It's all in the translation

We were sitting at an outdoor cafe on a canal in Amsterdam with Baby Brother and Partner when Hans brought up the subject of the Rosetta Stone (don't ask me how these discussions get started because I haven't a clue!). He had just mentioned the three languages that appear on the stone and Baby Brother corrected him. It turns out there are two languages and three scripts. The languages being Egyptian and Greek, and the third script is demotic which is another form of hieroglyphics.

This is the kind of repartee that goes on in Hans' family. In my family everyone tries to remember which neighbor got drunk and threw fish in our swimming pool.

But anyway, by the time we arrived in Germany (with the Traveling Pie) I'd forgotten the Rosetta discussion. We traipsed around Trier and took in the sights which include the largest Roman gate still standing, and a church that has been burned down and rebuilt so many times that I hope the next invaders realize that destroying it would be redundant.

We had just passed the old sight of a nun's cloister when we saw this graffiti scrawled all over an ancient wall.

I remarked that perhaps about a zillion years from now when aliens excavate this area they'll try to figure out what civilization left their writings upon these walls.

That's when Hans (who does not share my sense of humor) surprised me and said in a somber voice, "I hope they have someone who can decipher the Graffiti Stone."

This made me laugh for the rest of the day.

Sometimes I actually sew, you know!

While we were in Germany this month we found much to our delight that Hans' distant cousin HAS A WINERY!!!!

Oh happy day!



Here is Hans standing in the door to their business. They've been making wine for years but now that the 'Sohn' (our age) in the Werner & Sohn has taken over there's a bit of concern because you see, he only has daughters and they have no desire to continue the family tradition.

I just hope that the Sohn is around for a long time!

Cousin Marianna treated us to a wine tasting at the family home and I surprised myself when I discovered I absolutely loved one of their sweet wines. Normally they make me shudder but I couldn't get enough of theirs. In addition to the many wines, very expertly described by the owners, we had freshly baked bread from their kiln, elk pepperoni, and an assortment of cheeses.

Toward the end of the evening Bernard brought out an unmarked bottle which I learned he'd pulled from their 1976 stock and apparently it had been a very good year.

I think it was too.

Anyway we ended up ordering a case of assorted wines to be sent to us here in the states and I'm anxious for its arrival.

And as for a true test as to how good their wine was; I woke up headache free the next day.







All the greenery you see here are vineyards.

Actually Germany has many fine wines, they're just not that well known in our area.

Hans says that's because they keep all the good stuff to themselves!












This is Trittenheim, and Baby Brother has an oil painting of that little yellow church before the town grew up around it. Cousin Bernard drove us to the top of a lookout so we could get pictures of the valley.

I wish I had a better camera.

















Here are just a few of the bottles we sampled.

I tried to transfer this picture onto photo transfer fabric (purchased from Nicole Mallalieu) and I think I need to monkey around with my printer settings. It worked; it's just a little washed out (see next picture).














I then sewed the finished transfer to the front pocket of my Passport Purse.

I didn't put Velcro at the top of this pocket because I didn't want to stitch into the picture.




















A close up.

You can see that it's slightly grainy.


























Here's the back. Instead of another outer pocket, I added a more secure zipper pocket.
























I also made an adjustable shoulder strap.

I couldn't find small tri-slides so I substituted a vest buckle.

















The zippered gusset at the top of the bag.

















And I used one of the Werner wine corks as my zipper pull. As a thank you for showing us such a wonderful time, I'm going to send this particular bag to Bernard's wife. She's the tasting expert of the company.

On our next trip to Germany we hope to find relatives who own a brewery!

I Like Mine Medium Rare

I've completely lost my sewing mojo, so I'll continue with another story of our recent trip to Europe. But don't worry, I went to JoAnn's today and bought fabric for our Halloween costumes. I'll post about them later and you're gonna love 'em!


This is the hotel that Hans' great-grandfather owned, in Trier, Germany, over a hundred years ago (we have an old oil painting of it hanging in our apartment). His son (Cousin Marianna's father) took over from 1900 to 1931.

We went to Germany to specifically meet Cousin Marianna who lived there as a child. She was Hans' dad's first cousin.


If you can keep all of that straight.



Anyway, we took Cousin Marianna (who is 87) back for a visit to her childhood home while we were there.




A closer look at the sign. Weis is the current family that owns the hotel.













Cousin Marianna was born in 1923, after World War I, and Germany was going through a great depression. While everyone was affected by hardships in one way or another, some suffered more than others. Marianna's family certainly never went hungry but their business fell off greatly. "We had five guests one year and they only bought one beer." Marianna joked with us. An exaggeration I'm sure but in 1931 when she was eight, they were forced to sell the hotel.

