BSD Rinteln

28 June

Rinteln is one of the three important tourist towns in the middle Weser. Minden and Hamlen, of rats and pied piper fame, being the others.

Another good ride, improved by a small tailwind as we headed east for a bit. First rain on the bike since the start of the trip. Short light rain that was over quickly.

Another perfect medieval town. See pics. Hotel from 1593 but renovated. As it is Sat. Most places are closed. As the weather is cool and overcast it is a very good day for the wandering we did.

The architecture is called, in the tourist literature, Weser Renaissance. No idea why.

A ball of string:

This evening we took an after dinner walk smack into another outdoor feat. By the old church. 175 years of choral singing. Fish and drinking songs. Still comes out as a Polka.

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BSD Minden 2

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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BSD Minden 2

27 June

Today's blog will be posted when I next have a net connection. Wrote it up on pc and then ran into windows only connection.

Good write up but gentle readers will just have tp wait.
Research questions will be included.

Moin

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BSD Minden

26 June

Stoped for eleven-sees in a small town. Dutch bike shop, something we wanted to see. It was closed.

Windy ride to this central town on the Weser. A few Mis turns fixed by the gps.

No time to explore today. Longer day so just shower and dinner.

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BSD Nienburg

25 June

In Bucken we found this church with history to the 9 th century. Inside paint on walls and alter one of the best we have seen. QB took interior pics which will go up on flickr.

Another good relaxing ride through fields and bakeries.

Nienburg is not much of a tourist town. Ok walk in alt stadt.

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BSD Verden 2

24 June

Verden is the home to the Hannovarian horse business. Breeding is controlled from here via classes and certification. The Canadian Mounties come here for their mounts and breeding.

International dressage competion in early August as well two big auctions yearly. Hotels are all booked a year in advance and are sold out.

A perfect weather day so we decided to take a tourist day and are the market and Dom. Also a good cafe and people watching opportunity which we took. May need to find a way to get Radler's to Gorden Biersch.

Scored excellent raison bread in the local tues market.

Moin

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BSD Verden

23 June

Stayed up too late as to watch the Spain Italy quarter final.

Very windy day but fortunetly mostly a tail wind. Big weather change after yesterday and the thunderstorm.

Stork station with youngins just out of Verden. Wind now at plus 20 miles per hour according to gage. Much stronger gusts. Windmills doing very well.

Another charming city on the junction of two rivers. River tours etc. Feet tired from walking on the big cobbles.

First choice of hotel sold out but found a good local gasthaus.

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BSD Bremen

22 June

Hot, very humid, and a bit windy ride to Bremen. Mostly along the dike so a good view of houses and the river.

Lack of signs and some dead ends led to riding in circles around Lemverden.

Many Sunday riders so good people watching.

Bremen looked interesting when we got there. Intended to go further but decided to stay and explore a bit. Almost all the hotels in the centrum were sold out. Found one nearby.

Just missed Bach at the Dom, a bit too late. Coffee in the Markt. Then it rained. Ate during the warm rain with lightening and thunder. Rained more so we orfred coffee.

Speaking of coffee. Over one half of all coffee consumed in Germany passes through Bremen's ports. It claims to have had the first coffeehouse in Germany.

The section called Schnoor had far too much to capture on the BB. It is the oldest section and quite preserved. QB took pics.

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BSD Elsfeth

21 June

Good ride from Bremerhaven to the cute town of Bake. Decided to ride further so ww went to an even smaller town as per subject.

Ferry ride, lots of sheep, many fine thatched houses, and a shining river, the Weser.

Rode with a single woman who said she was a Freishlander, not from Holland. Takes off for 3 or so weeks each year to your. Good attitude. Go slow, avoid cobbles, see the local sites.

Very high high water mark. Must be hard to live near a big river no matter how lovely. The mid west being a current example.

Nice small hotel. Inexpensive yet offers free internet, bike rentals, excervise bike, BBC and CNN and mini bar items at local super market prices. Room at one third the price of Hamburg hotel.

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BSD Bremerhaven

20 June

Extended our stay by a day. Chores, relax a bit, final site seeing. Watched the German portugese quarterfinal. Germany got quite lucky.

Many potatoes at the market.

Herring heaven. The first place, and everyplace, we visited had about 10 types with several presentations of each. blackbread , sandwiches with onion and tomatoes. Smoked fish and eel. Fish smoke houses. Fast food and restaurants. Dock food. Shelves of salad concoctions with sauces , including curries.

Real north sea food. Yeah! Had the start of the season matjas from the North Sea.

If you go to the flickr pages you will see, just after this upload, some Hamburg photos by QB. Includes a pic of hail when we got on a tourist boat.

Dinner conversation with the person next to us. The other night it was a very interesting and talkative Bolivian woman who described her travels both through life and as a tourist. Tonight it was a metorologist who studies climate change in Antartica and elsewhere. Excellent English so we could have a technical discussion.

Asked him what is hardest to predict. Fog. Even the big supercomputers get hung on fog models.

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