Auf Wiedersehen Europe

Our luncheon complete and our shopping trip finished, we trooped back to our tour bus to leave Hamburg, with a bus back to Kiel and an overnight cruise return to Copenhagen. We knew that our SAS flight home would be waiting for us the next afternoon. After the longest vacation in our lives, it was time to head home. Across the walk from where our bus waited, I saw the hand graffito seen here, and I high-fived it before boarding.

Rather than explain or reminisce about the final image from the trip, I thought I would post a handful of poems from the days of the departure and immediately after. The only note here is to explain that folks do not say "good bye" in German: "auf wiedersehen" means "until I see you again."

Auf Wiedersehen, Europe!




AUF WIEDERSEHEN HAMBURG

We looked at the Rathaus, we saw the canal and its locks;
We noticed large homes with manicured lawns and gardens and
We rode round both lakes created by and for the canals.
We remarked about how different from crowded Berlin it was;
We noted how graffiti-free it seemed in comparison.
We checked out the Reeperbahn and the Beatles statuary and
We had long tasty Bratwurst and Beer aboard a tall-mast museum.
Most of all we had a local guide, filled with stories and jokes; we
Met shopkeepers and other Hamburgers with such smiling faces
That as I leave Hamburg and say ‘Auf Wiedersehen’ I mean it.
Literally.




NOT SO DIFFERENT AFTER ALL

Corn or beans, wheat or canola in field after field,
Cows or horses in every pasture we pass by,
Sunshine and puffy white clouds on bright blue skies,
Cold beer and tasty red wine with lots of hot food,
Dozens of museums and public buildings and statues,
People who respond to a smile and a thank you.
Eight countries away from home and nine hours early
Only to learn once again we are not so different after all.



LONG LIST

Eight countries, 18 days, 7600 pictures taken and sorted,
Rough drafts of 29 poems onto the laptop on the way home.
So why am I intent on returning to Northern Europe?
After spending some cruise time in Mediterranean areas,
Will I ever want to see some of these same countries?
Yes, indeed: Let me count the ways I wish to return:
Kensington Palace, Liverpool, Glasgow, Edinburgh.
Arc de Triomphe, Champs Elysees, Museums, Normandy,
Most of the Louvre. Paris and Berlin at night, lit up.
Stockholm’s suburban palace, lots of Tallinn haunts.
St. Petersburg’s hundred palaces and excesses not seen.
Sparakoff’s Beer Tram in Helsinki. All of Amsterdam.
More of West Germany, Belgium, perhaps little Luxembourg.
The long list of things we were not able to make time for
On our breath-taking two-and-a-half-week whirlwind tour.

That list, along with pretty much everything we did see,
Which we could stand to see again. And again.





THANKS, EUROPE

Little words we teach our kids can certainly mean a lot:
Most of the trip was in England or on the cruise ship,
Places where “thanks” is easy to use and well-accepted.
The word-lover in me made me try “merci” in Paris,
“Danke” in Berlin and again later in Hamburg.
Each use earned me an appropriate reply, returning the
Respect my choice had given the Frenchman or the German.
In Russia I tried a word I confess to having learned from a
Billy Joel concert album; several times I said “spassib” and
Again received respect, Russian this time, from the beautiful
Human beings I had the pleasure to visit.