Written yesterday, sent today the 28th
27 June

Exhausted just reading Libby's travelog. For those not on her list she
traveling in China as part of a choral group invited to sing (and it seems
eat and tourist) in several venues – she can pack more in one day than we
can in many many). Our day is much more relaxing.

Today included sitting at the "Gourmet Miele" (yes, gourmet mile) set up in
our honor in the town square. Rows of restaurants with their specialities
as well as beer and wine; music too. Melita has a moving coffee stand,
regular readers may remember it from Dresden, and he we sat in leather
chairs, under the state building, an impressive one, drank coffee and
watched the world go by. George – a perfect site for you to observe from
with Danish modern furniture to sit on under the stone arches; sorry you
missed this one.

As this is a promotional stand not only is the coffee good but it is
inexpensive at 1 euro plus a 2 euro deposit on the cup. We will go back for
dinner and sample the local fare. I have already tried the Gazpacho, a good
one but very small for 3 euro.

Breakfast included a new item. Melba toast chocolate covered, milk
chocolate. QB sampled.

A problem from last evening, maybe a suggestion will be forthcoming. The
camera photos all seem to be gone. QB loaded the compact flash from the
Nikon and opened the photo manager. Saw an error message (did not
memorialize it) and closed the application and reopened it. The photos are
gone. What is very very strange is that all the photo naming is there.
That is, there are a few hundred jpeg names each next to a file of 0 bytes.
A new partition 1 has been created. I have tried at the command line as
well as the file manager to find the images but they are not there. I have
put the card back in the camera and it says that there are no images. I
look at the command line and the MMD card is 47% used, as it should be. I
took some new pictures and they go into the new partion and seem to work
just fine. Stumped.

The local Dom here was destroyed in the latest war and has been rebulit with
spectacular stained glass windows and the original gothic architecture. The
old town has building marked from 1603 onwards. The local literature claims
that the first written mention of Minden was in 798 and that later, 15th
century Minden was granted status that all ships had to unload and sell
their wares in the local port. Naturally it prospered.

Research question: Lots of half timbered houses to be seen, mostly early
17th century onwards. What do full timbered houses look like in comparison
with half timbered?

Dinner was a mixed collection of local specialities from the festival.
Fleishspiese, Tafelspitz, Gaspacho, Chilli-pepper soup, asiagemuse, beer as
well as coffee and desert. Interesting conversation with a nuclear
mechanic (and motorcyclist) and his wife. They putup with my German for
almost 90 minutes. It wore QB out trying to keep up; she can to a large
degree now as she has far better language skills than I do.

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