Week 64: Meetups in Belgium and on Bikes

[I apologize for the lateness of these last posts. Between our recent move and other activities, it has been very difficult to catch up. After this post, there are two more coming.]

With the cool summer weather holding on for quite a while in the Eifel, we spent yet another weekend outside. On Saturday, we went to a Meetup member's house for Belgian National Day. As previously noted, Belgium has an uneasy truce between its two biggest groups: the Wallonians and the Flemish, but the national day does not so much celebrate this union as the creation of an independent Belgian state that served as a buffer between the major European powers in the early 1800s.

Much like Americans do for our Independence day, the Belgians celebrate with BBQs, fireworks and other summer outdoor activities--though they do end it with a tented and liquored dance party! We enjoyed it all (okay--minus the dance party) with the Meetup group, despite the cool weather and the rather small fireworks display thrown together in the village where we spent the afternoon and evening.

Spotted on the Way to Belgium: a River Full of Recent Rains

Sunday lived up to its name and we joined some other Meetup-ers for a bike ride along *yet another* section of the Mosel. For this ride, we started in the town of Schengen, Luxembourg. For many, the name Schengen may sound familiar due to the Schengen Agreement, which is the reason why it has been so easy for us to travel from one country in Europe to the next without any boarder controls. The agreement was signed in Schengen in 1985 and removed boarder controls between its signatories. There is a small monument to this event next to the river (and across from the bike rental location where we met up with the group).

View Larger Map

Our ride took us from Schengen to Oberbillig, Germany, up the Mosel river and mostly along bike paths that were lined with Dutch and German Wohnwagons (motor-homes). And the wonderful part of Germany in the summer? Festivals! We found a wine fest, stopped and had some Kaffee, Kuechen and other goodies while listening to the local choir and other choice musical performances. We didn't drink enough to be wobbly on our bikes, but we had enough cake to slow us down a bit. The ride was a total of 35 km (22 miles) and ended at a nice cafe with a beer and a chat before Jason and I caught the train back to our car.

An International Group

The Choir...with a Viking Ship?

Later that week, we did some driving through the countryside near our place and found, as there always seems to be around every corner, a playground with some choice equipment. Not only was there an old school steel merry-go-round (in this bone-crunching style), but there was also a great zip line. Jason was kind enough to get a nice blurry shot of me enjoying the ride!

Being Blurry Makes it Even More Fun!

Week 63: Koeln to Bonn by Bike

A little while back we visited the city of Bonn, West Germany's capital before the end of the cold war linked the two halves of Germany. Bonn is quite close to the city of Koeln (Cologne) and we thought that since they were so close and have a good train connection, that it would be nice to ride between the two cities.

View Larger Map

We started in Koeln and rode south, on the east side of the Rhein. The weather refused to cooperate the entire day and we ended up with 2 or 3 cloud bursts while we were riding. Not ideal, but better than pouring over the entire trip. The total ride was about 35 km (22 mi) based on the map, though we got a bit turned around just outside of Bonn when we couldn't find a way to cross a tributary of the Rhein, so it was probably closer to 40 km (25 km) total. 

Jason makes (very cute!) friends

Once we arrived in Bonn, we didn't have to wait too long for a train--maybe 5 minutes after we bought our tickets. From there it was about a 25 minute ride to Koeln. We dropped our bikes at the car, then walked around a bit. Koeln is the 4th largest city in Germany, and, let me tell you, on a Saturday afternoon in mid-July its shopping district is *busy*. It was a little overwhelming, since we are used to much smaller cities, but after taking a short look at the city's famous cathedral, we found a seat at a cafe and enjoyed a meal outside.

Inside of Koeln's Cathedral

With more rain in the forecast, we forewent a trip to the World Ballooning Festival, which we had seen last year in Echternach, and decided instead to go for another castle. We headed to Bourscheid castle in Luxembourg. The castle looks quite impressive from a distance, though it in more or less a ruined state (and has no place to get Kaffee and Kuechen!), with some restoration work having been completed since the 1970s.

Jason, an umbrella and a castle

Though there were no snacks, we did get a free English-language audio tour that was hosted by Victor Hugo and a couple travelling companions, who had visited the castle in the late 1800s. They told us about how the castle looked at the time of their visit and what renovations had been completed on the castle since that time in surprisingly good British accents for Frenchmen.

Bourscheid's Main Tower

After touring the castle, we visited the town of Diekirch, Luxembourg, which is home to a military museum that we had heard was very good and intended to visit, but we spent more time at the castle than we had originally planned, and so just wandered through town, had a small, late lunch and a cup of coffee and listened in for a while on a small festival, whose theme was related to WWII. We also saw this odd little gem keeping an eye on the town square. I felt much safer under his watchful eye as I drank my coffee.

