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Thursday November 15th, 2012: Hamburg around the Bramfelder See
Bob: I slept like a log for 12 hours straight, but Monika managed to pry me out of bed at 9 In the morning so that we could all have breakfast together. Afterwards we had enough energy to walk the circuit around Lake Bramfelder together. It was nice to see the lake in its autumn colors, which seemed to be lingering in Hamburg a bit longer than in northern Virginia. |
Monika: We slept for 12 hours and were greeted with a nice breakfast. We had decided to spend today with Heinke and Gustl doing rather low key activities. Well one of our favorite activities is walking, and Heinke and Gustl have this nice lake with a loop trail close by. A walk around the lake is always a great way to get some exercise and also enjoy a surprisingly sunny day. I was surprised to see that not all trees had lost their leaves and there was still a lot of color. This made, of course, for great picture taking. |
Bob: In the afternoon I took another walk with Monika, partly to see what was available at the nearby Aldi and Lidl stores, and partly just to exercise so that I would stay awake until somewhere near a normal bedtime. We found some small Christmas "pyramids" that were hand-crafted in the Erzgebirge region of Germany that we had visited on Wanderung 2 and enjoyed so much. These pyramids have a small round central section that is surrounded by candles and connected to a set of tilted vanes on top. When you light the candles, the hot air rising pushes on the tilted vanes enough to make the whole inside assembly rotate. Since the central section has one or more platforms with Christmas scenes on them, the rotating scenes are endlessly fascinatiing to watch. Naturally we couldn't resist picking up a couple of those, plus a "Rauchermaenchen" (English: "smoking-man"). A Rauchermaenchen is a small carved wood figure that functions as an incense burner--incense smoke comes out of his mouth! We choose the model of a woodcarver holding a birdhouse in one hand and bird perched on the other hand, which we thought was as cute as the bee's knees! |
Monika: After the noon meal, Bob and I walked to both Aldi and Lidl, low end stores that always have great specials. Since it was close to Christmas, Aldi had some nice wooden hand-crafted Christmas decorations, which we just had to have. |
Bob: Later that evening we shopped for food at Famila, the local grocery store, and I was amazed to see that they also sold an electric bicycle, which are called "E-bikes" in Germany. I later read that the market for such electric-motor-assisted bicycles is surging in Germany from 310,000 sold in 2010 to 400,000 sold in 2011. Famila sold a 36-volt "Prophete" model that advertised a 60-80 kilometer range for 899 Euro, and on the Internet I found several other models under 1,000 Euro as well as many more expensive models (the average price for such bikes was reported to be 1,500-2,000 Euro, which is rather pricey). With all this activity plus a decent night's sleep I was able to make it through the evening without a nap, but then I really crashed again for another solid night's sleep. |
Monika: After that we did not do much except shop in the local Famila store, a more upscale and diversified type of grocery store than Aldi or Lidl. We just were not all that ambitious and again we conked out early, but we did at least start to make some plans for the rest of the week. |
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