Air Canada would not let us put our Smart car in the overhead rack. It is sulking in the airport parking lot back in Regina.
After many hours and three flights from Regina to Stuttgart, we're in Germany.
More photos and story below the orange clouds.
The Official FredFredZ and Village Vet European Vacation Photologue (more pictures can be found here).
Beth and I arrived at Das Pelikan hotel in Schwäbisch Gmünd, in Baden-Württemberg state. We drove 700 miles (1,100km) from the Nebraska Panhandle to Regina, Saskatchewan. I found our front tires on our car bald after we got to Regina, so before we return we have to get new tires. The car also needs service so I contacted the Smart dealer in Denver to see if we can have it serviced by the Smart dealer in Regina.
In the meantime, our car is going to sulk because we left it in the airport parking lot and flew to its home country, the Land of Smart cars (Germany).
I was chewed out by Canada’s airport security agency for having three cigarette lighters (then they took two of them). I only thought I had one, the others were apparently lost in my coat.
We flew all the way across Canada and then the Atlantic. Beth spent the flight reading a book on the history of barbed wire, who invented it, patent wars over it, and how it Won the West™ whilst I read a book by Victor Stenger on New Atheism.
I was a test subject for airport security in Frankfurt when my left ankle triggered the X-ray machine and three people searched me. They never did find what triggered the machine, but I got a thorough inspection; in the meantime the rod in my wife's leg did not trigger anything.
We rode the S-Bahn, the train, and finally a taxi, and didn’t wind up in Slovenia. I think we did pretty well. In Regina it had been below freezing, but in Germany it was 70 degrees. I was still wearing my winter coat, toting two suitcases, a backpack, and this computer. I felt like a pack mule.
After some twenty-four hours in the same clothes I think I smelled like a moose.
This morning we went on a walkabout around the centre of the city. As my wife is a library director, she was naturally pulled to the Schwäbisch Gmünd Public Library, as a moth is to a flame. (It seems to be a rule of nature that librarians are attracted to libraries.)
More after the photos.
A librarian in her natural habitat.
Interior detail of the city library. The library was built in 1432 as an administration building for a hospital.
The children's section of the library is larger than most of our town in Nebraska. The library has 100,000 items available for checkout, including Hillary Clinton's book (in German) on prominent display.
This sculpture at the entrance of the library is entitled "Balance." It looks an awful lot like my wife's desk at the Broadwater Public Library.
The view across the centre of the city from the third floor of the city library.
After our walk around the city centre, two more people arrived for our conference, a woman from Argentina and a man who lived in the former East Germany (DDR) and was a "guest" of the Stasi (a political prisoner). He will be giving a talk on life in East Germany in the Eighties and his escape attempts. (He was jailed in Hungary after illegally crossing into Czechoslovakia from the DDR, then returned to the DDR. He spent time as a political prisoner until the West German government ransomed him to the West.)
Tomorrow the conference formally begins. We will take a hike to the local monastery, and then spend meet-and-greet time for the afternoon.
This evening we went for dinner with our newfound friends. Traditional German fare for me: witwurst (white veal sausage), German pretzels with sweet mustard, and German beer.