Life in Germany

Here we are in Germany! Check out the fall colors!! The park with the pond is in Boeblingen, the nearest town to us.

The summer brought us a change of climate from what we were used to: humidity! We made the most of the summer by visiting Garmisch, an American resort, down near the Alps for the July 4 th holiday. We camped and went sightseeing. The Zugspitze is the highest point in Germany. We rode the train to the top, just like a visit to Pike's Peak. Then we saw the fireworks that night, just outside of the resort. They were lit off about 75 yards from where we sat and they were so close to us when they exploded I thought they were going to hit us!! The next day we saw the Neuschwanstein castle (schloss) on our way back home. That is the castle that Walt Disney had inspired himself to create the Disney World Cinderella castle. We took pictures of it, of course. We have seen and visited about five castles since we arrived.

These are pictures of the Neuschwanstein Castle and us at the top of the Zugspitze.

The girls started school the end of August and they'll continue school till June 12th. Sarah takes German now and will add on a photography class in January. She has been doing excellently in her art class and really enjoys it. Joanna and Rebecca take a Host Nation class where they are learning some German and learning the culture. Rebecca is taking a Spanish class also. They have enrolled in Girl Scouts and Rebecca is taking up choir. Halloween was a blast: everyone on post sit outside the stairwells on the front steps and hand out candy and the kids go from building to building. The off post dwellers had the opportunity to come to Panzer Barracks, where we live or go to Patch barracks to the residential area or go to the parties there. I decided to head up the PTA book fair this year and we just finished with our book fair last week for three days just before Thanksgiving. The girls had a four day holiday last week. My stress level has decreased now that all that is over with!! I've been sleeping for 10 hours at a time since we had our Thanksgiving break!!

Bill had an awesome experience with the local Great Pumpkin Run race in October. He came in fourth place for his age group after running the 10k race. He plans to participate in the indoor triathlelon this coming weekend and another race later in December, an 18 miler on the 18th. He has also been taking online classes and working towards his assoc/bachelor's degrees. So, when he's home--he's not really home. Ha ha ha ha ha!

We had friends from church over for our Thanksgiving meal. Two of the families are living here in Germany, not being military and they didn't have access to turkeys, as they have to shop on the German economy, so we made a potluck out of our celebration. They are all university students, one working on his PhD and the other two are newlyweds and taking up a year in Germany to make their resumes look good. They are taking German as they study here also. The other family is military and they just received their household goods a few weeks ago, but not much has been organized. It was such a wonderful time to share with them.

So, now, on this last day of November, we have our Christmas decorations up, along with the tree that contains so many beautiful handmade ornaments from friends from the past 5 years ornament exchange parties. We have many wonderful memories.

Yesterday, Nov 29, we traveled to a town called Esslingen that is now holding their Weinachts Markts till December 22. This Christmas market is their annual Old World age market, taking visitors back to the "middle ages" about 500 years ago. There was plenty of food and drink, music from that time, clothing for sale from that time, trinkets, old world jewelry and glass blown items and plenty of Christmas tree ornaments. Of course, I bought our first one for 2008 from Germany. Later this week, I'll travel to Stuttgart's Weinachts markts with the RS ladies for another trip.

We hope you like our family blog. Let us know what you think!! Happy holidays and we'll send more later!!

This is me trying out the flammekuchen and kinder punsch. It's bread with cheese, onions and bacon. The punch is warmed up!!

Some of the food buildings had these type of toppers on the roofs.

PS: click on the pictures to view a larger version!