On Saturday Grandpa John played a game called Cricket with the folks we know at Christ Church. The church people made a team, and then they played Cricket against a team of people from England who live in Düsseldorf.

Cricket is a little like baseball, but not much. They throw a ball, and you try to hit it with a bat. Grandpa John did a good job and hit the ball a few times. They won one game and lost one game.
It was hard to see what was going on in Cricket, and I didn’t understand the game, so Grandma Barb and I sat on the grass in the shade and visited with people. I made friends with a boy named Owen, who is 10 months old. I also made friends with Owen’s big brother, Enne. He is six. Who do you know who is six and has a baby brother?

Owen liked to chew on my wing, and Grandma Barb liked that, so she took a picture of us. Then she took a picture of Enne and Owen. Enne finally smiled at us when we took his picture. He was a quiet little boy up until that point.

Then he asked Grandma Barb a question. She had a liter bottle of Diet Coke she had been sipping on all afternoon. “Why are you drinking so much Coke?” he said.

“Because I’m an American,” Grandma Barb responded. Enne’s mom laughed right out loud! That’s because Grandma was right. Only Americans walk around with a bottle of Coke. For the rest of Europe, Coke is something you sip at lunch, from a six ounce glass.

Then Grandma Barb made a mistake.

Grandma Barb said to Owen’s mom, “What is your e-mail address so I can send you copies of the pictures?” She gave Grandma Barb her e-mail address, but she looked very surprised.

A little later Owen’s mom said, “Would you mind horribly if I asked you to erase the photos from your camera? I work for the British government, you see, and I’m not supposed to use the e-mail for things not related to work.”

Oops. Grandma Barb learned a lesson. Never take pictures without asking, and never assume people have an e-mail address they can share.

There is so much to learn when you live in a different country!

But it was a lovely sunny day, and Owen and Enne and their mom had a good time with us watching Cricket. We had a tea break during the games, and we had little sandwiches on white bread and Apfel Kuchen. (That’s apple cake). Owen’s mom and Grandma Barb had tea with milk, that’s the British way!

One of my favorite things about Germany is that there are bakeries all over the place. On nearly every block you’ll find a Bäckerie. Inside are glass cases filled with rolls, bread, and sandwiches made with rolls.

If a Bäckerie is also a Konditorei it will sell pastry—like Apfelstrudel. What is Apfelstrudel? It’s apple strudel. That’s like apple pie, except it also has raisins in it. You say it like this, “Awful strudel.” Isn’t that funny? It sounds like it should taste terrible, but it is warm and sweet and tasty.

Sometimes a Bäckerie has a café attached, and then people can sit inside or outside and munch on their favorite delicious sandwich.

My favorite sandwich is a roll covered with seeds. Some rolls have pumpkin seeds on them, others have different seeds. Grandma Barb’s favorite sandwich has meat and kraut in it. Kraut is cabbage that is cut up with a little something in it that makes it taste both sweet and sour.

Maybe if you go to Germany someday you will decide which sandwich you like the best. I bet you don’t pick one with kraut!

What do you do with your dirty clothes when you travel? Just like home, you wash them. Once a week we put our soiled clothes in a suitcase and Grandma Barb goes to the Waschsalon. Back in America you would call it a Laundromat.

There are lots of washing machines and dryers there, so many people come to wash their clothes. When you walk in the door they will say, “Morgen!” That means “Good Morning.”

Then you say, “Morgen!”

When you leave, don’t forget to say, “Tchüss!” That means "So long!" (You say it like this: Chewss.) In Germany folks like it a lot when you greet people when you come into a room and say “Tchüss!” when you leave.

The Waschsalon has a sign hanging above the machines that tells you how to do the laundry. It has pictures, too, so you don’t have to know German to figure out how to do your wash.

When you put your clothes in the washer, you go put money in a slot in the wall. And you push the button on the machine or dryer you want to use.

But wait! Did I forget something? Oh yes, soap for our clothes. You can also drop a .50 Euro and get waschpulver to put in your machine.

When the clothes are washing there is a little time to play and goof around. I like to ride in the baskets because they have wheels and can spin around fast! Grandma Barb likes to read while the clothes are washing. Are you surprised that Grandma Barb likes to read? Me neither.

