It's one thing to visit places on your holidays but its a totally different experience when you spend time with the locals and see it all through their eyes.
That's exactly what our experience has been in Detmold when we visited Helga and Ulrich. Detmold is a beautiful, quaint little town oozing history at every turn.
We arrived, after a long drive from Den Haag - which Tony managed to do with great ease yet again, at 5pm and after lots of excited hugs we settled in to have Kaffee and Kuchen (pronounced cooken - coffee and cake). A lovely ritual in Germany.
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| Helga's beautiful home made Plum Cake! Of course we had 2 servings! |
Now for a short walk around the town. First up was the local park and I swear that I haven't used photoshop on any of these photos.....the grass is sooo green. It's just beautiful.
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| Tony with Helga and Ulrich - they are both 78 years young. Life in Germany is great for them. |
Once our big walk was over it was time to celebrate with a beautiful Italian champagne. Very yummy indeed. Followed closely by a glass or two of Italian red wine. Or we could have chosen wine from France, Spain or Portugal. Decisions! Decisions! Ulrich is the perfect host with wine!
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| Beautiful Italian champagne Prost! |
Helga made a yummy roast dinner with vegies and more wine to be served. Ulrich said that if we drink too much wine we can have water but there wasn't much water being poured.
Our lovely hosts spoke very good english which was great for my sake but it was so good to see Tony relaxing after a long drive and speaking fluent German with them. By the end of the night the German was flowing and I was even inserting a few German words I have learned. eg. danke schoen (thank you), bitte schoen (you're welcome), ein Bier bitte (one beer please), Ausfahrt (pronounced aus-fart - exit from a motorway), Einfahrt (pronounced ine-fart entrance to a motorway), Ausgang (exit to something when you are walking eg. shopping centre), Eingang (entrance to something when walking eg. movie theatre), gerade aus (pronounced grada-ous means straight ahead), nach links (to the left), nach rechts (to the right). But my most favourite of German words which describes the photo below is gemuetlich! (pronounced gemutlick - cosy, warm, inviting).
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| Settling in for a night of drinking, eating and chatting in the lounge room. Happy Days! |
So you can see I'm learning a lot of German words the next thing is to put them in a sentence. I just may have to come back many times to Germany to keep learning!
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| Soaking Biscotti in red wine.......wunderbar! |
After a long night of eating, drinking and talking we all went to bed at 1am. It was a very happy night indeed!
Today was a lazy day with breakfast at 10am with beautiful jams, breads, meats and cheeses. Note to self: must start that diet very soon.
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| Breakfast for champions! |
Out and about now to discover the old part of Detmold.
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| The flag is up so the Prince is home! |
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| Beautiful pots of flowers everywhere. |
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| I can't help but wonder how many people have walked along these cobbled stones. |
Lunch and more beer!
Kaffe and Kuchen before we head off for Hanover. I must start my diet soon.
Saying good bye to our beautiful hosts.....till next time we meet! Thank you so much for your wonderful hospitality!
Next stop, squealing with delight, is Hanover to see Lisa and Tobi.
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