We are in the middle of summer vacation but have been just as busy as ever! We went away for a long weekend on Thursday, but we had lots to keep us running around Monday through Wednesday.
Brooklyn was probably the busiest of all of us. In addition to piano and softball practice, she’s joined two new organizations in order to increase her volunteer hours. The first is the school Ambassadors club, which entails giving tours and orientations and being assigned as a mentor to students new to the community. She had her orientation this week and then gave tours on one of the summer orientation days. This is a big year for moves, so she said so many new students were there. The second organization she’s volunteering for is the local thrift shop, and she attended a new volunteer orientation one night. She’s definitely going to be busy the rest of the summer!
Ryan also stayed busy as his new Lego set finally arrived. He’s been mowing lawns for months and did a lot of work for his grandparents during our visit home. He finally saved up for his dream Lego set, the Star Wars AT-AT, which is being discontinued at the end of the year. It arrived Tuesday, and he spent just about every free moment since working on it.
We met friends at a local food festival, the Schlemmen Am See, on Wednesday night. While there was a street food festival a couple of weeks ago, this one is supposed to be the ‘gourmet’ food festival, with local restaurants setting up stands. It was huge, with about 40 food stands, and packed with hundreds of people, despite being a Wednesday evening. The weather was beautiful, though, which probably had something to do with it being so busy.
Thursday, we dropped off the dogs and departed mid-morning for Gelsenkirchen, in northwest Germany, where Brooklyn and I were attending Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour! We left in plenty of time to get to the concert but ran into a lot of traffic along the way. So, once we got to the hotel, we only had a few minutes to change clothes and hop back in the car for Matt to drive us to the stadium, which was about 30 minutes away. Traffic was so bad we eventually just got out and walked the rest of the way.
We finally arrived at the arena and headed to the merchandise stands. There were about 15 lines to wait in, and all of them were 100+ people long. Brooklyn saw that one of the lines on the end only had about five people in and went up and got in line. No one said a word to her, and we picked up T-shirts and posters in just a couple of minutes. Then, we headed into the stadium.
Long story short, we walked around the stadium twice, trying to find our section. We mistook the block we were in for the stairwell we needed to take. Really, though, shouldn’t the stairwell numbers match the seating blocks? Anyway, we made it to our seats with time to spare. We even had time to pick up some drinks and snacks and saw our friends Beth and Jane on the way.
We had a fantastic time at the concert! We pretty much sang our hearts out the entire time, and even though Brooklyn would like to probably kill me for saying so, she may or may not have been in tears for the first half due to just being overwhelmed.
After the concert, we met with Beth and Jane outside the arena because we were all staying in the same hotel, and Matt was driving us back. We got a few more pictures outside at the “Swiftkirchen” sign before finally spotting Matt’s car. When we got in, he told us he had to circle the block twice before we found each other. On his first circle, the police halted traffic directly in front of him, and he saw Taylor leaving in her motorcade with a police escort. So cool! But really, I can’t believe he didn’t get a video!
Traffic was heavy, and we didn’t return to the hotel until midnight. The next morning, we were leaving for Hamburg, and I’m not sure what made me think this would be a good idea, but I had booked a harbor cruise for 11 am, even though Hamburg was a four drive from Essen, where we were staying. With the late bedtime, I honestly was ready to write-off the harbor cruise, but the hotel room had a noisy A/C unit, and we were all up by 6 am and in the car by 6:30. We made good time and arrived at Hamburg harbor with enough time to grab some extra coffees before the boat ride.
Friday was also Ryan’s 14th Birthday, so we took some birthday photos by the harbor!
The harbor cruise was okay. You had two choices for seating: out in the glaring sun or in the partial shade, which was surrounded by windows, creating a greenhouse effect. It was a scorching day in Germany, so we sweated it out regardless of which section we sat in. Being inside the glass meant most of our photos came out with spots on them. Regardless, it was still a good orientation to Hamburg, the massive port city of Northern Germany.
