Our Trip Part Two

We have now made it over to Great Britain to see the rest of Mike's (and mine) family. Above is Tony and Mike as Tony is giving us a tour of Oxford.

Visiting the mini Stonehenge circle of stones called the Rollright Stones 

Geri in her great kitchen of their home built in 1750.

David Safranauskas, John Andrusiak and Mike looking over family history.

John Muranka, David, John, Geri and Tony Muranka having a family chat.

John, David and John looking at new family information.

Anne Andrusiak and Mike.   Anne was the gracious hostess to entertain all of the family at their home.

Anne passing our the gifts that mike brought for the cousins.

Since the top of the heads were getting a bit cold Mike has supplied a new set of hair for everyone!

LeAnn, Mike, Dara, John, David, Tony, Anne, John and Geri

Mike and David.   This is the first time that Mike has met David, his first cousin.

John and Mike plotting the path back to London.

Stourpout-On-Severn, where John and Anne live, have a man made canal system in the middle of their town.

Here we are back home with smiles still on our faces!  We had a great trip! Loved seeing everyone and where they live.  Glad to be home (except for the snow and 12 degree F.)!  This will certainly be a trip we will be talking about for the rest of our lives!

Our Trip Part 1

We have made it home!  Thanks to God for watching over us and keeping us safe.  He surely guided us through out our trip as we had all sorts of adventures!  Our trip was to see the relatives with a bit of scenery along the way and that is certainly what we got!  Here are a few more pictures from our trip that I had on my bigger camera and can now down load for you.  The above picture shows snow on the ground in Germany when we started our travels so we felt at home.

Visiting with Aunt Lydia was enjoyable and we felt that we were able to "talk" with her even though she mostly spoke all German and we spoke mainly English. Again it was an adventure to find her home via train, bus and walking when neither of us could speak the language, understand what they were saying on the overhead speakers on the trains or read the signs!  Plus it was dark out by the time we reached her home so that added another "mystery feeling" to the trip.

The Brandenburg Gate in Berlin was awesome.  Standing on the spot where the Berlin wall was overwhelming in that people were trapped and were killed if they tried to leave.




Cologne Cathedral

 My Camera is unable to capture the magnificent architecture of the cathedral in Cologne Germany.  Parts of it was built in 1248.

 



Marksburg Castle

 

We were able to see one medieval castle along the Rhine River.  Since we only had our feet for transportation up the hill we went.  History just oozes from everywhere you are.  Parts of this castle is from the 1200s and the structure is very sound... just lacking a bit in the heating department. 

Eric, Alex, and Marvin Helgeson (Mike's cousin) with Mike on the streets of Brugge, Belgium

Jan and Alex Helgeson walking in Brugge

The narrow streets in Brugge

The Black Sea were no matter what type of weather it is you always have to stick your toes in the water!

Eric with his stash of sea shells.

Marvin, Jan, Annika, Eric and Alex Helgeson who were so great to put up with us for 12 days!  I think they are having a party today to celebrate our leaving.

Biking with Kristin Scholten (my niece) in Zwolle, The Netherlands.



Kristin showing us around.  It was a unique environment as bikes have the right away and more people own bikes than they do cars.

 

England

We just returned fron England after a lovely three days with the cousins.  Again i took pictures with the wrong phone so more comingafter we get home. The first picture below is Tony meeting us in London.  The second picture is Tony and Geri s home. The third picthure is John and Anne s home. The last picture is blurry of John and Anne, who brought us back down to London. Marvin was kind of enough to pick us up in Brussels and bring us to his home.

Our vacation is now ending as we head home tomorrow. I will put in a final post from home of a few more pics of the trip and the snow we have at home. Good night.

 Today we traveled 8 hours on the train to spend 4 hours with my neice, Kristin, in Zwolle, The Netherlands. It ia a good thing we rode bicycles for two hrs as we ate the rest of the time! it was a blast to ride bikes as bikes have the right away, cars stop and wait for bikes. More people have bikes than cars. We met the president of the school and he was impressed with Mike's snook (? sp) or what we call northern. Mike was showing pictures from his phone. We stopped in a dutch grocery store and Mike got some Vle which was chocolate pudding in a milk carton! It was good but oddto drink pudding.  We are currently on the way back to Brussels and this train has wi-fi so able to right this note a bit earlier today.

Belgium

Hello! Today we got to spend the day with Marvin & Jan and sons in Belgium. Of course I took all the pictures of them on my other camera so will have to add them when we get home. We went to a very historic city, Brugge, and learned about the Flounders.  We also stopped off to check out the sea and have a bit of sand time with our hats and mittens on.  No snow on the ground here but is a bit cool around 40 degrees. Had a great supper back at their home and just relaxed for the evening before we start our final treks tomorrow. Good night!

Germany and Luxembourg

Here is the train station waiting to go to Berlin. We decided to back pack it for the 4 days in Germany.  Which might come as a shock to several of you as I usually have 3 suitcases for a weekend trip!  What should have been a 7 hr trip took over 12 hrs due to train cancellations because of the snow. we got to Aunt Lydia's at 9 pm. (She is in picture below). She is Mike's aunt who lived behind the Berlin Wall. She speaks a very few English words and we speak even fewer German words. Had a great visit with her for 1 1/2 hrs. She was teasing Mike and we shared pictures. This is the first time Mike has met his aunt.

 The next picture down is a Street in Bonn Germany, it was just down from our hotel.  The snow picture is of our 25 minute hike up a hill to see a castle built in the 1200's in Brabach Germany.

The last picture is Mike standing in some caves in Luxemborg that were craved out of the stoneto hold 35,000 people from the enemies.  We made it back to Marvin and Jan's (hence the blog update) Going to see Belgium with them tomorrow. Good night as it is now 11:00 pm here.

Made it to Belgium!

Have any of you seen Chevy Chase's Eurpean Vacation? Well welcome to the Herrmann European vacation! Since the Fargo plane left an hour late we nearly missed our connecting flight in Chicago to go to Brussels, Belgium. Do not believe (Mike's version that I had to stop and buy water before boarding!)

So we are almost at the end of our 7 hr flight when the pilot infirms us that the Brussels airport closed 30 minutes ago because of too much snow! They routed us to Amsterdam, The Netherlands where we sat on the olane for 3 hours looking at the above view! It was cool flying in as there was lots of green fields and canals.

We  were suppose to get to Brussels at 8:20am and instead arrived 12:30pm. Going through customs and getting our luggage took another hour. Since we are such world travelers we told Marvin and Jan we would take the train to there town. We hopped on one train as the guy was motioning to hurry get on (not sure if that is what he really said as he was speaking French and we don't speak French!)  After riding the train for one minute we realized we had no clue where it was going.  Some guy felt sorry for us told us to get off at Nord, which would have been good except we didn't know how to figure out their trian system or read the language!  After several hours of reading signs and texting Marvin, Mike came up with a plan (see picture below) on which train to take so we hoped on it at 5:30pm and got to Marvin and Jan's around 6:30pm.  Marv reminded us several times thst we were due in at 8:30am not 6:30pm!  Had anice evening with them and their children. Off to bed now as it is up early and see if we can make it to Berlin as the snow might affect the trains running, they got about 4-5 inches of snow.