As part of our Valentine celebration last night, we worked on our "Newlywed History." It is in many stages of completion. We started it after a few months being married and have kept it up fairly decently, but we're still filling in details on our honeymoon. So last night we worked some on describing our honeymoon. The following is an excerpt from our day in Weimar:
J: So we got in our car and ft-ft-, down the road ... to a pretty nice looking hotel, I might add.
D: It was a little hard to find, but we did. And they had no knowledge of our having called. That was curious. But they showed us the rooms and it looked nice ... and then they told us the price. It was not what we had bargained for!
J: Nope. I don’t remember her showing us the rooms. I remember her telling us the amount though, and we kinda dropped our jaws.
D: That was when she then showed us the place to try to convince us. But it was a hotel, not a bed and breakfast, and so we abandoned the venture and began searching all on our lonesomes for a b&b. We needed the b&b to make it a honeymoon for Joy. I had a firm decree to get you a bed and breakfast.
J: Cause I like bed and breakfasts and the Germany kind is really nice, and you will soon find out.
D: Someone finally suggested a place we could go (after visiting the local grocer), and it took us FOR-EVER to find. The wonderful computer car could not give me straight directions to save its life. But we got turned around often enough and Joy just started sending me down any road we hadn’t taken in this podunk village – both of us fit to be tied –
J: Very hungry by that time
D: When we came upon the Huber bed and breakfast in ... Wegefeld, about 10 km south of Weimar. The other place was in Kranichfeld, a bit further south. Tell us how wonderful it was, Joy.
J: It was a perfect bed and breakfast! Not only was it in our price range, it was the biggest place we ever stayed in! It was an apartment with ... we’ve only gotten bigger in our houses.
D: It was the rooftop apartment, so it had a slanting ceiling. The furniture was the cozy stuff they gave their family when they visited. It had a kitchen and everything. They had a TV too, but we didn’t need that.
J: There was a bedroom off the living area and a large bathroom ...
D: For Germany. The bed was large for Germany too, even if it was still two beds pushed together.
J: But that was just the beginning of how wonderful it was. There was also a garden in the back of the home with animals walking around. They and the garden
were fence up next to where you park your car.
D: They had some people over for barbecue when we drove up. I got out and asked the assembled men if we could find a room. One of them said he would go get his wife. She said that they were all full except for one room, and if we wouldn’t mind being in the attack we could have that. And of course by this point we might have been willing to sleep in a toolshed. This doubled our delight in the room (our desperation).
J: The decor of the buildings was very traditional, just like Derrill likes it, with the cross bars painted brown or something like it, so picturesque with flowers from the ground and in window boxes. We really enjoyed staying there, and we found a nice little place for dinner just a few buildings away. It was also a quaint little place.
Thursday, June 9
J: In the morning we ate a very traditional breakfast with all the trimmings.
D: Soft-boiled eggs in egg cups with little chickens on them to keep them warm; Brötchen and all the marmelades and butters you could want; a cute little garbage pail for the egg shells; and by our request, some fresh milk and orange juice. This surprised her greatly, but since we didn’t want coffee, she was willing. Plus, of course, introducing Joy to real Nutella.
J: mmmm *smack lips* num num num num. I didn’t think I liked Nutella because I’d had it in the United States before and it was yucky.
D: In the morning after breakfast, we went in to Weimar to do the city proper. We also arranged with the landlord to stay another night there so we wouldn’t have to worry, because Joy loved it so much, and because we learned there was a Miniatures ... park? museum? display? a few hours to the west and it would be convenient to leave from there.
D: In our Weimar brochure, we marked the places we went. The Goethe National Museum, from his house; Schiller’s house, which we passed by but didn’t go in; Wittums Palace (the state theater); Belvedere Palace. We also visited the Historic Cemetary Ducal Vault where Goethe is buried, but that was on Friday.
J: Oh, right. That had a lot of greenery outside.
D: We spent a lot of time searching for Goethe’s house. It’s just tucked in there like any other apartment on the town square, with no signs to direct you.
J: Reddish-orange color. It had a plaque.
D: People kept directing us back the way we came but could never find it. It was very aggravating. We were glad to get in. Glad and hungry.
J: And we almost missed it. We got there just before their last showing.
D: They had a walking tour with headphones, which we could acquire in English, so that gave us two tours in a row in English.
J: Very nice. Quite thoughtful.
D: They’ve largely turned his house into a combination of Goethe museum (this is Goethe’s desk!) /historical museum (this isn’t Goethe’s kitchen, but it’s how kitchens of the time looked) / and art gallery of things Goethe might have liked.
J: I liked the museum. I think especially because it was guided in English individually, but I particularly liked the garden behind the house. It was very beautiful with roses. Well kept.
D: The other place where we stayed significant time was the Belvedere palace, which was the place where the reigning person for Weimar lived.
