September 4th : Gieboldehausen

Five people, including me, gave slide shows, and they were terrific. One of them had been a hostage in Algeria for 177 days. Some of them had dramatic music. The photography was excellent, unlike mine. I was the only one who took a picture of the audience. They are laughing because I told them to, but they seemed very happy to do it. I did my show in German. It was a bit of struggle, but I got through it fairly well. Just before I finished, somebody shouted: "Why don't you do it in English?"

The meeting here has become a very good event. There were 350 people, but it didn't seem too many. They mostly camped out on a nice field (see below) and the set up is very convenient. The town is also interesting to walk through. It seems to have been largely undisturbed by the passage of time. Unlike most of the small towns around almost all the houses are half-timbered, and must be hundreds of years old. I want to thank Ralph and Wolfgang for inviting, and especially for the large sausage I was given as prize for having come so far. I ate as much of it as I could, before leaving the country. If there is one thing I regret, it was having to leave that sausage behind. Now that we have to put up with so much security to protect us from high flying murderers, can't we just stop harrassing the innocent European sausage? There are so many good traditional foods that you can only get in Europe that Americans know nothing about, because you can't bring them in. The pork lobby must be spending a fortune to keep those laws on the books. Well, here comes my train to take me back to the airport . . . It's the ICE - or Inter City Express. One of the luxuries of travel in Europe. NEXT PREVIOUS