The American Road Trip II

Our first stop on this day was Heidelberg, Germany.

The fog makes it difficult to see all the houses going up the hillside.

High above the city is Heidelberg Castle (Heidelberger Schloss in German).

There's a tram that will take you to the top so we decided to try it.

The views were really nice.

The castle was in good condition too.

Construction began some time before 1214.

I think this picture looks kinda like a postcard.

That's the River Neckar running through Heidelberg.

Our next stop was Cologne, Germany. I've never seen the cathedral at night - just beautiful.

The Cologne Christmas Markets had opened that very day. There are about 75 cities in Germany that host Christmas markets like this one.

More decorations I loved.

There was plenty to eat and drink like gluhwein (hot wine - not so good) and bratwürst. This fish was chopped up and made into a sandwich - lekker.

There are several markets throughout Cologne. You can see this one is set up right at the base of the cathedral.

We stopped at a pub for some German beer. I don't usually like German beer, but I must say this was pretty good.

Then it was home for our Thanksgiving dinner with family and friends.

[Jan, Annemie, Jim, Ross, Hannah, Bert, Daniele, Laurel, & Pieter]

The American Road Trip I

We left early on a Saturday morning heading south on our American Road Trip (meaning a long car drive there and back).

First stop was Luxembourg City.

It is the capital of the country of Luxembourg. Kinda confusing. Like New York, New York.

On this map, you can see the tiny country of Luxembourg (Lux.) bordered by France, Belgium, and Germany. Luxembourg City has a population of about 100,000 people and the entire country has less than a half million.

The country has become a financial and administrative center and many companies have established an office or even a regional headquarters there. Like Skype, eBay, PayPal. It's not Switzerland, but I think it gives the term Swiss Bank Account a whole new meaning. Perhaps it's their legal banking secrecy laws where banks are not allowed, by law, to provide authorities with personal and account information about their customers unless there's been a criminal complaint filed, for example. Some might call this a tax haven.

Anyway, Luxembourg also enjoys the title of second highest per capita GDP in the world. Second only to Qatar (that's in the Middle East near Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates - oil).

There's a lot more to see here (not just because of the fog) and I hope we can return one day.

Our next stop was Interlaken, Switzerland. Jim and I have been here before and it was just as beautiful this time.

Hannah and Ross looking through binoculars to get a close-up view of the Jungfrau Mountain in the Alps.

Interlaken is a popular ski destination. You can see the Jungfrau peak in the top center of the map and you can see Interlaken in the bottom center of this map. It lies between these two lakes, hence the name.

I can't imagine living here with this as your view.

We drove up the mountain to get a better view. This picture looks like a painting to me.

The first snow of the season had not fallen yet, but we found a little snow.

Our next stop was Lucerne, Switzerland. Jim and I have also been here before and I think it is one of the most picturesque cities we've ever seen.

The city lies on Lake Lucerne and this is the Reuss River which runs through it. The Chapel Bridge was erected in the 14th century. The Alps mountains of Pilatus and Rigi are in the distance, but the fog makes it difficult to see in the photo.

When I say "take a picture of all of us", Jim always obliges.

I guess this last one is where we said "okay, that's good enough".

Our next stop was Strasbourg, France. It lies only 3 miles from the German border and is the capital of the French Alsace region.

I just loved these Christmas decorations.

This is the Ill River which runs through Strasbourg and empties into the Rhine River in Germany. It's difficult to see every city during the day as our days are so short this time of year, but sometimes they are just as beautiful at night.

Last stop on this day was Zürich, Switzerland's largest city.

It was getting late and pretty chilly so we didn't stay too long. The city lies at the end of Lake Zürich and what's not showing in this picture are the mountains that surround Zürich.

It is a beautiful city and the Old Town area was really nice. I hope we can go back some time.

Achilles' Heel and the Midas Touch

I studied mythology briefly in college and I've read some here and there over the years. I usually just get confused by it all because it's a bit complicated.

After our trip to Rome, I had a renewed interest in reading about the basics of not only Roman mythology, but Greek mythology too. It's still confusing to me, but . . . in a nutshell.

Mythology for the Greeks and Romans was story telling of both fiction and history and was used to explain their world - the "here and now" and the "afterlife". The stories were passed down through the years and often it is difficult to distinguish between what is true and what is made up because a lot of it is fact and a lot of it is fiction.

There is evidence that Egyptians also believed in some type of afterlife in the Neolithic period in 6000 BC and gods (like Isis and Osiris) were definitely present in their world around 3000 BC when Egypt was unified. This religion endured for over 3000 years, but that's a whole other story.

Both the Greeks and Romans practiced mythology as part of their religion. There's not a lot of difference, but they are definitely not one and the same. No one knows for sure when Greek mythology began, but it came way before Roman mythology and the Romans borrowed much from the Greeks.