The family acquired a Doberman named Max the same year that Marianna was born, and he became her best friend and guardian. No one came near Marianna that Max didn't lift a lip in warning. Max certainly never went hungry, and in addition to his food, he was always given the leavings from the table after every meal.

I don't speak German but I knew exactly what Marianna was saying when she swept her hands over the table while talking about Max.

"He table surfed didn't he?" I asked Hans (my parents have a Doberman and I've seen her in action).

"She says Max's nose was level with the table and they had to watch him very closely." Hans confirmed.

When it was time to start school at the age of six, Marianna's big brother who could ride a two wheeled bike, refused to wait for his little sister and literally left her in the dust. School was a long scary two mile trek (it hasn't changed a bit in over 80 years either, believe me!) and everyone knew that Gypsies were just lying in wait to kidnap little blond girls.

So, Fat Max was pressed into service. Every day little Marianna went to school with the faithful Max in attendance. For allowing Max to sleep in the hall during class time, Marianna's teacher, a nice young man, was welcome to free coffee and cookies at the hotel anytime he wished.

But unfortunately, regardless of the exercise that Max may have received while acting as Marianna's guard, his eating habits caught up with him, and when he was seven, Max dropped dead from a heart attack.

Marianna was heart broken and the family made a big deal out of burying him out back and putting up a wooden cross. (Marianna made gestures with her hands to show how big the mound was that covered Max)

The next morning when Marianna started off for school, a poor neighboring farmer asked her, "Where is your fat dog?"


Marianna tearfully related the demise of Max and when the farmer asked, "What have you done with him?" Marianna told him about the burial.

The next morning the family was horrified to find that Max's grave had been excavated.

When Hans translated this information to me, I too was horrified and I had an awful feeling that I knew exactly what happened to Fat Max.

It wasn't until spring that the farmer fessed up.

He approached the family one day and wanted them to know that his family had been able to survive the winter thanks to Max.

After hearing of Max's death and knowing he hadn't been dead for very long, the farmer had waited until nightfall, and then stole the fat dog from his grave.

"We got four liters of fat alone off him!" The farmer proudly proclaimed in hopes that the family would feel better about the news.

They didn't, and the poor man headed for home.

"Wait! Wait!" The farmer called.

"I want you to know!" He puffed as he ran back to them.

What could he want? What could he possibly say to make them feel better about what had become of their beloved Max?

"I just want you to know," the farmer said with genuine sincerity, and he took off his hat and clutched it to his chest, "Your Max was a very tasty dog!"

The Brotherhood of the Traveling Pie

Hans and I traveled to Europe last week and our first stop was Amsterdam. We met Hans' baby brother and his partner who'd already been there for about three days. My biggest regret is that we were only able to spend one full day there before departing for Germany. Amsterdam is almost beyond explanation for me and all I can say is I have to go back someday. It's just that fabulous.

Anyway, I will post my Amsterdam pictures later but I wanted to share this fun little story first.

After arriving in Amsterdam we took a small nap to combat jet lag, and then went to meet Baby Brother and Partner who were very anxious to show us their favorite city. We walked for hours, enjoyed stopping at various sidewalk cafes for beer, walked some more, had dinner at a very good Indonesian restaurant (where I ate a lot of very salty Holy Mackerel!) walked some more, caught the midnight tram to our hotel, sat in the bar for a bit, and finally went to bed.

Even though I tried to sleep on the plane and had that small nap upon arriving, you can understand why my eyes were grainy and I felt like I was walking through sludge (remember we lost 6 hours due to eastern travel) when we hauled ourselves to the tram the next morning after waking up at 7 AM.

One thing I've learned in my overseas travels is that you really need to pack light as you'll be expected to walk up and down many stairs, get on and off too many buses and trains, and run like hell through airports. Baby Brother and Partner travel about a thousand times more than us (this year alone they've been to Egypt and just before meeting us they were sailing in Turkey) so I was a little surprised at the amount of luggage they had when they met us at the train station.

Rolling baggage, back packs, a huge camera case complete with a portable, bendable tri-pod, plastic bags full of sandwiches (a brilliant move on their part and I will love them forever for that as we ended up on trains for 7 hours that day), and a bakery box.

A bakery box?

I was too tired to think clearly, and my stomach doesn't like to travel as much as I do, or I might have questioned someone carrying a bakery box onto a train for a 7 hour trip. We lumbered onto our first train, banged our shins, knees, and elbows as we stowed our luggage, and struggled around each other as we tried to fit into our seats. During this time the bakery box was very delicately handled and then finally found its place of honor on the drop down tray in front of Partner.

I was tired and grumpy so luckily for everyone else I fell asleep as soon as I sat down.

