Fruchthalle Choir concert with USAFE band

Hopefully, I will find videos of this online soon.  The concert was only yesterday, but AFN (American Forces Network) was videotaping our choir's Fruchthalle concert with the USAFE (U.S. Air Force - Europe) Band.  Here is a picture to prove that this did indeed happen.  This comes directly from the US Air Force Europe Band website.  Can you see J and I?  I'll give you two hints:  I'm in the back row, and J is two people away from me...



I heard rumors that the guy next to me and I were on close up on video.  I don't know why, but I had a lingering suspicion this would happen.  Without intending to, I often end up on camera at large events.

The band was incredibly good!  Later, I learned that it is a prerequisite to have a Master's degree in music to even be considered for US military bands.  Not only that, but if you get accepted, you then have to go through regular boot camp and start at the lowest rankings possible.  Despite all this, it is still tough competition to get in!  Talk about the music performance industry being cut-throat! 

More interesting facts were that one of the trumpet players in this band and the piano player for the band are both married to choir members.  Not pictured here are the conductor, and three singers.

For me, I truly hope I can post at least one of the songs we did on this blog in the near future.  The entire concert is supposed to be streamed online in the near future.  It was also a cool feeling to be on the performing side of a concert band again.  I haven't been in 10 years, when I was in college.  I still got the stage butterflies right before getting on stage.

At the end of the concert, when the choir left the stage and the band did an encore piece, I noticed in the front row at least three 3-star generals from the air force!  I have never seen that many high-ranking officers in one spot before.  Up to this point, the most I had seen was a 2-star Army general with several colonels in one group.  Word on the street was that the generals were not there at the beginning of the concert, but were flying in from somewhere else in Europe and happened to make it to the concert in time for the second half.  I cannot imagine having a schedule that busy.

In other news, this is my first post using my brand new laptop!  It runs on Windows 8 which, once you understand the whole reconfigured desktop, is really just like all other Windows operating systems with things moved around a little bit.  I intentionally got a quad processor computer with a mid-range radeon graphics card and 750GB of hard disk.  I plan on it lasting me at LEAST 4 years if not more.  Ideally, I will condense my other two computers onto this one.  That's a lot of pictures, videos, and genealogy records...  So far, I like the laptop.  It's got a wider keyboard, which I already enjoy, and the speed and graphics are pretty slick.  It Skypes better than either of my previous computers, which is also good.  I haven't pushed it for performance yet, but I will get a chance soon.  If I get anxious, I can also upgrade the RAM quite a bit.  It's just a question of how soon I will choose to do so.

Hopefully, my next post will have video footage of the concert.

Snowflakes and Songs

This past week has had some interesting events.

First off, it has snowed about once every other day.  Now, J and I being from Minnesota, there's little competition.  The temperature has rarely fallen far below freezing, and the 1" snowfalls typically melt within 24 hours.  It does make for some pretty snowfalls and scenery, and we did learn that they actually have snow plows here (I was quite skeptical of this given the high prevalence of cobblestone streets).

Here is a video of one of the puppies I walk.  He was trying to catch snowflakes during our walk.  Yes, it was this puppy's first winter.  I thought it was quite cute!

Another thing about this week is that J and I have four, count 'em, FOUR choir concerts THIS WEEK!  This is pretty intense for what I am used to with choirs.  This is primarily because J and I are a part of the small group choir as well, which also performs extra concerts this time of year.  Now, to keep things in perspective, this is also high season for the choir.  There are really only four concerts in two weeks, but the small choir tacks on two more.  After this, they will take the rest of December and most of January off, I am told.  Our next concert after December won't be until possibly April or May.

J and I had a concert this past Tuesday and today.  We have two more tomorrow, that we know of.  Here is photographic proof of our small choir concert on Tuesday.  The pictures were taken by her co-workers who attended.

The concert today was interesting.  First, it was in a small, modern looking church.  Second, it was freaking cold in there!  The pews had heat vents beneath them, but the altar area was completely unheated and the cold air seemed to seep in through the huge stain glass window backdrop.  Every choir members' feet were borderline numb by the end of the concert.  Third, I learned a few things about German culture.

About the German culture I learned tonight.  Stateside Americans may not appreciate how big Christmas is in Germany.  Halloween is an imported holiday in Germany, only really celebrated by the current generation for the past 10 years or so.  Thanksgiving is not celebrated in Germany, for obvious reasons.  Around the Autumnal Equinox, a harvest season of sorts is celebrated with "Herbsmarkts."  The next thing after that is Christmas season.

