Das alles ist Deutschland!

Guten Tag!

I have returned from Deutschland safe and sound and ready to tell about my adventures in the Motherland!

My trip to Germany was the first trip I booked once I got to Spain!  I was going to visit my second cousin and her family, as well as my great aunt and uncle, so I needed to coordinate dates with them.  Once we discovered that we all had a long weekend in April, I booked my flights!

I got to the Dusseldorf airport around 4pm on Friday afternoon and Ulrike (my second cousin), Deiter (her husband) and Julian (their son) met me there.  It was great seeing them again!  I had visited them once before in Germany in 2006 with my family and since then we got to see Julian twice when he was studying in the U.S. for the year.  It was really great seeing everyone again!

We drove straight from the airport to Cologne, a city about an hour away from Dusseldorf.  Ulrike had found a great hotel and we spent the night there!  After settling in, we went to a nearby brewery that Ulrike loves for dinner (where I had bratwurst!) and then headed to this really awesome bar along the Rhine River.  The bar has live jazz music every night and decor inside was fantastic!  They made lights out of trumpets and trombones, and had mannequins that moved along to the music.  The band was great, too--you could tell that the musicians just really loved playing!

Bratwurst

Jazz Bar

Saturday morning we had a good Germany breakfast in the hotel, then went over to the cathedral.  It's a pretty famous landmark and super huge.  My great aunt remembers taking my mom there the summer she visited during high school!  We went inside and it was SUPER huge and really, really beautiful.  There was an especially cool stained glass window that was really modern.

After the cathedral we walked along the Rhine River in the beautiful sunshine to the Chocolate Museum!  The Chocolate Museum was really fun--it talked about the history of chocolate, how it is made, and cultural changes.  AND we got free chocolate!! What a win, win.

The Rhine!

So typical German

Chocolate Museum!

Food of the Gods!!

In front of the chocolate fountain

Food of the gods being made

Lindt chocolate truffles!

We grabbed sandwiches after the museum and this bakery that Ulrike loves (and where she bought bread and brötchen for my visit!)  Then we headed back to the hotel and ended up and this great ice cream cafe, where I got my first spaghetti eis of the trip!

Lizzy's favorite brötchen

Ulrike's ice cream... or are the potatoes?

Is it spaghetti?  Is it ice cream??

After enjoying delicious ice cream, we drove to Bad Salzuflen to Ulrike's house.  I stayed in Ulrike's study and had a bathroom to myself woo!  We had pasta for dinner, since Julian was running a 31 kilometer run the following day and wanted to carbo-load.  We were able to eat outside on the patio under the stars, which was way awesome.

Sunday we spent the whole day hanging out and chatting.  Ulrike told me over our delicious breakfast of brötchen stories about my grandmother's life in Germany and other family things.  It was really interesting to hear all these stories that I didn't know and learn about people I didn't know existed!  Too fun.  She also showed me some photos of her visit to the U.S. in 1971, where she stayed with my grandparents.  It was so fun to see photos of my uncles and grandparents from years ago.

In the afternoon, my great Aunt Itti and Uncle Gunter came over for coffee and delicious pastries.  It was really nice seeing them again, but I felt super bad since I don't speak German and Itti speaks very little English.  Ulrike helped translate, though, and we made it work!  We sat out on the patio and chatted away (while eating AWESOME sweet pretzels and cake) and had a great time reconnecting.

Ulrike's house

Out on the patio!

With Gunter and Itti

On Monday, Ulrike and I went shopping in a nearby town.  It was a GORGEOUS day outside, so we got to drive Deiter's convertible BMW with the top down!  That was too fun!  The drive there was really phenomenal--so typically German, in my opinion.  And the town was even better!  So many old buildings on little stone streets.  We shopped for a bit, then got ice cream (spaghetti eis #2) and shopped some more.  We bought a ton of groceries for our German barbeque we were having that night.  So many different kinds of bread and meat.  Love it!

GERMANY

With Ulrike riding in style

Beautiful German town

SO MUCH SPAGHETTI ICE CREAM

We ate dinner outside in the evening, and Itti and Gunter came over.  The meal was super delicious, and I got to experience a typical German barbeque.  After we finished eating, I showed the family some pictures on Facebook of our American family and Ulrike lit the fire pit.  We had a great time chatting around the fire as it got dark.

With Julian!

Sadly, on Tuesday I had to go back to Spain.  Ulrike, Deiter, and Julian all drove me to the Dusseldorf airport (about 2 hours away) and we went to a cafe together once there to spend as much time together as possible.  It was really great.  I didn't want to leave!

Going to Germany really made me realize that, after I conquer Spanish, I really would like to learn German.  It was pretty frustrating when everyone started a conversation in German and I was lost, and I would love to be able to have more conversations with Deiter, Itti, and Gunter!  So that is my new plan.

Now I'm back in Spain and it's already May and I only have 23 more days until I come home!  Talk about bittersweet :-(