This little guy makes sure you pay your tab

Week 60: Altstadtfest and...two castles!

On the day of the summer solstice, yes, the longest day of the year, I was in the city of Vaasa, Finland for work. Vaase is located at about the same latitude as Reykjavík, Iceland. I should have known I would be in for a tough few days, when I landed at 11pm and it barely looked like twilight, despite the fact that the city was completely covered in clouds. The next day was surreal. It looked like mid-afternoon far into the night. I couldn't, for the the life of me keep the light out of my hotel room. My. I had never been so jetlegged when traveling only one time zone. And, the crazy thing about this place, was that people didn't have the rolling shutters on their windows like they do in Germany. I don't know how they sleep...maybe they do it all in the winter, when they have 20 hours of darkness.

Around 9pm in Vaasa

After I made it home and had a good night's sleep on Friday, Jason and I met up with the Luxembourg Ex-Pat group in the nearby city of Trier for the Altstadtfest (roughly: Old-Town Fest). It was the standard German festival, with plenty of food, beer, wine and various forms of entertainment. We watched a couple cover bands at one stage, then visited the cathedral with a few of the ex-pats. One of the cover bands called out Jason for rocking out and playing air guitar to "Breakfast at Tiffany's" by Deep Blue Something. Jason *swears* he was doing it ironically and was composing a progressive interpretation of the song in his head. I'll leave it to you to decide if he was telling the truth.

This band liked Jason's air guitar

So, the next day it was raining. And, what better thing to do in the rain in Germany, than to go to Luxembourg and visit castles? So, we did just that. Our first castle was Beaufort Castle in eastern Luxembourg. We had been here before, about a year ago, but they were having a concert at the castle when we arrived, so we weren't able to to tour it. This time, no concert, so we took our umbrella and looked around.

Jason, an umbrella and a castle

There was nothing particularly remarkable about the castle, but it did have some nice tall towers to climb into and a number of passages to explore.

Jason looks at a Beaufort Castle

Our next stop was the castle in Larochette. We had traveled through Larochette a couple months ago when we were hiking with the ex-pat group. We didn't have the time (or, frankly, the energy) to visit the castle as we walked through the town, so we returned on our own. It was very wet out at that point, so we didn't spend too much time exploring the the ruins, but inside one of the restored buildings were a series of exhibits by local artists--I was particularly found of Alice Niederkorn's work. There were a few pieces I might have been interested in taking home, but we can't hang things on our walls...

Ruined Castle at Larochette

Week 57: Abtei and Luxembourg Photographers

Jason's boss is an A-10 pilot. As one coworker of mine said when I told him that "OMG! That is the coolest boss ever!" (That was in front of his boss, so he quickly backpedaled...) But, as happens with most military jobs, he will be rotating out of Germany and out of flying the A-10 within the next few months. As these rotations tend to come in waves, there were a number of pilots who were moving on at the same time, so the squadron had a farewell dinner for them all.

The dinner was hosted at Abtei Himmerod, located about 15-20 minutes from our place and is home to some ridiculously strong beer (10.5% alcohol content--that is much closer to wine...). We had the options of a few different German meals. Jason selected the Moechskloss (potato dumpling), whose correct spelling, with the German letters, is shown in the picture below. 

What would you like for dinner?

The farewell dinner was interesting, as no one wanted anyone to speak for very long, but each person did. And, this was despite the fact that they had a bowl of water full of ice at the front where everyone spoke. While speaking, the speaker had to have his hand in the bowl of water. It seemed to me to not be much of a deterrent since (1) these guys are in the military and have to put up with crap like that all the time and (2) they were sucking down the 10.5% alcohol beers like they were going out of style.

On Sunday we went off to Luxembourg for the afternoon. We were planning on doing Happy Mosel, where the road next to the Mosel is closed and becomes a huge bike way, as we did last year, but when we woke up it was PORING rain, so we decided to avoid making our selves into the wet and, likely, unhappy people we would become after riding our bikes for 2 to 4 hours in the rain. Instead, we visited a photo museum in Luxembourg.

The museum is located in one of Luxembourg's casemates (we've toured other sections on a couple of occasions) and is named, appropriately, Am Tunnel. Two Luxembourgish artists were featured. The first, is a sport photographer, Arthur Thill, who does photography particularly of F1 and Olympic sports (currently his site is showing snaps of the EuroCup). Check out this award-winning series of photos of a Formula 1 race in Germany, where some errant fuel was ignited. Very dramatic.