Christmas is truly celebrated as a season here.  Christmas Markets or Weihnachtsmaerkt open as early as late November and go to as late as early January in some places.  This whole time, most town squares are filled with small stands selling Glogg, Gluehwein, candy, chocolate, clothing wares, roasted chestnuts, and other food.  They also have little dances, miniature choral and instrumental concerts, and ornaments everywhere.  Every stereotypical Christmas thing being described in old Christmas carols pretty much is the norm in these markets.

At the concert J and I sung today, most of the music was modern/non-traditional music with Christmas themes.  However, we did two encore pieces.  Both were traditional German Christmas carols.  One of them, Es ist ein Ros Entsprungen, English translated as Lo, How a Rose Ere Blooming, I was familiar with in many church choir settings.  The other, O du froehliche, I was by far unfamiliar.  The small, older congregation seemed to know all of the lyrics for all three verses for both of the songs by heart.  They even started crying at the end of each song.  This was the first concerts I had ever performed in where the audience started crying out of appreciation of the music.

What did I learn?  Christmas means a lot in Germany.

J and I attended an Episcopal Service last Sunday.  Seeing as I'm Roman Catholic and she's Presbyterian, we think it may be a good compromise in the future for children down the road.  On base, we liked the time of the service, 10:30am, and all of the members, however few there were, welcomed us very warmly.  J and my skills as singers may be offered during Christmas time as the congregants was hoping to have a small Christmas music program.  With only about 20 congregants that we know of, the pickings are truly slim.  We hope to attend service there tomorrow, so we'll see if the opportunity presents itself.

In other news, look out world!  I plan on purchasing a new laptop possibly by the end of next week.  We have it picked out, but I want to wait another week to make sure that we can save up to afford it.  I'll update you on this event should it happen as planned.

Yet another strange day

I'll just give the rundown of today hour by hour.  I don't know if I could sort it out any other way.

So, I slept in this morning because I just needed the sleep.  The cloudy day truly helped my effort.  I then took Etsy for a walk and took her with me to the auto shop in town where I wanted to take my car to get fixed.

I chose this shop for several reasons.  First, it was in town, only about a mile away.  Second, it is a car repair shop only.  The other two car repair places in town are also car dealers.  I feel that when you double-dip like that, the quality of the repair is no longer a priority and is actually not the primary income source.  Third, on occasion, I have seen these guys working past 9pm.  If you live and work in Germany, this is exceptional.  The vast majority of 1st shift workers are religious-borderline-fanatical about clocking out at 5pm in Kaiserslautern.  Seeing him work late on repairing cars told me that he genuinely like repairing cars and cares about his work.

The receptionist spoke some english, (I learned her sister lives in New Jersey and is married to a US Army soldier!) but I memorized a few critical words to explain what I needed done.  The message got across, and I was told that the final could would range between tens of euro if drilling the bolts out was successful to hundreds of euro if the rotor needed to be replaced.  This was about what was expected.  They also said that they could get it done today, which I was very pleased to hear.

I drove the car very slowly to the shop, the owner looked at it, and agreed with me on what we had discussed.  I also asked him if he could simply replace all of the bolts, called "Schrauben."  I was beginning to think that maybe all of them were compromised given that two had snapped.  He said he would consider it.

I fortunately was still able to walk half of my scheduled dogs today, as I could take the train into Kaiserslautern and walk where I needed to.  While walking my first dog, they called me to say that they had successfully drilled out the bolts and the car was ready to go, and the final tab, including labor, was in the tens of euro! This is the best one could hope for anywhere!  I had enough time to walk my other two dogs and make it back to the train station in time to get back to the shop.

At the train station, I decided to get a beef stick while waiting as I was a little hungry.  It got stuck.  "Well,"  I figured, "may as well get two."  So I did.  Such a sacrifice :)

I got back to the shop an hour before they closed and found the receptionist gone, but the owner and another mechanic were working away listening to the local radio.  He said that he went ahead and replace all of the bolts when he found one of the remaining two on the wheel almost snapped in half as well.

The two broken bolts, the almost broken bolt, and a normal bolt.  These four bolts were what he was dealing with once he got that wheel off of my car to drill the snapped bolts out.  All were for the same wheel!

