The Halftime Report

We are in Norway now, but I’ll get to that in the next blog. For now, I thought I would just recap our our journey from Trier to Luxembourg to Belgium to get here. First off, we learned that the difference between the Luxembourg flag and the Dutch flag is just a few shades of blue.

Along the way we stopped at the brand new Herge museum which just opened in June. He is the Belgian artist who created Tintin and Snowy, and the museum is wonderful. It has very entertaining explanations about his influences, how the stories evolved over time and how they were effected by larger world events. And the artwork is just fun to see.

Finally we pulled in to Brussels to find that our hotel was across the street from what must be the world’s best, but also most inefficient pomme frites stand. People were waiting in line for over 45 minutes to get a paper cone filled with french fries. I didn’t have the patience and gave up after 15 minutes. I’ll have to wait for another trip to find out what made them so special.

Our last day in Belgium was also our last day with our car. With a heavy heart we gave it back and returned to the world of public buses and carrying our luggage. I miss it more than I thought I would, especially the GPS which could find any address in Europe regardless of how remote or tiny the street, or how many wrong turns we took on the way. I can’t imagine how we could have traveled without it.

On that note, I’ll end this post with the strangest road sign we saw during our time in the Peugeot. Apparently speeding tanks must be a real problem in Germany because there were quite a few of these along the roads near the Rhine.

Nearly every town that we’ve been to in Germany in the last week has had a münster or very large church.  They are very old; some were started in the 1200s, and each one has it’s own set of interesting carvings, painting, and spires.  However, the champion of all of them is in Ulm.  This münster has the tallest church tower in the world and comes in at 161.5m.  There should be no doubt about what we did next… 768 steps to the top.  The view is fantastic and every other building in the area looks tiny compared to the scale of the tower.

Here’s the view from the bottom:

We’ve been in Germany for a few days now and I’ve learned something about myself. Over the years I have aspired to be a foodie and definitely enjoy fine dining and innovative chefs. It’s also no secret that I love wines that are way above my pay grade. It should come a no surprise that we spent a lot of our time in the culinary capitals of Italy and France partaking in some of the famous specialties. We had Bolognese sauce on our pasta in Bologna, the appropriate drinks in Bordeaux, Cognac, and Burgundy, and every cheese named after a locality in between.

With this in mind, I had a smug expectation that the cuisine in Germany would be a let-down. I totally underestimated the “comfort food” factor. I also forgot that it’s either in my DNA or maybe just my upbringing to be a carnivore. Our dinners have been wonderful - the perfect thing to finish off a long day of “wandern” (hiking) on the many trails here in the Black Forest. What’s not to like about grilled and roasted beef, pork, or chicken with all sorts of potatoes, noodles made from potatoes, or potato dumplings, all washed down with the excellent local beer. Sehr gut.

Here’s how we’ve been working up the appetite - so many trails, so little time!