One Week Of Housesitting in Marin

[jberryhill]

So, we're ostensibly watching the cats in San Rafael while a relative is on vacation, for our vacation.

So, after a week of organic cruelty free whatever, good cheap wine, and a hot tub & barbecue out back, I finally get it - after enough of this, I will be nearly useless as a productive human being.

[DFW]

1. We have friends from the States who house sit for us for their vacation

With the Euro at over $1.40, although they could afford the airfare, they could not afford
3 hotel rooms (1 daughter and one mom-in-law) in Western Europe for two weeks. So, we invite
them to house sit for us while we are in the States. The weather isn't always ideal, but they
seem to love it (German Rheinland, and we DO have a 1000 year old castle in the back yard),
and we have live-in surveillance (since Romania and the Baltics joined the EU, break-ins in
Germany have gone up exponentially, and when Croatia and Serbia join, they'll triple again).

But we were house-sitting (for a "small" fee) on the Outer Cape (Cod), so we still think we
didn't exactly lose out in the bargain. We aren't going to be any good to humanity for the
next week, either--we think, anyway. We ran into Rachel Maddow 2 weeks ago, and she seems to
have returned to being her extremely useful self immediately.

[jberryhill]

2. Oooohhh....

How would you compare the Rhineland and, say, the Nieder Osterreich Donau and Wachau region.

[DFW]

3. Not too similar

We're sort of where the flatlands of the west meet the hills of the Bergisches Land to the east.
The Upper Rhein, down around Koblenz and Mainz, is more like the Wachau area.

Coincidentally, our nextdoor neighbor IS from Austria (Linz area).

[jberryhill]

4. Ah... well of course Frankfurt is nearly unavoidable

We drove from Frankfurt to Prague by way of Berlin and Dresden, and then back around through Vienna to Geneva on the German side since flights to darned near anywhere else route through there anyway, and I've wanted to see Garmisch Partenkirchen since the World Alpine Championship in 1978!

I've heard there is a cruise that starts in Amsterdam, goes up the Rhine, takes a canal across to the Danube and then goes to Budapest and points east. That would be epic.

[DFW]

6. A Rhein-Danube canal?

No such animal. There is a cumbersome way to get from the Main to the Danube by a series
of canals that is over 100 miles in length. But you're better off going from Amsterdam
to Basel, and then going on to Mannheim or Basel, getting a train to Passau or some such
place, and picking up the Danube there to go east.

Aren't Budapest and (especially!) Prague magnificent?

[jberryhill]

7. That's what someone told me....

So, I'm guessing that buying a cruise ticket from that nice man at the Amsterdam train station is maybe not the best travel idea.


As far as the tastes I was raised with... My mother is from just southeast of Linz, and decorated like Maria Theresa, lol.

[DFW]

9. It would be REALLY cumbersome getting from the Rhein to the Donau by water

It can be done, but there is no one single canal connecting the two. Your boat would have to go through
a series of smaller canals to do it.

[ThomWV]

5. We live way out in the country and some days its just good to sit down and do nothing

Or maybe spend an hour or so talking to one of the neighbors when they come down the road.

[jberryhill]

8. Funny you should say that...

We're thinking of ringing up folks we know in the Bay Area and seeing if they just want to hang out.

Living this way must be madness!