He said that I was very lucky.  I completely agreed with him.  I looked at the bill, thanked him profusely, and gave him a few euro extra for all of his exceptional work.  I learned from the bill that he was actually cutting me a huge deal based upon the cost for parts and what he was charging for labor AND factoring the typical 20% tax.

I drove the car back home to walk Etsy where it snowed a small sprinkle.  Talk about timing with getting the car fixed!

Snowflakes on my shoulder.

I then gleefully drove my car to Ramstein to buy snow shovels and then treat myself to Chili's on base there.  While waiting in line to pay for the shovels, the lady in front of me with her two little children was told by the cashier that her fuel ration discount had expired a few days ago because her on-post vehicle inspection had expired.  Upon eavesdropping, I heard that she had a 2 year inspection, and having just purchased a car that had a one-year inspection, I completely understand how she had lost track of that.  She also was told that as a result, she owed more money.  She seemed very embarrassed and almost scared because she didn't have the extra money.  She had no card to use, and was very likely on a fixed income because only her husband worked.  Again, this is very common for military families.  While she called her husband to figure out what to do next, I asked the cashier how much she owed.  He told me $20.  I just footed her the $20 in cash.  She was surprised and still embarrassed.  I simply told her, "Don't worry about it.  It's Christmas."  She was almost apologizing still, and I told her that I had the money.  It wasn't a problem.

That moment kind of made me a little sad for a few reasons.  First, it is the holiday season, and I felt that many people including myself just weren't thinking about it and it's meaning.  I actually surprised myself when I said it.  Second, I think it's the lack of snow and the lack of Christmas decorations on the houses.  It just doesn't feel like Christmas yet.  Third, I think being away from the states, effectively away from home, makes Christmas just not feel the same for a lot of military members.  Being in a foreign country, I feel like a lot of us just do what we can to make do until we get back, sometimes without even thinking about it.  Personally, J and I are getting geared up because we are slated to sing in several Christmas concerts very soon, and J and I are actively seeking out the Christmas Markets in the area.

Finally, I went to Chili's to gorge myself.  I saw this awesome sign in the parking lot.  I just had to take a picture.

I was so freaking hungry!  The service at Chili's is so very close to the service back in the states.  The wait staff really wait on you, are very prompt, and are always helping you out while keeping a casual atmosphere.  I went for the triple threat:  boneless buffalo wings, boneless buffalo chicken salad, and a chocolate shake with Diet (yes diet) Coke on the refill rotation.  I swear I ate it all in record time, and only for one minute did I start to feel full.  That minute passed quickly.

J and I chatted on the phone a little bit while I was there.  She got a chance to meet another female officer.  This particular officer was close friends with the first three star female general.  J absolutely loved all of the time, however brief it was, she spent talking to her.  I'm so happy she was able to find such a wonderful mentor, and what a rare opportunity to meet such a person!

We both agreed that today was laced with too many "perfect timing" situations.  It was the kind of day where it was perfectly clear that we either had awesome guardian angels or that there really is a plan for us that we don't entirely know about yet.  I was reflecting on how many close calls I have had in my life.  I'm definitely thinking that my life is being preserved for something.  I'm starting to think that I know what that is, so I'll pursue it.  It's starting to feel like J's feeling was about applying to the US Army JAG.  She wasn't sure why, but she felt very strongly that it was something she was meant to do.

This Saturday, we are going to Heidelberg to experience the Christmas Market there.  I'm hoping to have a bunch more pictures to share.  Until then!

A dog, a girl, and a car

Today was quite interesting.  I had a relatively light load for walking dogs today, so I decided later that I was going to change my car tires to winter tires.  The forecast says snow either tomorrow or Friday.  This has been forecast for almost a week now, so there's a pretty good chance it will be significant snow.

