Seems I’ve done some lately, with the foot situation, and my propensity to stop and look around. I’ll attempt to catch you all up on the state of things.

We’ve just boarded a train to Rome, after a morning spent on Mount Vesuvius. I realize I’ve left this journal in a lurch. The beautiful green fields and greenhouses of southern Italy are streaming by. We can see mountains on the right, shaded by patchy clouds, and nearly we can see the sea on the left. Headed inland, we’ll soon be among the mountains.

Should I work back to where I left off, or jump back there? I think I’ll start in Hamburg.

We had a classic German breakfast with Johannes’s grandmother and aunt, and took our time over a few cups of tea (well, I did). After conjuring up some sandwiches for the road, we strolled forth into the old city. The Hamburger Rathaus (Hamburg City Hall) is an ornate, majestic, old, very German building. Most of the notable buildings we saw in Germany probably epitomize all of those adjectives.

Hamburg has a warehouse district along the river which belies its nature as a district of warehouses, to the untrained eye. I didn’t think they looked much like warehouses. Tall brick buildings rise straight up out of the water on both banks, and some in the middle, with doors strategically placed for loading ships, I presume. Bridges across the river afford a nice view of the buildings. Wandering further into town, we found another old church with a giant spire, whose walls had been leveled by Allied bombers. Pretty much all there is now is a pavement square with a spire. You can go up the spire in tourist season. What amazes me is that the spires seem to be the part that held up the best to the bombs.

Here’s where things started to go awry. We thought we would head to Paris next. That had been the plan all along. We were a little ill-prepared for the state of the country of France that day.