Beer, Boats, and Bicycles

We are now 6 days from departure. A frenzy of preparation, along with the amazed realization that we are the luckiest people on the planet. Fitting this trip in between our work, play, Andre and yes, the grand baby is pretty sweet. I am particularly excited to retrace some of the steps I took with Melissa last year. A reminiscent experience and a prayer for fine weather.

We are starting in Frankfurt where my cousin, Caroline, will greet us. Caroline feels like an old friend and seeing her again promises to be wonderful. It seems impossible that we hadn't met before last Fall, but there is a strange familiarity about cousins.

Our trip has been altered since my last entry, we moved our Moscow sequence to another time, but no worries our time in Germany, Denmark and the Czech Republic will get us back in traveling shape and the slower pace will certainly feel good. As you can see by the title of this entry and the theme of our travels, we don't intend to do anything too fast.

We are trying something new for this trip. We are participating in a house exchange. The big plus of switching houses is the comfortable and inexpensive accomodations that expand our opportunity to stay in one place. The negatives are the worry about leaving things manageable at home. You never really know what it takes to keep your house running, until you decide to leave it for a month. The easy things like paying the bills, managing the automatic sprinklers and changing the sheets are all done. It is the little things like having enough cat litter, leaving keys and cars just before take-off, and making sure our guests have a bit of closet room. These are the things we are thinking about now.

Our trip will take us through the Rhine river valley by boat to Koln and on to Duisburg. Then we will train it to Odense, Denmark. This little town in the Funen region of Denmark will be uncharted territory for Gene and I. We have reviewed the travel books, talked with our Danish friends and will have a house and car, so the rest will just be trekking.

In Denmark it rains 14 out of 30 days in September and October, wow, that is 500 times more than it rains in Redlands! (don't check my math, this is what Gene calls "fairy dust".) We will see how our weatherized boots work out. You know what they say, "There is no bad weather in Scandinavia, just poorly prepared tourists."

We will be traveling the cheapest way possible, standby on passes, so wish us luck.

Signing off from Beer, Boats and Bicycles