26 Germany Day 2

Rothenburg ob der Tauber

Ray and Penny Owens are Extreme Tourists! After the day at Oktoberfest we spent a couple of hours in the hotel business center where we can plug our computer in or use their computers. They have no free wireless. Then off to bed.

We were up at 6:00. But only because I miss set my alarm. Penny sat hers for 6:30. You need every minute of sleep when your mission for the day is to conquer 15th century Germany.

On the train we sat in a compartment with a very nice man who is a history PhD. He said he works at a museum. I got most of what he was saying about the museum but am not certain if it a mining museum or whether it is just located in an abandoned mine. He did talk about other mines in other places.

He was on holiday to Eastern Europe. He was traveling by bus, train, and bicycle. He had his bicycle with him, folded up to a hanging bag sized bag that tripped all the suitcase rolling tourists getting on the train. His bike was sitting in the hall outside our compartment.

Our trip to Rothenburg required two train changes. Each change was to a smaller regional train. Do not think that more local people were riding these smaller trains. They were filled with tourists. This small town of 3000 or so has 2.5 million tourists each year. Not all of them were there on Friday.

Rothenburg is a medieval walled city, well mostly walled. One side presently does not have a wall but it does have a very steep drop on that side of the city. That should discourage any marauding bands of Japanese tourists from storming the city from that side of town.

Most of the buildings in the old part of town were built by 1400. It was a lovely town. It was fairly quiet on Friday. This was possible due to the end of the summer season but also because of the rainy, cloudy day.

We had a hard time finding the tourist information center. The large blue “I” in Rothenburg is a small brown “I”. We were told that there was an English tour of the town at 2:00 but at that time it was raining so we opted to let Rick Steves be our tour guide.

The market square was square-ish but the one stand with wet vegetables and souvenirs hardly qualified it as a market.

We went to St. Jakob’s Church which was built in the 14th century and has been a Lutheran Church since 1544. The stained glass windows behind the altar are the originals from 1330’s.

The altar at the front of the church is from 1546. The paintings on the altar are unusual. Peter is depicted reading a Bible (a book) and using spectacles.

Also at the front is a second alter that is even older and has a statue representing the trinity. The Holy Spirit is represented by a dove bridging God and Jesus. Jesus is standing on a skull, showing that Jesus has overcome death.

In the back of the church is a glorious 35 foot high wood carving by Tilman Riemenschneider carved from 1499 to 1504. It takes time to do great art. It was originally built to hold a rock-crystal capsule that held a scrap of table cloth that was miraculously stained in the shape of a cross by a drop of communion wine. The attention to detail in the carving is impressive.

Outside the church was an apple tree with fruit laying on the ground most of which had been smashed. A father and his 2 year old son walked by and the kid seeing the fallen apples turns to his Dad and asks "Das ist kaputt?

We ate lunch in a Rick Steves recommended restaurant. He was dead on. Burgerkeller is a small cellar one flight down from the main street. Harry Terian is the owner and was a delight. We arrived and there was one other couple was eating lunch. While we were there two men came in and had a coke and a beer. Business was slow today. According to Harry, the weather was to blame. He was hoping for good weather next week which is a holiday weekend and perhaps there will be big crowds.

The dining area is a half barrel shaped room with dim lights and wonderfully decorated tables. The walls had medieval paintings on them.

Harry spent most of the time talking with the German couple or to us. He had “oldies” music playing. I told him I liked his music and he stopped for a second to listen and said, “Ah, The Mammas and Pappas, jah?”

I ordered a beef and noodle soup and sausage, mushrooms, boiled potatoes all in a cream sauce. It was delicious. The mushrooms were wonderful and a variety that I had not seen before. The sauce was sinfully rich. Penny had fried pork with homemade noodles in a sauce with a green salad.

The meals were the best we had in Germany. But the pièce de résistance were the WCs (restrooms) which were upstairs in the back. They were immaculate and looked like something from a current magazine layout. When traveling you learn to appreciate good restrooms.

