June 15–16, 2014 Hamburg, Germany – Fort Collins, Colorado

Tobey and I left the hotel about 10:30 a.m. for our drive back to Frankfurt, Germany for our return flight to Colorado.  Estimated driving time was supposed to be about 4-1/2 hours. Again – road construction – and lots of it – made the drive much longer. We did ignore the navigation when she wanted us to change our route more than 50 km to avoid a delay on the road. It turned out to be only about 15 minutes! ANYWAY – the drive ended up being almost 6-1/2 hours!

Rental car returned to the airport, shuttle van to the hotel, and I had a panic attack because I couldn’t find our passports! Finally, buried at the bottom of my backpack, they appeared. We decided to walk to a restaurant for dinner since the hotel prices were extremely high. Well, this hotel is not near many things but we knew there was an Italian restaurant nearby that we had been to on a previous trip. What we didn’t realize was that most things are closed on Sundays in Germany – including this restaurant! The supermarket was closed, as well.

This wouldn’t deter the adventurous Tobey and Sue. We kept walking, and walking, and walking. Seemed to be mostly residential. We finally found two teenage girls and asked them if they knew if there were any places to eat that might be open. After some discussion, one of them said there was a place near where she lived and she was going home now and we could walk along. Thirty minutes later, we came to the first restaurant – closed. Another ten minutes we were at the train station area and there were a couple places to eat that were open. We said our thanks and goodbyes to her and chose the Turkish restaurant so Tobey could have his last doner sandwich! I had a small cheese pizza. Getting to the station, we had zig-zagged through neighborhoods, but managed to find our way back to the hotel taking a more direct route.

Monday morning we were on the 7 am shuttle to the airport and on our way home via Toronto, Canada. We caught a shuttle to Fort Collins where our friend, Wendy, picked us up and took us home. It was great to see our Moms who were taking care of Penny and our house while we were gone.

Now we are trying to get back into the routine and start thinking about the next adventure!

June 13-14, 2014 Hamburg, Germany

We left Dülmen around noon for our 4-1/2 hour drive to Hamburg. Road construction, heavy traffic, and our navigation system trying to reroute us made the trip into a 6 hour adventure! Oh well, we arrived at our hotel, got checked in, and five minutes later, our telephone was ringing. Tom, our first exchange student, was there, on his way to our room. We were so excited! His wedding was scheduled for June 14 – the event that precipitated this entire trip! We went with him to meet up with Anna and have dinner before the festivities of Saturday. It was really fun spending time together.

Saturday proved to be a busy day. We were off to St. Gertrud Kirche about noon for the 1 pm ceremony. It was beautiful, even though we don’t speak German, we could follow along. The minister did ask everyone to NOT take pictures during the ceremony, so we got one of the church before the wedding started.

After the service we all walked about a mile to a hotel for a roof-top reception of champagne and cake. That ended around 4 pm and we went back to the hotel to change into our cocktail clothes for the dinner/dance reception at 6 pm.

We had a wonderful time! We sat with another student, Alex, and his wife, Marleen. Alex was in the US the same year as Tom, and we got to know him and considered him to be one of our “boys”, as well!

Dinner, drinks, and a game were part of the reception. The guests were all given a list of things from “you are a parent, you are wearing black shoes, you are wearing a necktie”, etc. When the emcee announced the item number on the list, you stood up if it pertained to you. Tom and Anna then had to guess what everyone had in common. It was really fun and different than anything we have seen in U.S. weddings. The dancing didn’t begin until almost 11 pm, and the last course of the meal was served after midnight!

We reluctantly said our goodbyes and best wishes to the happy couple after midnight before heading back to our hotel.

June 13, 2014 - Witten - Dülmen, Germany

We arrived at our third exchange student’s home in Dülmen mid-afternoon and were met with warm greetings. It had been 12 years since we had seen Hauke and his parents, Hugo and Renate, and his brother, but it seemed like yesterday! After a wonderful snack of those yummy cakes, they took us to see the Burg Vischering, a 13th century castle which is about 15 minutes from their home.