While walking my second dog of the day which happens to be in the same town J and I live in, a little blonde girl came right up to us while she was on her way to school.  It was kind of cute.  She spoke only german, so  as is typical, a question is asked in german that I can't understand.  I then follow with "Enschuldigung.  Ich spreche wenige Deutsch."  This translates roughly to, "I'm sorry.  I speak weak german."  To my surprise, she then asked if I spoke english.  I said yes, and then she said nothing, but continued to follow me walking the dog for another half of a block.  The dog was so excited about being tailed, that I had to stop to get the dog under control.  Once I did, the girl came up to pet the dog.  I did have to restrain the dog from jumping, but she didn't seem too afraid.  She then proceeded to have a conversation with me in german about her own dog, which was a boxer.  I was not able to contribute much to the conversation, but I did learn a few words, like "springen" because the dog was jumping, and others that I have now already forgotten.  Along the route I was taking, she branched off to her house, or at least the house she was heading toward, and said goodbye.  I felt self-conscious while she was following because I was a complete stranger and she just followed along to pet the dog and chat.  Oh well, it was an easy way to learn a little more german.

To my german-speaking friends...after walking another dog in downtown Kaiserslautern, I got to my car when a woman came up to me, pointing at a hill that had construction on the other side and said something about "zuras."  I have no idea what this means nor can I find it online.  Did she mean a different word?  I told her I didn't understand what she was saying, to which she shrugged and then promptly left me.  Whatever.  I'm guessing it wasn't a life-threatening situation.

After finishing walking dogs, I proceeded to swap out my summer tires to winter tires.  For car people out there, german cars have lug BOLTS, not lug NUTS.  I lightly researched this in advance so I wasn't surprised when I found this out.  Swapping the tires out was actually quite easy.  The only thing that bothered me is that there were four bolts per tire, not five like I'm used to.

So I get to the last wheel when not one, but TWO bolts snap!  Both for the same half of the same wheel!  I had to test drive the car anyway to get it out of the garage, so I drove it around the neighborhood only on first gear, and it seemed to handle ok.  I also was very careful not to turn too sharply.  I checked it four times to make sure that the wheel was ok.

This puts me into a predicament.  I will probably have to buy a new rotor to replace the one holding the other half of the broken lug bolts.  I also am tempted to replace all of the lug bolts in the car.  I might be able to salvage the rotor I have, but I would have to try to drill out the snapped lug bolts and try not to damage the threads of the rotor...a tricky task.  This is a predicament because this is the only car I have for the next two days.  While I could limp it to a shop, I doubt they would readily have spare rotors and lug bolts on hand.  Well, I cancelled half of the dogs I have tomorrow, and I can take the train for the other half.  J and I talked about it and first thing tomorrow, I will see if I can talk to the german mechanic in town.  Ideally, he can drill out the two bolts and will have two spares.  That would literally be all I would need to be back up and running again.  We'll see how tomorrow unfolds.

And the excitement continues...

Here are some car pictures.  Yes!  Finally!  Pictures to prove that I own a different car!

I couldn't get a good angle of the car because it was dark and parked in my tight driveway.  Hopefully, you can get an idea of how relatively small it is.  I think it is actually classified as a mini car, which I would believe.

Yep..bolts, not nuts.  Yep, four, not five.  That sweet little tool there is a swiss army key tool.  It's the shape of a key so that it easily fits on your key ring, but is the combination of a phillips and flathead screwdriver, wire cutter, wire stripper, nail file, and a very limit knife.  I freaking LOVE it.  It was one of my many Eddie Bauer finds that my wife got me as a gift for Christmas last year.  Eddie Bauer sometimes is so much my taste I can barely stand it!

Yeah, a little shorter than they are supposed to be.  I double-checked the rotor and indeed, the other halves of these are still in the rotor, possibly to never come out.  Yes, Dad, I oiled all of the lug nuts I put back in.  I'm guessing the previous owner did not employ that practice.

Thanksgiving and gearing up for Christmas

Thanksgiving has come and gone, and now J and I are looking forward to how we are going to spend our Christmas in the country that has practically invented Christmas.

For Thanksgiving, J and I visited and celebrated with her co-worker AH, her husband SH, and their two cute kids A and C.  I was particularly excited about this because they share an extraordinary number of coincidences with J and I.  First and foremost, SH is a civilian husband who left his job to follow his wife's career in the military.

In short, we enjoyed it.  Their children were absolutely adorable.  Their two beagles were very snuggly and nose-driven.  The food was good.  We went for a jog right before Thanksgiving dinner to "pay it forward" as I like to call it.  We also had some pretty good cheese (more on that later).  They had a really neat yard, fully landscaped with two ponds with koi in them.  Sadly, I did not get a picture of any of this even though I did bring my camera.  Everything was very active with the little ones running around, J and I sleeping in both mornings we were there, and all the socializing we did.

