Rachel's in Germany!: It was a fantastic weekend!

Just got back from Indra's house a while ago. We had such a great time!

Indra, Marni, and I took the train part of the way, but it left the station late and Indra was worried we wouldn't make the connecting train. So her mom, Gaby, picked us up in Itzehoe, which is about halfway between their house and Hamburg. Indra's family lives in Hanerau-Hademarschen, a small town in Holstein. By the way, Mom, Holstein is part of North Friesland, so I have now officially visited the land of our ancestry! The drive was so cool! I got to see real Holstein cows that actually live IN Holstein! And all the canola flowers are in full bloom right now (those are what they make canola oil from), so the fields with them were bright, eye-popping yellow. It took about 25 minutes from Itzehoe to Hanerau-Hademarschen.

When we got to the house, it was chilly out! The house was smaller than it looked in the photos, but really neat. It is over a hundred years old, but Indra's dad Roland has been reworking it little by little over the years. Indra said their house is basically always under construction because her dad always has at least one project going on, and every time she comes home there is something new that wasn't there before.

It turned out that Roland's longtime friend, Frank, was also there. He was visiting from Köln (Cologne) with his three-year-old daughter Luna (his wife wasn't able to come though, because she had work or something). Indra was so excited to see him. She said she has known him her whole life but it had been a few years since she had seen him last--Luna wasn't even born yet the last time he visited! Indra's brother Aljoscha was there for an hour or two (he lives in southern Hamburg and was home for the weekend too), but after that he left for the night to go hang out with his old school friends in another town.

After Gaby showed Marni and me the attic loft where we would sleep, Indra gave us both a tour of the house. The inside was really neat too. Every room is like a work of art. It's kind of like a big random jigsaw puzzle. Marni and I were sleeping in the extension on the back of the house. There are stairs that go out the back of the kitchen down to the master bathroom (which is HUGE), and above the bathroom is the attic with a giant sofa-bed-thing for watching movies and a storage area where they put all their extra stuff (Roland's art things, mostly). The sofa bed was big enough for three people to sleep on, but Indra was sleeping in her room so Marni and I had lots of space. The house also has a cellar and a good-sized backyard. It's smaller than a lot of their neighbors' backyards, but compared to a suburban California backyard it is pretty big.

We also took a nice walk through the woods. Indra showed Marni and me all the places she and Aljoscha played as kids. It was really beautiful, and there were all kinds of magical-looking spots that would be perfect for adventures, battles, explorations, and other kid games. (Joanna, Emily, and Lara: there was one spot that really looked like Narnia.) We had so much fun on that walk! It was especially cool for me because I've never really experienced what it's like to live in the country. We waded through waist-high fields of grass, sang in the woods, climbed up into a platform seat somebody had built in a tree, and made turbans out of our scarves that we decorated with flowers and bird feathers. It was great!

After we got back to the house, Frank was busy making an Indian dinner recipe, with Gaby and Aljoscha helping. We set the table, but after that we had to wait for all the separate parts to cook and it took a super long time. Aljoscha left for his night with his friends, and basically it was a lot of just sitting and waiting. We tried to draw, but the house was super chilly--even inside--and we all felt like ice cubes. We finally had some tea while we waited. Dinner was extra-delicious because we had waited so long for it! We ate around 9 pm. Frank really did a good job, despite the lengthy cooking time: curry chicken with orange rice and spiced vegetables.

After that Roland made a fire in the fireplace outside, and he and Gaby went out there for a while. Frank put Luna to bed. Indra decided to take a bath, and she told me I could use it after she was done. She lit all the colored lanterns in the bathroom and ran the water nice and hot. I went out to the fire and talked to Gaby for a while until Indra was done. When I finally got to the bath, my feet felt totally frozen because I'd been cold for so long. That bath was, hands down, the nicest and most luxurious bath I have ever taken in my life. The bathtub is one of those big ones with the steps going up to it, and the whole bathroom is marble with pillars and fancy colored-glass lanterns. I felt like a Turkish princess when I got in. And it felt AMAZING to finally be in hot water after being so cold! I think I was in for probably half an hour.

By midnight everyone was settled in for bed. I slept pretty well, aside from the usual waking-up-five-times that always happens when you sleep in a new place. Woke up around 9 am, and the sun was peeking around the curtains and pouring through the attic skylight. I went downstairs and out to the back patio. Marni was already out there on the mosaic bench, soaking up the sun. Indra came out too. It was a beautiful morning! We watched the birds go in and out of the birdhouses and listened to the cows making noises in the neighbor's barn down in the field (I found out that cows can make a sort of bellowing dinosaur noise as well as mooing!).

Around 10 we had a (late and leisurely) breakfast. It was classic country style--a variety of bread and cheese with jam, butter, some raw vegetables, orange juice, coffee, tea, and whole milk (store-bought . . . we unfortunately weren't able to get the fresh-from-the-cow kind). The sun came in the window and we took our time enjoying the meal. It was so nice.

When it got to be around noon, we all piled in the car (they have a minivan, but it's a Hyundai, still pretty small compared to American minivans) to drive to the beach! We ended up not visiting Friedrichstadt this weekend, but it was fine because we went northwest about an hour to a peninsula that sticks out into the North Sea. The beach town there is called St. Peter-Ording, and it is famous in that area. The beach wraps around the whole peninsula. There is a lighthouse on the north side, and the town kind of runs in a strip down the west side of the peninsula. In front of the town are grass and sand dunes, and then in front of that a very wide, flat white beach. The beach area has the striped beach chairs and buildings on stilts. It reminded me of the pictures I've seen of East Coast beaches.

