Translating Messages From Heads To Hearts

Day 9 – Monschau

It's ok to ask questions

The Rome 2 Rio app is wonderful. Usually. Today, not so much. When we set out from Bruges to go to Aachen, Germany, and then to Monschau, it looked so easy; get on the SB66 at the Aachen train station and get off at Monschau. Simple, right? No. There is no SB66 bus from the Aachen train station. Instead, there’s a SB63 bus that says Monschau . . . but it doesn’t say you need to transfer midway through. I was convinced that it was going to be fine. Sherry said, “Why don’t we just ask to be sure?” I was certain we didn’t need to ask anyone (because the bus SAID Monschau), but if SHE hadn’t gone and asked someone, we might still be on the bus right now, probably close to the Polish border!

Word was that this place has been virtually untouched for the past 300 years or so. They clearly didn’t mean it wasn’t touched by greed. Every shop has all kinds of goods for sale, all at very extravagant prices. A bottle of Coke was $3.50!  Don’t get me wrong; I’m surely not sorry we came. But it is pretty dramatically different than what I expected. It IS beautiful, and and the buildings are incredible, along with the history. For example, our Bed ‘N Breakfast was built sometime in the early 1800’s and has been in the same family for over 5 generations now. Our host, Wolfgang Weber is a wonderful storyteller and “filler-inner” of as much historical minutiae as you can handle.