Doing Germany with the family
My parents left Sunday for the US after having been in Europe for just over a week. Their trip was a last minute one, planned about 5 weeks in advance (which is last-minute if you ask Mom:). Tim and I were thrilled that it all worked out and that they were able to come; the last time they came to visit us in Europe, they planned the trip months in advance and by the time they got to our house in Holland, everything was in moving boxes and we were about to move to Germany! They spent last Saturday and Sunday with Tim and I, then on Monday they left for Salzburg, Austria - where I joined them on Thursday. Friday the three of us drove west to castles in southern Germany, then north towards Aschaffenburg on a series of roads that together are called the Romantic Road. Tim was on a business trip most of last week which is why he couldn’t join us. My sister Becky was in Florida finishing up the school year as a teacher at Sarasota high school; if she would have been able to join us everything would have been 100% complete.
We had lots of good times. Just watching Dad eat a real German breakfast of crusty breadrolls and deli meats was enough to get the day started off right. Then there was the humour of driving down German country roads, one scenic view after another, while both Mom and Dad struggled persistantly to get their camera to take a picture of it. (If it wasn’t the batteries, it was the forced flash or the lens lid not being open that foiled their efforts. I eventually improved at leaving the highway on command for photo-op scavenger hunts. If you speak with them, tell them they need a new - modern - camera.) Of course, no one expected that I’d beat them all at the game “Hotel” back home in Aschaffenburg. The big topper was during one of the final rounds of pinochle with the four of us, when jet-lagged Tim made a cryptic bid in response to my opening bid and refused to give me, his partner, any explanation other than “that’s for me to know and you to find out”!
Between the four of us we managed to collect a decent amount of photos. I’ve posted the ones that are most meaningful to me on Bubbleshare (click on the scrolling images). Mom and Dad have more pictures they took in Salzburg but I wasn’t there for a couple of those days so I left them out.