OUR TRIP TO FEHMARN, GERMANY
MAY
29TH
- JUNE
6TH, 2000
As
told by
Judy Kostick Cummings
This year’s trip is a
little different from last years, as we have traveling companions this year.
Alan and Tressie Hughes flew from Washington State to Hamburg and met us
upon our arrival on Tuesday, May 30, 2000.
We’ve been planning
and talking about this trip for the last 6 months.
Tressie helps John with the “Fehmarn’s Cousins Newsletter”, so
their friendship started with this common bond of researching Fehmarn ancestors.
Her husband, Alan is the descendent of a Fehmaraner. Lots of phone calls and e-mails have gone back and forth from
Washington to Florida about this much-anticipated trip.
So, this year, my Travel
Journal will start out with the adventures of Alan and Tressie, as they left
their home state of Washington on Sunday, May 28th, a day ahead of
us. They had the greater time
difference to contend with, so they planned to arrive the day before us, rest a
little, and pick us up in the rental car from the Hamburg Airport on Tuesday
morning. This would allow us to
arrive in Fehmarn by noon and give us that first day to look around and show the
town of Burg to our friends.
This year we will
have comments from Alan and Tressie, and an occasional comment from John.
Now…… on to our adventures.
FROM TRESSIE….
Sunday & Monday, MAY 28-29, 2000
”Well we are off to Fehmarn. Leaving from SeaTac Airport, we arrived 4 hours early, so
that we could get our radios, cameras and video camera checked through customs.
(This was suggested to us so we could clear customs easier when we come
back, so there are no errors in having to pay duty on them.) While we were in
line, we were told that our 6:20 pm flight was not going to leave until 9:30 pm,
because of a medical emergency on the flight before ours.
When
we finally got to London’s Heathrow Airport, we had to go through the passport
check and customs. This was nothing
more than filling out a form and showing our passports.
Then we were bussed to London’s Gatwick Airport for a flight to
Hamburg, Germany. Unfortunately, we
were further delayed while British Airways had to find 5 pieces of someone’s
lost luggage. We were to leave at
8:15 pm, but with this new delay…. It was 8:50 before we actually left London.
We were so tired that we were thinking about our hotel room in Hamburg and how
good it would be to sleep in a real bed.
Upon our arrival in Hamburg, we went through the
passport check and went on to get our pre-arranged rental car. By now it was almost midnight.
We had called ahead to Hertz and explained our delays, so they had stayed
open and waited for us. Everything
went smoothly, except we noticed the car was smaller than we had expected.
I had gotten directions from the airport to our
hotel, before leaving home, so that we would not get lost…. But, we got lost anyway.
We stopped at a gas station, when we realized we were lost and asked a
local gentleman if he spoke any English.
He spoke a little, so we asked him for directions to the Best Western’s
Schmoeker Hotel. He said he knew
the place, and offered to take us there. We
followed his car as he wound through the streets taking small back roads.
Finally, we arrived at our hotel. We
thanked our Good Samaritan and wished him well.
We checked into our room, with that
wonderful bed …...and were sleeping within 15 minutes.”
NOTE* The one thing that we noticed that is very
different from home is the bedding. They
do not have our traditional sheets and blankets.
They use a bottom fitted sheet only and a single-size covered duvet
(comforter) for each person in our queen-sized bed.
They were very comfortable and kept us quite warm.
Tuesday, MAY 30th, 2000
TRESSIE- “We had asked for an 8 am
wake-up call, but I got up at 6:40 am all by myself.
I went to take a shower and found another thing different from home.
No shower curtains!! I took
my shower, being careful not to get the water on the floor.
Alan got up and was ready by the time our 8 am wake-up call came from the
hotel desk.
Alan started loading the car so we could pick up
John and Judy at the Hamburg Airport. We
were not sure we could get our luggage along with John & Judy’s luggage in
our rental car. I paid for the room
(144 DM) and asked for directions to the Airport from the hotel.
The desk clerk made us a copy of the city book and highlighted the roads
that we needed. We were on our way,
when we realized that we had driven right past the road to the hotel last night.
But because we were so tired, we had not even seen it!
Going to the airport, we only had to ask for
directions once. I consider this a
success! Before getting to the
Airport’s terminals, we turned on our family radios to see if we could get an
answer from John. We had
pre-arranged this before leaving home. After
2 tries, John answered and told us they were in the arrival area.
We could see them standing outside the terminal, but our only problem was
that we were in the wrong lane and couldn’t stop. All we could do was wave at them as we went by.
We drove around the airport till we got back near the terminal.
Again we were coming up in the wrong lane, so we stopped on the side of
the lane and called them on the radio. We
couldn’t get any closer, so they had to bring their luggage to the car. We started loading the bags and realized they
wouldn’t fit. Alan unloaded all
the luggage and started over. Most
of it fit in the rear trunk area, except for Judy’s 3 pieces, which had to sit
next to her in the back seat.
This was the first time we had formally met John
and Judy. We have been talking on
the phone and via e-mail for over a year and I have been helping John with his
Fehmarn Newsletter for about a year and half now.
We have become great friends, but never actually met in person until this
moment.
And
now we were all very close in a tiny rental car with lots of luggage on our way
to Fehmarn!”
Click here to continue on to Monday & Tuesday
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