Lake Phoenix is an artificial lake and meanwhile the place to be on sunny day in Dortmund.

With the ground to be removed to create a lake a small viewpoint has been created:

Animals are happily living next to some sailing boats.

Even some Art has been assembled over there

I always love to be there or even in one of the nice restaurants or coffee shops nearby

Merken

Here one of the various apple cake receipes:

mix and prepare a dough out of

220 g flour
1 teaspoon backing powder
75 g sugar
1 teaspoon powdered vanilla
110 g butter
1 egg

wrap a tin and backe every for 10 minutes at 180 degrees (celsius)in the meantime, cut 3 apples in small pieces, add them into the tin and backe it for another 15 minutes

Now the last step – some kind of icing:

100 g Marzipan
4 EL almond-milk
75 g butter
75 g sugar
1 teaspoon powdered vanilla
150 g sour cream
100 g chopped almonds

mix everything and pour it over the cake. Bake the cake another 10 minutes and enjoy – it tastes even better if some vanilla ice and a cup of coffee!

We started with a simulated train journey to swiss.

train journey to swiss

Within swiss a lot of typical attractions have been waiting for us…

milking the cow

We could experience milking a cow or putting our hands on/ in a glacier

glacier

The journey continued to Italy where we found sheep’s in front of a car and even experienced some rain

sheep

rain

Our next destination was the desert of Niger.

desert of niger

A mark shows us the height of a camel

a mark shows the shoulder hight of a camel

Afterwards we visited Cameroon.

crossing small pedestrian bridge within the dschungle

typical tool kit used in cameroon

Klimahaus even considered the fact that there can not always be daylight during a journey around the world

Earth at night

walking (or resting) under the starry sky

Shortly (due to the very cold temperature in this room) we visited the arctis

arctic

followed by the beautiful nature of samoa

gecko

snail crab

beautiful fishes within corral reefs

snake

before going back to Germany we have been able to get some Alaska impressions

alaska impressions

There was so much to see and to experience – the pictures can only show a bit of them. Worth to visit!

cruise ship in front of the Cuxhaven skyline

The first – and from my point of view most important stop – have been the seals. As long as possible they are relaxing on a sandbank. As soon as the high tide overflows the sandbank they have to swim until the low tide sets the sandbank free again. This picture was taken shortly before the sandbank was over flooded. In respect of the privacy of the seals and especially in order not to drive them off their sandbank we keept a huge distance to them.

Seals on a sandbank

I recognized hat every ferry I show you is getting bigger than before; so no surprise that in Cuxhaven the oversea truck ferries are taking off.

oversea truck ferry

More than one dockyard exists in order to repair ships whenever needed

dockyard

Wherever so much issues are going on on the water the police needs to go different ways as usual. Surely they need their own boats:

Cuxhaven police

This counts for the fire brigade as well:

fire brigade ship

potato salad

400 gramm potatos (cuttet in slices) – if prefered you can even leave the skin on it
1/2 teaspoon rough sea salt
1 spoon of olive oil10 garlic cloves – peeled (better let your beloved ones share the dish )

mix everything under each other and put it in the oven until the potatoes are soft.

In the meantime, prepare the dressing:

5 Spoons olive oil
1/2 teaspoon chilli powder
1 clove garlic (grounded or cutted in very small pieces)
1/2 teaspoon cumin
2 Spoons rice vinnegar

Then mix the dressing with the soft potatos and
2 red paprikas (cutted in slices) and
200 green beans (cooked and cutted in pieces

…. and enjoy!

Just take your favourite vegetables – as always: everything is allowed as long as you like it, add salt and mix it.
The relation from vegetables to salt should be 7:1. Hence, if you have 700 g vegetables add 100 g salt.

For getting a typical German vegetable stock I usually use

• 1 Onion
• 2 Carrots
• 200 g Celery
• 1 leek
• 1 bunch of Parsley
• 10 bay leaves
• salt (preferably rough sea salt)

ingredients

If you have a strong mixer, let everything mixed until you have a paste for a vegan vegetable stock.
If not – no problem. Just rasp everything, mix it with the salt and you are also already done.

You can now dehydrate everything to have a real powder but usually I refer from that.
I put everything in glasses, keep it in the fridge and use it whenever needed. I used it to flavour my dishes, to create a fast vegetable soup or spread it over my bread and butter.

finished vegan vegetable stock

For getting the real vegetable soup I just mix one soup spoon with 250 ml hot water.
In case you have a recipe with powder just take the double amount as given.

Elbe river crossing – way from Wischhafen to Glueckstadt

The ferries over there are quite big; Within 250 metres (270 yards) and 3 lanes about 60 cars (or proportionate less) trucks can be transported.

car ferry

along the way you can have a view on the beautiful countryside over there:

view from ferry while Elbe river passing

…but this does not prevent the big ships using the river as well

ships joining us in Elbe river using

And finally; our destination is in sight

destination: Glueckstadt

beach chair

Not sure weather somewhere apart from the north of Germany beach chairs are hirable. In this area
beach chairs are not ordinary chairs which are put in the sand, coast sitting is different over there:
There is only space for two persons sitting next to each other but the good side is that it is protecting its user from wind and coldness.

One beach chairs about 10 Euro. Usually they are sold in little shops nearby the beach.

selling point beach chair

beach chairs on the coast of Cuxhafen

They are very common; usually people like to sit inside the whole day (if not walking along the beach). Swimming is only a few hours a day possible since the low tide is very low on German coasts

Cuxhafen beach view

You can see on the picture above how far the water can leave and how near the big ships are… but don’t be fooled; the tide is everyday much smaller. It is possible (but very risky if you are not familiar with flood times) to walk miles until you see the water again. There are even guides from Cuxhafen to a German islands which can be done by feet at low tide.

Therefore – here one of my favourite recipes:

spring onion butter

250 butter (should be kept out of the fridge for some time in order to have it softened)
2 hands full of spring onions
2 hands full of roasted onions 2 tea spoons of salt
1 tea spoon of chilli powder.

Just mix it, wait for one hour (now you can put it back in the fridge if preferred) and enjoy!