The other photographer on display was Edward Steichen. Steichen is really only a passing Luxembourger, having moved to the US with his parents when he was very young. He is, though, quite famous (in the right set) for curating a photo exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in NY called The Family of Man, which went on tour around the world and was seen by over 9 million people. They had some information in this exhibit regarding his work, but the actual Family of Man exhibit (the last one left) is located in northern Luxembourg. That goes on our list! For 2013 (it is closed until then...)!

After visiting the museum, we got a coffee and walked around a bit, finding the crew of Asian tourists taking photos of each other in front of Dunk Henri's palace. Sort of a meta picture, I suppose.

The Duke's Palace, in many photos

For the evening, we caught up with the meetup group at a pub and did a pub quiz. We came in second, but by only three points. On the way back to the car, we saw a little piece of home in a shop window...go Celts!

Evidently, the Celtics vacation in Luxembourg

Week 54: Adventure Park!

As you can probably guess, when we get any chance of a break in the weather, we like to spend as much time outside as possible. We had the opportunity a couple of weekends to go with the Luxembourg Ex-Pat group to an adventure park (okay...that is crazy...I can't believe there is actually a Wikipedia page for adventure parks). An adventure park is also known as a rope course and is where that special group of kids went in high school to learn "leadership" skills (or, I can only assume...I was never part of that group...they always talked about some awesome thing called a ropes course, so I figure this was it). The idea is you have a bunch of platforms up in trees with "elements" between them that you need to navigate. These will be things such as rope bridges, or other methods previously only seen in movies for crossing deep ravines.

Jason crossing a lava pit

The park we visited (Parc Le'h Adventures) is located in Dudelange, Luxembourg. This was not our first time at such a park. We had also visited one on the MA, NY boarder (Catamount) a couple times in the last few years--it is equally as awesome, so if you ever have the chance, I *highly* recommend it.

Zipline!

One of the best parts about the adventure parks we have been to, are the zip lines. (Quite frankly, I work my way through the other elements just to get to the zip lines.) You can see me on one in the photo below. In the US, they give you gloves with your other gear when you check in, so you can slow yourself down a bit on the zip lines without chewing up your hands. In Luxembourg, they didn't give us gloves, but instead had well padded trees, so injury was (generally) avoided.

The end of a zip line

There are a number of different courses at these parks and each varies in difficulty, starting with the kiddie courses for the young ones and those not so comfortable with heights, going to those primarily intended for Navy Seals or teenage boys. Since Jason and I had some experience with them, we started with the second hardest, which was pretty good for us. We then did the course two levels below the first and then the one one level below the first, making it through 3 courses in total. Most of our companions weren't quite a quick/comfortable and made it each only through 2. We did, though, have one member of our group who tried the hardest course, which included a "Tarzan" swing, which required swinging from about 35 feet in the air on a rope to catch a 4 foot wide cargo net that was hanging opposite at a similar height (don't worry, there is *plenty* of safety gear). Unfortunately, he missed grabbing the cargo net, so the staff had to pull him down with a ladder, but he had a great time trying, which is really all that matters.

Oh, and did I mention we had a perfect day out in the woods?

Week 52: Ex-Pat Meetups!

Wow! Week 52! We've been here in Germany for a year now and are still quite enjoying ourselves. There are still more castles to see...

We've been participating on-and-off with an ex-pat group in Luxembourg for events such as Burgbrennen and a hot air balloon festival. A few weekends ago we participated in two events. The first was a hike through some of the hills and villages of Luxembourg. The hike ended up being about 22.5 km and resulted in some fantastic blisters on the backs of my heals due to my boots, which, evidently, weren't quite as worn in as I had thought. (I had to wear shoes quite sparingly for the two weeks following the hike--things are almost back to normal now...)

Despite the pain that tends to cause to such large blisters, we both had quite a good time, as can be seen in the picture below. The group we were hiking with included a couple Germans, a South African, a Canadian, a Bulgarian, a Luxembourger, maybe people from a couple other places, plus us Americans. (Luxembourg is great like that--there are people from absolutely everywhere.) And the weather was perfect. Oh, and the place where we ended our hike was having an opening celebration, which included free aps and drinks.

Enjoying the Hike

The hike was on Saturday. I spent much of Sunday keeping the backs of my feet away from just about everything. I do have to say, though, that Spyroflex coverings work really well, though it seems they are no longer manufactured (based on my Google search) and makes me wonder just how long I have had them in my med kit. By the evening, Jason was able to convince me to try my sneakers, which wasn't much more comfortable than the boots, but we made it to Luxembourg City, to join another group of ex-pats for a pub quiz.

Our group had a Moroccan, an Italian and Jason and I. We did alright in the first round, coming in 3rd, but blew everyone away in the second round, and ended up winning 18 EUR apiece! Nice! One of my personal contributions was knowing who William Cody was better known as. I don't think a single other person in that bar knew that answer--I've been to a ranch of his in North Platte, Nebraska many years ago.