J: I don’t even remember that place....
D: It had magnificent grounds that we wandered through. There was a hedge maze. There was a rose garden with hedges. There was a walk through the forest. There was a music school nearby and several other things we couldn’t go in. And the palace itself was an art gallery.
J: There was also a little shrubbery artistic shrubbery thing, wasn’t there? Like if you looked out the other window in the back, didn’t they have short shrubs that they did in different patterns and stuff. I remembered it specifically because many people in Holland do that in their front yard. It’s really cool. I didn’t remember that was in Weimar.
D: I’d like to do that too. I also like ‘carving’ and sculpting the bushes. Just one or two, but it would be nice. They showed some of the original wall decorations and the difference between the restoration work and the original. There were these gorgeous designs on all the walls and ceilings or curlicues and such.
J: I don’t think they let you take pictures, but they’d let you buy postcards.
D: The guard was a bit annoyed at me.
J: They had a beautiful fan staircase. I like those.
D: There are a few rooms that I still remember the look of, they were impressive enough. ...
J: Yeah. Palaces are just as cool as castles.
J: I loved the hedge maze. It was awesome. They also had a rose garden, didn’t they, on one side? That was in bloom, I believe. I loved that place. It was great.
D: We wandered around a couple hours, just looking and being in love. You don’t need Much to do on a honeymoon, but you do need Something to be doing together. It was just great to be with this wonderful woman all day and celebrate our love.
J: We went to some neat places, didn’t we?
Friday, June 10
J: The day we left the bed and breakfast, we even took a picture with the lady.
D: We got up bright and early to spend the mid-morning with the miniature park that Joy was very excited to see. It was near Eisenach.
J: They had full castles shorter than us. We took lots of pictures as I believe. The architecture was well done. The small detail work was ... better on some places than others. It was definitely a walking park, outside.
D: It was a glorious day – blue skies and greenery on the hills and a little train ran through it with a water feature and a teeny waterfall. It was very beautiful.
J: I like trains.
D: They had a model of the
castle where Martin Luther wrote the Bible and a model toy museum that was very famous, and various castles and palaces.
J: I really enjoyed some of the ones that they had done a back yard for and had little flowers and little flower pots. I liked detail work. Little staircases and towers...
D: I really want to look at the pictures we took, but all I could say is, “oh yes, I remember that one. I remember that one too.”
J: There was really no focus on people. It was very focused on miniature buildings and they did a pretty good job of having lots of different types of architecture for their miniature buildings. Course, there were little plaques for all the little buildings, and Derrill read a lot of them.
D: I knew that was coming.
J: But it was so beautiful it didn’t matter.
D: The first thing was a lighthouse that Joy just had to climb up near and look inside and play with.
J: I wanted to see the back. Think it was after that I found out I wasn’t supposed to get off the beaten path.
D: So that was the “mini-a-thür” park in Thüringen.
J: On our way there I was feeling a little guilty that we had to go so far out of the beaten path to get to the miniatures, but Derrill explained to me that it was important to do things that I loved too.
D: Otherwise we’d spend all our time going to museums and historic sights and she’d come home and say, “Well, we were in Germany. Derrill enjoyed himself.” And that is NOT the mark of a good honeymoon.
J: But we both really wanted to go down the Rhein....
D: Speaking of Derrill really enjoying himself, after the romantic and gorgeous miniature park, I took her to a romantic and gorgeous ... cemetery.
J: I don’t have much memory of that right now. Maybe while you remember it, I will.
D: It’s where Goethe is buried. Joy prefers Dutch cemeteries to German, but liked the tall oaks and the greenery around. She talked a lot about the Dutch cemeteries and how they were better. But they have a great church in the middle with a great circular hole and dome, and down in the basement are several sarcophagi.
J: OH! Right. It took us a while to find that building in the middle of the cemetery.
D: Joy had me try to explain why I liked Goethe and why he was so important. It took a few days of just finding plaques all OVER Germany saying “Goethe visited here in ....” to impress on her what a national figure he was.
J: A man can only be from so many cities. But I guess he traveled.
And here I am, arguing with the great man over which way we should go.
We took the long way home, pausing in Oberndorf on the German/Austrian border for a pilgrimage to the place where Silent Night was written. "It's only a model." Then we drove through a corner of southern Germany, past Innsbruck and Kufstein in Austria, and on through the twisting hairpins and switchbacks of the Italian Alps during a furious rainstorm in a van with malfunctioning windshield wipers. Good times.
We visited Verona twice, hoping to get in to the third largest Roman Collesseum (the Arena) or the Roman Theater ... but being denied access both times. We did make it to Juliet's house (they added the balcony in the 1930s for the tourists). Even had the balcony been there originally, the plaza here is 14-20 feet wide, so there really wouldn't be anywhere for Romeo to have hidden himself unseen.