After the harbor cruise, we checked into the hotel and grabbed lunch at one of the many seafood stands on Hamburg’s harbor front. I’m pretty mad at myself over this, but I got no pictures of the harborfront or the seafood market. But we were rushing, so I forgot. Hamburg has a vast harbor front, stretching down to its riverfront on the Elbe River. The city has proactively built a flood wall on the banks of the river and harbor, but it has also made it so that it can be used by people and vendors when there is no flood. It is a huge gathering place and busy with lots of activity, all the times we passed through. Here is a stock phone of what it looks like:
After lunch, we met our second tour of the day: a bike tour. Ryan loves biking, and if there’s any tour we can get him to join willingly, it’s a bike tour. We biked for four hours around the city, seeing its football stadium, lake districts, old town, war memorials, and even the red-light district. It is a big city and so beautiful! It was bombed flat in WW2, but instead of being rebuilt in Stuttgart’s cheap concrete block style, it maintained its Scandinavian feel with a British touch, as it was part of the British sector after the War. I would describe it as San Francisco meets Copenhagen. Its old warehouse district, now a UNESCO World Heritage site, has been re-gentrified into a hipster neighborhood that reminded me of Downtown Chicago and its river. Hamburg is so similar to Baltimore in that it’s a huge port city with lots of money coming in, so it had me wondering, why can’t Baltimore be like this?
Hamburg has two lakes within its city limits, the Outer Alster and the Inner Alster, both formed by dams in the Elbe River. The Outer is a huge lake filled with sailboats, stand-up paddle boarders, and kayaks. The park surrounding it was filled with walkers, runners, bikers, and people just hanging out. It definitely did not feel like we were in one of the biggest cities in Europe, and it seemed like it would be a great place to spend time.
The second lake is the Inner Alster, which was more like a large pond with a rocket fountain in the middle, like Lake Geneva. The inner lake definitely had a more urban feel with shops, restaurants, and hotels surrounding its edges.
We were so happy when it was time to return the bikes, not because the tour was over, but because not one person in our family had a crash during the tour, although there were some close calls! This was a first for our family! After the tour, Ryan selected Block House, our favorite chain steakhouse, for his birthday dinner. We all ate too much, followed by the Block House birthday celebration, which included a champagne toast.
After dinner, we were all dead tired from our jam-packed day and only getting a few hours of sleep. We headed back to the hotel and had an early night.
Hamburg is an awesome city and definitely now one of our favorite German and even European destinations! It is beautiful, clean, modern, and trendy. There was also a ton to do, and we barely scratched the surface. I am so surprised that this doesn’t rank highly on many travelers’ wish lists, and it must just be because it’s not as well known as Munich or Berlin. We would love to come back here again as its own standalone trip.
We allowed ourselves to sleep in a little bit the following morning, and after breakfast, we packed up the car and got on the road again. Our destination was Cuxhaven, a beach town on the North Sea coast. But first, we stopped in Bremerhaven to go to Decathlon, Germany’s big sporting goods store, to pick up some water shoes we would need for Cuxhaven. We intended it to be a quick stop, but we can never escape that place without being drawn down every aisle and sucked into making way more purchases than planned.
Finally, we made it to Cuxhaven, checked into our hotel, and headed to Dühne Beach, only about a five-minute walk away. We first noticed the yellow beach huts at the beach and promptly rented one. These little huts are essentially two-person benches with a built-in umbrella and side wind protection. You can turn them based on where the sun is shining from and they can recline and have built-in full rests—genius! The whole thing only costs €8 for the day, which we considered a huge bargain.
The second thing we noticed was that the Sea was not there. The Wadden Sea is known for its vast tides. When the tide is out, the Sea goes out miles due to the very gradual incline of the sea bed floor. It goes so far out that you can walk or ride wagons to the Frisian Islands in the North Sea. We arrived as the tide was almost hitting its lowest.
After setting up the beach hut, we decided to walk towards the “water.” Brooklyn wanted to lay out at the beach shack, so Matt, Ryan, and I set off. We did not plan to walk all the way out, but after making it through the deep mud close to the shore, we just kept walking on the soggy seabed. After about an hour and two kilometers, we made it to a wall of rocks to block boats from coming in so close. Although the water was still not even up to our knees, we could go no further. Ryan and I had fun playing with the little shrimp swimming around and floating in the water, which is actually the second saltiest in the world after the Dead Sea. After our long walk out, we realized that we had become a little disoriented and had not walked out in a straight line but instead were several hundred meters down the beach from where we started.