Our next stop was the Medieval Crime and Punishment Museum. Housed in two large buildings, it contains all kinds of items dealing with the legal system. Torture was evidently not thought of as a human rights issue. It was part of the court system. They had books that described the proper use of thumb screws for example. Rather than trying to describe this let me show you a few pictures.

This is a witch catcher. This is on a long pole and you shove this around the neck of a witch and you can keep her away from you while you haul her in.

This giant rosary was hung around the neck of people just inside the church if they skipped church (everyone had an assigned pew to sit in so they could tell if you were not there) or worse if you were there but fell asleep.

These are shame masks. If you violated a law, the court could assign you to wear these around town. One of them had a whistle in it so that when you breathed it made a noise so people would notice you. Slightly more intusive than a dunce hat.

This is a Medieval chair designed for torture but could be used as a recliner to discourage too much TV watching.

This is a book describing the proper use of thumb screws. All of these things were used by the courts.

This is a mouth pear. Evidently you stuck it in someones mouth and when you tightened the end the bottom spead out and stretched the mouth. To what purpose? You obviously are not going to get a confession from someone with that in their mouth.

After the Crime and Punishment Museum we went into a Christmas store. We were trying to find a Christmas museum but failed. The store was huge and crowded with merchandise. They were very proud of their Christmas items. Small China made wooden tree decorations (the kind you would see at Michaels or Walmart for 99 cents) were selling (but not to me) for 4 and 5 Euros ($5.50 to $7.00). Some of the fancier wooden candle twirlly spinny things were marked at 500 Euros. We did not buy anything.

After the Christmas Stores we climbed up and took a walk on the top of the city wall which is covered and thus a good thing to do in the rain. There were just a few people also walking in the opposite direction that required our squeezing by each other.

The inside of the covered walk is open to the city center and allowed peering down on everyone’s back yards. The outside rock wall has viewing holes periodically that allow photography by the people living in 1540 (okay, maybe it was for shooting arrows). Today they have stone plaques all along the wall with the names of people that provided money for the restoration and upkeep of the wall. They gave a €1000 per meter of wall. Some had 1 meter some had 5 or 10 meters. The names were from all over the world including the US but most were from Germany.

After the wall it was still raining and we decided to catch an earlier train to start back to Frankfurt. That would allow us to get off in Wurzburg and have about 2 hours to see some of the city immediately around the train station and find something to eat. The street across from the station looked promising but it was full of nice shops but not many places to eat. A trip down a side street brought us to a pub kind of place. The menu on the door looked like good prices and the sign saying “we speak English” sealed the deal.

We walked in to a small room with a dozen tables and room for maybe 50 people if every chair was filled. In the corner was a long table with a family of 8 or so adults and kids who were laughing and playing “Rook.” We sat down at a table, the English speaking waitress came and offered us English menus. Penny asked for hot chocolate and she grabbed a table card and began to describe the 15 different kinds of hot chocolate they served. She brought us our chocolate and we sat and sipped after ordering our food. As we sat there the place began to fill up. The family reunion added another 5 or 6 people and as they came in there were hugs all around (including the waitress). Other couples came in and everyone seemed to know everyone. We had stumbled into the German Cheers! It was fun.

Part of the fun was watching the kitchen staff of 3 preparing the meals through a slide up window where they passed orders and meals. It was like watching a cooking show on TV with pots flying, flip-stirring the content and pouring in some flammable liquid and then sloshing a bit over the side to flame the sauce and watching the flames leap high in the air nearly setting fire to the chef’s hat.

As they began to serve the meals to the family (one at a time) timing became a worry. We had reservations on a train and had a 15 minute walk or a 10 minute dash back to the station.

The food arrived and we paid at that point. We ate rather quickly. That was a bit of a shame because the meal was again very good. We dashed the 4 or six blocks to the train station and had six minutes to spare.

It was a good day and food, restaurants and people were a highlight.

