Today we walked around Coos Bay Oregon learning about the town's history while geocaching, which took us to the landmarks and statues that taught us about it. We found an old fashioned candy shop with fudge and caramel apples and enormous gummi bears and I got a piece of fudge, telling the lady that fudge does not exist where we live.
On our walk we saw a Pfand machine on the backside of a grocery store. We'd never seen a Pfand machine outside of Germany, but we had seen text on some labels of some bottles that indicated in Oregon the bottle is worth 10 cents when returned.
We're in Eureka, California enjoying another *good* Super 8 hotel (it turns out they are hit &miss). We saw some beautiful beaches on our way, and took the Redwood highway, which was gorgeous but there had been a landslide/road collapse into the ocean and there's a construction project that was intimidating to drive through.
We had a nice experience at the Safeway in Eureka. Shocking, really. Every single person in that grocery store had a mask on. After Washington and Oregon, slackers, it was so comforting to see masks on everyone. I asked the checker dude if that is normal and he said they mandated it recently. He talked and talked to me, depite a lengthening line of customers behind me, making me very nervous. When he asked for my ID for wine (What? WA and OR don't usually ask, I'm old) I said, "You're gonna like this" and handed him my German ID. Which he liked: )
Pot. Since it's apparently legal in all 3 states, we have been subjected to the wafting smell of marijuana from cars on the freeway repeatedly. I don't remember ever smelling it while driving on a freeway.
Checks. My sister left a check out for her housecleaner. A check. A piece of paper that is money that only one person can use. How odd, checks do not exist in Europe. How quaint and actually quite practical.
If you want to see how to get from the west coast of Washington into the west coast of Oregon, here is a video of our 6 minute adventure on the Astoria bridge. A bridge that I'm done with, it's just too much for me (wait til the end).
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Masks are now mandated for inside spaces again in Oregon. When the Delta variant started showing up in Portland (well,Oregon), at the smaller Fred Meyer where I shop I'd say 95 percent of the people were already wearing a mask before the mandate. Some areas of the coast are more resistant, plus there are tourists. "Give me liberty or give me death" I guess.
I like the Astoria-Megler Bridge, I walked it from Desolation Nitch to underneath the bridge in Astoria. It was the 10 km Great Bridge Walk and I guess it's happening again this year.
Hearing the GPS give directions in German made me smile.
Lea, do you speak German? Our navi does not understand English street names and she says things like "Turn left at 95 TH street" where she says the T and the H, so cute. I did not know that about the changing mask mandates, and we listen to political radio nonstop when we drive (POTUS and Patriot are the two channels we get in the car, one moderate, one conservative). In upcoming videos you'll get to hear some POTUS: ) I'd never heard of bridge walks and I can tell you I'd much rather walk it than drive it. It's terrifying to me. That was the bridge that killed my confidence.
My husband is from Germany and on all of our trips there we have visited friends (all older) in the old East, so no English spoken by them and lots of "immersion" for me. So no, I don't speak German but I can understand some. The "th" sound is something my DH complains about in English, because he says it doesn't occur in German.
The Great Bridge walk is a fund raiser for Astoria and it was HUGE when I did it. Walkers/runners are taken by bus to the WA side, the bridge is closed and at the start thousands of people start moving.
I guess I'd rather have dental work than listen to political radio, it's OPB/NPR for us.
lea, how cool. Where in the east? My real name has a TH in it and no one can say it so they just call me the german word for bed. *sigh* But my husband J's name is also unpronouncable to me *lol* Americans are the worst at trying to pronounce the German umlauts and even worse, the German R. Ask your husband how he says the popular dog name "Rex." How on earth do you make that sound while calling a dog, loudly.
In Germany there is nothing like political radio, so it's a guilty pleasure of mine, and J seems to love it. Until he gets so angry he flips it off.
LOL-yes, that Rrrr! He enjoyed demonstrating that sound to me. His name begins with an E and has a W in it, so of course it sounds much different in German.
A German laughed at my pronunciation of tüte, it is hard to hold the mouth just right.
One of our friends lives in Berlin/Muggleheim, my husband lived there as a child until the end of WWII and it was in the Russian zone. Other friends live in Halle(Saale). After he left the East E lived in Münster, finished Gymnasium there and then his family immigrated to the US.
lea, is it Erwin? I love that name. If not, I'll keep going....My first time in Germany, in 2005, I was in Leipzig. It was so, so different there. I loved every single thing about it and still note the differences in my life in West Germany in Bergishem Land.
Yes, that's his name, but he is not fond of it.
Our first trip was in 1991, flew into Schipol, rented a car and started our adventure. We worked our way up to Schleswig Holstein, the area where my grandfather was born. We headed east from Stade and it was obvious when we crossed into the old East, shocking really. Not surprising since it was only three years after the wall fell.
On a later trip we went to Leipzig with our friends and they took us to the church and the area where the people held a peaceful candle light protest in 1989. We went into a Communist era high rise apartment building-the elevator stopped at every other floor!
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