Thursday, August 6, 2009

Going Home


Thursday, August 06, 2009
Here's a picture of our castle hotel Schoenberg in Oberwesel. It's at the top of the hill. Fortunately, we can get most of the way by car. Unfortunately, we've walked the steps to our turrets quite a few times. I think it would be hard to be a princess!

Today was our last day in Germany! We like to call it our “Beach Day.” That’s the day we take it easy and go swimming in the ocean. But, as we have no ocean, and no swimming pool, we took a Rhine Cruise instead. We really relaxed. We sailed down the Rhine for two hours in the morning, and about 3 hours in the afternoon. The return trip was longer, as you’re going upstream. So, on the way to Brubach (from Oberwesel) we took lots of pictures and sat on the top of the ship. On the way home we sat inside and ate ice cream and played cards. It was fun and relaxing. We saw the Lorelei rock, where the ampitheater is in which Amanda sang in Aida last year. There were several very cute towns along the river. The loud speakers gave us information in German, English and Chinese.

When we got to Brubach we found a taxi to drive us to Dachsenhausen, the hometown of Johann, Peter Wagner (Durfee grandfather). It was only 7 kilometers up the road. The taxi driver was a nice lady who had a daughter in the USA. She spoke very good English. Brittany said it was her favorite taxi driver ever! I told her we were looking for Wagners in the cemetery. She said we’d come to the right place. There are LOTS of Wagners in Dacksenhausen. She was right. Wagner was to Dacksenhauser as Wiedemer was to Appenweier. We felt right at home. It felt good to know we were in the right place. It was a small village, probably about the same size as Brubach, the city on the Rhine. We only stayed in Dacksenhausen a few minutes, as we needed the same taxi driver to get us back to town to catch our boat. Brubach seemed quite deserted. We think everyone went to Italy on Holiday. We got some brats and sat on park benches eating brats and waiting for our ship to come back.

We ate dinner at our fancy castle hotel tonight. We even dressed up for it, which made us feel like we could have fit in with the wedding party next to us. They appeared to be American Military people stationed in Germany, along with their parents and a few friends. We also had a diner with a pigeon who walked right under our table. It was disconcerting.

It’s hard to believe the adventure is coming to an end. We’ve had a great time. We’re now ready to come home, take a leisurely bath, get some extra sleep and drink a lot of ice water. We can’t wait to talk to you all.

1 comment:

  1. I will be sorry to miss you! My closing went fine, glad that it is over. I can hardly believe how well it went. The gal who bought it said that she meet my neighbors and she like them and they kinda sealed the deal. I am glad I had good neighbors.

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