Ray

25. Germany Day 1

Ryanair.com is a cheap airline. They sell tickets for a pence or a few pounds. The taxes and fees are in addition. Our tickets to Frankfurt were £1.60 for the two of us. After the fees and taxes the cost was £87.04. That is still a good price. How do they stay in business? They charge for everything. Want to check a bag, have a coke, get on the plane as a priority seating (open seating)? All of that and everything else has a fee. In addition if you want to buy a scratch off ticket to win a million pounds or free air travel you can do that while in the air.

So although the flight was cheap there was a catch. The Frankfurt airport they fly into is Frankfurt Hahn airport. This Frankfurt airport is 77 miles from Frankfurt. We took an hour and 45 minute bus ride from the airport to the train station in Frankfurt.

Our hotel was right across the street from the train station. The Excelsior Hotel was nice. Large room at the back of the Hotel and was very quiet. We did not spend much time there. The Excelsior Hotel is the antithesis of RyanAir. They did not charge for anything extra. The Mini bar had sodas, juice, water and beer – free of charge. There were snacks in the lobby. They had a business center with eight computers plus places to plug in your laptop for internet, all free. Breakfast was also included.

After settling in the hotel we walked around the city area. Frankfurt is on the Main River. We walked over a very nice pedestrian bridge and down a park area by the river. It was a nice first evening in Germany.

Germany Day 2 Oktoberfest

The morning train from Frankfurt to Munich left at 6:56. It was dark for the first part and rainy enough for the second part of the three hour ride that it was difficult to see through the rain streaked windows. We also had aisle seats in a compartment with six seats and a table. That meant if I was to look out one side I might be mistaken for staring at one of the other passengers or perhaps worse I may have been thought to be reading some of the top secret emails and spreadsheets being displayed on the softly lit computer screens of our three piece suited traveling companions. The fact that I do not read German would, I am certain, elude them until after they beat me senseless in a fit of Bavarian rage. (Sorry about that. I have been reading a Dean Koontz novel.)

The point is I did not see a great deal on the train ride.

The train on the return trip enjoyed idyllic weather for late September in Germany. The sun was setting in a partly cloudy sky. We glided through green pastures with the occasional small town sprinkled in to break up the monotony of the pastoral landscapes.

It took a couple of towns before I could solve the puzzle of why the towns, while beautiful, had some quality that seemed just a bit a skew from what I was used to seeing in other places. The solution to the puzzle came to me.

Each small town had a church steeple rising up from somewhere near the town center. The houses and small apartment or duplexes were all lovely. Some were big and some small, some had large lots, some were sardine-like. Then it struck me. Every house, every church, everything in every town I saw for the first hour was painted the same shade of white. Usually the tile roofs (everyone I saw was tile) were the same color of red or brown; this varied in each town but within the town there was little variation in roof color.

What to make of this? I allowed myself to hypothesize:

1) There is one very large subdivision with very strict homeowner bylaws.
2) Walmart had a huge sale on white paint.
3) Keeping up with the Schmidt family has gotten wildly out of hand.
4) Social conformity is alive and well in the Bavarian countryside.
5) What are your theories?

Oktoberfest http://www.oktoberfest.de/en/index.php

We arrived in Munich and bought a map of the city and made our way the short distance to the Weisen area. We were not alone on this trip. The Weisen is a large park area with what they call large tents. They are really like park buildings with tent roofs. The floors are wooden. They have fancy decorations and are sponsored breweries.

Some of the tents are small holding 600 to a thousand people. Others hold over 9000 people inside with a few thousand more outside.

When we arrived at 11:00 after the short walk to the Weisen from the bahnhof (not to be confused with the flughofen or the busbahnhof) the tents were just starting to come to life. We had read the description on the internet of the various tents. Some were described as having young crowds with rock and roll music. Some were said to be family friendly. Some were said to have a mature crowd. We narrowed it down to two. We found one and it was open but there were only 500 or so people there at 11:30. We asked a nice lady if we needed reservations and she said the area in the middle near the band was open seating.

