Week 24 & 25: More Hiking in Luxembourg

The fall has been really nice here, with the trees slowly changing color--I think we are close to peak now--and some very warm days mixed in with some much cooler ones. As a result, we've been doing our best to spend a lot of time outside. This has resulted in me doing some mountain biking during the week as an option for my daily workout and us taking regular hikes in the area.

Two weeks ago, the intent was to go out on a hike for a couple hours in the afternoon, so we choose this one, which starts in Germany, crosses a river and heads into Luxembourg then loops back across the river into Germany. It was a beautiful fall day, with just a bit of crsipness in the air--just the type of weather I like for hiking. The valley we were hiking around was very pretty. There were a couple of small villages and a castle. Throughout our hike, we came across a few nice vistas, such as the one below.

Germany on the river's right, Luxembourg on its left

Now, one thing about the hikes from the site I linked to above, is that they (1) don't always follow well marked trails and (2) don't always include good trail descriptions. This particular hike had both of these problems. We found, though, what we thought to be the right trail marker to follow and did our best.

We generally thought we were on track. We found the bridge to cross back over the river. Seemed to be able to find the behavior of the trail we were on on the map and when we couldn't, we just figured the map wasn't very good, as we had run into that with other hikes. Then our 3.5 hour hike was becoming 4 hours...no need to panic, we lost some time on a false trail a bit earlier on...and then we passed another bridge. And about 10 minutes later it dawned on us. That second bridge, that is the one on the map. That was where we were suppose to cross. We had been lost and never realized it. And we agreed that often we'd rather be lucky than good.

 So, our 3.5 hour hike turned into about 5 hours. We breathed a sigh of relief once we saw the car. I was very glad I packed the extra water and food. Despite that, our feet were sore and our stomachs quite empty.  After a quick stop home, we cleaned up and headed out to a local Oktoberfest where we filled up our stomachs with meat and numbed our feet by drinking beer. It was great. I can't imagine what the scene looks like in Muenchen.

Based on our close call on the hike I described above, the next weekend, when we went out for a hike, we decided to follow one of the clearly marked hiking paths. In many towns in our part of Germany and in Luxembourg, there are well marked trails that start in the center of town and lead you out into the countryside before bringing you back into town. Generally each town has at least three: a short 2-3 km route, a medium 5-8 km route and a long 12-17 km route. We decided on the town of Lieler, Luxembourg, which is very close to the triple-point of Luxembourg, Germany and Belgium (more on that later).

The hike was very nice. We chose the medium distance. It took us along the edge of pastures and through the woods. Through our many encounters with cows, we found that Jason may have become an unlikely cow messiah: every time we came to the edge of a field and stopped to talk to the cows, then all gathered around him. Hopefully he will use his new-found power responsibly...

Jason tending to his flock

His notoriety has quickly spread to another field

On our drive back home, we came across the aforementioned triple point. There is a small brook that serves as the boarder between Luxembourg and Belgium and a small river that serves as the boarder between each of those and Germany. We found the marker and snapped a few shots.

Three countries at once!

Hopefully this good weather will hold out a bit longer and we can get out in the woods some more.

Week 23: Rainy Columbus Day Weekend

(I am about a week behind on posting. I will, hopefully, fully catch up later this week, as for the first time in a while, I'll have a full week with no travel.)

Our long weekend was a bit wet, so we did some more inside based activities, including our first trip to a climbing gym here in Germany (they have *no* pads on the floors in the top rope area--just industrial tile on concrete; despite the fact that I knew Jason wouldn't drop me, it took a while to get mentally over that), followed by a stop by IKEA.

The stop by IKEA was primarily to finish up the living room--or get it *closer* to finished than it was before. As you may remember from an earlier post, since our walls are really bumpy and not really white, I built a screen for the projector. I finished that maybe six weeks ago, finally finding some appropriate material for the screen, and getting a can of white paint. The result isn't too bad, as can be seen below. The picture is a little uneven in places--I think I'll need to do a second coat of paint at some point.

The screen in place

The big gain, though, from the trip to IKEA was to finally get the projector high enough above our heads that we didn't have to squinch down on the couch while watching TV. We ended up deciding on one of IKEA's modular units, which is just about the right height for the projector, when placed upside-down on the top most shelf. I like this position much better as it is going to be great for Wii playing during these long winter nights--something I should have done long ago when we had this setup in RI. I do want to paint the unit. Any ideas for anything interesting? I was thinking a 'film' pattern on the legs...