Matt did not want to float, so he started the long journey back. After about 20 minutes, Ryan and I decided it was also time to return. We could still see Matt walking about a mile away- it’s so flat, and he was walking straight to where we had started. So we decided instead of taking the direct route, we would run at a 90-degree angle for some time and then cut straight back to the shore and try to beat him there. We had to run off and on the whole way back, but we surprised him when we were sitting in the beach hut when he arrived. He had been checking back on us during his trip back and knew he had a 20-minute start on us, so he couldn’t believe we were there; so funny!
Afterward, Brooklyn and I took a walk out into the Sea because after hearing all we had seen, she wanted to see it too.
When Brooklyn and I returned, we were starving, so we packed up and went to the hotel for showers. Then, we walked down the street to a seafood restaurant where we all had the most delicious fresh seafood dishes. Matt had salmon, Ryan had local rockfish with North Sea Shrimp, and Brooklyn and I had shrimp scampi.
Sunday morning, we woke up for an early breakfast at the hotel, and it was so good. It seems like you can always count on a really good breakfast at the smaller hotels!
At 9, we headed down to the beach to meet a group for a hike in the Wadden Sea, the tidal part of the North Sea. Due to the risks of the fast tide coming in, it was recommended to hike with a guide, and we ended up with a great one named Kai. Kai worked for the town of Cuxhaven and was obviously highly passionate about the area and the Sea.
The hike took about two and a half hours and covered 2.5 km, but we stopped frequently to learn about the sea bed and the creatures that live in it. The first animals we came across were shore crabs. Lucky for us, we found plenty and even one female, which the guide said was very rare; only 1 in 500 shore crabs is female and he said he was really happy to see it. Next, we came across a family of hermit crabs scuttling across the sea bed. Kai told us that this is not their habitat at all and that they are extremely rare here. For us, it was the first time seeing a hermit crab not being sold in a cage in a beach-side store, so it was really cool. Kai taught us how to dig for mussels and clams, and we saw tons of baby shrimp.
Perhaps the most interesting were the sea-worms. I know- how can worms be even remotely interesting? But yesterday, we saw lots of what looked like worms as we walked out to the water, but when we touched them, they disintegrated like sand. It turns out the worms are much deeper in the seabed and eat sand and then poop it out. They are the North Sea filtration system, and the reason the water is so clean and clear (unless silt is being knocked around).
The BEST part of the hike was after we had been hiking out quite a bit. When we arrived, the water was not out as far as it had been the day before, but we had failed to realize that the tide had been steadily coming in since we arrived. While we stopped to listen to the guide speak, we noticed the water rushing towards us, marked with a stripe of brown froth from the rushing water.
The tide was quickly approaching, and we were suddenly in ankle-deep water. The guide had expected it, and we turned around at this point on the hike. We had to keep up a steady, fast walk to keep up with the water. Some beachgoers had also walked out to the point where we stopped with the guide, and he continued ordering people to come to shore. I can definitely see how it would seem cool to stand out there, but in a few minutes, they would be in 5ft+ of water. At a few points where the tide met standing pools of water, mini tsunamis were created, and a couple with a dog on our tour had to pick him up and run to where it was more shallow.
It was so cool to witness this phenomenon, but it can be lethal, too. We asked the guide how often people had to be rescued from the incoming tide, and he said last year was the worst, with over 100 rescues needed and two fatalities. Because of the very gradual incline and how far you get from the shore, people cannot perceive that they would be standing in 20ft of water at the furthest point out. And the water moves fast. We could keep up with it because we started in only ankle-deep water, but if we had been further out and the water had gotten above our knees, we would not have been able to walk so quickly and eventually would have been trying to swim. It’s a force of nature to be respected.
At the end of the hike, we tried to tip Kai, but he refused and insisted we donate the money to the North Sea Rescue, which had collection points in stores all over town. He was so sweet I could cry.
After our hike, we had a quick lunch in a pizzeria right off the beach. The Dühne Beach area was so cute, with its boardwalk, shops, and restaurants. We all commented on how it reminded us of Bethany Beach, Delaware, except everything was in German. We did a little souvenir shopping and then got in the car, sad we didn’t have more time there.
The drive home took us about eight hours with a few stops for food and gas and we made it home in time for sunset!
Gilcrests Abroad 