Inga is pregnant. We took the chance to see her in such turbulant, open-close, check, shutdown, re-open times because we might not get the chance before the birth. After the birth, who knows what might also be regulated…?
The trip to Bremen would be boring for our little one, if it were to merely meet a friend of his mother. Ingrid factored that in wonderfully.
We met Inga in the Bremer Bürgerpark (Bremen’s citizen park – I guess you’d translate it as). It’s pretty great because it has a mini-zoo and there’s a restaurant overseeing the big pond. Everybody wins! If you’re reading the blog enough, you might remember that Mateo and I have already been here. There were so many pregnant women exercising this time.
So we ate and talked with Inga until she had to go and we continued to drive to Hamburg. Traffic was heavy, but lighter in comparison to pre-Covid times. Something to be thankful for.
I can’t remember what we ate for dinner. It might have been McDonalds or similar. We wanted to eat in the hotel, but couldn’t find a menu in the obvious places nor online – the hotel’s website makes frequent mention of the restaurant and doesn’t include anything useful like opening-closing times or the menu. Sometimes, we are all too worried about looking like fools, so if we don’t know what we’re getting ourselves into, we avoid it… and choose Maccas, it seems.
Next morning was a bit of a highlight. Ingrid had been searching for places for breakfast (you know we love our weekend breakfasts!). There weren’t so many near the hotel, but one caught her interest Scotland Jard. We went in, I approached the counter and started to order. The lady serving dropped a “lovey” at the end of her German sentence, in a thick Scottish accent and BAM! We were laughing and joking in English, like old mates. I went out of my way to say “wee” a bit, just because I could and they liked their “G’day mates”. The food was good, but the staff really went out of their way to make you feel welcome and looked after.
Next stop! The Butterflies’ Garden. We’ve been teaching Mateo all that we know about the outdoor world – which isn’t a lot, especially in Germany. He’s fascinated by insects and spiders and all small creatures and what they eat and so on. I’ve trained him to be the insect remover for his mum. He’ll confidently pick up a spider in the hand (don’t worry, none of them are venomous here) and throw it away… or let it run around his hands for a bit beforehand. So yeah, his jaw dropped when we entered the tropically humid butterfly enclosure. It was a moment of parental magic, “we did the right thing”. Once you’re out of the enclosure, there’s not much to see or do. If the weather was nice, and it wasn’t, you could probably have a picnic – your food would be better than what their café has. On the way back to the carpark, a small herd of ponies were eating carrots. While we were watching them, a wasp got caught in a spider’s web and that grabbed Mateo’s and my attention. The spider carefully wrapped the wasp, always keeping a foot controlling the stinger, until the wasp couldn’t really move anymore, bit it and waited. That was also our signal to leave.
nathanczechingin 