The projector: Standing Tall

We did get out late on Sunday and went by a local Weinfest in Piesport. We had some sausage, wine and then...Waffeln am Steil! And I thought Americans had cornered the market when it came to putting things on sticks. The stand where we bought them had this great little waffle iron that could make up to four of these babies at once. It was a delicious find, with a little powdered sugar.

Jason and the Waffeln

Piesport is a big wine area (as can be guessed by it having a wine fest in the first place). After indulging in the festival food, we took a walk out next to the Mosel, by some vineyards. In the picture below, the hill behind me is covered in vineyards. There were more vineyards behind Jason. Those have already been picked clean. We still don't know just how they do it. We assume by hand, but it is a huge project, so I was expecting to see a roving band of migrant laborers completing the task, but haven't yet seen proof of that guess. Until that point, I will assume it is gnomes. They are in everyone's gardens.

Mosel valley

Week 22: A Weekend in Paris

I have been traveling quite a bit for work lately, and headed back to Beauvais, France this past week. Jason and I decided to take advantage of my work trip and spend the weekend in Paris. I took Friday afternoon off and visited the Musee d'Orsay before Jason was able to arrive early on Saturday morning. The museum itself is quite a site. It is an old train station and has a fantastic interior. A great place to sit and people watch.

I was especially excited to see their Van Gogh collection, as earlier this year there was an episode of Doctor Who which revolved around Van Gogh. There were at least two paintings featured in the episode that I saw: The Church at Auvers (I was unable to find the demon in the window, but I think that happened in an alternate timeline) and Bedroom in Arles (the third version--oddly enough, this painting also appears in my German textbook, in the section where you learn the vocabulary for furniture). I was thinking that Starry Night was there as well, but it turns out it is in MoMA.

Resting my feet next to the Seine

I met a friend of mine for dinner that evening. We were both on time (or close to), but managed not to find each other at Place Saint-Michel for about half an hour. Luckily we didn't give up. We had an excellent Tapas dinner, then walked around a bit to find some ice cream.

Jason arrived on Saturday morning and we planned out our day, wanting to hit a few things few things we didn't see on our last trip to Paris two years ago. Our first stop was the Catacombs. Under Paris were a number of limestone mines, which resulted in a vast series of tunnels. As the city was expanding during different points in its history, a forgotten graveyard or mass grave would be found. Instead of halting construction, the bones would be moved to the catacombs. Here you can see *piles* of bones from different points in Paris's history. There are plague bones and revolution bones and...and...and...lots of bones.

Jason and some bones

We walked around a bit and our next stop was the Pantheon. It is a very cool building and we arrived just in time to take a tour to the top of the building where you can look out, see all of Paris...and eat it.

The best part about Europe: The opportunity for forced perspective shots

Our final stop before resting up for the evening was the Pere LaChaise Cemetery. No, baby-boomers, we did not see Jim Morrison's grave. We actually wanted to, so we could compare the level of vandalism there to that on Oscar Wilde's (see below), but the cemetery was closing, so we couldn't make it. We'll look for it on our next trip. Oh, and we ran into Chopin's grave quite by accident. It was a quite lovely place.

So much lipstick...

 Saturday turned out to be "Blanche Nuit" (White Night; a slang term for an all-nighter), where Paris had many of its museums open late into the night and had a variety of public art exhibits set up across the city. Everyone was out and the weather was beautiful. We saw a couple video installations in churches, but otherwise just walked around and enjoyed the crowds. It was a great time.

We wrapped up the weekend by again meeting with the same friend I had met for dinner earlier that weekend. We all saw an exhibit on Giacometti and how he was influenced by Etruscan art (the Etruscans were in Italy before the Romans--the Romans thought they were weird, and they had a different language, customs and technologies from the Romans, plus no one knew where they came from; we decided they were either aliens or time travelers; add your vote in the comments). I only knew of Giacometti's work by sight and had very little knowledge of the Etruscans, so it was a beneficial exhibit to see on two fronts.

We had a great weekend and were back home in about 3 hours (2 hours by TGV and 1 by car). We'll have to make some time to do it again in the future!

Week 21: Hiking and Biking

The weather in our corner of Germany has been pretty spectacular for the last few weeks: sunny, but cool (I'd say in the 70s). The trees are starting to change, there is a bit of a nip in the air in the morning in evening and it is getting darker much earlier.

In celebration of the weather, we spent this weekend (Sept. 24th & 25th) mostly outside, first with a great hike in Luxembourg, followed by a bike ride on closed section of roadway. The hike was in the city of Vianden. We started at the Chateau and worked our way up the hill behind it. This page shows the profile of the hike (in German).