The Greek myths are chronicled in Homer's Illiad and Odyssey and focus on the Trojan War while Roman myths are chronicled by Virgil's Aeneid.

Both Greek and Roman mythology have gods and goddesses and often they are the same god with a different name. This makes sense because both Greeks and Romans were trying to explain the same world around them.

Among the principal GREEK gods were the 12 Olympians:

Aphrodite - goddess of love

This is Apollo - god of music, healing, and later the sun

Ares - god of war and murder

Artemis - goddess of the hunt

Athena - goddess of wisdom

Demeter - goddess of life

Dionysus - god of wine

Haphaestus - god of fire

Hera - queen of the gods

This is Hermes - god of flight

Poseidon - god of the sea

Zeus -king of the gods

The equivalent ROMAN gods are:

Venus - goddess of love

Apollo - god of music, healing, and later the sun

Mars - god of war and fertility

Diana - goddess of the hunt

Minerva - goddess of wisdom

Ceres - goddess of life

This is Bacchus - god of wine

Vulcan - god of fire

Juno - queen of the gods

Mercury - god of flight

This is Neptune - god of the sea

Jupiter - king of the gods

There are many phrases and expressions that find their roots in mythology too.

Achilles' heel - Achilles was a hero of the Trojan War, but was killed with an arrow shot by Paris to his only unprotected body part - the heel.

Midas touch - Midas found the satyr Silenus, foster father of Dionysus (god of grape harvest and wine), drunk and passed out in his garden. Midas treated him hospitably and Dionysus granted Midas the choice of any reward and he asked to be able to turn anything he touched into gold. He later cursed his wish for wealth when everything he touched turned to gold including his daughter.

Pandora's box - Pandora was given a box with instructions never to open under any circumstances, but her curiosity got the best of her and she opened the box and all evil contained spread over the earth.

The story goes that the Olympian gods overthrew their ancestors, the Titans, and were then the main Greek gods who ruled the Cosmos. They lived on the highest mountain in Greece - Mount Olympus, built by the Cyclopes. Zeus was their leader. The gods didn't age or die, but other than that, they were like humans - they sometimes married, had children and faults, and had ichor instead of blood. There were many Olympian gods, but never more than 12 at one time.

The Roman gods were faceless and divine, but still powerful. The human form of Roman gods came later and was borrowed from the Greeks. There were also 12 main gods in Roman mythology called the Dii Consentes. Jupiter was their leader. Romans of this time wanted nothing more than favor from the divine for himself, his family and the state.

There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of mythological figures in addition to the main ones named above . . . like Atlas, Nike, Medusa, Nikon, Triton, Cupid, Hercules, to name a few.

And that's probably all I'll ever know about mythology.

List of Greek mythological figures

List of Roman deities

Give Thanks

Since we're hosting an American Thanksgiving dinner for our neighbors and friends, I decided it might be a good idea to refresh my memory as to why we celebrate this holiday. I mean besides it being the day before Black Friday, of course.

Black Friday . . .

has traditionally been pegged as the biggest shopping day of the year since 2005 and the term "Black Friday" is now defined as the day when retailers begin to profit and are "in the black". The term, as it is used today, actually originated in Philadelphia in 1966 and was used to describe traffic jams and mobs of shoppers. Way back in 1869, the term was also used to describe a financial crisis in the U. S.

Anyway, happy shopping if you're one of the brave.

Thanksgiving in the U. S. has been celebrated on different dates, often determined by each state, but the first Thanksgiving when all Americans celebrated on the same day was in 1863. President Lincoln declared the final Thursday of November as Thanksgiving. It was in 1941 that the date was changed to the fourth (not always final) Thursday of November and became a national holiday.

Did you know other countries celebrate Thanksgiving too?

Canada - 2nd Monday of October

Liberia (that's in West Africa) - 1st Thursday of November

Norfolk Island (that's in Australia) - Last Wednesday of November

Grenada (that's an island in the West Indies - Caribbean Sea) - October 25

None of these on the same day as America. Well, except one other . . . more on that later.

The American holiday all began in 1621 at Plymouth (aka Massachusetts) or maybe it was 1565 in Florida or perhaps it was 1619 in Virginia. There are several declared origins, but the Pilgrims celebrating a good harvest helped by the Native Americans who provided seeds as well as teaching them to fish is usually the favorite. Of course that's a couple hundred years before we decided to take their land and kill them.

Here's an interesting theory on how it all got started . . . many of the Pilgrims who migrated to Plymouth had resided in the city of Leiden in the Netherlands. It is thought they may have been influenced by the annual Thanksgiving services for the relief of the Siege of Leiden in 1574 while they were staying in Leiden.

Briefly, the Seige of Leiden was during the Eighty Years War when the Spanish tried to capture the rebellious city of Leiden, but failed.

