The Mail-Journal, Volume 27, Number 23, Milford, Kosciusko County, 20 July 1988 — Page 12

THE MAIL-JOURNAL — Wed., July 20,1988

12

By RICH RHODES It was a hot, steamy 90-degree day when myself, accompanied by Bob and Sally Wise, took off for our European vacation. Even though the departure date of June 13 fell on a Monday instead of Friday, there was still an omen of bad luck to run into. On the way to Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, which is the busiest in America, the windshield got smashed. We still do not know if the piece of asphalt came from an overpass or from a truck ahead of us. It hit first on the front of Bob’s car, then completely smashed the windshield. It is a good thing it did not rain, because the wipers would not have been operational. Aside from that little mishap, we arrived safely at the airport. In the midst of checking in, we were informed by American Airlines’ officials that our DC-10 was changed to a 767, which is a little bit smaller plane. Just when the call came through to board the plane, my name came over the intercom telling me to come to the ticket desk. My first thoughts were that something was wrong with my ticket, but all it was only a seat change. We finally got situated on the plane, and then the fun began for this second-time flyer. About 10 minutes went by from take-off time, when the captain came over the radio and said we would have to be towed off the runway, back to the airport because of a stuck engine valve. When we finally took off, it reminded me of the roller coaster “Gemini” at Cedar Point. After about an hour in the air, drinks and peanuts were brought around. In about another hour, dinner was served. I was surprised how good the meals were on the plane. The first meal was fillet mignon and salmon. At 8 p.m. it started getting dark out. It did not quite get totally dark when we crossed the daytime line and got to see the sun come up again about an hour after it went down. They served us breakfast at 12 midnight (Indiana time). We had a very smooth landing in Frankfurt at 1:45 a.m. (Indiana time). It was really surprising that nobody checked our luggage when we went through the Frankfurt Airport. There were no customs to go through or anything. Now came the task of waiting on our luggage to come around on an automatic turn-style circular belt. Our luggage was the first on, so it.was the last off. With luggage in hand, we set out to find the Eurail train sta-

,r *' M-' r L . Ml 119 W- ■ > z -t Z-', . IB ■ I I I AT THE TOP — Rich Rhodes is standing atop of Schwarzee Mountain in the Swiss Alps with the famous Matterhorn in the background. Many have unsuccessfully tried to climb the Matterhorn. (Photo by Bob Wise)

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Area residents home from Europe

tion. We were told that we could catch it right at the airport, but found out by trial and error that we needed to take a shuttle train into Bonn to get the Eurail train. Sally Wise can testify to the fact that persons are not even given a chance to find/a seat. If it’s time for that train to go, they shoot out of the train station like there is no tomorrow. I keep teasing. Sally about attacking a German man, because on our very first train, it took off so fast that she was forced into a German man’s arms. We even saw one man almost get shut in the door. He was about ready to get on, and it was time for the train to depart. So, the doors were shut on him. He used all his human strength to pry the electrical doors open. You could tell if he didn’t, he would be late for work. We finally made it to Bonn and had to have our Eurail passes validated. Boy, was that fun! An elderly German man at the train station kept yelling at us in a hostile manner that we needed a voucher. We had no idea what he was talking about. Then after some hasty checking by Bob Wise, he figured out what this very hostile German wanted from us. All he had to do was ask. I guess he was asking — only in German. Boy, do they ever have a sophisticated train system that would put ours to shame. I’ll say one thing for the Germans, everything is always on time — not a minute late nor a minute early. There are only four or five minutes to catch your next train, so you’d better know what platform you should be on before you arrive at the next station or you will be lost and have to reroute your entire schedule. We did miss our last train to Osterholtz, Germany, where the Wise’s son and daughter-in-law, Scott and Wanda Wise, live. Scott and son, Trent, came to the train station at Bremen to pick us up. It is only about 30 minutes from Osterholtz. Scott and Wanda also have a fairly newly arrived daughter named Shay Renee. After spending a little time with my eyes closed trying to get over jet lag, I managed to find my way to a mini-mall. These malls are very common in Germany. Big Difference Things are packaged a lot differently than in the States. Milk is in a one-liter box that can sit on the shelf for months without spoiling. All you have to do is refrigerate it when you are ready to use it. I think this is one area where the Germans have us beaten. Germans park right up next to

the stores on the sidewalk. And there are no parking meters. Our very first German meal was bratwurst, which is sausage, and brochen, which is homemade German bread. Germans like their homemade cooking. Just in Osterholtz, which is a little bigger than Milford, I counted seven or eight bakeries. Mom called around suppertime — so she thought. It was 6 p.m.

