The week before my birthday was crazy! J had at least two days where she was informed after business hours that the next day she had to be out of town for whatever reason. That made it a total of 4 of the 5 days that week where she had to be up at 4:30am for something and still got home at around 6pm those days. On top of all of that, she noticed the week before (somehow no one else did) that she was going to be one of only three employees working in their office that week. Three out of the typical 10 or more! So she was not only the OIC (officer in charge) but also ridiculously understaffed. On those days where she needed the car all day, I had to bike around for my dog appointments. Yeah, that week was spent mostly running around and sleeping.
I also found time to check out the local farmer's market. It was actually pretty good: fresh fruits, berries, vegetables, tubers, poultry, pork, fish, flowers, and herbs too! It was definitely worth it, as we figured out that the berries alone cost half to a quarter of the cost in the grocery store. I also got a kilo of locally grown apples which I like a lot!
The weekend before, we checked out something called a Kulinarische Wanderung. For the non-German inclined, it essentially means a culinary wandering. Nine booths were set up around 500 meters apart in a big field. Each booth was sponsored by a local restaurant and winery. The people who attend get to spend a reduced price on the best locally produced wine and food. J was a little buzzed by the end, figuring she may have had close to four glasses of wine grand total over four or so hours. I was sober cab, so I only sipped a little bit here and there. It didn't help that it was clear and hot, so I was told that may have contributed to the inebriated feeling. The food was fantastic. There was so much that we had to skip food for a few booths.
Here is J with the 1 euro wine cup each entrant was allowed. Only one cup of wine per booth.
Here I am sampling the salmon sandwich at one of the booths. They were smoking the salmon in this awesome portable smokers right there! This was good stuff!
Sorry Kaleb, I couldn't straighten this one any further without cutting too much out. This booth had swiss cheese (the best swiss cheese I've ever had, and I don't like swiss cheese) with pretzels, grapes, and some pretty tasty cold sausage. The kid in the red striped shirt here was part of our group. J and I conversed with him a bit. He's pretty delightful.
Here is the stand for the picture above. Pretty nice setup.
Next stand, weisswurst and some almost stewed beef (on the table). J LOVED the beef at this stand.
To our surprise, a very American looking stand with some crazy awesome BBQ pulled pork. They did not hold back at this one!
I finished all of it off with the equivalent of an icee. It was pretty warm that day, so brain freeze settled in...repeatedly.
This was the last stop. I'd say this picture was about a quarter of the people at this booth. There were a lot of people in attendance.
As a result, instead of the Kaiserslautern home soccer game that we had intended to go to, I chose to just spend the day mostly at home relaxing. We saw Brave, J made a killer chocolate cake, and we went to the best Italian restaurant in town.
Also that week, our choir performed at a gospel benefit concert...our traditional choir that focuses on traditional Christmas music choir. While we gave it an effort, we clearly felt that we did not belong there...stylistically, culturally, musically, and in terms of preparedness. The crowd was very forgiving and supportive and the choir largely did it because of an invitation from a choir member and because it was something different. Yeah, it was definitely an experience.
I was showered with lots of delightful gifts over my birthday. J was especially determined to make the weekend special for me, and it was. A special thanks for all of you who sent me a gift. All of them were very much loved and appreciated.
THIS week was a little less interesting. While looking for a car, I have around four dogs a day that I walk now. J has been settling a little better now that almost everyone is back. She also is enjoying looking for a car with me. We have this bizarre pattern of rain every time we look at a car together. There was only one exception to this rule yesterday, and we really liked the car except that the owner said it wouldn't start when it was running only three days ago. If he gets it running again, he will let us know. Good sign, or blessing in disguise? Time will tell.
Other bits of randomness. In this part of Germany, as an alternative to using wood to use in your household furnace, apparently you can use charcoal blocks. These blocks were about 1 foot by 2 inches by 5 inches.
Also, by being near a large US Air Force Base, cargo planes are a very common sight in the sky as well as pairs of F-4 fighter planes (I'm guessing on this one as I don't know my planes very well). The fighter planes fly over our house on average once every other day. On occasion, you will see helicopters like these. I don't know what kind these are, so maybe Rod can help out.
I learned this week that our town's train station is one of the 10 oldest in the country. Not so much in terms of its existence, but in terms of what it uses to work...cables as opposed to electronics. They need to have two people manning the station at any one time so that the cables are operated at the appropriate moments when trains arrive.
These are the cable handles inside the station.
Here are some of the cable pulley junctions outside the station. They operate stop and go signals for the trains, the gates for cars that want to cross, and probably other things.
Here are two pictures of the station itself. There are the remnants of a waiting room and ticket counter inside with bathrooms, but none are in use anymore. Only the control room and an electronic ticket meter outside.
As a final picture, right outside of the station, I saw sumac turning red in some pine. I thought it was a cool color contrast.
Check back again in another week. We may have a second car by then :)
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