It was farewell to Claudia, after a final breakfast feast, as Siegfried dropped me at the South Berlin train station for my journey to Bremen, and after farewell hugs he headed off to work. At the other end, Bremen, I was met with hugs and roses as cousins Harold and wife Marianne, aka Janne, were waiting on the platform. We drove to their home in Achim, a town of about 30,000, for "mttensup" or in my terms a midday feast. Janne is an excellent cook and we enjoyed German wedding soup, meats, cheeses, potato salad, the always exceptional breads and chocolate pudding. After that we needed a walk about their properties and neighborhood. My hosts plan to give me a taste of everyday life in Germany along with the sites of the north rural, towns and cities.
We began with a stop at a local garden centre, where we were met by a moose topiary, though maybe it was a reindeer, depending on your cultural background and references. Flowers, herbs, shrubs and trees, pond plants and exotics, cactus to air orchids, there was a broad range of choices for green thumbs.
Next stop was the rural village of Fischerhuder, where there are more horses than people, according to Harold. It is also home to a a great little restaurant with the BEST TORTES, made fresh on site. There is a buffet of these wonderful cakes, and even better they let you have two half pieces to make up your one cake to go with your coffee. Between the three of us I got to taste six different exquisite kinds. My choices were cappucino, and an apricot liquer tort - SCHMECKT GUT!
After that wonderful sugar rush, another walk was called for and we set off to the local church, again several hundrend years old but with bright blue pews. It is also where they honor Cato Bontjes von Beck, a 23 year old student hung by Hitler for handing out pamphlets on the street. Her poem, "The Cloud" follows:
I am the daughter
of earth and water,
and the nursling of the sky;
I pass through the pores
of the ocean and shores;
I change - but I cannot die.
We also walked over to a local artists' gallery/publishing place for books, cards, calendars featuring artworks. While Harold and I headed into the loft to view the current exhibition of paintings, Janne browsed the books. She found a great book on Germany that she gifted to me (again I am being spoiled rotten by my European family). We finished with a drive about the village over an old bridge with the remains of an old waterwheel, hand pump and then along the rural lanes back to Achim. I love that so many of the rural roads are like driving down a tunnel as the trees tower and arch over the roadway...once all the leaves are out it would be even more beautiful.
Back in Achim we headed over the Weser River for another angle on the town and picking out their property along the high bank. We sat by the river as a big barge passed, and I noted the grasses hanging off the fences, remains of flooding earlier.
The tour of Achim included the town's windmill which has been preserved by a local service group and is used for small social gatherings. Harold showed me where he was raised, the school where he taught history and geography for many years and the church where his children and he were baptised and confirmed. We were very lucky as the bells started to toll and the doors were open when we got to the church, so I could see the inside and the lovely pipe organ, which seem so common in the churches here.
By then it had been a long day and it was home for supper and another local specialty usually reserved for Sunday dinner - Braten (roast pork), with all the fixings.
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