We selected a seat at one of the tightly packed long picnic table with benches. We selected one at the outside rail so one side did not have a bench but a railing next to it.

We had the table to ourselves until almost noon. That was when the crowds started arriving. A group 20 something men came in and sat next to us, one of them looked very suspiciously like England's Prince William. Does anyone know if he speaks fluent German?

The Real Prince William

People sit down and wait for the staff to bring you food and drink. You pay when they serve you. We had coffee and hot chocolate to start. Fortunately they had English menus with German subtitles so we could point and grin. Our waitress did not speak English but we had little trouble. We order our lunches. Penny had roast pork with potato dumplings and cabbage salad. The potato things were rather bland and the sauce over the pork was needed. The cabbage salad was very nearly coleslaw of sorts, not the creamy kind. I ordered the farmer’s lunch. It was meat, lots of meat with sauerkraut. There was roast pork, ham, pork sausage, and a liver dumpling. There was also bacon crumbled on the sauerkraut. It was very good. The liver dumpling was like an ice cream scoop of liverwurst. I have been known to eat and enjoy liverwurst. I ate every bite. I promised not to eat the rest of the day. I shattered that promise about three hours later.

The brass band began arriving just before noon. At high noon they began to omppapa. They played two songs and then took a break (must be some union rule). The break was short and then the music continued. We listened for a while and then sat out to explore the other 14 tents. We were able to go in and walk around the outside of the central seating area, which is generally surrounded on the outside by small (25-75 seats) box seating areas which are almost always reserved. In some tents all tables are reserved.

It was interesting to see the different characters of the tents. By 2:00 the crowds were packing in. By 3:00 it was difficult to swim through the sea of humanity.

The waitresses and a very few waiters were working very hard to keep people supplied with food and beer. You may have seen pictures of waitresses carrying 10 or 12 litter mugs of beer. They really do that. They have 4 or 5 in each hand and sometimes 1 or 2 mugs balanced on top of those. I did not see or hear any dropped mugs.

The patters of food were almost as impressive. There are big food prep areas on one side of the tents where large rotisserie cookers were cooking chickens, ducks, and pork. Picture the ovens at Sam’s cub that cook 25 or so chickens. Now picture those ovens on steroids where 100 chickens in each of 3 or 4 ovens are being cooked. There is a lot of food. Oktoberfest is about beer but it also about food.

The tent temperament is salient. Some tents were filled with young folks having noisy fun in their beer hats (those tend to be the non-Germans). Many of the Germans were wearing Heidi style clothing. This was men and women. Our friend at Harlaxton from Germany said that people can pay thousands of Euros for these outfits. Think of it like the people in Dallas or Houston who only pull out and wear their cowboy boots and hats when the rodeo comes to town.

Other tents were filled with a mature clientele. These tents all were having fun but the difference was you could hear the music above the conversation in some of the tents.

There is a traditional song to spur the sale of beer. Almost every tent played this 10 second song. German national law evidently requires those drinking beer to stand up, hold the mug in the air and when the music stops you clink your mugs together with all your friends and the take a big swig of beer. Some go on and finish the beer and the bang the table to order another.

We stopped and sat outside a small tent (1000) and had apple strudel with cream. It was very good. It was quiet outside and was fun watching people.

At the far end of the Weisen was a huge area with lots of rides. These were Six Flags kinds of rides, not your traveling carnival rides. I am not sure the wisdom of folks drinking lots of beer and then paying someone to spin you in circles or drop you from 6 stories in the air.

On our walk back to the train station we went to Beethoven square which was on Goethe Strada. We had thought that we might see a statue of one of these people but found only this lady. She does not look like I thought Beethoven would look.

We were standing looking around (looking lost) when a lady stopped and said something in German (shocking). I asked if she spoke English and she said a little. She thought we were trying to find the Weisen. We said we had just come from there and I asked her if this was Beethoven plaza and she said yes. “Where is Beethoven?” She laughed and said he wasn’t there and then said and Goethe is not here either.

