Ammerland - Visiting Relatives

Rastede


We stayed the week with old family friends - Herbert and Rosie in Rastede. This area is called Ammerland and includes the town of Oldenburg where Liane's parents grew up. Herbert speaks good Aussie/English because he had lived in Australia for 10years previously and enjoys having a joke. They have a beautiful home and garden. It is the only flat roofed house we have seen in Germany.

The neighbours even had a welcoming Australian flag flying for us!
Every morning we had a lovely breakfast on the terrace. Was it the north/south or east terrace? It was a topic of discussion each morning. We nicknamed it Hotel Rosie as she certainly looked after us very well. Rex and Rosie managed to communicate even though both didn't speak each other's language - everything was schon (lovely).
We visited an amazing farmer's museum where an old farmer had collected thousands of old farming and household items.
Then we had a lovely walk in the evening through a rhododendron garden and almost lost our way. Check out the height of these bushes!We also visited a newly built Beach Club which had a fantastic water skiing machine. It looked so cool we wanted to have a go! Reckon it would be a great thing for the Gold Coast or even Geelong for any entrepreneur out there.


Cloppenburg

One day we looked through an old village museum which had examples of many old farmhouses and mansions. It is amazing to think how they built these houses with massive wooden beams. The animals were also kept in the same house with the hay stored in the attic. Many did not have chimneys and the smoke filled house preserved any meat hanging from the rafters. They would also sleep 3 or 4 people together in small sleeping cupboards. Very cosy indeed, but neccessary in winter.

Rosie swinging the pot of stew around for serving

Oldenburg

The next day Herbert took us to visit one of Liane's aunties who lives in her dad's old house. Her cousin also arrived and so the family photos began.
One day Liane's Uncle Ernst picked us up and did a fantastic job of taking us all around the Stalling side of the family (Liane's mother's side). First we visited Oma Rosskamp’s old house (which has been renovated), then the oldest church in the area (950yrs), then the graves of Uncle Alwin, Oma and Opa Stalling. We had a quick look inside the church too. We then visited Auntie Marianne for Fruhstuck (2nd breakfast of bread rolls and cake).

We visited a farm that sells produce straight from the farm. The owner was a good friend of Uncle Ernst. They make a lovely non alcoholic sekt from some flowers so of course we had to try a glass. It is asparagus season so everywhere there are huge amounts of asparagus for sale and it’s featured on all the restaurant menus. Wiefelstede
We stopped off to admire the lake with three hills (Bad Swichenahn??) and then drove out to Auntie Annie’s where we were expected at precisely 3pm. All the cousins were waiting and of course the table was beautifully set. We had strawberry cake and rhubarb cake. There were cousins Helga, Heiner and Helmut as well as their wives and two of their children.

Heiner gave us a tour of his dairy farm. He has all new sheds. One for new calves and one for milking - all with a massive amount of solar panels on the roof of which he sells the electricity back to the system. He has two state of the art robot machines which milk the cows – as each cow steps on the platform it is scanned and those who don’t need to be milked are sent off. Those that are milked have the teats all washed and cups put on by laser. Some of the cows can now be milked 3 or 4 times a day!



Helmut then gave us a tour of his Wholesale Nursery. He now has 10 hectares of plants after buying some land further down the street. It is a very busy time for him as they were just taking all the plants out of the hot houses and replanting them into bigger pots. It is an enormous set up and he now employs about twenty people. He says he has so many orders he can’t grow enough plants to keep up!

We then drove to the hospital to see Uncle Georg. He looked very well and was coming home the next day. While we were there we came across a lovely lady who had volunteered to look after a small Angolan boy who was recovering from an operation.

We then went to a restaurant at Bad Swichenahn, which was on the other side of the lake, with Auntie Annie to have tea.

View from the Restaurant

“So…Finally” said Uncle Ernst, “We get something decent to eat!!” We had schnitzel and beer!

Back to Oldenburg
We took Auntie Annie home and then visited Auntie Hanna (by this time it was after 9pm) where cousins Helmut and Walter were waiting with beer for us!

We eventually got home at about 11pm. Liane was totally kaput that at the end she was beginning to translate into German for Rex when someone spoke English!!

A very big day indeed!

The next day we had a more relaxing day out with another of Liane's cousins from her dad's side. Sebastion, their son, had stayed with us last year for a few days.

Rastede - Medieval Festival

We went along to this Middle Age Festival. At first we thought it was a festival for middle aged people but then we realised it was really a Medieval festival!!!People were all dressed in costumes and there were many stalls, battle scenes and some crazy entertainers and of course plenty of food and beer! If you bought anything you received a golden taler for change. You could only spend talers at the festival. These festivals rotate around Germany every weekend for the whole summer - perfect for all the palladins out there!

We found a stall that was able to give us some details on both our family names. We both have a shield and come from quite royal heritage.

The weapons stall-no damaged returns allowed!
Sorry Julian we won't be allowed back into Australia with these.

Which hat?

This one?

or this one?

Yes this one!

Battle scene - Does this look like anyone you know?

70 stunt men and women having fun!

Some girls kindly posed for this lovely photo.

How to keep your man in line!

A folk band performed.
Click play button to hear band

The highlight of the afternoon was a band who played old medieval bagpipes. A very energetic performance, particularly enjoyed by the punks in the audience.

Schelmish-Bagpipe Band.

Click play button to hear band

Bremen (Upper Lower Saxony)

On Friday we travelled east on the autobahn to Bremen (a large city of about 500,000 people, dated back to 789) for Liane’s Aunties 80^th birthday the next day (we went at least 150km/h with many cars passing us at a much faster speed!!!). Bremen was an old port built on the Weser River. We walked around the old part of Bremen, in and out of the tiny streets, Böttcherstraße (built in the 1920's by the person who produced the first ever decaf coffee-many specialist shops)

The Sögestrasse (an old quarter where they used to drive the pigs through the streets)

had coffee and cake, walked through the market place and listened to some Russian buskers (they come over during their school break to earn money for their studies).

Click play button to hear the buskers playing

We listened to the famous glockenspiel which had a rotating display showing the history of the merchant trading in Bremen. We looked through an old church and the ratskellar (town hall) which had a display of a huge bunker where they hid the German U-boats with walls 4-1/2 m thick!!! We found the statue of the Bremen Town Musicians and a few other versions of them as well as an impressive 10m statue of Roland (part of Bremen’s royal history). All in a couple of hours!!

We then had tea (ambrodt) at Liane’s auntie and uncle’s place and had a tour of their well- maintained garden. To finish off the evening we dropped into a local hotel for a farewell beer (with Anne and Heiner) and ate peanuts and were told to throw the shells onto the floor!!!

We stayed in a small hotel near the river. The next day was the big birthday party. It was held in an old German renovated farmhouse. We met all the relations and had Wedding Soup, red cabbage, beef and pork, vegetables, salad, potatoes and Liane’s favourite dessert - mixed berries (Rote Grutze) with custard sauce. After that we had coffee and cake (strawberry torte, bee sting cake, apple cake).

Brake

Liane’s uncle and aunt then took us to north to Brake where we stayed with Liane’s cousin Anke and her husband Stefan and their daughter Annabel. (Both of which are pastors of the local Lutheran church).

Anke preached from the high pulpit. As it was a special service she spoke on God's covering, hence the coloured umbrellas.

It seems to be that where ever we go there is some special event happening as the next morning we enjoyed a confirmation service before we were picked up by some old family friends to go to their home in Ratstede for the week.

An interesting poster that Anke and Stefan had in their house.