Thursday July 28
I've learned that my German neighbors are obsessed with cleaning their steps. I also saw another elderly lady scraping the moss between the cobblestones outside her house, omg, am I supposed to do that? It would take me a year to do all that, we have a big driveway and a corner house! Also the Germans have plants...everywhere...steps, window sills, inside, outside, lining the driveway. And they (most of them) take pride in the appearance of their landscaping. I think there is enough in our yard for me to keep up with and I don't need to add to it. Although I did bring our flower pots with us...
So, I've been completely under the weather and the weather has been somewhat less than desirable! I woke up with white spots on my throat on Tuesday and thought for sure I had strep throat. So I called Dave to figure out how I was going to get to a doctor (with no Internet for another 6-10 days and no phone book I was feeling a little helpless) but by the time he got an answer it was too late in the day. I curled up with a blanket and a book and listened to the rain. Wednesday we found out that the doctors office is right around the corner but only with hours from 8-12 so by the time I received the info at 10:30 I called the office till noon only to get a busy signal the whole time! I just took it easy the rest of the day, I finished another book yippee! I was feeling better and actually some of the white spots had disappeared. So I'm figuring it is just sinus stuff and if it doesn't seem to get any better by early next week I will try the doctor again. I realized that I was dialing the office without adding on a "0" at the end of the number. Dave told me to leave it off and since we don't understand the phone numbers here I listened ton him :). I walked up to Aldi's...in the rain....to get stuff for dinner and walked by the office and noticed the number included the zero so I tried it when I got home and voila, right through to the voicemail! It's funny we ride bikes by that office all the time and didn't know what it was!
Since we got a converter for the computer I've been adding pictures to my Kodak Gallery so that it's easy to upload them once we have Internet. If the weather cooperates in the next 2 days, Bonnie and I want to take the train down to K-Town to explore but if it's going to rain like it has everyday then we will hold off. I'm trying to plan our weekend to Rothenburg for Saturday and Sunday which looks like a cool town. It's Germany's best preserved medieval "walled" town.
I've learned that my German neighbors are obsessed with cleaning their steps. I also saw another elderly lady scraping the moss between the cobblestones outside her house, omg, am I supposed to do that? It would take me a year to do all that, we have a big driveway and a corner house! Also the Germans have plants...everywhere...steps, window sills, inside, outside, lining the driveway. And they (most of them) take pride in the appearance of their landscaping. I think there is enough in our yard for me to keep up with and I don't need to add to it. Although I did bring our flower pots with us...
So, I've been completely under the weather and the weather has been somewhat less than desirable! I woke up with white spots on my throat on Tuesday and thought for sure I had strep throat. So I called Dave to figure out how I was going to get to a doctor (with no Internet for another 6-10 days and no phone book I was feeling a little helpless) but by the time he got an answer it was too late in the day. I curled up with a blanket and a book and listened to the rain. Wednesday we found out that the doctors office is right around the corner but only with hours from 8-12 so by the time I received the info at 10:30 I called the office till noon only to get a busy signal the whole time! I just took it easy the rest of the day, I finished another book yippee! I was feeling better and actually some of the white spots had disappeared. So I'm figuring it is just sinus stuff and if it doesn't seem to get any better by early next week I will try the doctor again. I realized that I was dialing the office without adding on a "0" at the end of the number. Dave told me to leave it off and since we don't understand the phone numbers here I listened ton him :). I walked up to Aldi's...in the rain....to get stuff for dinner and walked by the office and noticed the number included the zero so I tried it when I got home and voila, right through to the voicemail! It's funny we ride bikes by that office all the time and didn't know what it was!
Since we got a converter for the computer I've been adding pictures to my Kodak Gallery so that it's easy to upload them once we have Internet. If the weather cooperates in the next 2 days, Bonnie and I want to take the train down to K-Town to explore but if it's going to rain like it has everyday then we will hold off. I'm trying to plan our weekend to Rothenburg for Saturday and Sunday which looks like a cool town. It's Germany's best preserved medieval "walled" town.
Sunday July 31
It's been another weekend already! Sunday is a good day to be home, it's quiet hours all day so that is a good excuse to watch movies, read, spend time with each other biking, hiking, etc. Still no Internet of course and boy do I miss Facebook. There are so many days when I'm doing something or see something and have to put it on Facebook but, oops, still can't! Oh well I'm sure I will still have those moments when the glorious day of being online finally comes. As it turns out, the USB stick that was lent to us never caught a signal so we didn't even bother trying to get online after a few days.
As July closes on us, I'm curled up with a blanket, tea and my iPad! Dave said that it's been a great summer for tea! Oh my goodness, this weather has just been so dreary, I sure hope we don't have an early and/or long winter. So I though it was a good time to update on our weekend whereabouts.
On Friday, Bonnie and I took the train from Enkenbach to Kaiserslautern which round trip cost me €5,30 which I didn't think was too bad. We didn't really have a plan but to walk around, shop and have some lunch. It really was an easy experience taking the train though. It's about a 25 minute walk from the house to the station then a 12 minute ride to K-Town and inside the station there we can get info on all the other trains that connect through there as well as the fast ICE trains! We left der Bahnhof and headed toward downtown but didn't get too far because we found a cute jewelry/bead shop that we spent a little time in of course. The owner was super nice, English speaking, and gave us cards to hand out out to other Americans! I will definitely go back there because much of the jewelry she makes is similar to mine and maybe she'd be interested in buying what I have?! We walked to the area that is lined with cobblestone walkways, shops, restaurants, cafés, etc. It's quite easy to get around on foot down there and certainly close by. We pretty much made it a day of that and got home just about the same time as Dave did from work...just in time to head to our local fave...Stella's...the Greek place 150 meters away.
