Adventures in Deutschland
My second lesson: Germany (at least the northern part) is very very green. There are so many forests and flowers. I was really surprised with the nature that I saw, so beautiful!
My third lesson: they drive like maniacs here! We were driving 140 km/hr on the motorway and were being passed like we were standing still. It made driving on the 401 seem like child's play!
We arrived in Lubeck and looked for a place to stay (who preplans road trips anyways?). We ended up at a beautiful old hotel which I am sure was haunted. The hotel staff were absolutely fantastic and I have found that Germans have been by far some of the friendliest people I have ever met on any of my travels.
After settling in it was time to check out the city! It was like any other European city I have seen: old buildings, churches, and monuments. All are beautiful and all are different in their own way. I can't really put my finger on it but cities in France feel different than cities in Sweden which feel different than cities in Denmark which feel different than cities in Germany. Make sense? Didn't think so. I always assumed that European countries would all be pretty much the same, but was I ever wrong! It's really something that needs to be experienced to be understood.
We were getting hungry so we stopped by a German pub for some food. I had homemade soup, cheese and toast and it was fantastic! And even though I'm not really a beer drinker I had to try out local beer, and of course, a couple of shots of Jagermeister. I was absolutely shocked that the Germans had not heard of Jager bombs (a glass of Red Bull with a shot of Jagermeister dropped into it), and found the concept disgusting. I was also surprised to find out that they do not have English speaking television programs like they do in other European countries. All of their programming is dubbed instead of subtitled. We were talking to a couple of Germans in the pub and they could not tell from my accent where I was from. I could understand if they didn't know that I was from Canada, but to not even recognise an "American" accent was unheard of for me. In fact one guy (who asked if I was from Finland) really struggled and had a lot of difficulty understanding what I was saying even though he has no problems understanding people with British or Australian accents.
It had been a long day so we headed back to the hotel for the night. The next day we headed back for some sightseeing in town. We checked out some old churches, met a couple from Toronto, watched a man and his two sons play the xylophone (super talented!), and of course had some Marzipan--Germany is renound for this chocolatey goodness.
Drinking with the Devil...
I would have liked to have stayed longer but we had to head back to Sweden for work. We got into the car and headed back to the ferry that would take us back to Denmark, but first the border shop! Sweden has extremely high taxes (something like 25%), and the alcohol is very expensive there. So Swedes drive to Germany to buy Swedish produced alcohol for dirt cheap. Make sense? Didn't think so. This has however resulted in the biggest alcohol store I have ever seen in my life. It's like a bulk barn for booze! Three floors for alcohol, one floor for candy, add in a few escalators and I was in heaven! Not only that, they had taste testers for countless different wines. Of course I had to try! I noticed that I was the only one helping myself to the samples, and double fisting at that (it's the classy Canadian way!), but hey I had to make sure that I liked it before I bought it right? I left that place with a smile on my face, feeling warm and happy inside.
Yay for samples!
