Wind Rain & High Water

June 25, 2012

Well, the Caribbean must be bone dry as Tropical Storm Debbie has drawn all the moisture north and dumped it on Florida. The South wind has blown the water up Charlotte Harbor for the last three or four days and that combined with a high tide put water over our dock for the first time but not over our canal wall and into our backyard and not anywhere near the level of our house, thankgoodness.

Link to Pictures  

Copenhagen

View from Our Room

After a pleasant 5-1/2 hr train ride, we arrived in Copenhagen  yesterday.  There is lots and lots of sunshine here.  We decided to orient ourselves by using their hop on/hop off boat/bus combo.  The boat ride meandered down canals full of historical buildings along with new modern type architecture.  The Danish love lots of glass with unusual shapes.  In fact, the hotel we are staying in was built by the son of the architect who built the Sydney Opera House.  It's called Copenhagen Island Hotel and it's surrounded by water on 3 sides.  Our room overlooks the harbor and last night we watched fireworks over Tivoli Gardens from our hotel window
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Little Mermaid

After the boat, we hopped on the bus for the land tour and then treated ourselves to lunch in a cute little area called Nytorv.  We visited the royal castle and the botanical gardens.   Richard took this nice picture of the Little Mermaid.  Tomorrow, we'll go to Tivoli Gardens.  Check out our Pictures by double clicking on them and selecting slideshow.

As predicted by yesterday's sky and Weather Underground, we awoke to a chilly, wet and windy morning.  Oh, well - we can't complain -  most of our weather the last few weeks has been awesome.  After breakfast at the hotel, we rented bicycles and pedalled our way to the National Museum.

By the way, the bicycle is a popular form of transportation here in Copenhagen as it appears to be in Austria and Germany. See Bicycles in Copehagen.  The entire city is set up with bike paths to make it easy and enjoyable.

Inside the warm and dry museum, we toured the stone, bronze, iron and Viking exhibits.  Richard recently read the Earth's Children Series, a fictional account of people living 35,000 years ago in Europe, a time when Denmark was still covered with ice. Neverthless, the museum displays the skeltons of a giant deer and an auroch, animals thought to be plentiful until hunted to extintion.  Also, flint tools were on display; lots of pages are given over in the Earth's Children series to flint tool making. 

After walking through the exhibit Denmark through the Ages, we mounted our bikes for a ride to Christania, Copenhagen's hippie community. This place is a bit controversial in Copenhagen - they have cleaned up some of the drug use there.  It was full of peace symbols and painted buildings all reminiscent of the 60's era. Following a quick look around, with the weather improving, we rode over to Nytorv, the "New Harbor" for a lunch of pea soup.  That warmed us up!

A ride down to the Little Mermaid and then back to our hotel completed our bike adventure and tour of Copenhagen. It's a wonderful city that we would recommend highly.

Sadly our European Vacation has come to an end and tomorrow morning we fly home, on a airplane, not a bicycle!  Can't wait to see Mom, our friends and our dear kitty, Bleu!  Thanks so much to Angela for taking care of him.

Hamburg Immigration Point

Hamburg – Od Seaport Town

Great-grandfather Walter on my Mom's side of the family was a ship chandler in Hamburg, Germany before he immigrated to the United States. We have no clue why he boarded a boat for the trip across the Atlantic, but after visiting the BallinStadt Emigration Museum here today, we were educated that Hamburg was one of the major ports that took immigrants from Germany, Eastern Europe (especially Poland, Russia and Austria) and the Scandanavian countries to the USA, Latin America and Australia from the 1850's through the early 1900s.

It had wonderful exhibits in English with old black and white photos.

We also enjoyed a boat harbor tour aboard the Olympia, a huge vessel where we met some nice Australian travelors from Tasmania. We learned that Hamburg is the 2^nd largest port in Europe and the 2^nd largest city in Germany after Berlin. It is full of young working people and humming with life. We really enjoyed our visit here and tomorrow we are off on a train to Copenhagen, Denmark.

Pictures

Sonderborg Denmark

Visiting Ancestorial Home

When I was about 10, I visited my Grandmother, Ada Johanna Calleson McDermott, in Brooklyn, NY. She showed me her jar of coins that she was saving to visit Denmark, the country that her parents had immigrated from in the late 1800's. Grandma never made it back there nor did my Dad. But now almost 148 years to the day, I was privileged to visit my great-grandfather's hometown, Sonderborg, Denmark.

