Titisee-Neustadt
22nd - 26th June 2000
A party of 13 departed late from Heathrow on Thursday 22nd June heading initially for Stuttgart then by road to our twin town of Titisee Neustadt. Mark Freeman lead the group as mayor with his wife Sue and daughter Claire. Rita and Peter Styles were also part of the group. Others made their way to Titisee in their own way, Fireman flew from Luton, Rappers drove down in 16 hours. Mike and Brenda Ball flew into Zurich. In all some 34 Leightonian's converged on Titisee.
Most of the visitors were put up by German families with only Mark's family and mine in a hotel in Neustadt.
We were on the first and second floors and both had veranda's looking down towards the railway station.
There was very little time to unpack as the first official event
of the weekend was taking place in our hotel at 7pm and turned out to be a
speech making event most of which was in German! We did get a copy of the main
speech about the history of the area in English which did help to fill in the
time. The main
reason for going to the Twin Town was to help celebrate the 725
years of Neustadt. The "New Town" towns meet every year in different
locations throughout the world and this year Titisee Neustadt hosted visitors
from 31 locations mainly in Germany but also Eastern Europe. Mark was
obliged to make a speech to the meeting and certainly got the most laughs in the
shortest time.
Referring to the music that had interspersed the speeches as the international
language understood by all. A theme that was to re-occur a few times during the
visit. The view below is of the hall, the rest of the Leighton Group were in the
balcony at the rear of the hall. Christine and I were on the front row with Mark
and Sue.
Mark, on behalf of the town of Leighton - Linslade presented a cut glass ginger jar to the Burgermeister of Titisee Neustadt Martin Lindler to commemorate the visit.
