Day: July 28, 2017

Hotel, Jet Lag, and the Discovery of Stroopwafels

By / July 28, 2017 / 2 Comments

Today was spent at the Atlantic hotel in Kiel. There were staff meetings, registration, and orientation as we got the last pieces in place for the conference portions of the cruise. We’ have a good crowd:

In this photo Howard, Mary, and Dan are all pointing to Kenna, who is our queen of assistants and whose standard answer is “I can do that.”

One of the things that made me really happy was seeing attendee’s faces light up when they saw other attendees. These are people who may live half a world away from each other, but they are friends because of these Writing Excuses cruises. I love to be a part of the organization crew who made that possible.

I’m not suffering too badly from jet lag, though a noon nap was necessary today. Hopefully by tomorrow I’ll have finished acclimating. I’m drinking lots of water and making sure I’m exposed to natural light as much as possible.

Today was also the day I first ate a stroopwafel. It will not be the last because, though they are treats from the Netherlands, Amazon in the US appears to sell them. A stroopwafel is a wafer cookie with two waffle layers and a gooey syrup filling. The whole thing is coated with cinnamon and sugar. It was delicious to eat and just as fun to say.

Tomorrow we board the ship. I’ll leave you with this little crocodile who was hanging out on our hotel sink.

He’s also featured on the do not disturb sign and some other hotel literature. His stomach says Qrogl, and I seem to remember my sister’s German-raised children loving a cartoon crocodile with that name. So, from Germany Qrogl says hello and hopes you will wash your hands thoroughly.

Kiel on Day Two of the Trip

By / July 28, 2017 / 3 Comments

Reading German road signs, menus, etc is making me silly happy. It is fun to recognize a word in the middle and figure out the rest. Sometimes the word I recognize is in the middle of a sentence, other times it is in the middle of a word. It is like the world around me is filled with clever word puzzles and the only clues I have are decades old education I have to dredge from memory. (and google. Sometimes I google.) It has been interesting to travel with Howard here in Germany where I have familiarity with the local language and he doesn’t. When we’re in a romance based country (All the prior international travel has been to places where he was more expert than I was.) He’s asking questions and I’m surprised at how many I’m able to answer. I carry a fair amount of remembered vocabulary, more than I’d expected. On the other hand, I’m afraid I have now taught Howard enough German that he has wortrauchenfruede (Word smushing joy.)

As usual, it is a comfort to me when I open up my computer to discover that my usual internet haunts are the same whether I’m accessing them from Utah or Germany. However even online little things come to my attention. This morning I was on facebook and noticed that the little notification globe looked different somehow. Then I realized that the globe is centering Germany rather than the US. And it made me happy, because of course it does that.

A similar moment came when I heard the sound of emergency vehicles outside my window and they had the siren sound which I’ve heard before in movies, but which isn’t the same siren used in the states. I hear the noise and a piece of my brain laughs at me because I’m surprised to hear that sound outside of a movie.

The flight from Paris was uneventful. I even got a glimpse of the Eiffel tower. I promise that in the middle of this photo, lost in the haze is a tiny Eiffel tower. I was able to see it, but my camera has insufficent resolution to differentiate the haze.

It was a tiny, terrible view of so significant a landmark, but it made me so happy to get to glimpse the structure at all. I didn’t think I would get to.

On the shuttle bus from Hamburg to Kiel I had ninety minutes to watch out the window while German landscape passed by. I’ve seen forests and fields in the US, but not usually in so close proximity. Old growth forest surrounded most of the fields and the forest itself has a different feel than the forests I’ve been in on either East or West coast of the US. I realized that I was staring at the forest that was the origin of many European fairytales. The forests I saw made sense out of those tales of deep, magical woods full of peril. I spent some time thinking about how landscape changes the cultures that grow up in them. I didn’t have brain to get much further than that thought though. Jet lag muddled most of the thoughts.

Related note: staff meetings when all the staff are jet lagged become rambly and amusing affairs.

Our hotel is lovely. I have a view of the port outside my window.

Tomorrow morning my ship will dock there and I’ll get on board. Today is full of jet lag recovery and pre-cruise organization and orientation. The students have already begun to gather.