One little trip SH and I went on was simply getting a cheese and bread appetizer before Thanksgiving dinner.  It was also an excuse to have a teeny bit of guy time.  SH is a really interesting guy and it was great conversing with someone who has experienced so much of what I have in the past year.  About the cheese though...  We got a good handful of cheeses and picked one neither of us had tried before: Gouda Chevre!  First, I never knew this existed.  I picked it because I'm a Gouda fan and J is a Chevre fan.  Second, it was good!  SH also shared a favorite of his: Rochefort.  It's like a salty blue cheese.  Over dinner, SH made a recipe suggestion using Rochefort cheese.  We didn't try it while we were over there, but J and I think we will give it a shot if we find Rochefort cheese in town.

Random tangent:  I acquired my first purely German recipe two weeks ago!  I got it from one of our choir members.  We were having a rehearsal with the small choir at one of the members' house.  They had served a very good tasting dip, everyone loved it, and I decided to ask for a copy of the recipe.  We have yet to try it, but we are very much looking forward to giving it a whirl.  We know we won't be disappointed.

Another tangent:  We have 5 or 6 concerts to sing this December with the choir.  They are all crammed in the first two and a half weeks of the month.  This will put a damper on J and my ability to visit the Christmas Markets around Germany, but this is also the "high" time for the choir, so we are excited.  I haven't had this many concerts in such a short time frame since high school, and then it was with an instrument.

Yet, another tangent:  Our list of Christmas Markets or "Weinachtsmaerkt" are the following: Heidelberg, Rothenburg ob den Tauber, Strasbourg, and Bruges.  We don't know if we can make the last two happen.  Ulm, Stuttgart, Dresden, Salzburg, and Munich are also on the list if we get our act together and contact our friends in those cities.

J and I have gotten almost all of our Christmas shopping done now which is kind of a funny feeling.  We did it so that we could be sure that all of our family will get their gifts by Christmas.  It had the strange side-effect of leaving J and I with no December holiday stress of worrying about gifts for anyone except ourselves for Christmas this year.  J has already beat me to the punch and gotten my gifts.  She'll be out of town this coming week for another CLE, so I will do shopping for her while she is away.  We're also thinking of having a Christmas date night for which I will start fleshing out plans.

The dog walking front has developed in an odd way.  I am about to meet up with another possible client.  With travel times involved, this will put me almost at 8 hour per day capacity.  This is good in that I'll be busy earning money.  This is bad in that instead of being able to take on more clients, I will have to start making the judgement call of trading out clients.  I suppose I could simply stop advertising, but something tells me that might not be a good idea.  I should also be focusing on a more permanent and typical job.  I guess that's a thought:  stop advertising as a dog walker and start advertising as a more regular employee.  I'll have to stew on that.

Good news for all of you!  J and I capitalized on a Black Friday deal and, in combination with saving money in advance for it, we have purchased a new camera.  While it is not the ideal camera we were hoping for, it does replace J's camera, which I accidentally damaged, and is a step closer to the DSLR that J ultimately dreams of possessing.  It is also HD video capable, so hopefully you will have better videos and pictures coming your way by 2013!

One loose end that J and I have been working on the past several weeks is getting our Cornish Rexes over.  I requested at least half a dozen online quotes from professional pet movers, and have not even received an acknowledgement of one request!  These requests were make two weeks ago and it was absolutely not the response I was expecting.  It is possible that our location in Germany is problematic as the only local airport is a military one.  I now have to take the next two steps:  consider calling each of them for a quote and firm up a game plan for simply doing it myself.  I would rather have a professional do it as it would be old hat for them and might possibly be cheaper than doing it myself, but doing it myself would assure that it gets done correctly and has the added advantage of using the local airport.  I might be able do it via Space Available military flying for at least crossing the Atlantic.  We'll see.  I have plenty of options to investigate.  Our hope is to get them over by February, but we'll see if we can save up enough money in that time frame.

One final thing:  J and I decorated the house for Christmas today.  We kept it pretty simple, but here is a picture of the tree...

