This past week, while Tanya was working, Jay visited the beautiful university town of Tübingen, about 35 km south of Stuttgart. The place is absolutely delightful. They say that one of every three residents here is a university student and that’s easy to believe. There’s also a well-restored Schloss, dating from 1050 that now houses university offices.
Tanya and Jay have been in the Stuttgart area this week and while she has been on work assignments I have been playing tourist. Two days ago, Jay crossed an item off my bucket list, a visit to the Porsche Museum. This temple to automotive engineering and excellence is located at, appropriately enough, Porscheplatz 1 and is adjacent to their manufacturing and design complex just outside Stuttgart. Here is a sample of his experience:
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| The Museum |
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| The First Volkswagen |
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| The “one of a kind” police Porsche |
It seemed like January would never end but we can now see the light at the end of the tunnel. Germany is lovely any time of year, and we certainly haven’t seen the types of winter storms that North America has been having, but…..Tanya and Jay are definitely looking forward to spring and the adventures to come this year. The sun is starting to shine and this weekend we’re off for a mini-adventure to Baden-Wurttemberg. Tanya has a work assignment for a week in Stuttgart, leaving me to explore the area in depth. High on my list for next week is a visit to the Porsche Museum and probably a return visit to the Mercedes Museum.
After our week in Stuttgart, it’s back to Wiesbaden for a few days and then flying to Buenos Aires on the 20th, enjoying the summer sun and Argentine beef before boarding a ship on the 24th. Our three week voyage will take us to Montevideo, Uruguay and then up the Brazilian coastline, making stops in Rio, Recife and other coastal cities. The highlight will be a week sailing over 1,000 miles up the Amazon River. Our anticipation level is running pretty high right now as you can imagine.
Much has been written in the last several years about how anticipation of taking a trip is often even more satisfying than the trip itself. Studies have shown that looking forward to a trip makes our work go easier and reduces some of the negative aspects of our everyday lives. Of course, as with most studies, this validates simple common sense. My 80 year-old grandmother used to tell me that she always had to have a trip planned so she could look forward to it. True to her word, she even had a trip planned during her final days, even as she was confined to a nursing home with little chance of recovery.
And so it is now as Tanya and I anxiously anticipate our trip to South America and the Amazon, set to begin next month. Every day we tell ourselves, “Only 32,31,30 days until our trip.” It’s interesting how our minds go through each detail of our upcoming journey. We imagine what we’ll be doing at breakfast time, what we’ll be doing during the day, the new people we will meet and so on. We can feel the humidity, the smell of the tropical air, the sound of the jungle. It really doesn’t matter whether the ultimate reality of the trip matches our imaginings. It’s as if we will be taking two vacations: the one visualized and the real one. Both are satisfying. Now I’ve got to get to work planning our next trip so we have another one to look forward to.
Maybe it’s because it has been a few months since I got on an airplane. Maybe it’s because it is mid-January and very cold. Maybe it’s because a friend of mine and his wife are planning a one-year around-the-world trip. Whatever it is, I find myself obsessed with taking a trip around the world. I can’t even get a complete night of sound sleep I’m so excited about the prospects of another trip. What is it with me and others like me? I think we belong to a sub-culture of travel addicts. It’s not that we’re not satisfied with where we are. It’s just that people like me know there is so much out there that we have not seen and experienced yet. Tanya used to say that if I didn’t smell jet fuel every 90 days I would get cranky. I think that’s still the case.
Thankfully, we have a trip planned for next month. It’s not for a year long and it’s not around the world. But it is to another culture, to another climate and to another part of the globe. My addiction will soon be placated…..at least for now.
Jay can’t seem to get that Paul Simon song out of his head. Although it seems appropriate when the next line of the song is “please, don’t take my Kodachrome away” because his skill with a single lens reflex camera goes back to those pre-digital days with his trusty Canon Eos Rebel.