Contest 1: What does this German word mean?







Contest 2: What is this guy doing? (I don't know the answer to this one.)





It was a good day.

24. London Weekend Sept 14-16

Go, GO, GO, Work, Work, Work, GO, GO, GO!

“The hurrieder I go the behinder I get.” At least that is what my mother used to say. It has been very true the last couple of weeks. I have been having lots of fun, working hard, seeing lots of things and have not taken the time to write in the blog.

Penny and I are in Frankfurt, Germany as I write this. I will try to quickly catch you up on the last two weekends and then we will try to keep up with Germany.

This may be brief (no applause, no applause) because I have slept several times since the events unfolded and when I sleep some creature enters my brain and gnaws on my memories. That at least is the story to which I am sticking

Penny and I went to London on Sept 14th to the 16th. We decided that we wanted to check out a few more things. The first lesson we learned was not to believe anything you read or indeed anything you hear. We both read and had been told that you could not get tickets to see the musical Spamalot at the half price ticket booth in Leicester Square. So believing this, we went to the theatre box office on Friday and bought tickets for Friday night. We got good seats on the main floor. We did, I think, get a better price than face value of the tickets. But then we walked to Leicester Square and they were indeed selling tickets to the show. We did not check where the tickets were located or how much they cost, preferring to believe that they would have been way in the upper balcony behind a large man with a hat who has season tickets.

Spamalot was a heck-of-a-lot like the movie Monty Python and the Search for the Holy Grail, which is what it was. I had not seen the movie in years but most of the jokes came back to me. There were the knights that say NEEE, the knight being dismembered who keeps saying “tis only a flesh wound.” They were sent on a quest to find a shrubbery. But it was still fun for the most part. They did throw in highly stereotyped references which we were uncomfortable with to Jewish people and of course there was the obligatory gay knight. I felt pretty good about the overall experience until the next night.

On Saturday we decided to go see “The Lion King.” We started out at Leicester Square half price booth but could not get tickets. We walked to the theatre and we were able to get some tickets there. Now while this show was also based on a very familiar movie, I enjoyed this one far more than Friday’s theatre experience. Lion King was a beautiful and entertaining production. It is a musical (with all of the familiar songs) but it also is an elaborate dance production and an entrancing puppet show.

The characters almost all have puppet features. The adult lions had head dress masks that moved up above their heads at times and at other times with a head flick the mask would float down in front of their face as they made a particularly lion-like move or statement. The actor that played Pumbaa, the warthog, had a puppet warthog face that was huge and the actor was sticking out of the back and working the head (mouth, tongue) with his arms and hands. The giraffes were people in costumes with stilts on legs and hands. They used birds on strings that they spun above their heads. It was amazing how they drew you into viewing the animals and not the puppeteers/actors who were clearly visible at all times. At times they marched up and down the aisles of the theatre. The show was completely engrossing and very entertaining. I had a great time.

On Friday we spent some time at the National Portrait Gallery. It is a marvelous collection of (drum roll please…..) portraits. Many of them are well known figures British history. Henry VIII was there along with most everyone else you would know. But then there were lots of other folks who were not so well known but who were just as cool in their own ways. Unfortunately I did not take notes and my memory for names is abysmal. So you will have to go to their web site to get the story. http://www.npg.org.uk/live/index.asp

On Saturday we went to the British Museum. We did the audio tours and that was very nice to hear about the highlights of the collection. We saw the Rosetta stone which was the key to decoding Egyptian Hieroglyphics because the stone had the same text in Greek, Latin and Hieroglyphics.






We also learned about the Elgin Marbles (which has nothing to do with a school yard and little glass balls). They are the marble carvings that were surrounding the top of the Parthenon in ancient Athens. The Parthenon was used as an ammunition dump in a war between people and consequently it was largely destroyed. A man by the name of Elgin got permission from the government to salvage and remove the stone carvings. He brought them to England and subsequently gave them to the British Museum. They are a marvelous work of art and hearing the details of the carvings (which never stick out more than a few inches from the flat surface of the stone) made me appreciate the skill in carving stone that was used.