We had a HUGE thunderstorm. Grandpa John went into the bedroom to close the window, and guess what? I big pigeon was sitting on the windowsill. INSIDE the bedroom! Grandpa shooed him out the window, and he sat on the ledge outside while it rained. I stood on the otherside of the window. I am bigger than he is, and I think I scared him.

Look on the ledge under him. Yes, that's bird poop! (Shh, But don't tell anybody.)

Germany is divided into states, just like America. I come from the state of Minnesota. Now I am staying in the Federal State of Germany called North Rhine-Westphalia (sometimes you see it written as NRW). Over 18 million people live in this part of Germany. Minnesota has just over 5 million people. So you see, NRW has a lot more people than Minnesota.

Düsseldorf is the capital, just like St. Paul is the capital of Minnesota. There are a lot of people living in Düsseldorf. In fact, there are 6,949 people per square mile in this city. That is a lot of people!

Clever people have figured out ways to stuff so many people into a city and still make it nice. They kept the big trees lining the streets. Flowers grow in window boxes, and in the tiny, tiny yards in front of apartment buildings. The trains move many people quickly and easily from home to work.

But what do you do with the garbage from so many people? If you left it in garbage cans, the streets would be full of garbage cans in a hurry. German people decided to do some special things to help out with the garbage. There are no pop cans in NWR. No beverage cans of any kind.

Pop, water, and other drinks may be bought in glass or plastic. You pay a deposit on pop bottles. When you return your empty plastic bottles at the grocery store you get money back. As much garbage as possible is recycled.

So, on every other street corner you see these big grey containers. They are labeled: brown glass, green glass, white glass, and paper. When people walk to the train, they bring their recycling with them and drop them in. Then at night big trucks come and take away the grey containers and leave new empty ones.

And Düsseldorf stays clean and pretty.

Kaiserswerth is special because it is on the Rhine River. The Rhine is very big, and its water moves very fast. For many, many hundreds of years it was like a big highway for the people in Germany. Boats brought people from town to town, and boats brought all the stuff people needed for life.

The river runs too fast and too deep to swim in, but people still like to ride boats on it. This is a tour boat on the Rhine. The people are enjoying looking at us, and we are enjoying looking at them! Take a peek all the way across the river to the other side of the Rhine. Do you see campers and trailers? Those are campers enjoying the view of the Rhine. Germans like to camp as much as people in Minnesota do.

On hot, sunny days like the day we visited Kaiserswerth many people enjoy walking along the Rhine River. Does this remind you of Canal Park in Duluth?

Near the ruins of Emperor Friedrich Barbarosa’s castle is a green, green park. It has the hugest trees. Look at the size of this one! The park also has a special area where people can sit and have something to drink on a hot day. The tables and chairs are made from logs and split pieces of trees. Some of the round tables are a circle more than 4 feet wide. They came from a big tree like this one.

Sunday after church we took the small train to a small town north of our apartment. It has the funny name of Kaiserswerth. It’s special for a few reasons. It’s a very old town. Some of the houses there were built before George Washington was our president. That means they were there before there was the United States of America! This is a very old house, built in the 1700s.

Now look at this funny house. It has a sidewalk built right through it! Would you like to have people walking below your bedroom? This house is right next to the very old house.

We went to Kaiserswerth to see a castle built by Emperor Friedrich Barbarosa. The castle was built in 1184; that’s more than 500 years before the very, very old house! The Emperor Barbarosa built it on an island in the big Rhine River. Then one day warriors from the country of France came and knocked it all down. The German people built it again. But guess what? The people from France came back many years later and knocked it all down again! So it’s kind of a wreck. Here is what it looks like.

This is what the mighty Emperor Friedrich Barbarosa wrote on his castle when he built it. I HAVE DESCENDED FROM MOUNT ALKMAR, FROM THE ROCK OF THE DRAGON, AND I WELCOME ALL BOATMAN AND INHABITANTS.

I’ve never seen the rock of the dragon, and I don’t think I want to!

Today we rode on the big train to a city far away called Aachen. It is where a king named Charlemagne lived a long, long time ago in the 700s. That is even before electricity was invented! It took us 1 ½ hours on the train to get there. I looked out the window at the cities and fields flying by. Soon we were in Aachen!

