A long bike ride

Sunday 28th June Humid and cloudy today. No opportunity for church today, breakfast wasn't until 10!
We went on 17km bike ride, my first time on a bike for nearly 30 years!



Our first stop was Wulfen, which has an interesting old church and statue.
On the way to Schloss Lembeck, we passed this old boundary stone (left).

We spent some time at the schloss (above right), several groups of impressive old buildings built in 1687, two on islands in a moat (right). The gardens are renowned for rhododendrons in spring, but are well worth visiting at any time of year.
Interesting places on the way back: a refreshing foot spring, built in 72 hours by a church youth group by order of the Archbishop; Lembeck village – old hand-pump for horse trough (below) outside the church, used to be the village water supply too; Wiesenthal hotel - Judith used to work there in the holidays; roadside strawberry stall - bought some to eat with ice-cream and to take back to Duisburg.
Once back in Duisburg, Jeremy biked home from the Hauptbahnhof, we took the U-bahn but were delayed at Duissern trying to get the station lift to work. A 10-year old girl in a wheelchair wouldn’t let Bruce carry her up the stairs, so she and her mother returned to the Hauptbahnhof to use the lift there! Jeremy wondered why we were so late.
We had a yummy dinner of tapas and the Spanish version of crème brulée by the harbour. The waiters helped us move to another table covered by an umbrella when it started to rain!
We arrived back at our hotel about 9.30, but were kept awake by noisy people in the middle of the night. It was hard to wake up the next day!

Part Three: Germany

Wednesday June 24th Another fine day! We went to the railway station at 11, admiring the Godiva chocolates there but they were too dear: €50/kg! However, we bought some cheap, yummy chocolate-chip brioches and had a nice cup of coffee at the station café!
The ICE train was very comfortable and it was hard to believe it was going very fast at all! There were a couple of interesting events on the way: 1)the lady opposite us apparently had the wrong ticket, and only spoke Spanish which the ticket inspector didn't know. As she was only going to Liège, she was allowed to proceed.
2) After arriving at Aachen, 2 armed policemen entered our carriage and went to speak with a man sitting further forward - but he wasn't arrested or anything!
Liège: a very beautiful traffic overpass by the Station, designed as a gracefully curved suspension bridge. The station was also very attractive.
The Belgian countryside looked pretty, lots of livestock, small fields and as one went east, it became hilly rather than flat.
Part III - Germany
The landscape quickly changed: larger fields, more trees, lots of modern flat-roofed houses even in small villages.
Aachen was interesting at first with lots of allotments containing fancy sheds, some resembling tiny cottages, also some large houses with nice gardens. Unfortunately the rest was ugly!
Köln : We saw a barge go under one of the huge bridges over the Rhine. We changed to a local train here, finding one's platform using the station timetables was SO easy.
On arrival in Duisburg, where was Jeremy? On the opposite platform of course! But we soon met up in the subway, and took the U-bahn to Duissern, the section of the city where he
lives.
After dropping off our things at the hotel, we went for an interesting walk towards the inner harbour (left) past an interesting sculpture (right).










The huge Lego giraffe (above left) outside Legoland is an amazing sight! The Evangelische Kirche (above right) is close to the ruins of the Old Market,(below left) which dates from Roman times.
We enjoyed some yummy ice-creams, very welcome as it was very hot, admiring the bird-woman (right) – a Duisburg emblem.

Part Two: Belgium

Sunday 21st Changeable weather, fine then colder, windy and cloudy.  I got up too early, making the dog rather excited when I went downstairs, she wanted to go outside - but I missed one deadbolt so she had to wait a bit longer!Managed to bypass the Baptist church due to talking too much, realising once we reached the Catholic one that we'd gone to far.  We ended up about 15 minutes late but enjoyed the service plus chatting to some of the friendly congregation and pastor afterwards.  They help an African church in Nairobi by sending teams to teach pastors and Sunday School teachers.
We went to Heathrow by bus after lunch. British Midlands seemed very efficient, but there was a long delay on the tarmac before we were cleared for take off, so the pilot made a big joke out of it.  However, we made up half an hour in flight time due to tail winds!
Part II - Belgium
Our first glimpses of Belgium were interesting: lots of tiny fields, some looking like mediaeval strip-farms, entwined within a cobweb of roads that sprouted clusters of houses along their lengths.  There seemed to be few trees apart from a large area near the city, but there were quite a lot of canals and other waterways. 
At first airport formalities seemed pretty scanty with no arrival forms to fill in.  However, two out of the three queues for non-EU passport-holders were stationary or almost so, so people started moving to the only one that was proceeding quickly.  We decided to do the same.
The charming official only wanted to know whether we were there for business or not, so was interested to hear that we were going to visit our daughter in Belgium, and that we were from NZ, saying, “Old Zeeland is very close!”
It was a little hard to find the right platform for the train, but it was a quick trip to the Midi.  It seems young Belgians love covering things with graffiti, even the train carriages! 
It was also hard to find the right exit out of the Midi station, we thought we’d come out on the other side, so we went in the wrong direction down the street looking for our hotel.  There seemed to be few street signs + my street map was confusing, even the bus stop one didn’t help, so we went back to the station to ask directions.  I also asked at a few places on the way, trying out some French! 
The hotel was a bit grotty, and our room only had a shared toilet, with no bathroom, so we paid a bit more to get a room with a shower.
Dinner was interesting, we went to the next-door Greek restaurant.  It was hard to work out which dish was which + the staff only spoke French - but a kindly Asian girl helped us.  The chef complimented her on her excellent French and it was quite funny how quickly they became a little flirtatious, although he was twice her age! It was a cheap filling meal, so we slept well afterwards, although it was amazingly light outside after 10 p.m.