Also at the Museum we got to see the traveling exhibit of the Terracotta Warriors of China’s First Emperor, Qin Shihuangdi. It was only a few of the thousands of warriors they have uncovered in China. But they gave lots of information on how and why they were made. The why was the attempt at immortality on the part of the Emperor. He thought if he were buried with all of these clay warriors that somehow he would be taken care of in the afterlife. Check out this blog from my student who went to China and saw the whole army.

Rachel Vig’s blog: http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/blog-173822.html .

Then we came home to Harlaxton.

The following weekend we stayed at Harlaxton because (brace yourself) we actually had classes on Friday to make up for the classes we are missing on Thursday of this week. The Harlaxton weekend was pretty relaxed. We went to Grantham to the market on Saturday. We walked around and ate at a Thai restaurant that was pretty good. We saw some interesting folk. I was walking behind a man and a woman. They were both wearing leather clothes. He was toothpick thin and had on big black leather boots with spikes and skin-tight pants and shirt. He had chains and tattoos over all the skin you could see and long hair tied with a red and white bandana. He had chains hanging down. She had on a short skirt (leather), lots of tattoos and chains. They were quite the pair. And that was from behind. When they paused to look at something in a booth we walked by and I got a peek at their faces. They were at least 60 years old. Or maybe they were 40 and looked 60. But I do believe that they were in their late 20s or early 30 when the Beatles came on the scene and they were still lost in the 60s. They were cute.

We went to Church on Sunday at St. Wolframs Anglican church. It is the very large building in the center of Grantham. There were maybe 100 people there. Everyone I have talked to has said that England is becoming more and more a secular nation. Fewer and fewer people seem to go to church, especially the young people. There are some large evangelical churches but most folks are not interested in Christianity. England is a nation of immigrants and they have brought their religion with them. There are many Muslims and some are very radical in their anti anything but Muslim stances. One of the most radical, calling for violence and what not, is an Imam who is head of Mosque in Nottingham not very far from Grantham.

Student storys:

One of our WJC students hurt her foot by kicking her boyfriend in the shin when he was tickling her. I told him it was his duty to throw some soft part of his body in front of her foot if that ever happens again.

Tuesday we had a very drunk student in the cafeteria at 5:30 during dinner. She came back from town. I don’t know what the consequences were but Student Affairs took care of the matter.

On Wednesday all the students had their first British studies exam. They were pretty stressed. Before class one of my students was talking about Sir John of Gaunt. She was trying to find information in the text and could not find it by flipping the pages. I suggested she use the index. Voila!

Later at the late night study break in the cafeteria I asked another student, who had said she had been studying hard, if she knew who John of Gaunt was? They about had a panic attack wanting to know why I asked and if I knew anything about the test. I assured them I knew nothing about the exam.

Ray

23 Cambridge September 8

After leaving the cemetery there was little talking on the short ride to Cambridge. We were dropped off at one end of town and lunches were distributed. Cambridge University is unlike most American universities in that there is no central campus. Like most universities there are a number of colleges that comprise the university. At Cambridge each college is like a separate campus. They are self contained and have a large gate to enter the campus. This is also where they stop you and charge you a fee to go inside. We walked down King’s Parade, the main street, where the front gates of the oldest colleges are located. The back side of all these colleges is the bank of the river Cam. They cleverly do not have a foot path along side of the river. This prevents people from sneaking in without paying the entrance fee. It also makes riding down the river on a “punt” so that you can see the backyards of all the colleges more attractive. More on Punting will be forthcoming.

