17/18 June

17 June

Day started early, and we were picked up promptly at 6:15 for our transfer to the airport.  Getting checked in was easy, and I received my first female pat down.  I have no idea why I set off the sensor gate.  I've worn similar clothes in the past, no underwire etc.  I guess it was the screws and anchors in my shoulders, because the lady gave me a nice massage on both shoulders.  She also gave me a thorough rubbing of my ankles.  Once we got inside we started our wait.  Our flight was delayed over 1.5 hours, but fortunately I had planned on us spending the night in Dusseldorf.  It would have been tight making our connection.  I've been E-Mailing with Jaime in hopes of meeting up this afternoon.  

It's a small world.  After getting to Dusseldorf and checking in to our hotel, we had several phone calls from my cousin Jaime Andres.  His parents, Jaime and Maria Helena live in Bogota Colombia.  They happened to be visiting Jaime Andres in Essen Germany, which is about 1/2 hour train from Dusseldorf.  Rosario, Jaime's sister therefore another cousin, was visiting from her home in southern Germany.  I met Rosario in the lobby and she went up to our room, and about 45 minutes later Jaime, Maria Helena, and Jaime Andres showed up at the hotel.  This was not planned as part of our travel , but it just happened to work out that my cousins from Colombia and Germany were able to meet up with us in Dusseldorf!  What are the odds?  What would have been more amazing would have been stumbling across Jaime, Maria Helena, and Jaime Andres in Istanbul, because they were in old Istanbul the same time we were.  Anyway we had a GREAT VISIT with them, although it took a couple of reminders to get Rosario to either speak in Spanish or English and not German.  Roger was sort of able to follow the conversation in Spanish.  Jaime Andres has excellent English, so poor Roger wasn't completely out of the picture.  I think the last time I saw my Colombian cousins was 3 years ago.  It has been probably 15-20 years since I've seen Rosario.  Rosario recounted a story about my parents' last visit, it had something to do with remodeling and not having a bathroom in the house in Hungary when my parents and their friends visited.  We had some EXCELLENT wine from Rosario's vineyard which is in Hungary.  She said that one of her friends wants to export her wine to the Philippines, so she's in the process of figuring out how to do that.  Her wine is a three grape blended red wine, with no additives, and no added sugar just the sweetness from the grapes.  It was very good, especially since I'm not a big fan of red wine.  Rosario also brought some smoked pork from a local place in Bad Reichenhall, where she live.  After the wine and meat, we left for a short walk about in Dusseldorf with Jaime Andres as our guide.  The Rhine river is very full in Dusseldorf, with a strong current still running.  The didn't have a lot of flooding, because the river is wide in Dusseldorf and northwest of a the extra rain that caused flooding elsewhere.  

We went to a place that Jaime Andres likes and the restaurant brews its own beer.  Apparently most restaurants brew their own beer and each says their beer is the best.  At the restaurant we had beer, and it was good and cold with a little bitterness to it, all in all not bad.  We also ordered a board for 4, which is a platter of meat for 4 people with potatoes, mash potatoes, and saurekraut .  The 6 of us made a dent in the food, but there was still a quarter of a pig on the platter.  There was pork knuckle fixed two ways, pork steaks, bratwurst, spicy sausage, and ham.  It was a lot of meat.  Rosario ended up with a large "doggy bag" of food.  Roger and I looked at the platter and thought of it as "a coronary attack in the making."  The company made it worth the sit down and supper.  We parted ways about 2230, and we got on the tram and they were going to catch a train back to Essen.  

When we got back to the hotel, it took my brain a long time to process all the conversations we had.  Plus the fact that I had to replay and translate some of my thoughts.  Roger said he was mentally exhausted, and impressed with Jaime Andres' language skills (Spanish, German and English).  Maria Helena was enjoying her European trip and had the pictures on her iPad to prove it.  We did take a lot of pictures, so hopefully when I get theirs, we'll have one good one of the group.

Right now, we're at the Dusseldorf Airport waiting for our flight.  If all goes well we'll be in San Antonio this evening and hopefully home before 2200.  It has been a good trip and hopefully I haven't rambled you to boredom with all my blogging.