To get to Sonderborg, we rented a car in Hamburg, Germany. After negotiating what seemed like kilometers of city traffic, we turned onto the A7 Autobahn. At a speeds of up to 140 km/hr , we zoomed North for 140 km before turning onto lovely country roads passing through rolling farmland, dark green or earthy brown where freshly tilled. Lilacs bloomed on this gorgeous and warm May day with not a cloud in the sky.

Across the Danish border at the battlefield museum in Dybbol, we learned why 1864 is such a significant year in Danish history.

One month before my great-grandfather, Adolph Callesen's, birth (May 26, 1864), Prussian forces launched an attack on the Danish and after huge casualties, the duchies of Schleswing, Holstein and Lauenborg (including Sonderborg) were forfeited to Prussia. The Danish Realm was reduced by 1/3 of their land and 2/5 of their population. Otto von Bismarck, the strong minister of Prussia's weak king, used cunning politics to engineer a unified Germany under Prussian dominance. A united and resurgent Germany was rising and taking over land.

One can only guess how that affected my great grandfather's young life. The family lore is that as he got older, he left his homeland because he did not want to be inducted into the Prussian (German) army.

I've done a bit of geneological research – For interested family members here are the details:  Adolph Callesen married Nielsine Petersen Jensen (DOB June 25, 1863). Adolph's parents were Asmus Callesen (DOB 9/14/1830) and Maren Petersen (DOB 6/1/1831). They were married on 3/29/1860. Maren's parents were Petraus Cornelius Petersen and Adelheit Christensen. Adolph Callesen was christened on May 28, 1864 in Bjolderup, Asbenraa-Sonderborg, Denmark. This info is from Danish on-line baptisimal records.

Our return trip on a Friday afternoon suffered from early weekend traffic. Our GPS routed us through suburban Hamburg saving us from what looked like a monstrous traffic jam on A7. Nevertheless we still encountered a lot of backed up traffic at one light that turned green only ten seconds out every minute! Enterprise wanted us back by 5:30 PM to give us free ride to our hotel. We pulled in their lot almost exactly at 5:30! GPS – don't go on the road without it!

Click to see Pictures

Click on first button under box on the left - - Joanne talks about her ancestorial home. . .

Hamburg

We arrived Hamburg this afternoon by train.  No problems.
We appear to be at the end of free Internet access so we probably won't be posting as many, if any pictures, now.

Tomorrow, we rent a car to drive to Sandorborg Denmark for a day trip.

A Day on the Rhine with Castles

Best Lunch of the Trip

We stepped aboard the boat and made our way up the gorgeous Rhine River past hilltop vineyards and ancient castles to the town of St. Goar, home of the Rheinfels Castle, the largest on the river.  It was built in 1245 and saw lots of action during many wars.  Fortunately, we had the Rick Steves Guidebook, which gave us a free self guided tour that we enjoyed immensely.  But even more than that, the outdoor lunch experience at the castle overlook was my personal highlight meal of the trip.  The view was awesome, the food delish and the weather idealic - what more can you ask for?  Check out pics below - as always, just doubleclick and then click on slideshow...
Tomorrow, we are off on a 5-hr train ride to Hamburg, home of my Mom's ancestors on the Walter and Fiely sides of the family.

Pictures

Bacharach

Today we dropped off our car at the Frankfurt Airport and caught a train to the lovely town of Bacharach on the Rhine River.

We arrived in the late afternoon and after checking into Pension Lettie, we toured the town and climbed to a tower where Richard took this beautiful picture.  Tomorrow, we will go on a boat ride and tour the Rheinfels Castle in St. Goar.  Double click Pictures for more views of the town.

By the Way - Some of our observations about life in Germany...

  - Boy, are they GREEN !  We have seen so many solar panels on the roofs of buildings and homes and even, solar farms of thousands of panels.  We are wondering if they have incentives to encourage solar power or whether Germans are more energy conscious than Americans ?   Also, we noticed many large wind farms along the roads. See Renewable German Energy.  Also, all these bicycles can't hurt. 

But do they drive fast on the autobahn - higher speed = lower fuel efficiency!

 - Smoking - ugh, it seems like many Germans are still lighting up.  In Italy, we rarely saw this and even in France, fewer seemed to have this habit.  But here, it continues - but fortunately, it is not allowed in most restaurants and public places.

 - The people seem taller.  I've seen many women as tall as me and very tall men.  Very unusual for us!

 - SPARGEL EVERYWHERE!  What's that?  The country's crop of white asperagus has been harvested.  It is only available for one month.  We tried it - and it's great!  It's not fiberous like ordinary asperagus and they serve it with a white hollandaise sause.  We also tried the spargel soup and it was yummy too.  We are enjoying the German food more than we thought we would - and the desserts are fantastic.  It will definitely be diet time for us when we return to Florida.