We decided to pay the fee and go in and see King’s College. Founded by King Henry VI in 1441, and thus we know why it is named so. Although all the building are old the most prominent building in the college and perhaps in the town, is the King’s College Chapel. It has been called perhaps the best example of Perpendicular Gothic architecture in England. What this means is that everything about the building seems to point straight up to heaven. This is true on the inside and outside.





Building a building in the 1400s was a slow process. Henry VI began the sponsorship and supervision of the Chapel building but he did not live to see the project completed. Henry VI was deposed by the son of his great great uncle who became king but that started the war of the roses. It was a mess! Here is the family tree, you figure it out?








Inside the chapel is a very large empty space with all the lines going straight up and down. It is so expansive that it has been called the “noblest barn in Europe”.

That description seems a bit harsh to me. It does not have the cross shaped floor plan that most churches and cathedrals have. It felt very different. Much of the decoration and carvings commemorate people and kings (like these Tudor roses of King Henry VI) and do not particularly point people to God.

The chapel was still being built when Henry VIII was king. In fact Henry VIII and Ann Boleyn are said to have carved their initials in the chapel. One of my colleagues said they saw them but I did not. This is particularly amazing since Henry and Ann were only married a couple of years before he had her head cut off for adultery. Ironic since Ann was carrying Henry’s baby before he was divorced from his first wife Catherine. Talk about your double standard.

The most fun activity of the day was watching the punters. Punts are basically Jon Boats with a flat deck on the end where a person stands with a long pole and propels the craft down or up the slow moving waters of the Cam. It appears to be great fun and they market this adventure feverishly all the way up and down the street. We were asked at least 15 times if we were interested in a “punt on the Cam”. You can rent the whole boat and take your friends. This is funny as it evidently is not as easy as it looks to get that little water craft going in a somewhat straight line. If not for the snail like pace of these boats the bumper car punts would have been dangerous. But as it was there was a lot of good natured taunting of the nautical skills of all of the amateurs.

The smart ones (or perhaps it is the wealthy ones) bought a ride in a punt that was professionally propelled by young “Cambridgeiens.” This comes with a history lesson of Cambridge and the colleges along the Cam. Standing on one of the bridges you could catch snippets of the history as the boats passed under the bridge and if you were not careful you might get poked in the eye with a long pole as they pulled it out of the water and raised it in the air just as the punt passed under the bridge. The pole would suddenly come popping up over the bridge rail on which we were leaning. This surprised me at first.

The punters were quite the variety. There were families.

There were professional punters who evidently were a bit ashamed of their profession and wore a mask.

There were lazy male chauvinist pig punt riders or perhaps it was liberated female punter.

There was a confluence of amateur punters which resulted in a near log jam.

Then there was the walk down memory lane punters. The ties are an indication that they attended one of the colleges at Cambridge in the distant past and they were here to relive their glory days. Well done.

A bride and groom were having their pictures taken on the Mathematical Bridge. This bridge was supposedly designed by some famous mathematician in such a way that no bolts or nails were needed to hold it up. One punt guide was heard saying that one of the rumors as to why it now has bolts was that the Queen was coming to walk on it and they did not want to take any chances.

On the way home on the Coach we saw a very unusually dressed motorcyclist following what appeared to be a Mary Kay consultant.

It was a good day.

Ray

22 American Cemetery in Madingley September 8

Is the phrase “no rest for the weary” or “no rest for the wicked”? Either way probably fits me. After a long day in Lincoln we slept in our bed and after breakfast we set out again. This trip was to the university city of Cambridge.

As we drove into Cambridge we paid a visit to the American Cemetery in Madingley, England. With a bus full of 19 and 20 year old kids I was not sure what connection they would have with a war that was waged some 60 or so years ago. But it was a very moving experience. Our bus pulled in along with a slow parade of other tour buses. There was almost no talking and when people did speak it was in hushed tones. Let me share with you as we experienced it. We walked around and we read.

If you cannot read this try this link to see bigger pictures.

http://picasaweb.google.com/doc4wjc/MadinglyAmericanCemetary/photo#s5110909528091819138

Ray