Groovin' on the Baltic

I figured with that kind of cliff hanger, I should get back sooner than later. And I may end up on a yacht bound for Denmark first thing tomorrow, so I may by incommunicado for a bit here. I am currently in Heiligenhafen, a small town on the northern coast of Germany, sort of in the centre, right near the border between what was East and West Germany.

After we went to Freiburg, Kelly and I came here via a 6 hour train ride from Freiburg to a pretty little town named Lübeck. Lübeck, I can tell you is also a convenient waystation to purchase a new bag, should one find that they have been just a little too hard on the luggage. On a related note, I am the proud owner of a very nice backpacking pack that now contains most all of my worldly possessions that aren't in Mom and Dad's basement or in a second bag stored in a friend's basement in Mainz. Fortunately I have a good idea of what I actually have with me and what is not with me, seeing as how I was afforded the opportunity to repack my entire bag, undergarments and all, in the Lübeck central train station. Don't worry, there are pictures. I'll send them out just as soon as I can get them off my camera.

But back to the point, we wandered in Lübeck for the better part of the afternoon and got into Heiligenhafen late in the evening where we were greeted by the family for which Kelly was an au pair for a year. And when I say greeted, I mean welcomed with open arms and the biggest smiles I've ever seen. The family picked us up from the train station and took us back to their home where we got settled in, were provided a lovely dessert (it was about 11:30pm, so too late for dinner), and serenaded. The 3 daughters are all beautiful singers. Apparently Kelly taught them to play guitar, and spending evenings sitting around sheets of music singing as a family are quite frequent. I now refer to Kelly as Fräulein Maria and regularly start humming themes from The Sound of Music.

The family also owns horses, so the entertainment the next day began with a good 3 hour ride. And we're not talking nose-to-butt trail rides here. The two girls and Kelly are all very experienced riders, so I was really put through my paces (pun fully intended). We were trotting and cantering through wheat fields and along windmill topped hillside for about an hour before we came to the water, where we managed to, hooting and hollering, pulling and thwacking, get all four horses in the water, get ourselves well soaked, and scare the bejeezus out of some sunbathing Swedish tourists. This was also the point where I learned a little something about English style saddles, with which I am completely unfamiliar. I learned that there is a lot less of them, in terms of volume, than there is a Western saddle. So when your horse, a spirited little devil named Felix (this is the part where I tumble from a large German named Felix. Apologies to my other, human, German friend named Felix for the series of bad jokes that will continue from me and Kelly as a result of this incident) decides to make a hard right out of the water and along the beach, there is nothing so convenient as a saddle horn stopping you from spending a little time airborne. I was just fine, no worries, but I did look something like a ball of snickerdoodle dough that had been rolled in cinnamon-sugar by the time I climbed out of the sand and back into the saddle. I will say though, for Jenny's sake, that I am getting much better at posting. I'm still a little bow-legged three days later, but all the better for it. And I can sit now, which is an improvement.

That same day, with sand still behind my ears, we took off for an afternoon sail in the family's yacht (which are significantly more affordable and more common up here). And Jenny, you wouldn't believe the jellyfish they have up here!! The children play with the little ones, and the lifeguards pile the poisonous ones up on the beach in a single quivering mass. (Again, I'll attach a picture ASAP). We were practically making Jello by pureeing the jellyfish whenever we turned on the motor. But that has been more or less the tone of my last few days here, some combination of biking to town, beach-bumming, chatting with the family (in their perfect English), sailing, riding, exchanging recipes (we've been creative- no baking soda, crisco, brown sugar, blenders, and yeast comes in compacted, individually wrapped cubes, whereas milk comes packaged like our juice and can be stored unrefridgerated for indefinite time periods), and generally hanging out.

So now, the family is getting ready for their annual sailing trip through the Baltic, and Kelly and I were going to go to Berlin via Hamburg. But the family generously invited us to accompany them for the first leg of the trip, and the youngest, Silja, has been making puppy eyes and pleading for us to come, so, depending on their first destination and therefore the winds, we may or may not be sailing to Denmark at 5am tomorrow morning, and then taking a train to Berlin instead. So when I say we are going wherever the wind takes us...