This was not a travel day, but a family & friends day. We are, of course, already 6 people anyway, neatly tucked away in our two rentals, but today was the day that both my sister Judith and her husband Michael and my long-time friend Andrea (whom I met in first grade, and with whom I’ve been best friends since 8th grade) and her husband Peter came to join us. So we were 10 and started the day out with a big German-American brunch at our rental. I made a potato-based breakfast casserole and a French toast casserole and there were the traditional German cheese, cold cuts, and jams as well as some yogurt. Uschi, Imke, and Dorothee brought fruit salad and some cut veggies, and Judith and Michael came with shortly before 10 with fresh rolls and coffee and filters for the coffee maker. Andrea and Peter, who arrived by train around 11 (we sent Mark and Kai to the station as a greeting committee), had made brownies, but we saved those for the afternoon. We had a wonderful meal with great conversations, and then endeavored to go for a walk despite the fact that all day long it was either drizzling or starting to drizzle. So we did the walk thing about three times in various constellations when it was reasonably dry (even though it never stayed that way). It was a Saturday, so the town and even the beach walk were busy despite the marginal weather, partly because a cruise ship had docked in the bay and a 1000+ extra visitors were strolling around. This is a relatively new thing for Eckernförde, and we watched the tenders unload a boatload of 60 passengers while a sea shanty choir with accordion welcomed them. As Mark always does look for the name, we found out that the name was “Artania” and the Wikipedia entry yielded the usual tonnage and age information—but I was in for a surprise when we were out on the pier and a woman asked me for the name and was beyond thrilled that it was the Artania and knew the captain’s name. It turned out (as Peter knew, since he knows everything about TV) that there is an unbelievably-lame-sounding but popular reality TV / documentary show (“Verrückt nach Meer”—and untranslatable homonym/pun that means either “Crazy for the Ocean” or “Crazy for More” that follows this ship’s and one other cruise ship’s “adventures” (basically just everyday life on a cruise ship). They are in the 8th season now and have filmed over 170 episodes. Dear God. At any rate, the cruise ship was out in the bay all day, from 10 to 4 pm and one of the few things on our walks back and forth in the drizzle that was unusual. We walked the shopping district, where we showed Kai the amazing candy factory again, where a wonderful boisterous candy “chef” demonstrates and explains the process of making candy from behind a huge glass window—there were probably at least 30 people watching, and after he and his silent assistant made orange-licorice candy, everyone got to try one. Kai also got to pick out a little baggy from the choose-your-own bins. Fun times. We later walked across to Borby and visited the little church up on the hill by the panorama point (Mark and I had skipped that on our last walk up there). Again, it was a church going back to the 12th century, and a recent restoration had uncovered a bit of a medieval ceiling fresco that we could see to the left of the altar. Andrea and Mark had fun taking lots of photos throughout our walk (including sneaky ones of all of us), and Mark finally “caught” one of the super-fast low-flying swallows that dart in and out of the crowds hunting for insects.
But mostly our walking was just about getting a bit of fresh air and exercise, and about talking—Judith and Michael and I about possible plans for a joint road trip in the US; Andrea and Mark about photography; Andrea and I about family and family worries; Peter and Kai and I about Peter’s most recent script and his next project (he is a script writer for TV but works freelance now and has some really amazing projects going), Dorothee and Andrea about art; Uschi and Judith and Michael about J & M’s upcoming trip to Japan, and so on. It was a lot of fun, including for Kai, who adores Peter in particular, and didn’t feel even once that he needed to withdraw and be away from us. That was a win. He also felt validated because after
Then we had coffee and brownies at about 4 pm, we watched the “best of” videos from the musical, and Peter in particular (who understood more of the lyrics than anyone else) was a huge fan. The two of them also had extended conversations about what to do with one’s life, about the creative process, about different ways of coming up with an idea for a story, etc. It was a great joy for me to hear them.
After ANOTHER walk in the drizzle (Imke and Dorothee stayed behind because they had it with the weather), we went to the Indian restaurant across the street and had food from their small but wonderful buffet—there was an eggplant masala that I especially liked, but several chicken dishes and the dal were also quite good. They incongruously had a Northern German desert, a fruit compote with vanilla sauce, but that was a nice little finish—and the simplicity of all the food was nice, especially since we all felt like we’d eaten all day long.
We spent the rest of the evening just sitting and talking at the apartment, with Judith and Michael taking off around 8, and Dorothee, Imke and Uschi shortly after. We hung out some more with Peter and Andrea, and walked them to their 9:20 train (it takes about 2 hours to get back to Hamburg from here by train). Kai talked some more of his ideas over with me when we got back, and we wrapped up the busy “people day” a little after 10. Let the record show that we at least checked on the outcome of the all-important soccer game that Germany won against Sweden at the last minute, and that prevented them from being kicked out of the WC at the quarterfinals stage. But we didn’t watch any of it and basically had a soccer-free evening. 🙂