Vianden Castle

You'll note around kilometer 4 the very sharp drop. At this point, we were descending along the ridge line. The path had been well used in the past, but definitely was not used quite as regularly recently: there were a number of instances were I looked on either side of the ridge--quite steeply down to both my left and right--more than once each before I found the trail again. The picture below gives you a sense of this downward climb. Yes, we are both on the trail.

Hiking the Ridge

The trail looped back around to the castle, passing through an adventure park. (Kristin, there are at least 3 of these within 90 minutes of our place--they are really big over here!) For those of you unfamiliar with an adventure park, it is also known as a high ropes course. You are strapped into a harness and then work your way around different elements at different heights in the trees. They are tons of fun if heights aren't a problem for you. Jason and I have gone with friends to one in the US, but have not done one here in the EU...yet.

On Sunday, we went out for a bike ride from Dreis to Kluesserath. The area was having a biking festival, with a total of five towns participating. There were lots of people out on the bike paths and the section of the road between Rivenich and Kluesserath was closed to traffic, so you could really get pumping going down the hills into the river valley. This section of the ride was edged by vineyards. The grapes are about ready to be picked, I would hazard to guess, but we haven't seen anyone out among the vines yet.

The ride was mostly flat, except for the trip down into the river valley. The hill was deceptive, though, as on the way down it seemed very steep and I was dreading the mere idea of riding back up. But, either it was a bit of an illusion, or I am stronger than I think, as it turned out to be quite a manageable incline. The ride was a total of 36ish kilometers round trip--about 20 miles. I found that my tailbone was still not completely healed from my fall in the bell-tower, but I made it and the weather made it a perfect day to be out.


View Larger Map

Shortly after the end of the ride, I was off to the train station for work, headed to Afschaffensburg, just outside of Frankfurt. Such a shame to have to leave a day like that as early as I did, but the need to demo called, so off I went.

The Catch Up Post

It has been a number of weeks since I last posted. These has been because (1) Jason and I took a vacation for the first part of September and (2) I have been travelling a ton for work lately. So, this post will serve to catch up on some highlights of the last few weeks.

The last weekend of August included two rather nice trips for us, both involving nearby villages and castles. There are two particularly awesome things about this weekend that I want to share. The first is this slide:

Unfortunately, since it was so wet out that day (I had, only 20 minutes before this video was taken, fallen firmly on my ass while we were climbing down from a bell tower on its slippery wooden stairs. Ow. My tail bone is still recovering.) that I couldn't get much speed up while I was on the slide, but man, I can't wait to go back and try it out when I don't have wet pants slowing me down.

The second fantastic thing was a trip to the town of Manderscheid, which was having a medieval festival at one of the town's *two* castles. Evidently, the castles were owned by competing families, who spent their time eyeing each other across the small river. The lower castle was quite a complex and we spent some time walking through it with hoards of other visitors who were there for the festival.

Me in front of Niederburg

After that weekend I headed out to the Netherlands, the met up with Jason in Boston a few days later. We had a great time back in the States visiting our friends and family, despite the fact that I completely lost my voice due to strep. Hopefully I didn't get anyone sick (if you did, send me a note and I will send you a 'get well' card by way of apology), as I was walking around for a few days most likely contagious, before my dad told me to go to the clinic.

Instead of heading right home to Germany after vacation, Jason headed to Texas (Jason' characterization of his first ever trip to Texas: "It is hot and flat.") for a conference/workshop and I went to Beauvais, France to sit in on a series of training sessions performed in French for my company's software. Beauvais is generally an unremarkable European city. This is my 3rd work visit there. It is a smaller sized city (about the size of Concord, NH population-wise) and has all of your standard cafes and stores that you expect. It also has a cathedral. A very tall cathedral that was never finished and has beautiful and large stained glass windows. If you ever find yourself in Beauvais, it is a must see.

Beauvais Cathedral

Jason's flight back from Texas ended up being delayed 4 hours, so he didn't end up getting back home until late in the afternoon last Saturday, so we had a bit of an abbreviated weekend. We did venture out on Sunday and explored a bit of the Vulkaneifel. Part of the area near where we lived used to be very volcanic--and is still a little volcanic. We took a few walks around some maares (volcanic crater lakes). It was very nice and there were many Germans also out for walks. One of the maares we visited had quite a swimming spot. The maares make great swimming holes, as they drop off very quickly--evidenced by the 7 meter high diving platform on the shore in the below photo. We'll need to come back here next summer.

Swimming Area with High Dive Platform