OLD MEMORIES
Visits to sites of my youth
18th September - 25th September | 2022
During my stay in Köln, there is not much happening, mainly relaxing and having a drink with my mother's friends. Also going to the hairdresser as my helmet-hairstyle needs a bit of TLC ;-)
Oh, and I met my first "fan": Marlies :-D She gave me a guardian angel - thank you so much! Looking forward to meet you next time I am back in Köln.
Whilst in Balticum I downloaded one app to use the e-scooters, which I haven’t done yet. However, being in Köln, I used them for the first time and I really enjoyed it! A nice and easy way to get "fast" from A to B in a city. I must admit though, it took me 1 min to work out how to get it running ;-) but then I really enjoyed it!
I spent nearly a week with my mum, and then it was time to move on. I planned to visit my old hometown Solingen, where I grew up and went to school. I still was in contact with 3 schoolmates and in the end, we arranged a school reunion dinner for that evening. Unfortunately, it was for the majority too short notice, but we got the ball rolling to get nearly all contacts for a Whatsapp group together :-D Now the next meeting should be much easier to organise!
In Solingen, I visited the landmark of Müngstener Brücke, as it was a major project to build that bridge back in the day! Also, I wanted to see the house I have grown up. Currently, there was a lot of work outside, and what used to be bushes and trees (our playground) are now houses! I stopped and due to the work, the lady-owner was talking to one of the workers through the window.
So I introduced myself, and she said "I used to be with a Stefanie xxx at school" - "That’s me!" Through the various schools we worked out, we joined together in the 5th and 6th year! Then she told me her name, and I remembered it immediately. The world is a village!
She invited me in for a drink, which I couldn’t deny as all that was so exciting!! Due to the work outside, I had to get in through the back door and I remembered everything, even though a lot has changed in the past 25 years!
After that, it was about time to get to the house of my old school friend Anja, as she spontaneously offered me to stay at hers. It was so great to see her and catch up on the past 30 years!
One of my schoolmates, Frank, whom I started the Whatsapp group with, picked me up to meet his little family.
Later that evening we had dinner and we were 9 people in total. It was so great to see them again and heard their stories. And, of course, we were quite often coming up with old stories from our trip to Pécs in Hungary (remember my visit to Peter & Esther in June). We will try to get another meeting together when I am back around Christmas this year.
The next morning, after saying Goodbye to Anja and her lovely family, Frank drove with me to the garage in Kohlfurt to get the new rear wheel bearings fitted. Micheal Sladek is a very professional guy, and thankfully it was only the bearings on the rear tyre that needed changing, but desperately though!
Frank and I had then a drink at the well-known "Cafe Hubraum" (just on the other side of the Wupper of the garage).
Then it was time to hit the road again, as I still wanted to visit the place we had our weekend-horses-house in the Eifel. As I did already a lot of ferry-river-crossings I also wanted to do one over the Rhein.
After that, I took the motorway A1 and I didn’t need the GPS anymore as I drove that so many times in the past! First I visited Bad Münstereifel, which had suffered very much during the big flood last year. Unfortunately, I couldn’t drive through as it was the weekend, but you could still see the damage the flood and heavy rain had done!
Talking of rain! It then started raining heavily! I went from Bad Münstereifel to our old wooden house close to Wershofen. The village hasn’t and has changed! Some more new houses and it appears that some of the old houses are now weekend houses, as the owners must have passed away. Our old house looked ok, but the garden is overgrown, so it looked all very untidy :-( But I was so emotional excited to come back here after all the years to see the changes.
The next stop was to visit our (my mum's and mine) old friends Anja & Gereon, whom I haven’t seen for at least 15 years! It was so great to see them again after all these years! As you can imagine, we chatted away until late at night.
The next morning, we drove around to see the horses and the damage from that flood. It was so unreal to hear (and see their videos) all about the flood!
After a lovely lunch, it was time to move on, which meant saying Goodbye to Anja, Gereon and Nicole. Due to the hotel prices in Holland, I booked a cheap-ish place just on the border between Germany and Holland.
As I am coming closer to home (Portugal) and not much is happening for the moment, as the weather is really bad for a while, the next blog will be only ready next week! I hope you can understand that and I will update you on my travels next week!
Places | Cities:
Köln, Solingen, Bad Münstereifel, Nettersheim, Düren, Heinsberg.
Driven km | Trip:
Total | Steffi: 27480 km
Maintenance | Breakdown:
Back wheel bearings - fixed at "msm-motorrad-de" between Solingen and Wuppertal.
Health issues:
./.
Special thanks to:
Anja and her family to look after me whilst staying in Solingen.
Frank to arrange the garage (see above) and giving me some company riding.
Anja & Gereon to pamper me whilst staying with them - next time we will go riding (sind ja keine Warmduscher ;-) )!!