A castle, sugar, stalkers

When I write a whole post about water, I realize that I am running low on inspiration. Brian and I leave for a week in Ireland on Wednesday, so I promise you more interesting stories soon. But for now, I will tell you a little about what we saw on yesterday's bike ride.

1. Old woman in motorized wheelchair scooter by the side of the road, under an apple tree. A young boy (either her grandson or some poor passerby too polite to say no) climbing up an apple tree and trying to knock down the apples with the handle of the woman's umbrella. It seemed like there must have been an easier way to do this...

2. Schloss Marienburg in Fall. This is the castle built by George V, the last king of Hannover for his wife Marie. Construction started in 1858 but they only spent a year there before the Prussians came and the royal family fled to Austria. I wrote about it in this post when we first saw this castle in May. Now, with the leaves changing colors, we rode all the way up the hill (perhaps the only hill in the state of Niedersachsen) to the castle and had a look around.

3. Sugar processing plant below the castle. The funny thing about living in Europe is that there may be a Claire's Boutique in the ground floor of a 16th century half-timbered house (saw that in Celle), and there is a sugar processing plant with the best possible views of the Marienburg castle. Sugar beets are grown all over northern Germany and here's one of the places where they turn into sugar. The beets are sliced and soaked in hot water to get the juice out. Then the juice is boiled down so that the water evaporates and sugar crystals are left behind. Leftover pulp from the beets is ground into pellets for animal feed.

4. Bike stalker. We have stalked in the past, but yesterday we were being followed by a lost cyclist. I guess he wasn't trying to be too sneaky, since he wore neon yellow. He was probably just lost. Toward the end of the ride he caught up to me and asked (in German) if we were going toward Hannover. I said yes, and then, in a surge of self-confidence, didn't stop there. I told him that the Maschsee (Hannover's big lake) was to the right. It was actually to the right then the left and we were taking a back-road way to get there. What I should have done was just told him to follow us, because we lost him a few minutes later. He may still be riding around looking for Hannover or maybe he stumbled across the naked lake and decided to stay. I felt a little bad about that - not the naked lake part but the not inviting him to come along. Sometimes when my brain is focused on operating in German, all common sense I may have had once disappears...

5. Solitary naked man on the shores of the naked lake (no photo for this one). It was a chilly day to bare it all.

That's the report from yesterday. It's also proof that not having anything to write about does not keep me from writing.