We are lucky so far, the predicted heatwave got only up to 32*C here in Ingolstadt, so we spend the day floating around the Oldtown, with a very nice lunch with my sister Petra, shopping, haircut, with stops in cafes and beergardens to keep hydrated. As an evening dessert Ted made a delicious peach cobbler!
Today we were invited to my nephew Daniel and his girlfriend Regina for dinner. We were blown away by their super delicious pizza, cooked in the barbecue! See for yourself…
Our plan of loosing a few Covid pounds just doesn’t work. We are spoiled left and right with good food, beer and wine, and saying „no thank you“ is not an option…..
Ted is cooking today and he decided to make those pancakes that our friend Leslie made for us at Lake Tahoe last fall. Ever since, those pancakes are our favorite breakfast special and Ted has mastered them – Leslie would be proud of him!
Serve these pancakes with butter and warm maple syrup.
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
2 1/2 cups buttermilk
1/4 cup (1/8 lb.) butter or margarine, melted
1 cup fresh blueberries, rinsed and drained, or canned blueberries, drained (see notes)
Salad oil
In a bowl, mix flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. In a small bowl, whisk eggs, buttermilk, and butter until blended. Stir egg mixture into flour mixture, then gently stir in blueberries.
Place a nonstick griddle or a 12-inch nonstick frying pan over medium heat (350°). When hot, coat griddle lightly with oil and adjust heat to maintain temperature. Spoon batter in 1/3-cup portions onto griddle and cook until pancakes are browned on the bottom and edges begin to look dry, about 2 minutes; turn with a wide spatula and brown other sides, 1 1/2 to 2 minutes longer. Coat pan with more oil as necessary to cook remaining pancakes.
Serve pancakes as cooked, or keep warm in a single layer on baking sheets in a 200° oven for up to 15 minutes
Beside several amazing museums (Bavarian Army Museum inside the castle, Museum of Modern Art inside the old city wall, Anatomie Museum where Dr. Frankenstein‘s lab used to be, etc), Ingolstadt has a few very interesting festivals. One of which, the „Stadtfest“ happened last weekend in order to celebrate the 550 year existence of the university. It was spread over the whole old town, which is an area of 10 acres, had 9 stages with 200 hours of program, 90 booths with food, drink, arts & crafts, along with all restaurants, retail, bars being open until the wee hours. We went Saturday and Sunday and had so much fun!
The artists with their bicycle-part costumes
Walking through Ingolstadt is like a lesson in history that I didn’t care much about as a child. Growing up with a castle in the background, with houses older than the USA, Ingolstadt is very fascinating to me now, as a visiting adult who appreciates the many unique features it has to offer.
First settlements in 5500 BCE, first written documents as a town in 809 CE, first university in Bavaria, the secret cult of the Illuminati was founded here and Frankenstein, a student from Geneva, who studied medicine here, got attention with his “experiments”. Mary Shelley heard about those and wrote her world famous book, based on those stories she was told.
Today Ingolstadt has an innovative university, the headquarter of Audi is located here, but the soccer team, 1st FC Ingolstadt, sucks 😬
Bitcoin ATM
This weekend is a big festival in town, the „Stadtfest“, which is an overload of music, culture and entertainment. And – not to forget – food! So we ate our way through a variety of calories which we always excuse with several miles of walking. Those calories still show up on the bathroom scale however, which we think doesn’t work properly anyway…..
And this was not the end. We were invited to my brothers house for dinner where we were treated to a very special, super tender meat dish: „Schichtfleisch“, cooked in a Dutch oven for 2 hours! 6 pounds of pork neck slices are layered with bacon and onions, then cooked to perfection! It ends up being super tender, you could eat it with a spoon!
There is something to the idea of „coming home“. We arrived at my moms house yesterday at midnight, catching up on sleep (after our long travel day from London to Germany), food, talk, pampering! Family, oh how much I missed them!!!
Home, sweet home!
Starting at 5am, we were well prepared for a long trip, with first class tickets (assigned seats, food, etc) to go from London to Ingolstadt, where my family lives. Little did we know…
We had waited 3 days to get on this train and we were very excited for different reasons: 1. Visiting my family of course, 2. A train ride underneath the Channel, that connects England with France and 3. Being on the continent and off the island, whiteout borders, pass controls, mile long security lines and with one currency for the next few months!
So off we went through the Eurotunnel!
A: It opened in 1994 to connect England with France
B: It is 50,45 km long
C: it is 75 meters below sea level
D: The train goes up to 334.7 km/h
So this all sounds very spectacular, but in reality we didn’t even realize that we were in the tunnel until we were halfway through (there are quite a few tunnels during this train ride). It takes ~25 min.
2 hours after leaving London, we arrived in Brussels, Belgium. Our wait was scheduled to be 2.5 hours, so what do you do with 2.5 hours in Belgium?
Our flexibility and open-mindedness came in very handy, because after the waffles and almost at the end of our 2.5 hour wait we got some surprise!
What should read like Brussels – Frankfurt didn’t work out: train cancelled and we had to choose between 1. Waiting another 2 hours for the next train to Frankfurt and miss all the other connections or 2. Go to Welkenraedt. And Welkenraedt is a city, actually more like a town, a very small town. It is a village with a train station to be precise. And that village is just the last one near the Belgium – German border. So they sent us there to just get rid of us I guess.Out of sight, out of mind! The instructions were easy: Go to Welkenraedt, take a train across the border and any train you like to your final destination. Since you already have paid, you can take any train of your choice. You just have to figure it out yourself. Great!
Welkenraedt is a village in the Ardennes, with beautiful green hills around. The Ardennes were a highly fought after place during WWI, according to a history professor, one of many interesting people you get to meet when traveling!
To make this long train travel day a little shorter:
So it was midnight when we had finally arrived in Ingolstadt after switching trains a few more times, after knitting, reading, playing cards and talking to people. My mom was thrilled! Usually she goes to bed when the sun sets, but she danced around the table until we showed up, she put food in front of us, a good night drink, and finally we ended up in bed. Exhausted and happy!
We had another fabulous day in London with gorgeous weather, delicious food and great adventures!
After breakfast we wanted to check out the British Library for a little bit – time just flew by and it was 3pm when we left!!!
“Don’t judge a book by its movie!”
We went on to do the tourist top tens: Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, Trafalgar Square, Downing Street, etc. You name it! And all the tourists in London did the same thing apparently 😆
After the tourist top 10 we floated around the neighborhood and ended up at Kings Street and the Covent Garden, which I love!!! We had another great dinner right there, we listened to an opera singer and – I can’t say that enough – we just love to be stranded in London! Everything was spontaneous, everything worked out to our best 🥳
They were all visited by us on this trip! And what else?
They were all destroyed by a big fire at one point in their history!
September 2-6, 1666 London: 13,200 homes were destroyed, 6 people died, 70,000 people lost their homes (out of 80,000)
September 20-21, 1776 New York: not clear, but 400-1000 structures were destroyed
May 5-8, 1842 Hamburg: 1700 houses were destroyed (1/3 of the city), 51 people died
January 23, 1904 Ålesund: 10,000 homes (100%) were destroyed in only 16 hours, 1 person died
April 27, 1915 Reykjavik: 10 houses were destroyed, 2 people died
