2. July: Ratingen (near Dusseldorf)

The flight went smoothly; we landed at 7 in the morning local time. My cousin Billy was waiting for us. As usual, Kristen stayed awake the entire trip; I slept most of the time.

On the way to Billy and Uschi's house, we stopped at the bakery and picked up fresh buns for breakfast. I had forgotten just how good the bread is here. :)

Billy and Uschi have a very nice house in a suburb near Dusseldorf. They bought the land and built the house, a nice combination of Chinese and German culture. The back of the house which overlooks a valley has large windows, unusual for Germany which prizes privacy.

Uschi was part of a choir tour of Ratingen, the medieval town where they live, so after a quick hunt for a cell phone, we joined the tour.

First we saw an old well probably from Roman times. The owners had found it while they were remodeling.

Next was the ice cream store. I had Mozart Gelato--chocolate with marzipan; Kristen had raspberry.

Then we walked past a bunch of old buildings, many built in the 17th and 18th centuries. We also saw part of the old city wall and several towers or places

which used to have towers. Along one of the walls was a bronze sculpture of a story about a swineherd whose pigs found a church bell from St. Peter and Paul Cathedral which had been hidden in the forest during a war and then lost until the pigs snouted it out.

Finally we stopped by St. Peter and Paul Catholic Church where we had a private tour.

The choir was given permission to use the organ, so we all stood around and sang while the choir director played the pipe organ.

Finally we climbed up to the attic and then crawled into the bell tower. To get to the bell tower, we had to climb steep stone stairs,

circular stone steps, and steeper wooden stairs and climb under a metal support beam about 3 feet off the ground.

Seven bells hung in the belfry.

Formerly they had been rung by hand; now electric motors moved the bells over the clapper.

Next we walked past an old castle complete with a moat which had been turned into an upscale restaurant to a park where we were surprised with tables of food: wurst, little sandwiches, kuchen and torten. We ate, played games,talked and sang.

After that we walked to the first industrial factory in Germany which stole the technology for spinning cotton by machine from England soon after England came up with the technology. We also toured the house of the boss who lived next to the factory. The central room was circular with large windows and walls with paintings of mountains.

We walked back through town, past the center of the city which was quiet now that the shops were all closed, and past restaurant famous for making its own beer. In the evening we picked berries--raspberries, strawberries, black currants,and gooseberries. Then we sat and talked. For supper we had steamed vegetable dumplings.