Back in Hannover

I returned to Hannover late Sunday night... but not too late for a glass of wine before bed. My sister and her husband are on a kick of drinking Spanish wine, which I appreciated. I guess I'd never had Spanish wine before. An interesting side note: I noticed that the cork was not actually made of cork and mentioned this to Debbi. She said this is somewhat of a controversy in Germany now. Cork oaks grow very slowly, and wine drinking is on the rise (I promise it's not all my fault). In fact, would you believe that now in Germany more wine is consumed than beer? Anyway, the synthetic cork was a matter of cork oak conservation.

On Monday afternoon Debbi and I rode bikes (no hills! so I managed nicely) to a garden party for Franziska's 10th birthday. I would explain to you who Franziska is but... it's complicated. Somehow every time I go to Germany I find myself at a party with a bunch of people who don't speak English. This time wasn't as bad as usual, though--sometimes I could guess at what they were talking about (I kind of made a little game of it!)--although most of the time I only understood about one word in every sentence. And of course every now and then Debbi translated a little for me.

On Tuesday Debbi and I made an excursion to downtown Hannover. We stopped by the "new" town hall (which is about 100 years old) and saw the scale models of the city (one from 1609, one from 1939, one from just after WWII, and a current model). Our main stop was at the Sprengel Museum to see an expressionist exhibition of works by Franz Marc, August Macke and Robert Delaunay. I enjoyed it, but after having so recently seen such beautiful artwork in Florence and Rome, these more modern paintings weren't as impressive. In fact, a good number of them appeared decidedly lacking in talent. My favorites were the small pencil "sketches from the front" by Marc which showed pleasing balance and interesting movement. My favorite painting was, I think, called "Sea", by Henk Chabot, and I wish I could find a picture of it. The museum houses several Picassos on permanent exhibition and I wondered how much they were worth... but (don't shoot me!) they fell in the "lacking in talent" category for me. And thumbs down to Hannover's own Kurt Schwitters... I think he "has a bird".

On Tuesday night the older two of my three nephews were getting together with a group of friends to watch DVDs. Lukas jokingly invited me to join them and I hope he wasn't too surprised when I actually decided to go. We watched Deja Vu and Before the Sunset, the first of which I hadn't seen before (though I somehow felt like I had...) and the second of which I don't recommend you waste your time on. The group graciously watched both of the movies in English for my benefit. And shared their pizza with me!

On Wednesday Debbi and I once again took the train into the city center, this time mainly for shopping. I had some leftover Euros to use up. (I think I mistakenly threw a 2€ coin in the trash... that wasn't the way I meant to use them up). Anway, I needed to pick up a few souvenirs so my kids wouldn't ship me right back as soon as I got home. We ate some Turkish "döners" for lunch which are similar to Greek "gyros" but don't let them hear you say that. Very good, but very spicy (on the way in and on the way out!)

On Wednesday afternoon my oldest nephew let me go through his 50GB music collection and pick out a bunch to take home with me. I'm sure it was all perfectly legal. He also showed me a funny video he is working on of his school's class trip to Greece. He needs to post it on youtube when he's finished. I guarantee it will go viral. Later that evening we watched video clips of Jeff Dunham's ventriloquist acts. While drinking wine, of course.

And that's pretty much it! The next day was a looooong day of traveling, ending with a 3-hour drive back home during which I was so tired that I am pretty sure I was hallucinating. I can't imagine what it would have been like without the help of my first Red Bull. But I made it home in one piece, as did all my luggage (most importantly my wine and Hud's beer), the only casualty being one glass jar of Nutella--good thing the other two jars made it safely. By the way, I still have 55€ left over, so apparently I need to go back. Girls, get ready for 2013! No excuses this time!