Week 53: Marksburg and Mid-Week Paris

We had a clear weekend to visit Marksburg castle, which we are only previously visited briefly a few weeks ago. This time we were careful to arrive in time for one of the English tours. The castle is particularly noted as being the only castle on the Middle Rhine to never be destroyed and was first built around 1117, making it just under 900 years old. The castle had many owners through its time, including Napoleon. 

The two most facinating things we found out about the castle, was that (1) it had an icebox--it was the first castle we had been to where such an item was part of the tour and (2) the head of the German castle authority gets to live here. For that reason, the tour was limited and did not include the tower, which was unfortunate, as that is generally the *best* part of any castle tour. Following the tour, we enjoyed some coffee and cake, to help blend in with the German crowd.

Marksburg

The following week, some friends of ours from the US were spending a few days in Paris as part of a post-med-school graduation celebration European trip for one of the couple. Jason and I looked up the TGV times and hopped on a 6:40am train from Luxembourg and were at our friends' hotel by 9:30. That is about 2 hours to travel 230 miles, with some metro transit on the other end to complete the trip. Average speed of 115 mph? Yes, please.

This was the graduate's first trip to Paris and since we had been before, we let them lead the way. We attempted to go to the Catacombs, but they were closed due to V-E Day, so we had a nice walk from there to Notre Dame. After a wander through the inside of the church, we went up the towers to visit the gargoyles, as well as get a rather nice view of the city. This was a first for both Jason and I, and, despite the wait, was totally worth it. Plus, you get to see the bell, which is enormous.

The gargoyles overlook Paris

We next took the Metro up to the area of Montmartre and visited the Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Paris. This is another place to get a great view of the city. While we were sitting and enjoying the view and determining our next destination, the graduate's name was called out--and here, in Paris, 5000+ miles away from school, he runs into one of his classmates. Crazy.

Our next stop was for a cafe (shown in the photo below), then a quick run by the Moulin Rouge for a photo from the front. Instead of a fancy dinner, we decided to grab some cheese, bread and wine for a dinner by the Seine. The weather, which was supposed to be rain, held out for the day and we had a fantastic time by the water eating, drinking and chatting. Of course, since the summer is coming, the days are getting longer, and as we said good-bye around 8pm to catch our train back to Luxembourg it wasn't even dusk yet. 

The guy walking out of the cafe...not part of our group

With that, we had our 2 hour train ride and then our drive home--a great day and definitely worth the time off from work.

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

Week 7: The Hardware Store, Happy Mosel and Marburg

This past weekend was rather busy. On Saturday we took a trip to the hardware store. German hardware stores are just like American hardware stores, except with far fewer 2" x 4"s and more shelf toilets. Those of you who had been to our place in Providence know about our projector, which serves as our TV replacement. In Providence, we had the projector shining on the big white wall in the livingroom. In our new place, the walls are yellow and textured, and thereby don't serve as well as a projector surface.

Once I realized that, I started hatching a plan. On our last trip to IKEA we picked up two Expedit shelving units. For a few weeks we had a sloppily hung old bedsheet between the two as an interim solution. The master plan involved the trip to the hardware store, where we picked up a few 3/4" x 2-3/4" x 6' pieces of wood (of course, I am translating--they were sold in metric), a bunch of hardware and some paint. I also wanted something akin to a drop cloth, one of the old-school cloth ones made out of tightly woven cotton, but no-such-luck.

The Projector Screen: In Progress

Back home, I proceeded to build a frame out of the wood, drilled out some holes in the Expedits and, using some leftover brackets from IKEA furniture, mounted the frame between them. Jason helped me stretch the old bed sheet over the frame and hold it in place with push pins. Ta-da! We have a more workable screen for watching our movies.

I still want to get a better piece of cloth, mount it with something other than push-pins and paint the surface with the bright-white paint I bought (suggestions on how to do this and what material to use are welcome--and w0z, yes, I will write this up for IKEA hacks once I am done), but this will work well enough for the time being. Hey--we have to keep up with SG-U.

Jason, Kitted out for Biking

We also got out and about this weekend, mostly on Sunday. Sunday did not live up to its name. It rained on and off for most of it. We went out for Happy Mosel nonetheless. As I mentioned in a previous post, during Happy Mosel, the road running along the Mosel river, known as the Moselweinstrasse, is closed to cars for a 50 mile stretch. Local vendors in the towns set up wine and food tents along the road and people ride their bikes for a section or the entire way. We did only a section of about 20 miles round trip due to the rain and other commitments, but the area was beautiful between the rain drops, with vineyards stretching up the hills away from the river. You can see them a bit in Jason's photo.

On Sunday afternoon we drove out to the Marburg area to visit with--here we go--Jason's sister's husband's brother's girlfriend. She is currently finishing up her studies in Marburg for her Master's and was nice enough to show us around the city. She took us by two of the main sites, St. Elisabeth's Church and the Landgrave Castle.

The View of Marburg from the Castle

There was a service going on inside the church, so we only viewed the outside, which was very nice, Gothic architecture. The castle was high atop a hill and from there you could get a nice view of the town...and the storm clouds. What you can't see from this view is the couple behind us who, in full view of all visiting the castle, were fiercely making out, like it was going out of style. Based on his balding dome, I was surprised at the vigorousness of the activity, but I guess every so often love conquers all--even public decency.

Next weekend I am off to Chicago for a week for work. We'll see how I do with the jet-lag. If anyone starts a pool, I want the square that says I fall asleep at 7pm all week.