We left early on Saturday for Rothenburg ob der Tauber which was about a 2 hour drive on the A6 East.
It's a scenic drive just on the Autobahn! The little towns and villages nestled in the hills, the vineyards, churches, and castle ruins that just appear out of no where!
When we pulled into the parking outside "the wall" and immediately felt that we were in Medieval times!
We immediately climbed a wall tower and started walking the perimeter of the town wall. It's about a mile and 1/2 all around but we just did a part of it before climbing down to the busy streets filled with tourists, shops, bakeries and beautiful architecture all in place by about 1400...isn't that crazy?! We chose a restaurant outside in Market Square called the Gasthaus Marktplatz that was prime people watching and good food. It was right next to the Town Hall which was a very bust place with vendors, tourists, and even a wedding party on the steps! After lunch we went to the Medieval Crime and Punishment Museum that had EVERYTHING connected to medieval criminal punishment, pretty freaky stuff. It was certainly interesting and luckily all the items descriptions were in English to make it worth our while otherwise we wouldn't have know what we were looking at half the time probably! Pretty scary stuff though - I don't know what's worse - now or then?!
We spent some more time walking the wall on the other side and then back to the streets and shops. We were by St. Jakob's Church where a wedding was outside. The bride and groom were releasing white doves! Many of the guests were wearing funky hats and were dressed in 1920's get-up, it was neat to see. The Christmas shops are unbelievable and I can't wait until the Christmas markets start up in November, I'm waiting until then to buy all of the fun decorations and collectibles I was looking at. There were tons of steins, cuckoo clocks, wooden carved trinkets and ornaments that I could just go crazy with souvenirs but then we reminded each other that we already have way too much stuff to begin with! So we will settle with some special traditional items that we know we'll use forever. It's always good to eat our souvenirs too :) and I couldn't leave Rothenburg without trying the popular Schneeballen which i didn't read good reviews about but had to try them because they were everywhere! It's basically pie crust scraps rolled up into a ball, baked and then dusted with sugar or some other sweet coating. I had a little choco-dipped Schneeball and I thought it was ok! I could not see eating the BIG ones they had but at least I tried it. We were starting to get rained on so after the last stop at the bakery, we made our way out of the walled city and headed home.
Link to the Rothenburg ob der Tauber pictures:
There's a little place up the road called La Piazza that we thought we'd try for dinner. It's the same place we stopped for ice cream last weekend. The waitress handed us a couple of menus with nothing but ice cream sundaes! No food there so we got a couple of beers and headed to a place around the corner from there called Alfred's Bistro to actually eat dinner and it was pretty good, a nice quiet and quaint little place. It's fun to try new places.
Today was a pretty lazy day, gloomy again, but we did manage to get a bike ride in and found some trails that we hadn't seen before. There is an entire trail of 12 different stations (the one we were at was the Labyrinth) that we will have to try next weekend. I'm not sure yet what the story is with those but we'll soon find out!
Tuesday August 2
It's a miracle! Two days of sunshine and beautiful weather, almost as if a flip was switched at the beginning of August! Now we can just hope and pray that it continues! Yesterday I had to mow the neglected yard and I sure learned my lesson to not let it go over a week! It took me over an hour and a half because I had to keep emptying the grass clippings but it sure looks nice now :). Then I took a quick stroll to the bakery to get a roll for a sandwich for lunch, forgetting that the one closest to us closes at 12:30 but luckily there is another in Alsenborn open all day. In the afternoon I decided to try one of the Nordic Trails through the woods so I packed up my backpack and set out. It was a fun little hike on a beautiful day.
It's a miracle! Two days of sunshine and beautiful weather, almost as if a flip was switched at the beginning of August! Now we can just hope and pray that it continues! Yesterday I had to mow the neglected yard and I sure learned my lesson to not let it go over a week! It took me over an hour and a half because I had to keep emptying the grass clippings but it sure looks nice now :). Then I took a quick stroll to the bakery to get a roll for a sandwich for lunch, forgetting that the one closest to us closes at 12:30 but luckily there is another in Alsenborn open all day. In the afternoon I decided to try one of the Nordic Trails through the woods so I packed up my backpack and set out. It was a fun little hike on a beautiful day.
I thought I'd do the short blue 3,5k trail but then decided to do the red 6,2k trail instead. I was a little scared in the woods but the trails are well marked and there were other bikers on the trails. I don't know if I was more scared of scary animals or scary people but luckily there were neither!
It was really peaceful, actually.
There were crazy mushrooms growing all through too!
On the way back home I went by the pool and it was packed! Of course it was for the 1st nice hot day we've had in weeks! Maybe this afternoon that would be a good plan since I am trying to ignore all of the weeds growing in the flowerbeds since we've had soooooooooo much rain!
We received the directions to complete the paperwork to be residents of the town so I better get started on that. Still no word on our Internet hookup, I won't even know what to do with myself once we actually do get it! Everything takes a bit more time here than what we are used to. I guess not being so rush rush is a better way to live anyway!
No comments:
Post a Comment
Tell me what you think!