Costume Party, New Car, and another round in Heidelberg

Halloween was interesting here.  Talking to several friends and locals, we learned that not even a generation ago children did not go Trick or Treating in Germany.  It's interesting learning that America is responsible for an imported holiday!  We also had a surprising number of trick or treaters on Halloween night.  J and I did not expect the locals to celebrate, so we did not buy candy to hand out.  Man, they were persistent!  I was alone at home as J was working late, so I turned all of the lights off.  They rang the door anyway.  When J got home, they were still at it so we posted a sign in both English and German stating that we didn't have any candy.  They STILL rang the doorbell, sometimes twice!  That is way more persistant than any American Trick-or-Treaters I had experienced.  I give them credit for really working it.

J and I got invited to a Halloween Party.  We had a hard time coming up with a couples costume that was inexpensive and was not based upon an American culture icon or euphemism.  We settled on a leprechaun and a pot of gold.  We already had everything for the leprechaun and we only needed some simple paper products for the pot of gold costume.  Everyone liked it so much that we actually won first prize.  I personally think it was because we stood out like sore thumbs.  Everyone dressed in black as a witch, vampire, skeleton, or pirate..and then you had us ignorant Americans in bright green and shimmering gold.  Even further, the whole leprechaun-pot of gold idea is also an American culture reference.  Only one german who lived in America for six years understood what we were.  In retrospect, I had heard that the Irish have said that America celebrates St. Patrick's Day more crazily than the Irish do.  In short, two wrongs made a right.  How funny is that?

As for pictures, J has several on her facebook page.  Sadly, I don't have any with me at the moment.

After looking at cars for a while, and assessing the market for used cars where we live, we decided that shopping for a car in K-town was just like shopping for a rescue dog back at home.  The turnover for decently marketed cars could literally be hours, so we started checking daily, made inquiries daily, and got a car that fit the bill after test driving it and looking it over.  It's definitely a german spec car: stick shift and tiny. While it doesn't have the pickup of our american spec car, it certainly maneuvers the hills a lot better and fits in the narrow stretches more easily.  It's not the best on gas, but it works for our purposes.

Still no pictures of the car.  I'll get those this week if I can.

J had two ODT's to look over this past weekend.  Funnily enough, one of them was just here a few months ago.  I'll do some explaining.  ODT stands for Overseas Deployment Training.  The US Army Reserves requires a short amount of deployment time each year for each reserve soldier.  It is unusual for a reserve soldier to get an ODT to the exact same location twice within a few months.  It happened because November is the new fiscal year, and Kaiserslautern's Kasernen are currently going through a rapid-fire cycles of ODT's.  They used them this time because the vast majority of J's office was out for a CLE (Continuing Law Education) course out of town and they were temporarily short-staffed.  J had responsibility for them this time, so we took them out to a farewell dinner.  During the dinner, it was decided that we would take them to Heidelberg for an outing.  ODT's typically don't have their own transportation, so they were pretty much locked to base unless they walked around town.

We all drove on over to Heidelberg, J had lots of great conversation, and we both learned a lot about the US Army Reserves program.  While in town, we just had a very casual and relaxed afternoon and evening around town.  We walked through the main walking street; we shared a few meat and cheese trays; we chatted at a cafe; we ate truffles, roasted chestnuts, and dates; we had fantastic regional and Swabian food at the Roten Ochsen (Red Ox); and then we got a nice view on the old bridge and finally got to experience the bronze monkey!

One of the places we visited in Heidelberg was the Kaethe Wolfahrt Christmas Store.  They had TONS of decorations.  I took particular interest in the miniature wooden trees they were selling.  Here are the ones I took pictures of...

A new car!

Lots happened last week! Sorry, no pictures yet, but J and I bought a new car and we also won a costume competition. More details to come...

First snowfall!

J and I were greeted this morning with the first snowfall we have experienced since living in Germany.  I don't know if it's coincidental, but I have heard that stateside a lot of people had their first snowfall of the year this past week as well.  It has literally snowed all morning, but very lightly.

Rothenburg ob den Tauber

I walked Etsy the last morning we were in Bad Windsheim, packed things up, and then headed out once J was done with her last conference day.  We decided to do some sightseeing of Rothenburg ob der Tauber before heading home.  I don't have all of the pictures here, but I'll post what I have immediately on hand.

