“See dad, this is why I love Europe.” Lauren chirped as I awaited the definitive progressive announcement of civilization, a word picture that sums it all up. “Hmm, what is it?” I intoned with jet lag weariness. “They have armoires!” “What’s an armoire?” said Jenna. God bless my cultured children. This morning we awoke to the sound of church bells pealing from the cathedral across Lake Alster. Hotel Alster provides breakfast, richly grained breads with unsalted butter or liverwust, multivitamin light orange juice, bottled water without gas and with gas, scrambled eggs and pork sausage, fruit, cheese danish and croissants with apricot marmalade. And the star of breakfast, the kaffee machine. Holy caffeinated jitters. Place your china cup below and push a button, kaffee, cappuccino, espresso, all thickly infused with steamed 4 per cent milk from the pastures of Bavarian dairies. Give me one each! I did actually and I’m writing this powered with the magical clarity of eight espresso shots.

The beauty of a vacation is conversationally renewing with children who now have their own ideas, lives, thoughts, and jobs. My daughter in Nashville has a degree in psychology which she uses in her work as a barista, a landscape nursery laborer, nanny and dog walker. Lauren passed on this conversation she had recently.

Rich lady in Brentwood at the landscape nursery: “Thank you sweetie. Are you the daughter?” (Of the owner)

Lauren: “No, this is my job.”

My daughter brews coffee, picks up dog poo, rocks babies, and places bags of compost manure in the trunks of Cadillacs. And people wonder how she will ever use that psychology degree.

Here’s a preview of my next post, Sunday ramblings in Hamburg: