VINTAGE VENTURES: The reason I write my travel journals is to be able to look back and remember our ventures. A secondary reason is to allow me to organize all my trip photos. I have thousands of photos. Organizing them into a travelogue made sense. The trick was to figure out how to organize all these photos and journals into a cohesive story. My early attempts failed miserably because I couldn't figure out how to meld photos and text into a structure that worked. It was when Wanda came across the Constant Contact format that allowed me to develop a coherent story of our trips, and to be able to send them to friends, family, and anybody else that was interested.

So, I have decided to go back to 2014, when we started our travels in earnest, and re-organize them utilizing the Constant Contact format. This first trip was to Holland, Germany, and Austria. My sister, Diane, and her husband, Heinrich, reside in Germany. They have a wonderful Mercedes RV and they invited us to accompany them on a European trip. Wanda and I were still working, although I was down to part-time. I was also playing nearly every weekend in a band, so it was tough to carve out two weeks to jet over to Europe. We did find time, and an obsession was born.

It is my plan to take each of these early trips, which I call, Vintage Ventures, and collate them into Constant Contact. Unfortunately, on our first few trips my writing was sparse. I was mostly interested in photography, so I let my photos tell the story. Still, I hope you find some value in them, even though they are, well, vintage.

Going to Holland, I had to shoot an iconic photo of a windmill. It wasn't hard to find one. In fact, this was the first photo of our trip. Ironically, this windmill was in Xanten, Germany, just before the German-Holland border.

We landed in Dusseldorf, Germany on June 8. My sister and brother-in-law picked us up at the airport in their RV. We started our tour below sea level in Holland and ended our trip well above sea level in the Austrian Alps.

We were a bit awestruck this first day. I don't have a lot of information about these photos, except that they were taken near the German-Holland border. By the time we landed and got settled in the RV, much of the day had already passed. We still got some interesting photos in, Xanten, a small German town; and of the Castle Moyland, a castle in Bedburg-Hau, another German community. Both sites are just a few miles (oops, I mean kilometers) before the border.

The Klever Tor (tower gate) in Xanten, Germany.

This is the Xanten Cathedral, also called St. Victor's Cathedral. It is Roman Catholic with construction beginning in 1263. It was completed 281 years later. Churches, some well over 1,500 years old, are a big deal in Europe. They are grand edifices.

We were impressed with the beauty of the architecture in Xanten, Germany. 

Apparently, there was a VW event taking place in town.

The gorgeous Schloss (Castle) Moyland is complete with a mote.

Heinrich cooking some delicious German sausages - our first meal in the RV.

Dave and Wanda

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