Debi and Jack sailing on SV Iroquois

We've arrived at our final spot for this season. The boat gets pulled out of the water Monday. Burgstaaken is an interesting place. It's definitely a tourist destination for Germany, but it looks like it's also a big exporter of wheat. There are huge grain silos at the harbor and there was a stream of tractors and wagons delivering wheat when we arrived. There has been a different freighter here every day to fill up with the grain and a few times they have waited outside for another to leave before coming in to load up. The yacht harbor itself is very busy but the facilities are mediocre. Apparently there is nowhere to do laundry, not even in town, so each morning we wash a few things by hand and hang them from the lifelines to dry. Germany has not been as easy for us as was Norway. Norwegians are still grateful to the US for the Marshall Plan, which amazingly was mentioned to us by quite a few people. In Norway they loved us because we're American. In Germany they love us in spite of it. Germany is much more crowded and maybe that's why Germans are more like Americans at their worst. They are aggressive, self-absorbed and like us unapologetically who they are, German. Most Germans do not speak English, just like most Americans do not speak German. Here in Burgstakken there is a U-boat museum, not that there is anything wrong with that but I am having a hard time not feeling like the sentiments of the Nazis are still just below the surface; even though the Germans are acutely aware of the dangers of the past. Outside of Germany every German we met was fearful of Donald Trump, here in the fatherland no one has asked us about him. (This is probably just coincidence). However our German neighbor was trying to convince us to stay longer in the Baltic and his reasons included that there weren't crazy Muslims and that there are lots of places where Americans are not well-liked. The Norwegians have just recently come into money and they are generous with it. The Germans seem to have constantly had the taste of want close at hand even though they seem quite well off. The first thing we saw approaching Burgstaaken was a beach cram packed with cabanas in front of high-rises. It's quite different from the tiny island communities where we spent most of the summer. The Germans are however very good at cookies and pastries, there seems to have been consistent improvement as we moved south, the Danish treats and bread better then Norway and the Germans even better than the Danes. They also have better beer the further south we go. We were impressed when we saw the Danish boat in Nyborg with the beer taps built in, but Germany has that beat by a mile. We walked to the home improvement store to buy some tools and saw an amazing display in the entrance. They were selling a backyard beer cooler that comes up out of the ground. It is an inground beer silo. Perhaps they only sell them in farming regions. Much of this is our first impressions and we have met more Germans that are a little warmer, not Norwegian warm but enough to frustrate the stereotype of rude; Which by the way is not mine alone, many of the web sites I have looked at for activities in Munich and Berlin mention that. The Germans also seem to take their dogs with them on vacation. Not surprisingly they are mostly Dachsunds, this is the land of noodle dogs. There are the black and brown ones, long haired ones and even one that looks like a Irish Setter. There are many Schnauzers, and Shepherds (German ones) they take them into restaurants as well. We have been to a bakery where they had these great pastries, the place was buzzing with bees collecting sugar from the icing. Our boat refinishing work came to a stand still today when the harbor master told us that we had to stop, it is true that we were making a fair bit of noise and dust, so we are at least 1-2 days behind schedule. The trick to never needing to do alot of work on the boat is to never use it, and never ever cross an ocean. Another thing we've noticed about Germans is their tool organization. Every shop is meticulously organized and we walked past a guy working on a boat who had an amazing suitcase of tools. Just now we saw a great thing, two Germans came to a boat to thank the owner for helping them find a mooring, they had brought him two large beers. When they realized he was not onboard they solved the problem by drinking the beer. They do have good beer here.