Adventures in Travel, Part 5: This and That

As we come down to the wire on our vacation in Germany, I thought I'd just fire off a few quick comments about various things that don't seem to fit into their own post.

Ice Cream. You can get marvelous ice cream and ice cream treats in Germany. The other day I discovered a flavor of ice cream called Maracouja. According to a Google search, maracuja is passion fruit. It makes wonderful ice cream. Speaking of ice cream, Agnes and I stopped at a local ice cream shop this afternoon for a treat...they don't do things halfway here...


The Ugly Statue. I made a mistake the other day when I wrote about the hideous statue here in Singen. I said it was called "The Tree of Life," but it's actually called "The Tree of Paradise." It's still ugly. And if this is what Paradise looks like, I don't think I'm interested.

Bears. There are about a million gaily painted statues of bears dotted all over Singen. I'm not quite sure why, since the bear is actually the symbol of Berlin, but it doesn't matter. It reminded me of our visit to Vancouver a few years ago, where the city was full of similarly gaily-painted statues of orcas. Here are a few of the local bears...

Family History. Agnes's father gave me an hour-long monologue this afternoon about his postwar experiences as he made his way home from captivity in Russia, through Romania, Hungary, and Austria, to a displaced persons camp in Freiburg, Germany. It makes me wonder if I could have been as determined and resourceful in the face of such daunting adversity.

Food. Germans always complain about the size of restaurant portions when they visit the U.S. They're always shocked at how large the portions are and how much waste results. Well, I'm here to tell you that they need to be quiet. Portions at restaurants here in Germany are enormous. And the food is wonderful. At the rate we're going, our luggage won't be the only thing that's overweight when we leave on Tuesday.

Okay, that's all for now. Tomorrow is going to be a very stressful day as we pack our suitcases and say our goodbyes to Uroma and Uropa. I'll try to put up another short post tomorrow evening, and then I'll probably be offline until Wednesday. Try to cope. Off to bed...

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo