Arrival in Germany…and the Stuttgart Volksfest
Tuesday, October 16th, 2012
You may recall that my step-brother Bryan and his wife Erine re-located to Germany last July, as Erine’s government job as an auditor took them to town near Kaiserslautern known as Trippstadt. My mom began to brew and simmer the idea in her head to take a trip to visit them as soon as they hit the door. I initially hoped to put off the visit until 2013, knowing that the vacation schedule of 2012 would be pretty full. I ended up bypassing both a trip to India and a possible one to Easter Island and instead opted to tag along to Germany. I was mostly excited that our visit would coincide with Oktoberfest, as that’s most certainly a bucket-list event. My aunt Diana and uncle Tom decided that they’d go along too and pretty soon plans were underway. Read the rest of this entry »
Even though Bob and I were only on day five of our two week journey through New England, I was constantly looking at our itinerary, concerned that we would run out of time before we finished everything on it. We had a nice full day ahead of us, but this was the first day that we cut a few things out for the sake of expediency. Being a Sunday on July 8, 2012, it also limited us from doing a few things as fully as I’d have liked. But of course I’ve learned from experience that you can’t have everything on these journeys. The day would go surprisingly well, especially considered that it began in the house where Lizzie Borden’s parents had been murdered. 
Bob and I found ourselves in Natick, Massachusetts on the morning of Saturday, July 7, 2012. We had driven to this city to escape the high prices of motels in the Boston area, but most of our business that morning would be on Boston outskirt town of Cambridge, home of Harvard University. After a hearty breakfast of eggs and sausages, we left Natick a bit before 9am and arrived at the Mount Auburn Cemetery (which we had scoped out the night before) by 9:30. This was a neat cemetery with a convenient search kiosk. Although most of the more notable names were on the cemetery map, there were a few that Bob had added to the list that we had to locate using the kiosk. So I handled that part.