The castle, complete with a moat surrounding the fortified defensive structure, was built on an island. The round castle with drawbridge embrasures and battlements was partially damaged by fire in 1521. The reconstruction of the medieval foundations took place in the Renaissance style. It was interesting to see, but a severe thunderstorm with high winds earlier in the week downed several trees, so much of the area was closed off while crews were working to make the area safe for visitors limiting some of our tour.

We headed to a lovely nature park for a walk before heading back to their house for dinner. We spotted one deer and lots of people enjoying the beautiful weather.


Back at the house, Hauke and his brother, Arne, became the grill masters for the evening. Hauke’s girlfriend, Pia, arrived in time to join in the fun. We had so much fun catching up that we talked well past midnight!

Saturday morning everyone slept in, then we enjoyed a leisurely breakfast that lasted until noon! It was hard to say goodbye, but we hope that it won’t be another 12 years before we see him again!

Next stop, Hamburg!

June 10-12, 2014 Munich–Witten, Germany

What a busy, busy, busy travel week!

We spent Tuesday in Munich with Paul, our last “school-year” exchange student. It was so fun to catch up and spend time with him. We enjoyed walking around the old town Marienplatz area then to the and Englischer Garten.

Munich is a beautiful city and near the southern end of the Englischer Garten we had fun watching folks “surfing” on the river.

We spent almost an hour watching them!

We ended the day with dinner at a wonderful Italian restaurant and talking until late which made for a short night! We were up early to get on the road to Witten, almost 6 hours from Munich!

We arrived in Witten late in the afternoon to see Leon, a student we hosted last summer through the Lions Club exchange program, and his family. We had a small snack then were off to visit the Nightingale Mine, an old coal mining operation.
Coal was discovered in the area in 1714 and over the next 150 years, the Nightingale mine developed into one of the most productive mines in the area. It is located near the River Ruhr. Most of the mining operation ended shortly after WWII and in 1979, the area was turned into a museum. After visiting the mine, we stopped at one of Witten’s city parks and climbed the tower for a wonderful view over the river and surrounding area. We loved the “aqueduct” bridge that carries one of the railroad lines.
Again, we stayed up late visiting with Leon, his brother, and parents. The next morning, his dad, Sebastian, took Tobey and me on another tour. Our first stop was the Henrichshutte Ironworks museum. During its peak, 10,000 peopled worked at this gigantic industrial site. They produced coke, iron, and steel and operated for 150 years, until 1987. It was interesting to see the ore bunkers which were also used as bomb shelters during WWII and could house several thousand workers.
After leaving the Iron works museum, we headed to Hattingen to see the 13th century Burg Blankenstein Castle. Today you can climb the tower for great views over the town, the castle is now a restaurant and events center.

Sebastian is an architect, so we really enjoyed seeing all the different types and styles of buildings on our outing.


After lunch, Tobey and I said our farewells and hit the road for Dulmen – about an hour away – to see our third exchange student, Hauke, and his family. More adventures to come!

June 7–9, 2014 Frankfurt, Erbach, and Munich, Germany

We arrived in Frankfurt and picked up our rental car from Europecar. They upgraded us to a 4-door VW Golf with a navigation system. NICE. After we finally figured out how to release the parking brake, we were on our way to Erbach and seeing two of our former exchange students, brothers, Stephan and Christoph, and their parents. We have been so blessed to have made such good friends with their family! We enjoyed two nights with them.

We noticed many more RV campers on the road here in Germany. The weather is nice – 86F and sunny so the Germans are enjoying their holidays, as well.

Another thing we noticed is that many of the buildings have solar panels on them. For several years, the German government has subsidized the installation of solar panels in support of green technology. Unfortunately, they will be phasing the subsidies out by 2018 because the demand is so high and so are the costs.

On Sunday we went to Wimsen Cave, the only cave in Germany that you are able to enter in a boat. It wasn’t large, but it was interesting to see. We also took a walk around the huge park and saw a beautiful stream.

We stopped for afternoon cake at the Lagerhaus. It is probably a good thing that we don’t do this often or we would need to join a gym! Tasty afternoon treats along side a nice little stream.