We first tried to catch the noon tolling of the main square clock, but missed it by two minutes.  We then wandered around.  First, we went up the Rathaus tower and peeked out the window.  Second, we looked through several Christmas shops.  Third, we toured the gardens and looked at the Jewish memorial (apparently, there was another devastating ethnic cleansing of Judaism in Germany in the 1200's, according to the memorial).  Fourth, we wandered through more shops.  Fifth, we tried to tour through the churches, but didn't feel like spending euro to do it.  Sixth, we looked at some of the ramparts, the section of town destroyed by WWII bombing and being rebuilt by donated support.  All in all, Rothenburg is very impressive.  It's literally an entire city encased in a large town wall.  Most walled-in medieval cities are quite small, whereas Rothenburg felt like well over a square mile in size!  It felt quite spacious for being completely walled in, and the architecture is indeed very well preserved.  It also felt like a modern town in that road construction was still being done, there were grocery stores, cafes, restaurants, a Rathaus, several churches, and a more residential section of town.

Here are some of the pictures I have off hand...

This is the town symbol.  I thought it looked a lot like the symbol for the Freys of Game of Thrones.

This is in the gardens.  I liked the mossy rock water spring touch with fish in the pond, but again, I like all of those things:)

Here is from the Marktplatz of Rothenburg looking down one of the streets to what we thought was a gate.  Turned out, it was not a gate but the lone random gate-looking clock tower in town.

This is also from the Marktplatz looking downhill to one of the actual gates.  Rothenburg has six gates that I can remember.  They are easy to spot because they are all very tall, have large doorways at their base, and nearly all have clocks on them.

This is from the "Ramparts" on the wall under reconstruction looking into the city at the largest church.  This particular church had a tunnel underneath where carriages and pedestrian can still travel through.  This is the first cathedral I have ever seen that was built for common traffic to travel under.

This is a view down the "Ramparts."  For 1000 euro you can have your name on a plaque on the wall as you see here as you have effectively donated enough money to restore one meter of wall.  You can donate more if you like.  I'm sure they won't mind.

Here is a street-level view of the wall under contruction.

Here is a street level view of the "Ramparts."  The towers in the distance are one of the gates.

This is inside the moat outside the "Ramparts."  Rothenburg is surrounded by a cliff or moat on all sides except for one gate.  That gate was the only gate susceptible to attack and was always the only gate that invading forces took to enter.

An opposite view of the same moat leading to the cliff.

Bad Windsheim Day 4

While you could argue that I wasted and opportunity today in that I chose not to visit the Outdoor Museum when I could have, I feel that I had a good day in other ways.

Etsy was too rambunctious for my taste today, so in the afternoon, I did a training session with her going through all she should already know with the exception of fetch.  It worked quite well in that she was quite tired and behaved much better the rest of the day.  I learned that I may have to work on training daily with her just to keep her from getting too crazy as well as keep her well trained...and yes, one can have a well trained crazy dog.

J and I spent a good dinner socializing with A, her counterpart in Belgium.  Great conversation, and she has been helping doing physical fitness training with J the past several days.  This means a lot because she has found few co-workers with which she feels comfortable enough doing this.  We also think we may spend Thanksgiving with them, but we'll figure out those details more in the future.  Considering they are more isolated than we are, it's a bird's-of-a-feather kind of a thing.

Speaking of parties, J and I have been invited to a costume party by a friend of I and S.  We're still trying to decide what costume we will wear, but it should be fun nonetheless.

Today was more quality time spent with others than sightseeing, and I'm okay with that.  I took a video of falling leaves today, but I only had my phone on me at the time, so the video did not turn out at all as I had intended.  With this same phone, I was able to take a nice picture of Etsy during our training today.  I like the contrast of her fur against the leaves.

Oh, by the way, C and R!  With the goats today, I saw several chickens with feathers on their legs down to their ankles.  What kind of chickens are those?

Tomorrow, we check out of the hotel.  I get to pack everything and load the car while J finishes up with her classes.  After that, we head out to Rothenburg Ob der Tauber to take a look at the impressive city in the daylight before we head home.  Then its, "Hello weekend!"  I'm totally going to experience a 9 day weekend!  Score!

Bad Windsheim (Day 3)

Ok.  So I chickened out with the outdoor museum.  I'll get to that in a second.

I had a pretty relaxing morning, had breakfast with J, chatted with a co-worker of hers, then took Etsy for her morning walk after tooling online for an hour.  On our walk, we got to the far park of Kurzpark, took paths we had not taken yet, and then saw a horse!

