Tomato, Tomato, Konstanz, Constance, Venizia, Venice

1:10 PM
6/11/07
Train to Venice

Well here I am, sitting on a train to Venice, which left from Milan. A pretty nice train, and in fact, it has power plugs at the seats, so I don't even have to use battery power. No wireless though - that would be just too much. Anyway, we've just spent the last few days in Konstanz or Constance if you're spelling it the english way, but it was a beautiful little town (I say little, but it was the biggest town on lake Konstanz) on the border of switzerland, and on the other side of the lake, it's Austria. The clouds were a little thick most of the time, at least in the way of seeing the alps in the distance, but on clear days (I saw pictures) you can see them with their snow topped, um, tops off in the distance. We ended up in Konstanz because Simon's girlfriend Rachel's family had an exchange student live with them a few years ago, for a year. This is who we stayed with - her and her family. What wonderful people they are (the Windisch family). They treated us like kings by giving us a place to stay (thanks to Hendi's twin sister Saskia for letting us use her room), and food to eat, and wonderful conversation. They all spoke english - it amazed simon and I that they would speak english just the same way they would speak german - it was if nothing was changed. We had very interesting and extremely intelligent (well, I can't say much for myself, but they all were) conversations. Her mom teaches english at a boarding school across the lake - a beautiful place from what I saw in the brochure, and her father is a professor in stuttgart, where he lives for most of the week, then returns home to be with his family. When we arrived there, we were whisked off to Hendrickje's grandmother's house where we had coffee, cake, amazing strawberries, and conversation. So after a while, went back to Hendi's house, dropped our stuff off, showered (as we were sweating like pigs from the trip in, as it was a very hot day), and we immediately went out to check out Konstanz. We walked around and she showed us all the sights in her area just a little outside the town itself. We went home, and had dinner with her mother and her sister, Saskia. We had so much to talk about, we finished dessert at 1:00 AM and so we headed to bed. The next day, after a wonderful breakfast, we went biking through to Konstanz proper, as well as another town (which I can't remember the name of) across the lake, and saw all the history and the things to see there. We visited an old castle, and just checked out all of the lake / hills views that were to be seen from there. Meanwhile, this whole time, we were pelting Hendi with questions about Germany and the language, and her studies, and the government and taxes, and all kinds of stuff she probably didn't want to be talking about, but she gladly answered them - very nice of her. We returned home, again sweaty, so we showered, and had dinner, this time, with her whole family, father included, as well as Hendi's friend from her running team's parents. They were wonderful, and although their english was not quite as good as the Windisch's, they were wonderful people to talk to, even with a little translation in between. Yesterday (sunday) we woke up later, and again headed out by bike to check out the surrounding areas of Konstanz, which we took two ferries to get to, with the bikes. It was a very scenic tour, stopping once at a church/vineyard to check that out, as well as rest and have a little snack. We returned home, but not after seeing these very old (or recreated to look very old about 80 years ago), stilt houses which were built by people in the stone age and the bronze age (as I recall). They used all kinds of primitive tools and such to do their living to kill bears, and deer and find fish. There was actually a movie made called "Stone Age - The Experiment," in where some families lived in these houses and used the tools those people would have used to live and eat. We didn't see the movie, but we heard that it was more interesting than was thought, because while the families were trained to use the tools and such, it began to rain a lot, which made using the tools very difficult. Hendi was very kind to translate the tour, as the lady who was having it (and held the keys to the houses, so we had to follow her) was only speaking german, so she told us the important highlights and such. We went home, had a shower again, and went out to dinner with her family, minus Saskia who went to a movie with her grandmother. We went to an italian restaurant, fittingly enough, as we are on our way to Venice right now, where we will stay for 2 nights. We had a little ice cream, went home, discussed computers for a bit, booked our hostel for Venice, and went to bed, only to wake up to breakfast cooked and ready for us (at 5:00 in the morning, as our train left Konstanz at 5:57 this morning) - what a guy Hendi's dad is to do that for us.

In other news, the internet is very weird here in europe - in the states, many cafes and restaurants open their wireless internet for anyone to use - in fact, it's a selling point for people like me, but in europe, they close everything down! Oh well, I guess it's just one of those differences, but I was under the impression they had a lot of wireless internet here - at least, that's what people that had been here recently told me. Anyway, I'm going to put my computer away now. I'm happy to have power here on the train, but I can't do too much without the internet. I hope everything is going well back at home, and I can't wait to see you all to tell you more about the trip. E-mail if you like!

Love,
Matt