In the evening we had dinner at a lovely Greek restaurant. It is so easy to spend time with them, we reluctantly said our goodbyes today and headed to Munich.

In Munich, we met up with our last school-year exchange student, Paul. This afternoon we spent a few hours visiting and walking with Paul and his mother’s friend, Stefan. We will spend one more night in Munich and see them again tomorrow.

The weather in Germany is definitely summer and we are enjoying the sunshine and warmer temperatures.

June 5–6, 2014 At Sea to Copenhagen

After leaving Stockholm we enjoyed seeing many of the islands on our journey back to Copenhagen. We had an entire day at sea to relax and kick back. The cruise staff put on a variety show in the afternoon, then we went to the art auction. We are definitely not art connoisseurs and we were amazed that people were bidding like crazy on some of the paintings. Some sold for more than $10,000 USD! I guess it takes all kinds, but I didn’t see a single painting or print that I would want to buy! We also enjoyed the last evening’s show on the ship.

We arrived back in Copenhagen on Friday, June 6. We took the bus back to the city center and walked the few blocks to the Savoy Hotel where we spent one night. The staff was wonderful and upgraded us to a larger room because it was ready at 10 in the morning when we arrived! We dropped our bags then walked a bit around the city. I felt the beginning of a cold, so we went back and I slept most of the day away.



We had a funny experience when we went out to dinner.We decided to eat at a Turkish restaurant across the street from the hotel. We didn’t have any Danish Krone left, so we planned to pay with a credit card. We experienced having to put in a pin number with a credit card purchase before, but we now knew that they could override the system and put in a code for people without pins on their cards. Okay, so we have dinner and hand over the card and are told to put in our pin. We tell the owner, we have not pin. He tells us to put in the pin, we tell him to input the code to override the pin. He tells us he can’t do that, put in our pin. We try to explain that our cards do not have pins, to input the number manually, or override the pin. This went back and forth for several minutes. Finally, he said to go to the bank and come back tomorrow and pay him. I am sure he thought he would never see us again, but we left and went to an ATM and got cash, and went back immediately. He seemed truly surprised. The next day we walked and walked enjoying the sights of Copenhagen then went back to the same restaurant for lunch. We had $77 Krone left after purchasing our train tickets to the airport. We handed him all of our money and asked what we could get for it! We split a durum wrap, French fries and two drinks. The owner came and offered us a free cup of coffee, as well. We don’t drink coffee, but we all had a good laugh together.

We then headed off to the train station – and this is for you Wendy – there was a transportation strike! Lucky for us, the strike only meant that the trains were running every 20 minutes instead of every 10!! We had plenty of time to catch our flight to Frankfurt.

June 4, 2014 – Stockholm, Sweden

After a rainy day in Helsinki, the fog rolled in and stayed with us all night. We listened as our ship sounded its foghorn and heard the reply of other ships enroute to Stockholm. Because of the poor visibility, our captain had to proceed slower than usual and our arrival in Stockholm was 1-1/2 hours late! Fortunately for us, our tour group was all from our ship, so we didn’t miss it. The departure time was also pushed back an hour.

We passed through a fairly narrow, island-filled, and heavily traveled channel on our approach to Stockholm.It was beautiful! Many of the tiny islands had one or two houses on them.

We met our guide, Ira, and joined our busload of 26 to begin our Panorama Tour of Stockholm. We were a little nervous about having 26 in our tour group, but she did a great job of keeping our group together and we never felt like we needed headsets to hear her. She moved to Stockholm about 8 years ago and said she loves the city and that enthusiasm came through in her commentary.

Stockholm, founded in the 13th century, is built on 14 small, rocky islands among open bays and narrow channels and has 47 bridges that connect those islands.

Our first stop was the City Hall Building which was completed in 1923 after 12 years of construction. There are 1 million red bricks and the tower is 106 meters high. While the outside of the building is impressive in its arts & crafts style, the inside of the building was amazing.

