04 Oct '05 - + 18 - 18 Seasons Change with the Scenery
Autumn is a definite force this far north. We enjoyed daylight
past 10pm in June, but now we have to turn the lights on before
5pm. The leaves have started to change colors, and the
temperatures have dropped sharply. Last week, Hamburg saw nothing
but chilly rain. There are fewer people riding their bikes or
walking around the lake, and the heavy coats are coming out.
It's been about three weeks since I've blogged about life here.
We haven't gone anywhere too exciting in that time, but we have seen a
bit more of the area and seen some of the changes.
Jenny's family (mother, sister, and grandfather) visited for a week in
September. It was really good to see them again, and it was a blast to
show them around Hamburg and how we live here. My parents are coming
at the end of October for a week, too, so we'll get to be tour guides
again. We're not sure how cold it will be by then, so we've recommended that they bring heavy clothes.
In addition to seeing the East German town of
Schwerin (and its fantastic castle) with Jenny's
family, we've made a couple other day trips. A couple weekends ago,
Jenny and I went to the northern-most island in Germany:
Sylt. Sylt is
mostly a big tourist-resort-beach place, but this time of year it's too
cold really to appreciate. So, we had some seafood, walked on the beach
and in the cold sea water, and headed back. On the way back, we
stopped in the smaller harbor towns
Husum and Friedrichstadt. Both
towns were cute and worth walking around, but neither had anything in
particular to draw tourists. However, we had a very nice dinner in
Friedrichstadt.
Yesterday, we went to the nearby town of
Ahrensburg.
We might have biked there normally (about 22 km each way), but I'm
getting over a week-old chest cold, so we wimped out and took public
transportation. Ahrensburg is another cute northern German town,
although the center of the town is newer than many of the other towns
we've seen. Instead of half-timbered houses, the architecture is
dominated by modern red brick buildings. I don't know if this is
recent growth or a result of WWII, but it made the town less cute than
many other towns we've seen. On the plus side, it has a
Renaissance-style palace/castle that has much of the original
furnishing.
Other than that, we've kept busy. Jenny was in Genoa, Italy for
much of last week for a conference, and I've been working on my
independent-study project and watching the leaves fall outside our
window.
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