To this day, the church in Leiden, Pieterskerk, commemorates the hospitality the Pilgrims received in Leiden with a Thanksgiving Day service on the American Thanksgiving Day. So that's the other country that celebrates on the same day as us.

Leiden, Netherlands - Last Thursday of November

Leiden, Netherlands is about 2 hours north of where we live. We've never been there, but I found this picture on the internet. Looks like a nice place.

Happy Thanksgiving, Pilgrim! We do have so much to be thankful for.

This is MMXI

The Roman Numeral.

Usually only seen on a clock face or a list in a document, Roman numerals were replaced with Arabic a few centuries ago.

Once upon a time I knew how to write Roman numerals. I suppose I learned it in a math class somewhere along the way, but I really don't remember when or where it was. I'm not very good at it anymore, but I do know the basics. Perhaps you knew this at one time too?

Letter values:

I = 1 (one)

V = 5 (five)

X = 10 (ten)

L = 50 (fifty)

C = 100 (one hundred)

D = 500 (five hundred)

M = 1000 (one thousand)

Rules:

Letters are arranged from largest value to smallest and with the value added to the previous ones.

Only powers of ten can be repeated and no letter can be repeated more than 3 times in a row so some numbers must be written using subtraction. This is accomplished by placing the letter of smaller value before the one with a larger value. Only one letter can be subtracted.

Note that "one" is the smallest number because the concept of zero and negative numbers did not exist.

Examples:

100 is not LL (not a power of ten) or XXXXXXXXXX (too many X's repeated).

~ 100 is C

_______________________________

1510 is not XDM (10 + 500 + 1000) because the largest number value goes first.

~ 1510 is MDX

_______________________________

800 is not CCM (100 - 100 - 1000) because M is the largest value and C can be repeated up to three times.

~ 800 is DCCC (five hundred plus three hundred)

_______________________________

45 is not VL because 5 is not a power of ten.

~ 45 is XLV (fifty minus ten plus five)

_______________________________

140 is not XCL because fifty isn't smaller than ten.

~ 140 is CXL (one hundred and fifty minus ten)

_______________________________

Or better yet, you can just use this handy online Roman Numeral Converter.

The Five Country Tour

We're back from our little road trip (1,600 km = ~ 1,000 mi) or as our neighbors call it "an American trip". They call it that because Americans think nothing of getting in the car and driving 8 hours somewhere then turning around and coming back. Belgians wouldn't think of it. An hour's drive is long enough for one day.

I haven't downloaded one photo, but we had a nice trip, visited 5 countries (France, Germany, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Netherlands), 7 cities (Strasbourg, Freiburg, Interlaken, Zurich, Heidelberg, Cologne) and the weather cooperated with mostly sunny skies, no rain and very little fog. We confirmed that no one does Mexican like the Germans and that the Germans should leave the beer brewing to the Belgians.

I'm catching up today and starting to think about our upcoming Thanksgiving dinner. We're hosting dinner for 10 and although that may not sound like much, I've never hosted Thanksgiving dinner. Ever. So hopefully in the next 2 days I can figure out the metric measurements, find a turkey and we can pull off an American Thanksgiving dinner.

But most importantly, I'd like to wish a happy 31st wedding anniversary to . . . us!

Welkom in België

Ross's good friend Hannah arrived today. It's her first trip to Europe and although it's a bit chilly here in Belgium, we've ordered sunny skies and according to the forecast, it should be sunny.

Hannah & Ross at Ross's graduation

March, 2010

We've got a busy weekend planned with she and Ross and Ross has some great travel plans for the two of them after that, so keep your fingers crossed for those sunny skies!

Welkom in België, Hannah!

Arrivederci Roma

As we walked back to our hotel in Rome, I took this photo down one of the narrow streets. No editing on it either. The sky really looked just like that.

The next day we headed to Termini Metro Station to give my wallet away, then we took the bus to the airport.

I love taking pictures from the airplane. I can only take a few despite taking the dramamine. It may be hard to tell, but this is the coastline. Blue sky at the top, then clouds, then ocean, then land at the bottom.

This map of the Alps shows about what a flight path might look like "as the crow flies" from Rome (bottom center) to Brussels (top left). It crosses over the island of Corsica, then over the Alps where they meet the Mediterranean Sea.

We assumed this could be a land mass, but don't know for sure. The airspace here was incredibly busy. Do you see the plane in the far left of the photo?

Then another plane flew right underneath us!

It was obvious when we began to fly over the Alps.

This plane flew along beside us for a while.

Soon after I saw this plane.

And then immediately, another one flying in the opposite direction. I really can't believe I got a shot of this.

The sun was really pretty on the open ocean.

I thought this looked beautiful with the sun glowing through the clouds.

We did throw coins in the Trevi Fountain to ensure a return visit to Rome. And once the "wallet incident" fades . . .