The original designs for the Blue Hall included painting the bricks blue, but the plan was later changed. I’m glad – I think it is beautiful just the way it is! Since the 1930s, the Blue Hall hosts the 1300 guests at the Nobel Peace dinner every year on December 10 . It was interesting to learn how and why Alfred Nobel, inventor of dynamite, donated 80% of his fortune to establish the foundation that gives the award each year. The City Hall has one of the largest organs in Europe with 10,000 pipes.


We climbed the marble stairway to see the Golden Hall which is used as a ballroom. The pictures on the walls are mosaics which include 10 kilograms of 24.5 carat gold leaf. The materials came from Germany, but the artist was Swedish, and the hall took 2 years to complete. Ira told us there is some discrepancy about the headless mosaic that depicts St. Eric, the patron saint of Sweden. Some say the artist said it was to show him as he died in battle by being decapitated, but others say they were rushed to finish and miscalculated when installing the design! Either way, it was awesome.
The mosaic at the opposite end of the hall was the Queen of Lake Malaren who represents the city. The thought was Sweden (specifically Stockholm) was the center of the universe and the design was the desire of Sweden to unite the world. Her hair represents the waves and her large eyes were to be able to see the world.


After City Hall, we went to the Vasa Museum where the 17th century ship is housed. What an incredible story! The 17th century was considered “the golden age” of Sweden. The king had the Vasa built in 1628. On August 10, 1628, Vasa set sail on her maiden voyage and sank in Stockholm Harbor!

Apparently, strong winds blew the ship over. The designer of the ship died one year before the ship was completed and the king took over the design and it is speculated that in his haste to complete the ship, he cut corners. Thoughts are the hull was too narrow so when the wind blew, the ship tipped, and the 56 cannon windows were open so she took on water and sank.

There were more than 600 people onboard and documents show that only about 20 people died. They Swedish people constructed a diving bell that was used in the 1700s to recover the cannons because they were so expensive! The wooden ship lay under the water for 333 years until 1961 Anders Franzen was able to locate the Vasa and arrange for it to be raised. The ship was about 95% intact. We could have spent more time there, but our itinerary only allowed about an hour.

While we waited for our group to gather before leaving the museum, I spotted this beautiful bird. I have no idea what it is!

We headed back into the Old Town to see the outside of the Royal Palace where the royal family took up residence in 1754. The cathedral next to the palace was built for the royal family. The royal guard still protects the palace to this day.We also saw the royal guard leaving the Royal Palace on horseback and riding down one of the busy streets of Stockholm.

Moving on, we stopped in another square where the Nobel Museum is located. Ira told us the story of the blood bath in 1471 of Stockholm. Denmark and Sweden had been at war for two years when the Danish king, Christian, said he would grant amnesty to the Swedes if they would give up and appoint him king. Believing him, Christian invited all of the royal Swedish royal family to his coronation and 3 days of celebrations. Over 90 Swedish noblemen in attendance were then taken out into the square where they were beheaded! One nobleman’s nephew thought something was amiss and did not come to Stockholm for the event. When he heard word of what had taken place, he gathered an army and after 2 more years of fighting, defeated Christian and Gustaf became the king of Sweden.

We saw on slab from a Rune stone from the early Viking days. Ira wanted me to be sure to tell you that “Vikings did not steal from people – at least people who were alive. It was against their code of honor.”
So, of course, they killed you first, then took your property!
This stone was moved over 500 years ago to the corner of a merchant’s store. It was a memorial stone. About 300 years ago the cannon was placed next to the stone to protect it from wagons as they turned the corner.

We also walked down “Marten Trotzig Grand”, the narrowest street in Stockholm. It looked like a sidewalk, steps and all, but it is a street.

Other sights in Stockholm included the theater with the golden façade, the place where Ingrid Bergman was discovered. Other famous Swedes who got their start there included Greta Garbo and Ingmar Bergen, the film maker.
It is near the end of the school year, so the high school students charter large trucks to drive them around the city while they drink and celebrate. We saw a couple of those showing off their pomp and circumstance, as well.

Ira was certainly right that we would love her adopted city. She was wrong about one thing, however. She said Stockholm had the best cinnamon buns anywhere. Ira needs to come to Fort Collins and have a cinnamon roll at Vern’s or the Silver Grill … then she will have had one of the best cinnamon buns in the world!

