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