' ?? I BMB I r ; J■Hr r ru i ■ v* I k I’ - Hub MM > V " I W **■■■■■■■ A COLD SHOULDER — Bob Wise is shown inside an ice tunnel on top of Mount Titles in the Swiss Alps. A windbreaker jacket was not quite warm enough as the temperature was around zero degrees at the top. (Photo by Rich Rhodes)

(Indiana time), but she forgot about the time change and it was la.m. (Germany time). Germans can spot Americans right off. I went jogging, and you would have thought that they had never seen a jogger before. Talk about some strange looks — and yes, even a few laughs. I never did see another jogger. The closest thing to a jogger was a real old gentleman doing a fast walk, but I think he was American. Everything is so rushed in Germany. It is almost if your life is on the line if you do not beat the other person. It is not just on the Autobahn where they drive anywhere from 130 to 170 mph. They rush, rush, rush — on bicycles, on the sidewalks and inside the stores. If you stand still, you get run over. There was a German woman who literally pushed Bob and me through the check-out line in a grocery store with her cart. There are hardly any lakes that I am accustomed to seeing while living in this lakes’ community. The closest thing I saw to a lake was a very narrow canal which rich people use for their yachts. Expensive Things are super expensive. For a can of soda pop on the train, it was two marks and 60 pfennings. Pfennings is the German word for cents. That would be around $2 dollars in American cash. Mom wanted me to pick her up a Hummel, but the cheapest one was 260 marks. Needless to say, I got her a German clock instead. I should have done as one lady did as we were talking on the plane ride home. She said she went right to the factory and got a Hummel for only 30 marks. My favorite pastime is eating ice cream, but the scoops were so small. They had regular-size cones with the only difference being that there were pictures on the cones. It took at least six or seven of the small scoops to make just one of our scoops. It was very good, though. I mentioned earlier in this article about people almost flying on the Autobahn. Well, there was a German girl who got a speeding ticket on her bicycle. Can you imagine going 160 on the Autobahn and then getting a speeding ticket on a bicycle? TV shows start and stop in midhour because there are no commercials. What a drag — no time to rush out for ice cream! We also got to experience a German holiday. Unlike America where everyone hustles and bustles around to get to family picnics and the beaches, all the Germans stay at home and rest. The streets are barren. I guess they are very tired from all the rushing around through the week. Strange Laws The laws are really strange over there. It is against the law to have rust or a bad dent in your car. They say that some of the cars in the junkyard in Germany

look better than some of the “heaps” driving on highways in the States. One afternoon I was out jogging and saw a German woman actually take the back seat out of her car and scrub it for all she was worth. The Germans do keep their cars spotless — inside and out. It is also against the law for kids to ridein the front seat until