We walked for a few blocks down some little hills and found a GREAT BIG church. It is called a “Dom” that means Cathedral. A Cathedral is the biggest church in the city. King Charlemagne had this church built a long, long time ago. It is so high –104 feet—that I almost couldn’t fly over it. The outside of the church has statues all over it. The statues are mostly of Jesus’ friends called the twelve apostles.

Inside the church are a lot more statues, and the throne of the great King Charlemagne. There is a room with a golden statue of his head, and lots of other golden statues too. There’s even a little gold crown covered with jewels. Kings sure were fancy back then!

Outside the Dom are cafes where you can eat, and on the weekend you can buy fruit, cheese, flowers and even eggs from the stands that farmers put up in the street around the Dom. It is a fun place to visit on the weekend. I’m glad we went. At the end of the day I got a treat: a piece of gingerbread. The people are famous all over the world for their delicious gingerbread. At Christmastime Germans give one another Aachen Printen (gingerbread) as a special treat. It was yummy.

Saturday was our adventure day. We rode on two trains and one bus. As we whizzed along Düsseldorf unfolded before our eyes. We saw children playing, people pulling their groceries behind them in bags with wheels on the bottom, and lots and lots of buildings. People live in apartment buildings in most of Düsseldorf. It would be hard to count all the windows in each apartment building, they are so big! Most windows have short lace curtains.

“Well hurry up, Granma Barb! Tell us about your adventure, not about where people live!” I hear you saying. OK

Not everybody lives in an apartment building. Or even in a house. Some people live in a palace. Kings and Queens live in palaces, right?

A long, long time ago, when George Washington was president of the United States, there was a king in Germany named Theodor. Only the king wasn’t called a king, he was called the Elector. The king and his queen had a palace in Mannheim, where they lived most of the time. But the king wanted a palace to use in the summertime, and as place to invite his buddies to go deer hunting. So he built Schloss Benrath. This is what it looks like.

We walked through the palace and a man told us all about the king and queen and their beautiful home. Their house had a ballroom, just like in the Disney movies. It also had a chapel (that’s a small church) so the king and queen didn’t even have to leave their house to go to church on Sunday.

One fun thing we discovered is that palaces have secret passageways! The walls open up, and behind the wall is a staircase or hallway. Servants used the secret passageways to get to and from the kitchen or other rooms. Servants were not supposed to use the same rooms as the royal couple.

The servants didn’t even live in the palace. They had their own buildings off to the side of the palace with their bedrooms, a chapel for the servants, and the kitchen for the palace. When dinner was ready, the servants carried it to the king and queen through and tunnel, up the stairs and into the dining room through a door in the wall! What an amazing life kings and queens had long ago!

Would you like to dance with me?

Grandma Barb was sick. That’s why you haven’t heard from me. She does all the typing for me because I don’t have fingers, I only have wings.

She was sick for a few days, so she decided to see a doctor. Did you know that all the doctors in Germany have Friday afternoon off? Neither did Grandma Barb.

So Grandma and Grandpa went to the hospital. It is called "Paracelsus Klinik Golzheim." And it is only a block from where they live!

Grandma Barb said, "Ich bin Krank." That means, "I am sick."

Soon an “Arzt” came to see Grandma. An Arzt is a doctor. (A doctor for blue parrots is called a Tier Arzt. You would call that doctor a veterinarian).

The doctor was very kind. He knew how to speak English. That was good, because Grandma Barb does not speak German.

When the doctor takes your temperature, where do you put the thermometer? In Germany the doctor checks your temperature by putting the thermometer under your arm!

The doctor took a test and said, "Yes, you are sick!" He gave Grandma Barb some pills to take.

And today she is much, much better.

Just like in the United States, people in Germany treasure their children. There are lots and lots of playgrounds. Here is a sign that means playground. Do you see the children doing cartwheels? Remember, that’s a common sight in Düsseldorf! There’s even a Spielplatz für Kinder right next to the Rhine River. It has a big fence around it so no little tykes wander off and fall into the water!

Here’s a sign that you see often on the street. It means “Slow” Do you have any “Slow, Children” signs in your neighborhood? What color are your signs?

Here some big kids are playing with the giant Legos in of the the Nordpark Spielplatz für Kinder. It looks like a giant game of Jenga!

I can look right out my window at children playing in their playground. There are always grown-ups nearby. Wouldn’t they be surprised if they looked up and saw a blue parrot?