Notice the yard.  This is why it is not wise to own a horse if you don't have the property for it.  Back at our house, there are fields with occasional horses who have land plots three times this size and pulverize the lawn within a month.  I actually felt sorry for the horse.  It readily let me pet it and started licking my hand as I think it expected an apple to be there.  Etsy wanted to meet it too, but I'm glad there was a fence to prevent such a meeting.  I think it might not have turned out well.

J spent lunch with me in our room.  She get's lunch free, but it's 20 euro per lunch and dinner at the hotel for me, so I bought some groceries and will spend at least the rest of the lunchtimes in our room.

In the afternoon, Etsy and I sought out the Outdoor Museum.  It is supposed to have a lot of transferred medieval aged buildings together in a makeshift town.  I found it easily enough, but it did not look as big as I was led to believe, and for 6 or 7 euro per entry, I wanted to see it with J rather than by myself.  Etsy and I travelled to more of Bad Windsheim that we had not walked through yet and found more manatee images.  We eventually got back to the manatee statue, and found an informational panel that I had not noticed before.  For those who would like to translate, feel free.  I will get around to it, just not during this trip.

We spent dinner at the Hotel Gastof Le Anfore Restaurant with J's colleague who has a civilian husband.  We discussed JAG gossip and points of view.  It was italian cuisine: I had a calzone, J had spaghetti, and J's colleague had rigatoni.  We all had bruschetta and J and I had dessert as well.  It was decent food, the servers were nice, and I would have to say it was the lightest calzone I had ever had: thinner crust, not tons of oil, nice filling and topping, and not heavy on any one item.  It was great conversation and we all had lots in common to talk about in both work and personal lives.  Around when we left, an accordion player arrived and the table behind us was 20 strong 60+ year old men all singing.  We could understand very little of what they were singing, but J and I enjoyed listening.  A patron next to us said that it was a thick local dialect and he could not understand much of what they were saying either.  The best J and I could muster was that it was a very Bavarian set of tunes as at one point they were listing off the different parts of Bayern (Bavaria): Berchtesgaden, and several others that escape my memory.

J and I both agree that the bar singing is definitely something we will have to find again.

Bad Windsheim Day 2 (and Rothenburg Ob Der Tauber)

I took the the second day to explore more of the Kurzpark and do some grocery shopping.  This is what I found...

Some very Autumn scenes...

...and, quite randomly, a few goats and...

...and aviary of parakeets!  The parakeets were the biggest surprise to me.  They were all colors: pink, green, blue, yellow...and they were outside where it was cold!

I took a solo trip to the grocery store and found this...a ninja stylist!  Who knew?

This cat has claimed a small stretch of sidewalk.  I saw three different people petting it, Etsy went a little crazy last night trying to catch it, and today, it walked right up to me for a nice picture.  I went to pet it afterward are it acted repulsed by me and scampered away.

In the evening, J's CLE organizer set up a time to have people go to the Rothenburg Night Watchman tour.  I looked it up online and it was very highly regarded.  When we got to the city, it was impressive even at night: six large city gates, a cathedral sized church that had a street going underneath it, and this clock who's windows opened automatically to show two human-sized figures moving around at the top of each hour.

Interesting history.  Rothenburg was first built around 1100 AD and was never taken until the 1600's during the 30 years war when one of their own accidentally blew up the gun powder tower.  It never recovered from poverty after that, was taken a second time, and lost the north and west walls during american bombing in WWII.  It was spared complete destruction because of two reasons: the local American commander's mother loved Rothenburg so they asked the occupying German force to surrender the city, and the German occupying force was temporarily missing their commander.  The poverty was what actually preserved the city for so long after surviving a very long time without being sacked or burned.

This is the main gate.  They still have the door there that was built in the 1500's.

During the tour, the Watchman gave a short plug for one of the city pubs: Zur Hoelle, or in english, To Hell.  The local city joke being, "Go to Hell!"  We decided with the people we car pooled there to check it out.

To our surprise, the Watchman showed up a few minutes later.  This is the best shot I could get.  It was dark and I didn't want to use the flash.  You will find a better picture of him online.

This is J enjoying spiced hot wine, a seasonal favorite of Germany.  I took a sip.  It was really good.  However, I was driving so that's all the more I had of that.

One of the ladies we drove there was also a JA who's husband was a civilian, just like me!  We've decided that we will all have to hang out in Belgium at some point.  That is where she is stationed.