GWAPA: Articles: Sean's Cryptocoryne Odyssey

Sunday, October 29, 2006

Well Sunday morning rolls around and I find that I'm the second one up. I spot Piet, the other gentleman from the Netherlands, walking around outside as I get my things together for the trip back to the north. I get out of my room and go outside to look around in the daylight. It seems like I never really got a good chance to do so before. I step over to the edge of the backyard where there is a fence and I discover that the bell I heard tinkling nearby last night was attached to a sheep.

Breakfast is setup while I look around at the farmland. I can see a section of the Rhine River. More agricultural fields surround the property. It's a very quiet place, except for the bicycle tour of about 50 "metric" kids that stayed in the hostel next to our building last night.

Breakfast, I'm getting used to the selections, breads, cheese, meats, coffee, juice, granola, or cornflakes with that yogurty stuff or milk. Then it is time to settle up our bills and get our things to the cars. My bill came to 300 something Swiss francs. My mind is thinking that this is more than if it were Euros, so I'm convinced my preloaded Visa card is almost gone now. Little did I know, it was about halved.

Saying good bye takes a while as everyone has about 20 people to say goodbye to. What also takes a while is that we are waiting for Cord and Maike to come back to the building so we can follow them to Gula, the plant wholesalers where they work. Gula is located up near Stuttgart in Remseck and Jan says it would be a good visit. Roland, Romeo and Uwe are also going for the tour. When they arrive we all say good bye to the few people that remain, mostly our Swiss hosts at the hotel, Claus, and Alfred, we line up our mini caravan and off through the Swiss countryside we go. It turns out that you have to buy a Swiss autobahn toll sticker and put it on your windshield to use the highways. Since the stickers are only good for the calendar year, Cord did not get one (who could blame him) so luckily for me we are taking the scenic route to Germany. More sites for me to see, quaint little villages. A few wrong turns here and there, I'm glad I'm not driving. One turn takes us over a bridge below a hydroelectric dam. I'm not fast enough with a camera to get a shot of it.

We get to a spot, after several border crossings, where we are in Germany and Cord can use the highway, about 40 minutes later we are turning off the highway, back into a small village, past a group of farming greenhouses to the site of Gula.

Gula has several greenhouses where they are growing plants with both submersed and emersed culture. They actually have three layers of plants in one section, tanks of water with submersed plants, then a layer of emersed lowlight plants like anubius, then a layer of higher light plants, swords, stems, and some more anubius. The other greenhouses are single layers where they are growing out tissue culture plants and the like. Cord also showed us his aquariums and betta tower, very innovative use of space and a nifty water change setup. They are very generous, they give me several plants to try to bring home with me. I take their list, to try to set up an order with them. They promise that they will get a phytosanitary certificate for an order so I may try to organize one for our club. It seems that Oriental aquarium ships plants to Europe that we try to order in the US but they never ship them to us. Going through Gula may be away around it. Gula also sells a dimmable T-5 light fixture, that could be interesting in the future.

We say our good byes and head off for Emmen, stopping just north of Koblenz for a bite. We arrive back in Emmen around 8:45 PM, we made much better time going North than we did going South. I joke about it being easier going downhill, the Netherlands is very flat, I'm not sure it translated. We have dinner with Cora and relate the events of the trip. Jan tells me that Christel Kasselmann stayed in my room when she visited, I didn't realize it was already my room. Semantic also don't translate well. Well, I spend a few minutes emailing my "girlfriend" and my wife, they just happen to be the same person (another joke with Jan), then after posting a few quick notes up on the forums I realize I need to get some sleep because Monday is going to be a day of labor. We pull together a quick list of the plants that we have carried back from the meeting. The easy part is over.

Thud!

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