June 25, 2012- As promised by yesterdays post, I’m gonna catch you up on what happened this weekend. After a two hour drive north, on a highway that allows speeds up to 90 mph, we arrived in the seaside town of Cuxhaven. Mostly known for its seaside hotels and large mud flats. A mud flat is the natural phenomena of water disappearing due to tidal phases. The moons gravitational pull on our oceans causes daily ups and downs of the waterline, but in the far north and south of the globe, the tides are much more dramatic. During a full moon, water will be pulled back farther than five miles. In some cases, you can ride a horse to a nearby island or put on your rubber boots and go for a stroll. Fun as it sounds, if you wait to long to return to shore, the water can dramatically rush back on you, leading to disastrous causes. Besides that, it’s quite the neat experience. Due to the timing of my visit, the mud flats only extended about fifty yards, better than nothing, I guess.
After the beach, we had a quick bite to eat, and were on our way to Bremerhaven. Bremerhaven is your basic industrial city, overrun with ports and factories, with not much substance to it. You could compare it to any major sea port on an American coast, it’s still nice. There, we met my host mother’s aunt, Marget, and her uncle, Conrad. After initial greetings, we had dinner at an Italian bistro and went for a walk.
By the way, in Germany, a twenty minute walk, can easily turn into a two hour walk. The highlight of our evening stroll was when we took a turn into the harbor. We were going down a peninsula, when the bridge opened up for a boat. It took nearly thirty minutes for the bridge could come down, and for us leave. Not a good thing for when your bladder is acting up.
That night, my host brother and I slept on mats in an upstairs room of the house. They had no extra beds, but these things did the trick. It had been a long day, and sleep came pretty easily.
By morning, the sound of seagulls gawking woke us up abruptly. That and the distant smell of fish intestines isn’t a good way to begin your day. Bremerhaven is Europe’s number one export of fish. Which made it the ideal place, to have an entire days meals, featuring fish. Over the past two days, I must have eaten my weight in fish. (You would hate it hear, Julia.) I’m not even sure what most of the fish was, but I ate it.
Now were back home, it was a nice little excursion for the weekend. Allowed me to get a different taste of German life, away from the suburbs and cities. Also, the museum count for the trip, is now five. I’m gonna start counting, anybody think we can break double digits over the rest of my stay?
-JP