they reach the age of 12. The stores close from 1 until 3 for lunch. They even lock the doors. Then on Mondays, the stores close at noon to make up for working in the morning on Saturday. I guess they have a lot of bankers in Germany. All the cars in Germany are small. It’s a good thing, too. The streets are so narrow that two average-size American cars could not pass each other. You can surely tell that the Germans are very strict on their fines for littering. You cannot even find a candy wrapper on the streets. People keep their bushes and yards and stores so clean that it was almost unbelievable. The weather in Germany is note hot and humid in the summer like in the USA. Its summer only lasts about two or three weeks, and it only gets up to 70 or 75 degrees. It does not start to get dark until 10:30 p.m. and starts to get light at 4 a.m. In the winter, it is the other extreme. Darkness begins to set in at 3 p.m. in the afternoon, and it does not get light until 9 a.m. Tour Army Base While at Scott’s, he took us on a tour of his Army base — Garlstadt. He showed us the tanks he works on and the different sights around. I can tell Germany has turned Scott into a lead-foot. On the way to the base one day, I looked over at the speedometer and we were going 110 mph — and that was not even the Autobahn. After spending about a week in Osterholtz, Germany, we took off for Engelberg, Switzerland. When we got on the train at Hannover, we got into the wrong passenger car and people with tickets kept taking our seats. On the way to Engelberg we saw fields of Hidden. One German man said they get sugar from it. This one German man we were talking to served in Hitler’s Army. We also found out very quickly that there are still a lot of bitter feelings left over from the war towards Americans. At one train station, Bob was asking a lady directions and she shook her hands like she didn’t understand. We found out later that she was an American, and she thought that Bob was a German asking for something. She said she was half asleep. She was heading a group of girls to some type of sporting event. Sally said that when she got back to the group, she asked where Pinky was. One girl said, “I tried and tried to wake her up when we got off the train, but she would not wake up.” Who knows where Pinky ended up. Visit Switzerland We finally made it to Engelberg, Switzerland, on June 20 around 7 p.m. The Swiss Alps are so extravagant that even a picture cannot portray the beauty of the land. We stayed in this rustic mansion-type inn called The

Alpina. It had a winding, wooden i staircase, glass chandeliers in i the dining room, and antiques were all about the inn. It reminded me of the Stratford Inn on “The Newhart Show.” Switzerland is so much warmer than Germany. Most of the Swiss curtains are made of lace and shern. The nicest elderly couple were the proprietors. We didMiot even have to check in. They just took us to our rooms and told us what time breakfast was. Then the lady came down to our table at breakfast to make sure we had a good night’s sleep. We went to the Alps that morning, and actually had to go get the owners out of the kitchen to pay when we were ready to leave. Is that trusting or what — unlike the United States where persons want your whole life story and payment on the spot before you get a room. The Swiss like their coffee strong. Everywhere we went the coffee looked like it could burn a hole through cement. It was extremely good, though. Cab drivers are extremely kind in Switzerland. They dress in suits and load your luggage and even hold the door while getting in or out. While at a souvenir stand in Engelberg, low and behold, I met two guys from Elkhart. I felt at home after that. You cannot get much closer. We went up Mount Titlis the first day. It was breathtaking. We also went inside some ice tunnels 1 that were carved out. It was around 90 degrees at the base and around zero or below at the top. The second day it was off to Lucerne, Switzerland, where we took a boat cruise and saw all of the sights. One of the highlights was seeing a building built in the late 1700 s or early 1800 s. It is now a restaurant. We stayed in the Waldstatterhof Hotel in Lucerne. While I was out for a walk in the evening, I met a couple from Missouri. He was wearing a cowboy hat, and my first thought was that he was an American from Texas. It turns out that they were in New Guinea for 22 years and are out to see the world before migrating to Australia. I told him to say “Hey” to Mick Dundee foh\. me. The couple was searching for a hotel. He was joking about being a world traveler and not even being able to find a hotel room in Lucerne. After our boat tour, we ate in a restaurant called The Bistro, right on the water. We fed the swans and ducks, and by the way, swans have very sharp teeth — I held onto one of the French fries much too long! In Switzerland the people have a very strange custom of shutting