We walked to the water (finally got to go barefoot in sand! It's been a while) and Marni actually stripped to her swimsuit and went in! She had decided beforehand she wanted to do it, so she went through with it. But she said the water was disgusting compared to the clear water in Western Australia. This water was choppy, brown, and silty, like Seal Beach water on a windy afternoon. There were a lot of kite flyers and also kite surfers. It was pretty sunny, but the wind was so strong that we all got cold fast. We walked to the on-beach restaurant, which had glass around the deck to block the wind, and all had hot chocolate (Heiße Schokolade). Then Frank and Indra pushed Luna for a few minutes on the swing that was near all the beach chairs.

By the way, Luna was sooooo cute! For a three-year-old, she was extremely well-behaved and also really smart. Frank's wife is Polish, so she already knows German, Polish, and some English, and Frank is trying to start Spanish with her too. She only had one real crying episode, and that was at the beach restaurant when she pinched her finger in the clip that was holding the tablecloth. She wouldn't stop crying, so I tore out a page from my sketchbook and gave her a pencil, and that gave her something to distract her from her "owie." We had fun taking turns swinging her between us while we were walking, and Indra walked around with her and played with her so Frank wouldn't have to be occupied with watching her every second.

After that we walked back to the car and drove to the town. It was small but busy (after all, it was Saturday afternoon). We got ice cream (Eis) there--I had tiramisu flavor, which was delicious!--and the adults all had Fischbrötchen, which is a specialty of the North Sea/Baltic region of Germany. It's a roll with a cold fish filet (usually herring), onion, and lettuce--think of it as a sort of sushi sandwich. I was full after my hot chocolate and ice cream, so I didn't want my own, but I did try some of Gaby's. It was actually good . . . believe it or not, it's the raw-onion part, not the cold-fish part, that I don't like! We hung out for a while and I bought some postcards (including a Nordfriesland one to send to Grandpa Jack, who always tells me "A true Frieslander will always meander"). The clouds came over though, and it was starting to get colder, so we went back to the car and drove home.

It was almost 6 by the time we got back to the house. We were all so tired. Indra and Marni went for another short walk in the woods, but I was too tired and cold. I did the only thing I could think of to get warm--the same thing Mom told me she did when she was in England, which was to get in bed with a hot water bottle and have a cozy relaxation time! From the loft I could hear everyone else coming and going in the house. After a while I heard Gaby come into the kitchen to start dinner, and she put on an album from the '70s by Francis Cabrel, a French musician. I actually knew who it was because I heard one of his songs when I took French, and I called down to her from my bed, "I love this song!" She came up to the loft for a few minutes and was telling me about how she used to live in the western part of Germany, near the French border, and how at one point at her school there were a lot of students who only spoke Russian and French, so she ended up becoming mostly fluent in French by talking with them. She said that western Germany feels like her second home.

We had a late dinner again, maybe around 8 or 8:30. It was leftover rice and curry from the night before, with bread and fruit to supplement. Gaby made a yogurt cream to go with the strawberries. I lost count of how many grapes and strawberries I ate!

All three of us girls had a bath last night. Marni was especially eager to get really warm after her cold dip in the ocean earlier! I would have liked to watch the stars out of the attic skylight, but unfortunately the clouds were blocking them, so I had to do without any stargazing. I slept pretty well, except that my arm hurt a lot because something in my back is still off and now I keep having muscle pain in my arm. I finally got up and took some Advil, which worked well enough for me to go back to sleep.

This morning was still cloudy, but not so cold. We had another late breakfast and everybody figured out their routes home. I tried liver-paste spread on my bread! It was actually good that way, though I don't think I would like liver if it were in its original form--I've heard the texture is nasty. Anyway, it was decided that Gaby would drive Frank, Luna, Aljoscha, Indra, Marni, and me to the train station at Elmshorn, which is about 20 minutes by train outside of Hamburg, and we could all go our separate ways from there. We packed our things and then sort of just hung around until it was time to go. Roland was so nice--the three of us were asking him about a gold-dust powder that looks like gold leaf that Indra has, and he gave me and Marni each a little container of the gold powder and also a container of solvent to mix it with, so that we could paint it on like gold ink. Marni and I felt like kids at Christmas! We must have thanked him at least five times. Neither of us has been able to find a good and relatively affordable pen or bottled ink that actually looks like real gold, so that gift was a special treat for us.

A little after noon, we all said goodbye to Roland and got in the car. Gaby drove us to Elmshorn, where we said goodbye to her, and then we all went to the platform. Frank and Luna had to take a different train back to Köln, so we said goodbye to them too. We told Luna, "Tchuß" (say it "chooss"; it means "see you") and she said, "Tchuß" and then realized we were all leaving and started to cry. It was kind of sad, actually . . . poor kid! We all had a lot of fun together this weekend. Indra, Marni, and I all agreed it was more fun with Frank and Luna there, because Frank was such an old friend and Luna was so cute.

Aljoscha rode the train with us to Hamburg, but we got off before he did because he had to go farther to get to his connecting subway. Indra, Marni, and I were all super tired, but we agreed it had been a great time. We had a "rest and relax" period for a couple hours, and then reconvened in Indra's room at 7 to watch a movie she brought from her house. It was called Accepted, and it's an American comedy about students who create their own college after they get rejected by all the schools they applied to. In general it was funny, but definitely a lot more language than I prefer to hear in movies . . . thankfully it wasn't a super long movie. Don't think I would watch it again, let's put it that way.

Anyway, it was a very nice weekend. I really enjoyed just being in the family environment and living in a real house again for a few days! And it was especially neat to experience country life for a bit! I am such an urban/suburban kid that I've never totally experienced what it is like to live in a rural town. Hanerau-Hademarschen isn't as rural as a lot of German towns, but it's still small, and it has the cows, the fields, and the bread-and-cheese breakfasts. Loved it!

Here are lots more photos:

Walking in the woods (and fields)