Moritz's House

Our tour of Celle after our ice cream stop

After leaving Nele in Schweinfurt, we headed to Celle to see Moritz.  When we arrived on the train Thomas (Moritz's dad) said that we had a little time to kill before heading home for our big lunch.  So, we walked around the town of Celle.  The town was beautiful!  There are lots of the old half-timbered houses.

Group photo!

When we got to Moritz's house, his mother had prepared spaghetti for us because Moritz remembered how much I liked it.  It was wonderful!  He had also bought a bunch of Cherry Coke and Dr. Pepper since those drinks were very hard to find in Europe.  So, we got used to drinking soda once again!  After lunch we got to take a horse-drawn carriage ride through the Lüneburger Heide (which means "heath) and it is an area where these pretty purple flowers grown and tourists come in August to see all of the flowers.  Apparently this is also the spot where Moritz and his family come to go sledding in the winter.

Looking at the church organ at Peter and Paul Church

Our tour guide when we went out on the carriage ride

After that David got to meet with the church organist at Moritz's church.  She showed them their pipe organ and then let David play several things on it (what he could remember or find in the hymnal to play).  Then she played some for us.  It was really nice!  Then we got to see the apartments where we were staying and they were lovely (the house was from the 1600s).  Moritz's family had stocked the fridges for us, so there was no way we were going to go hungry!

The next day we got to go into Hamburg and see Wunderland, which is a place where people have built a whole bunch of scenes with model trains.  They are some of the most elaborate scenes I've ever seen and there are even tiny humans going about their lives in these scenes.  They have a huge model of Switzerland where the trains wind their way up hills that are two stories tall.  They also have a big scene of Hamburg including their new opera house which is under construction.  The model was really cool because if you pressed a button it would open up and you could see inside the building and the little orchestra was "playing" and Peter and the Wolf music came out of the model. 

Model of Germany

They even have a model of the USA out west.  There are all sorts of stereotypical scenes from the US, like a huge line for the fast food restaurant and people getting giant amounts of food compared to their size.  Also, there were model freeways with trucks with triple trailers and even a "brush fire" on the side of the road.  They also had a scene from Las Vegas where all of the casinos light up at night (they alternated between 10 minutes of "daylight" and 3 minutes of "nighttime" in terms of overhead lights so you can see everything light up at night.  When we got back home there was lasagna to eat.  Talk about being spoiled!

The "old west" model and the huge line for the fast food hot dog stand (note the person with the giant sandwich and the mechanical bull and the CNN truck)

Western USA model

Snack break!  Note the fearless pigeon in the foreground

On Sunday we went to church at Mortiz's church and then came back home for his 18th birthday party.  There were lots of guests -- all of whom were members of his family or next door neighbors.  We ate and ate until I thought we were going to explode!  The party lasted for around 6 hours and ended with watching the soccer game between the Netherlands and Mexico.  Later that night we got to take a walk around the neighborhood and then light a paper kite on fire and watch it float away.  So much fun!

Thomas cooking at Moritz's Party (after they started the BBQ with a flamethrower)

Kids on the trampoline

Everyone playing a viking party game where you have to knock down the farmers (wooden blocks) with sticks before you can knock down the king in the middle

Moritz pouring champagne for everyone

Monday we had to head to the train station to leave.  We plan to meet Moritz's dad in Berlin (where he works during the week) for his birthday when we are in Berlin.  So, at least we don't have to say goodbye to all of the Nikolais.  But, we are very sad to say goodbye to Stefanie, Moritz and Robin.  We hope they will come visit us in Alabama in the near future!  We love that family and wish them all the best in the coming year!