• • / „ • \ '--v • u ■-’ MM ■ ’■ ■ ■ . ‘A-..,z . .. ' ■ * MRMr 1 . * *\ VACATION CRUISE — Bob and Sally Wise of Milford enjoyed a cruise ship ride while recently touring in Lucerne, Switzerland. (Photo by Rich Rhodes)

off all their vehicles while stopped at a stoplight. When the light turns green, all the engines start up. In Lucerne I saw something in the park that I have never seen before —a giant game of chess. There is a chess board painted on cement and huge chess pieces are used to play. Two hands are needid to move the pieces. A German girl taught me how to play chess, and it was the highlight of my vacation to beat her in the last game. Then we returned to Germany. The next morning I went to get my Swiss money switched back into German marks. That afternoon I decided to go back to Switzerland, so I had to get my German marks switched back in-

to Swiss francs. It was the same guy at the bank, and he must have thought I was “off my rocker.” We had one day’s rest, then it was back to Zermatt, Switzerland, the home of the biggest of them all — the Matterhorn. On the way to Zermatt we saw all these miniature fields of crops on the sides of huge mountains. It makes you wonder how they farm. And every single cow had a huge cowbell around its neck. It sounded like a melody while rolling through the countryside. Our train ride ended abruptly 35 miles from our Zermatt destination. All of us were told to get off at the station. We still don’t know if it was a rock slide or what, but darkness was closing in — it started to rain and we were stuck! HoWever, they got us a bus and our tickets were still good. At one point, there must have been close to a 20-mile stretch through a tunnel under a mountain. We went as far as we could by bus, then we caught a shuttle train up to Zermatt. We got a little surprise in the way of 45 francs apiece for the shuttle train. We found out that our Eurail pass didn’t apply up there — something the German travel agent did not tell me. We finally made it to Zermatt and no sooner got off the train, when two guys tried to swindle us. We must have looked like country bumpkins or something. These two guys had this great deal for us. They said if we came to their hotel, it would only cost 100 francs for a room. They also said that every other hotel in town cost 200 francs or more. It did not take a genius to figure out that they were going to charge an a™ and a leg for fare to cart Sus four or five miles out ol town to| their hotel. This one guy was super “pushy” and was bound and determined that we were goingwith him. I finally told him in no uncertain terms that we would walk wherever we go. We ended up staying in the Gprnergrat Hotel, only 50 yardsTfom the train station —for only 110 francs. When we finally got settled in our hotel, nothing was open. So, we had a nutritious supper of brochen, candy bars and peanuts. The next morning it was off to the Matterhorn. You cannot go up the Matterhorn itself, but we had a super clear view of it from the Swiss Alps — right beside it called the Schwarzee. There were 31 gravesites of men who have died while trying to climb the Matterhorn. The town of Zermatt was really a picture postcard-type town with horse-drawn carriages all decorated while going through the center of town.

Strange Way To Travel On the way back to Germany, we saw cars being hauled on the train. I know this is nothing unusual, but there were families and luggage in the cars. We left Zermatt at 11 a.m. Saturday morning and got back to Osterholtz, Germany, at approximately 1:30 a.m. Sunday morning. Those trains travel close to 100 mph on the straightaways, so I would not doubt if we covered 1,000 miles in one day. We thought we might get stranded before we got back, because someone told us the trains stop running at 10 p.m. We did get stranded one stop before our destination, so we took a cab the rest of the way. We stayed in a hotel in

■ ■ p - ■ i i * A » ' £ I?' fJ OFF fWW wWB Ww J w ww L WW- Sf tit SB” ’’ !il !«» m ■Mh-AOl ** “• f * *WI ggM| BMt B|mE ■ w * . w II TOURISTS IN SWITZERLAND — Bob and Sally Wise are pictured as they visit in the “postcard town” of Engelberg, Switzerland. The town sits on top of a mountain. A elite hotel is shown in the background. (Photo by Rich Rhodes)

Frankfurt the day before our flight out since our Eurail pass ran out the day before we flew back. We had to stick close to the airport. The cab ride to the airport was something else. The speedometer said 170.1 tried to get a picture of the speedometer, and the cab driver looked at me like I was crazy. We had a slight delay at Frankfurt Airport, but a very smooth take-off to start off the ride home. We crossed over the Arctic Circle on the way back. The sights of the icebergs and glaciers over Greenland were unbelievable. It was a smooth flight home. We landed at Chicago’s O’Hare right on schedule on June 29. As the airplane wheels hit the run-

4-H members go to Washington, D.C.

