what about the plastic animals?

Ostseebad Sellin

From Büsum we took the train back to Hamburg and then switched to an eastbound train to Stralsund, on the Baltic Sea near Poland.  Our destination was the island of Rügen, Germany's largest island.  There are several small towns on Rügen that became resort towns about a century ago.  We rented half a house in the beautiful town of Sellin.  The pier turns 100 years old on August 2nd!  It was mostly destroyed by ice in 1924, rebuilt, survived the second World War, fell into disrepair under Communist rule and finally rebuilt in the 1990s after reunification. 

The building contains a restaurant and party hall.  There were two weddings going on while we walked around.  The end of the pier serves as a ferry terminal.  Travelers arriving on the ferry would walk up these stairs to Sellin's main street, which is lined with turn-of-the-century pensions and restaurants.  After we climbed the stairs two guys rode mountain bikes down them. 

My Green Pet

Say hi to Cabby the Cabbage Worm.  Unlike the first President Bush Cabby loves broccoli!  I bought a head of broccoli at the Greenmarket the other day and Cabby tagged along as a protein-rich bonus.  Luckily for Cabby and me, he was discovered before being fried to a crisp.  Next time I buy broccoli I'll remember to soak the head in really salty water before cooking.

Wind Power

There were hundreds of wind turbines in northern Germany.  In the last several years Germany has been strongly promoting energy efficiency and developing renewable energy resources.  A September 2003 US Energy Information Administration report stated that Germany "has the most installed wind power capacity in the world".  About half the more than 16,000 wind turbines in Germany are in the three coastal states of Lower Saxony, Schleswig-Holstein, and Mecklenburg-West Pomerania.

Ferry to Fairway

Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges

Brooklyn Gantries

Forlorn Staten Island Ferry

Back of Fairway

Fairway shoppers

The obstacle course

Late last week I happened across an announcement from New York Water Taxi that they would be starting a free Saturday morning shuttle to the new Fairway grocery store in Red Hook.  The water taxi would leave the Fulton Ferry Landing at 9:00, go across the East River to the South Sea Seaport and then head to Red Hook, arriving at 9:20.  The ride to Red Hook is free, as is the ride back if you buy $100 of groceries.  If you don't spend that much the return trip is $7.  Although it meant waking up and getting to Dumbo early on Saturday, I hadn't been to the new Fairway and hadn't been to Red Hook since last fall.

At a little before 9:00 there were four eager Fairway shoppers waiting on the Fulton Ferry Landing.  No water taxi.  Five minutes later the taxi is leaving the South Street Seaport and heading toward us.  This is the reverse of the published schedule.  We were off to Red Hook.  Had it not been so foggy and misty we might have had nice views.

I presumed we would dock at the Van Brunt Pier, but Fairway had their own dock.  Even though it was a short walk from the dock into the store via their café, the café doors were closed.  We were directed around the building to the front entrance.  There was no sidewalk or walkway, we had to make our way around old trolley cars, construction debris, and other obstacles before hopping over a short wall and onto Van Brunt.

The new Fairway is larger than the one in Manhattanville, with a greater selection and more of each item.  I didn't notice any walk-in refrigerated rooms, however.  While I enjoyed the new store, I was hungry, so it was up Van Brunt to Baked for a second breakfast.

Boats in Büsum

The second stop on our trip was the town of Büsum, on the North Sea.  We left the cousins behind and my aunt, uncle, father, sister and me went north by train.  Büsum has a commercial fishing fleet and is also a resort town.  My grandmother lived there for several years and her grave is in town.  My father was not able to return when she passed away in 1982 so we went to pay our last respects.

Almost Related

One day in Germany my father told us a story.  A class from a private girl's school use to come to his Long Island deli every once in a while.  One of the girls in the class took a liking to my then teen-aged uncle, who worked in the deli.  They went out on several dates.  She would send a limo to the deli to pick him up. 

Once, on a visit to the deli just before Thanksgiving, the girls were excitedly talking about their holiday plans.  All except the girl who dated my uncle.  She went into the back of the deli and started crying.  In all likelihood I would have been there, playing or napping amongst the stacked cases of beer and soda.  Her parents, she explained, were spending the holiday in Europe, and she was spending the holiday alone.  Taking pity on her my parents invited her to our house.  She declined and at some point she and my uncle stopped seeing each other.

A couple of years ago my Dad realized what happened to that girl.  She grew up to be Paris Hilton's mother.

That's quite a story, right?  Had Paris Hilton's future mother and my uncle hit it off there would be no Paris, no Nikki, no Barron, and no Conrad Junior.  No Simple Life, no grainy hotel room movies.  Popular culture of the early-21st century would have been completely different. 

Except for one minor detail.

I looked it up and Kathy Richards Hilton would have been five or six years old when this happened.  Ah, well, it's a great story so I'll probably keep telling it.

Building Progress

30 April 2006, 120th St. and Fifth Ave.

17 June 2006, 120th St. and Fifth Ave.

Morningside Park Condominiums, 116th St. and Morningside Ave.

Some buildings go up faster than others.  it doesn't look like much of anything has happened to the site at 120th and Fifth in the past two months.  There is a flurry of activity every morning when I walk by the Morningside Park Condos.  The latter looks really nice:  two bedroom, two bath, floor-through apartments, each with their own fireplace.  Prices start at $1.075M.

German Family Reunion

Aunt Helga and Dad

Dad and Uncle Rainer

The German side of the family

The day after we arrived in Germany was my Aunt Helga's birthday, the first of three birthdays to be celebrated during our visit.  I hadn't seen Tante Helga since I was four or five years old, and I'd never met Uncle Rainer or their kids.  We had a great time catching up, looking at old photos, and trying to communicate in Germlish.

Waiting on a Train

It has been thirty years since my father visited his family in Germany.  He grew up in the northeastern part of the country.  It has been sixty years since he and his family fled the Russians at the end of World War II and he hadn't returned to his home town in sixty years.  This past winter, after several years of trying, my sister and I, but mostly my sister, convinced him to go for a visit.

Judy arrived in Frankfurt around noon.  My dad and I arrived two hours later.   I then amazed everyone with my ability to buy three train tickets from a german ticket machine.  An hour later Aunt Helga and Uncle Rainer were meeting us at the train station in Karlsruhe. 

There were also many bikes:

Let's Go to Germany

Taking off from JFK.  See the A train?

Island in Jamaica Bay

Sunset over the clouds

The trip to Germany begins!