Everytime I woke up though I saw that pie sitting on the drop down tray. Sometimes the lid was up and sometimes it was down (to let the steam out and keep it from getting soggy I later learned) and I caught Hans looking at it in a perplexed way a few times. I still didn't say anything as I thought maybe taking pies across borders was a European thing and I didn't want to appear to be any more unworldly than I already am.

We'd been on the move for about three hours and were only minutes away from our connecting train station when an announcement was made that there was a problem. We were going to have to get off of our train and onto another one. NOW.

This was not good news as we only had 10 minutes between our connecting trains and this switch was most likely going to screw everything up.

It did.

"We ask that everyone exit the train and move swiftly to the awaiting train," was the next announcement.

Then, "We will need your full cooperation. Exit to the right and board the other train immediately. Everyone must exit the train."

I looked around and saw young people with strollers, old people with canes, and I knew that even if I threw these people off the train myself, there was no way we were going to make our connection.

We didn't.

With one last dire warning from the 'voice', we retrieved our luggage (and the pie) and shoved our way off the train fully prepared to leap onto the next one.

Only it wasn't there.

As everyone looked around in puzzlement, Hans looked at me.

"This never happens! Never! Only with you, I swear!"

I gave him my dangerous look.

A few minutes later the other train pulled in but it really didn't matter because we'd missed our connection anyway.

Once again our luggage, bags, and the pie were loaded and stowed.

A few minutes later we arrived at the station, disembarked, got new tickets, and found out we'd have to sit there for an hour, so we went outside to a cafe for a beer.

The next train wasn't the 'Deluxe Lickety Split Get You There In No Time Train', it was the 'I've Been around Forever And I Don't Give A Shit How Long It Takes Me To Get You There Train".

So after heaving our luggage, bags, pie, and tired bodies aboard yet once again, I noticed there were no drop down trays.

No drop down tray to hold the pie that I was now starting to equate with the Baby Jesus as it had been cradled and carried ever so reverently for the last few hours.

Since I was still tired and grumpy, I did everyone a favor once again and took a nap. I woke up as Hans arrived back from a trip to the potty when he once again glanced at the pie which of course now had to be hand held for the remaining 4 hours of the trip, and whispered to me, "What the f**k gives with that pie?"

Just then Partner (who is a wonderful person and did not hear that comment) opened the box and peered in. "It's cracked!" he cried in dismay.

And that was it. The pie wasn't the only thing that cracked.

I dissolved into my seat in a fit of giggles.

All I could see was that pie box that had been on and off trains, up and down broken escalators, in and out of cafes, and hand held lovingly for hours at a time, and I just couldn't stop laughing. Poor Hans broke down too and when Hans gets going on a belly laugh it just fuels me even further. Tears were running down our faces and I turned toward the window and hoped that I wouldn't offend anyone but I don't think I succeeded.

The pie ended up being given to Hans' eighty-seven year old Aunt Marianna (who had once upon a time mentioned to Baby Brother that this pie was her favorite) and she served it to us the next day.

All I can say is this; for a pie that started out hot in Amsterdam, and was served cold in Germany, it was very good!

Sehr Gut!!!

The guest of honor on it's drop down tray.

At a cafe at the train station in Cologne as we wait for our connection.

Making sure all is well.

At last! Serving its purpose on this earth.

Traveling with Hans is too much fun.

travel update

We're still in Europe and haven't been kicked out yet.

Typing on a keyboard here is quite the experience. It took me about an hour to find the @ sign just to log in to my hotmail. I don't think anyone here needs to worry about my breaking into their computer systems and stealing vital secrets anytime soon.

We had an interesting trip from Amsterdam to Germany and a very precious apple pie made the journey with us.

More on that later.

We are near Köln (German name for Cologne but I wanted to use the ö with the dots over it to prove I'm really here).

Let me give you a few more symbols:

ß;I think it's a funky S.

ü; a different pronounciation of the letter u.

ä, I have no idea what the hell it is.

And the letters y and z are swapped on the keyboard (???!!!)

I really need to start learning German as I feel like the village idiot when everyone can converse in multiple languages but me, and no one wanted to talk in pig latin.

Anyway we've had a fabulous time so far (off to Switzerland tomorrow), including a visit with Hans' 87 year old cousin who told stories of her youth as a secretary with the German Secret Police, her capture, and short spell as a POW.

We visited the old family hotel complete with a castle that Hans has offered to buy back just for me, but I insist that he put the roof back on and get a couple of the fireplaces working. What's a few million dollars in remodeling if it will make me happy!!

We've had virtually no internet access here (so I can't read other blogs and acknowledge comments that have been left and I'm very sorry for that) and it won't get any better.

I'll be sure to catch up and post a few of the thousand pictures I've taken, when we get back.



I know you can hardly wait.