By KAREN S. LOWRY (Extension Agent 4-H And Youth Two Kosciusko County 4-H Club members traveled in and around Washington, D. C., as part of the Indiana delegation to the 4-H Citizenship-Washington Focus program July 9-16. Jeryl Baker, daughter of Wilburta Baker, r 1, Pierceton, and Paul Berkey, son of Wayne and Carol Berkey, r 1, Claypool, learned more about our country’s government and heritage during this week-long program in the nation’s capitol. While in Washington, the Indiana delegation stayed at the National 4-H Center in Chevy Chase, Md., and participated in several citizenship training programs there. In addition to the National 4-H Center, program participants visited Capitol Hill to observe the legislative and judicial branches of the federal government, Arlington National Cemetery, the Kennedy Center of the Performing Arts, Mount Vernon, the Smithsonian Institutions and various federal agencies and organizations. Delegates also visited the Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson and Vietnam Veterans Memorials and the White House while in Washington, D.C. Congratulations to Jeryl and Paul for being selected by the Kosciusko County Awards Committee to participate in this exciting citizenship program. At the 4-H Council meeting held on July 12, some special guidelines were established for plant and livestock projects, entomology and rocketry due to the drought conditions this summer.

BPW welcomes two new members

The Syracuse Business and Professional Women’s Club met Tuesday evening, July 12, at a Dewart Lake restaurant. There were 23 members and five guests present. Bess Stetler, president, opened the meeting with the pledge to the flag and the club collect. Gloria Hodler read the secretary’s report, and Linda Jaggers gave the treasurer’s report. Guests were Kay Lowe, Florence Bridenhecker, Marilyn Long, Julie Kern and Jeanne Gardiner. Jeanne Gardiner was presented with an engraved gold

way, I thought to myself of the line that Charles Emerson Winchester quoted on one episode of M*A*S*H, “Be it ever so humble, there is no place like home.” We were given a 30-minute speech on how hard and long it would take to go through customs. It only took a total of 10 minutes. I can really see how so many drugs get into the US. The inspectors did not check the luggage at all. Rod and Sherrill Hamman, Bob and Sally’s son-in-law and daughter, were awaiting us for the trip home to Milford. This whole trip can be summed up in four short lines: I went to Europe, the exchange rate was a joke; I had the time of my life, and now I am broke.

For completion of alfalfa, flowers, forestry, garden, oats, plant science, small fruits, weeds and wheat, 4-H members must complete their record sheet and may submit a reduced amount of produce or product. We are relaxing some requirements so that the 4-H members will have the opportunity to complete their plant projects. For completion for livestock members whose animals have died, they need to submit a completed record sheet and help at the project livestock show at the county fair. Rocket records will be accepted and not penalized due to the lack of participation at launches because launch cancellations were forced by the weather. Entomology members also may submit a reduced number of insects along with their record sheet for completion. We hope these special guidelines will assist 4-H members in completing their projects this year. 27-28 — Home Ec judging, fairgrounds 28 — Swine barn set up, 5:30 p.m., fairgrounds 29 — Dairy goat tent set up, 6 p.m., fairgrounds 30 — Beef barn set up, 8 a.m., fairgrounds 30 — Sheep barn set up, 9 a.m., fairgrounds 30 — Rabbit tent set up, 8:30 a.m., fairgrounds 30 — Poultry, pigeon and waterfowl tent set up, 9:30 a.m., fairgrounds 30 — Dairy barn set up, 10 a.m., fairgrounds 30 — 4-H Tenure, 4-H King and Queen, and 4-H Fashion Revue program, 7 p.m., Rodeheaver Auditorium

charm in appreciation for her assistance as fashion coordinator for the recent style show. Two new members were welcomed into the club, Mary Stackhouse and Janet Anderson. Julie Kern, one of the club’s scholarship recipients, told of her plans to attend Ball State, majoring in elementary education. Door prizes were won by Kay Gibson, Jeannette McDaniel, and Mary Van Dyke. Hostesses for the evening were Pat Benson, Maggie Crouch, and Cindi Flynn. . ' F Mary Rose Henning closed the meeting with a "Prayer For Today.”