This Christmas Jay got a new Nikon D5200 SLR to replace (or substitute) for his little Canon point and shoot. He had finally had enough ribbing from his professional photographer buddy, Dave, who once asked me “when are you going to get a real camera?” Tanya also encouraged him and suggested that it would be fun to get some higher quality photos of our travels. So Jay bit the bullet and got this groovy new camera and he’s all set. He quickly realized that he had forgotten almost all he’d learned from his photojournalism class 30 years ago. What is an f-stop again? How do you adjust the aperture with the film speed? Oh yeah, we don’t use film anymore. Darn, just when he thought he could revive my darkroom techniques. What’s the rule of thirds? Or was it nines? Anyway, Jay went to the library and got several books on digital photography and even one specifically on his new camera. So, now he’s on a quest to absorb all this new information and become friends with his new tool. He was going to say “new toy” but Dave would surely tell him the “toy” was his point and shoot. We’ll see how this all goes now that Jay has a “real camera”.
Last week’s snow has melted and we have settled into a typical wet, gray weather pattern, not unlike that of Portland. But here we can reflect on those few beautiful days of snow and sun.
And so we end another year, reflect and look forward to a new one. In the everyday routine of days, we often feel we are in an endless cycle of eat, sleep, work, weekend and repeat. But when Tanya and Jay reflect on what 2014 was to us, we can point out some fairly noteworthy accomplishments.
We moved to our new apartment. We have some kind and friendly neighbors. We take walks through the nature preserve across the street or take strolls down the hill into town. The best of everything.
Tanya got a new job with a promotion and is enjoying her career immensely. Her garden in summer is the envy of the neighborhood. Jay started taking golf lessons and practices at the driving range regularly. He looks forward to improving and to becoming a regular at the golf club. His German language skills still need work, but progress is being made.
We had some interesting and fulfilling travels in 2014. We visited seven different countries, including Ireland, Norway, Luxembourg, Netherlands and Hungary. We experienced several great cities this year: Dublin, Budapest, Paris, Oslo, Dresden. And, we took three trips back to the US. Seventy-five nights on the road.
The Guinness Brewery, opera houses in Budapest and Dresden, the natural beauty of Norway, Notre Dame at midnight, the flowers of Colmar, the somber dignity of the US military cemetery in Luxembourg and the joy and laughter with family and friends in Portland, Newport Beach, Monterey, San Antonio and Cologne will be our fondest memories of 2014.
Happy New Year and Best Wishes to Everyone for a wonderful 2015!
Last weekend we spent a fun weekend in Köln, meeting up with friends we met on a cruise of the Mediterranean last year and meeting one of my cousins and his family for the first time.
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| Our opera-loving friends, Jürgen & Det |
Our friends, Det and Jürgen, introduced us to opera when we first met them and they invited us to join them for a performance of The Damnation of Faust at the Köln opera house. While not technically an opera, more of a choral performance with orchestra, this work by Berlioz was very enjoyable. The soprano and baritone were excellent and it was a great evening of music. But the most important thing was being able to see our friends again and to have tea and coffee in their beautiful home. The two also encouraged us to keep up our blog. I didn’t know we had any readers, but now I’m inspired.
The other highlight was finally meeting my cousin, Thorsten zur Jacobsmühlen, his wife Jozefina, and their two daughters, Sophie and Isabella. We connected via Facebook and while we aren’t exactly sure how we’re related, our best guess is that our great-grandfathers were brothers. We plan on meeting his sister later next year who is the chief researcher of the family tree. Apparently, we have records tracing our family back to 1530. For second-generation Americans, like Tanya and me, it really gives us a sense of history and connectedness to Germany, or as my grandparents called it, “the old country”.
And, of course, no visit to any German city at this time of year would be complete without spending some time at the Weinachtsmarkt. Köln has five of them and we successfully toured three. Glühwein anyone?
The first several weeks of our summer has been taken up with moving and getting settled into our new apartment. We’re getting to the finish line and now it’s just the ongoing process of putting things together one day at a time. Of course, the biggest excitement was a week ago when we got our NEW KITCHEN!
Never Left Home 