There was so much to see and so little time. Tobey and I both said we would like to come back to Stockholm to see more! We have one more day on the cruise – at sea returning to Copenhagen where we will once again have internet. Until then, goodbye from Sweden!

June 3, 2014 - Helsinki, Finland

Our ship arrived in Helsinki at 7 am today, but our tour didn’t begin until 9, so we had a more leisurely start to our day. We had booked a 5-hour tour through the same company as our others, and we were pretty disappointed with this one. It was interesting, but our guide spoke softly and we didn’t have headsets like we used in St. Petersburg so it was difficult to hear her, the group was 21 people, and the bus driver and the guide were arguing quite a bit about the route. The driver kept turning on different streets that the guide wanted to go on … it was just weird – and to top it off, it rained off and on most of the day.

ANYWAY … Finland has both influences from the west and east – Vikings from Sweden and Russians from the east. We headed through town down some beautiful streets.


One of the major industries in Finland is shipbuilding and they have ice breakers to keep the Gulf of Finland open year round. Our guide told us that last winter was very mild and the ice breakers didn’t have any work because the Gulf did not freeze. The large ships below are ice breakers.

Our first stop was Senate Square. The large white building with the green roof and dome is the Lutheran Church. It has the second largest organ in Europe with 4000 pipes. Inside the architecture is very simple compared to many other European churches.

The blue building is City Hall where a single guard stands every day.

A block from Senate Square is the Market Square. Strolling through we saw the fresh fruits, flowers, fish, and of course, tourist souvenirs for sale!


You could get a fresh fruit or a hot meal …. or even a leather fly swatter!

We walked a few blocks to see this church – I think it was St. Henry’s Catholic Church, but I need to research a little more to confirm that! I will let you know next time I have internet.

We had a five minute stop at the Olympic Stadium where the Olympic games were held in 1952. Today it is home to a sports center.

Our next stop was Seurasaari People’s Park which is the smallest of the 38 national parks in Finland. Founded in 1909, it is the home to 85 wooden buildings dating from 1686 brought from all over Finland. This was our favorite part of the tour and wished we had more than an hour to spend there. We were greeted by several gulls because the park is located on the Gulf of Finland.

Just as we entered the park we saw the Forest Warden’s House which dates from the 1890s.


The 19th century hay-cabin had earth floors and came from the shores of Lake Pulmankijavi in Lapland. The houses below were from the 1700s.

The chimneyless cabins from Kaukoa were built in the 1820s and transferred from the Lutheran area on the Karelian Isthmus.

The outside storehouses for sleeping and storing food were brought from Sakkola and Kaukola. Compared to storehouses in western Finland, these were small. We were able to tour the inside of a couple of the larger homes. This girl was dressed in period costume.

The last building we saw was the Karuna Church which is the oldest building in this open-air museum. Baron Arvid Horn built it as a chapel for the parish of Sauvo in 1685-86. The exterior has been altered several time and the weather vanes on the roof date from alterations in 1773-74 when the shingle roof of the church was made. In the early 1900s, a new stone church was built in Sauvo, and the old wooden building became obsolete.

We thought the candle holders in the church were most interesting!


We had a 5-minute photo stop at this monument to one of the most famous composers in Finland. His name? Something like Sebulus, but I’m not sure. I do know that she said it was built in 1967, has 570 pipes, and is a UNESCO site.
Our last stop was Temppeliaukio Church, more commonly known as the Stone Church. The church in built into the granite and when you see it from the outside, it looks like nothing special – a concrete entrance next to the granite.

Inside is a much different story – it was simple, but unique. The organ has copper pipes and the dome is covered with 22 km of hollow copper pipes that create great acoustics.

The dome is only 13 meters high (about 40 feet.) Our guide said over 80% of Finns are Lutheran.

After the tour we hustled back to the bus in the rain, then made our journey back to the cruise ship. We learned a little about the history of Finland, the geography, the culture, and social system. Again, another country with only about 67 days of sunshine – I could NEVER live here, but it was fun to visit!