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2 August -
This month starts with family members scurrying in different directions.
Tracy is off to Finnsnes to speak at a conference, Katie is off to Denmark for a week's intensive swimming training,
Matt has gone to Bodø, Thomas Andrew is hard at work and Tim still has two concerts left to play in Germany.
Before these concerts, though, there's a couple of days in which to relax and catch up on other work (left - click for 3 enlargements).
The network of rivers and lakes that we've described covers an area roughly the size of North Wales, or of the whole of Norfolk and most of Suffolk combined - and all of it fantastically beautiful. You can read a little about it here or look at it on Google Images. Curiously, in all the time we were there I saw one solitary Dutch car - every other car was German, and mostly north German at that. Wherever we went, we only heard German being spoken. One evening I was chatting with some visitors. "Of course", they said, "this is a good place to come because it's so much cheaper than on the coast. Everything is so expensive there". If ever somewhere was undervalued it's this place.
6 August - There's this fairytale about a little girl who goes into a house in the woods and eats a bear's porridge and then sits down in the bear's chair. In Norway the animals are fighting back. See what came out of the woods in today's NRK news.
Katie is now in Denmark, swimming hard, Tracy is at the Normisjon conference in the north and Tim has dragged himself away from lakes and rivers and moved on to the last two concerts in the Germany series; oddly enough, further down the winding River Havel.
7 August -
I was expecting Havelberg to be lovely — small ancient town of 3000 or so and a cathedral built on an island in the River Havel — and it didn't disappoint
(photo, left - click for series).
The usual cobbled streets surround a market square with the kind of attractive old buildings we've come to expect in Germany.
The cathedral itself is a gem, with its peaceful cloisters and its fantastic position on a hilltop overlooking the river.
The other concert is in nearby Tangermünde, a town of which I had no such expectations. Though only 20 miles away it's on a different and altogether more serious river (the Elbe) and approaching the town involves passing a cement works and various industrial premises. It turned out to be another of those towns (which we keep stumbling over in Germany) in which you wonder whether this can actually be real or whether it has somehow been constructed as a tourist attraction or film set (photo, right - click for series). One difference was noticeable, though — there seems to be money in Tangermünde. The town was full not of hairdressers but of upper-class beauty and spa establishments, shops selling expensive oil paintings and high-class viniers and coffee roasters — not to mention fashion houses (one of which gets a photo for its bizarre take on Scandinavian style). According to the organist, though, it's all for the benefit of the tourists. "Out of season, when they're not here, the place is completely dead". The vast church contains a beautiful and vast organ from 1620-1624, still in original (though beautifully restored) condition; one of Europe's most important historical instruments. There's a story behind it, of course. In 1617 the town was a flourishing and fabulously-wealthy centre in the Hanseatic League, when most of it vanished overnight in a catastrophic fire (for which poor Grete Minde was burned at the stake for starting, only to be cleared of the crime some 250 years later, which sadly was a bit too late for her). During the fire, the church spire fell down onto the organ, so the town's reconstruction started, naturally, with a new instrument of a scale that reflected the town's importance. Many buildings in the town thus date from the 1620s and 1630s. Of course, if they'd known the future they probably wouldn't have bothered reconstructing. First came the Thirty-Years War, in which the town no less than fourteen times became the headquarters for various ad-hoc armies, meaning that by the end of the war only 228 out of the 623 rebuilt houses were still habitable. There was then another catastrophic fire in 1676, followed by a further one two years later, and nearly everyone that was left died in a plague six years after that, leaving an impoverished farming community amongst the ruins. Their luck didn't improve dramatically. They started reconstructing the town around 1800 and immediately found themselves occupied by Napoleon. Even in newer times, they built a wonderful bridge over the River Elbe in 1933, only to get it blown up during the war. No wonder they're determined to take full advantage of the tourists — experience has taught them to make hay while the sun shines.
8 August - It shone today, and the concert was well and enthustiastically attended.
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I should add that although a few places have been mentioned here, I've visited a lot more in passing; many of them really beautiful and interesting in their own right — there just isn't room to rave about them all here. For instance, between the lakes and Havelberg I dropped in at the small and lovely towns of Wusterhausen on the River Dosse and Kyritz, where I ate a wonderful dinner and explored its Johann-Sebastian-Bach-Stra�e. Last week at Bedheim I'd been in the nearby town of Hildbughausen and found that too had an inexplicable Johann-Sebastian-Bach-Stra�e. In a rare idle moment I wondered how many Germany towns and villages had their own Johann-Sebastian-Bach-Stra�e and even thought to list them here. After a quick Google search I gave up when there was no end in sight after the first thirty places — some of them, like Arnstadt and Erfurt, closely associated with the composer, but most of them places that he never even dreamed existed.
10-12 August -
The family is re-assembled and life returning to "normality".
Katie is back from a successful trip to Denmark and is largely dried off.
Tracy has returned from the far north ("very nice but I wouldn't want to move back there"),
Matt has flown in from Bodø today (12th)
and Tim came home from Germany on Monday (10th).
So now we're all trying to get to grips with things that need doing.
("Back in the car" - photo by Katie).
14 August - A lovely day together with our friends Jon and Sarah. The morning involved a mountain walk (except for Tim, who was at work); the afternoon was spent by Jon, Katie and Tim at the river (photos, left and right - click for enlargements), followed by a wonderful dinner.
15 August - Saturday night in Ørsdalen - Saturday-night entertainment at the Rishton household consists of preparing the Sunday-morning service (photo here).
16 August -
A cake was eaten after Tracy's service, to celebrate 10 years as an ordained priest.
(Photo, below left - click for 2 pictures).
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17 August -
Short outing to Ørsdalen's "hidden waterfall" (photo, left - click for enlargements).
18 August - Day out at Brusand Beach (photo, right - click for enlargements).
19 August - Before Jon and Sarah caught their flight northwards, we had a last outing to enjoy a sunny afternoon on "our private" Ørsdalen beach
(2 photos here).
22-28 August - Tim's father, Don (photo, left), died today (22nd) after a long illness.
The funeral was held on Friday 28 August.
See newspaper report here.
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