This was only the second pub-quiz I have ever been privy to. The first was a little less than a year ago in Norway. The entire pub quiz was in Norwegian, though, so my coworker and I didn't participate. This didn't stop him from getting two questions right, despite not knowing a word of Norwegian. He was lucky, though--he's Canadian and the answer to both questions was Canada.

All-in-all, a very good weekend, meeting some people from all over the world. With the bonus of coming out 18 EUR richer and with (hopefully) a pair of boots that are a bit more worn in and ready for the next hike.

Week 48: Our Second Visitor

Well, it has been about 9 months, but we had our second visitor a few weeks ago. While you may recall our last visitor was a friend of mine, this time we were joined by a friend of Jason's. We took him to a number of sights that we have visit before, including the Manderscheid Castles, Burg Eltz (a place where we went with our last visitor) and Luxemburg's Casemates.  

Jason, his Long Time Friend and Manderscheid's Niederburg 

Luxembourg City

We, of course, found some fantastic new things, including the slide in the picture below. You may recall a previous slide we had found in Germany. The one was located in a playground in Luxembourg City. I don't have a video (our guest tried, but the video did not really come out very well since the slide is covered), but can attest to it be quite awesome, though the climb up was a bit awkward as it was meant for much smaller people. And no, we did not push kids out of the way to go down the slide...we calmly waited our turn.

Awesome Slide!

Not shown in the photo above is the rest of the playground, which was just as cool. It looked like a pirate ship! And even included a crow's nest that you could climb into. Additionally there was the swing set, shown in the movie below, where kids got to have the excitement of almost swinging into each other, but due to the mathematics of the paths, never did. And, the best part, which I also don't have documentary evidence of, but I have seen in a number of other European playgrounds was an Archimedes's screw and a set of dams and pumps so you can be the Army Corps of Engineers and manage the water flow through the area. European playgrounds are awesome and teach kids about math, science and engineering! It is like spending the day at the MOS! (On a side note--the Boston Museum of Science's web address is mos.org--Jason just wondered if MIT might have provided some help in getting them such a name.)

With our last visitor, we had visited Burg Eltz, which is the old castle in Europe that is still owned by one of the original families, and large section of it was under renovation. As can be seen in the picture below, they are not yet complete and we still get to see a crane with the castle, though much of the other work has been completed and really looks great compared to the scaffolding we saw on our last visit.

Burg Eltz with a Crane

We sent our visitor off with a dramatic train catch. I rushed in and bought his ticket, while he grabbed his bag. We hurried up to the platform, and just as we stepped off the escalator, the passengers were stepping off the freshly arrived train. I've been riding the train a lot in the past year and that is the most perfect timing I have ever been involved in--talk about luck. Two minutes later and we would have missed it!

Week 43: Buergbrennen

A note to all US readers! The images and videos below do not take place in your culture! And thereby do not carry the cultural baggage associated with such images in the US.


We are starting to see the beginnings of spring here in central Europe and one indication of this was Buergbrennen, a festival in Luxembourg City to mark the first Sunday in Lent and the coming of spring. The festival consists of a torchlight procession from the cliffs where most of the city sits to the valley below. In the valley is a large cross which contains, what looks like, dry Christmas trees. After a bit of ceremony, the members of the procession toss their torches into the pile of hay at the base of the cross and the whole thing goes up in a big ball of flame.

Torchlight Procession

Cross prior to Flames

Cross in full Flaming Mode

Of course, since this is central Europe, you can get a waffle or two, a beer and even soup from the stands brought in for such festivities. We found out about the festival through the ex-pat group in Luxembourg and had the chance to meet some Americans and other non-natives in the area. Despite the knowledge that this is a traditional festival for this region, I have to say, we still felt a little uncomfortable gathering around and watching a cross burn--it is amazing how deep-seated cultural identifications can be.

Week 39: Munich

We spent the last weekend in January in Munich. I was in the area for work for the end of the week, then headed out to Austria on Sunday late in the day, so it was a convenient trip. Jason flew down from the Luxembourg airport (he, like me, is now converted to flying Luxair--you get a sandwich, a real, good, sandwich, and a drink on a one hour flight in economy--the only way to fly!) and we met up at the apartment that we rented through AirBnB (if you aren't familiar with AirBnB, it is a site where people can put their extra rooms or even their whole apartment up for rent for a day or a month--we've used it a number of times here in Europe and it is pretty great). The apartment happened to be over a yoga studio. This was our second apartment rented through AirBnB that was over a yoga studio...the lasts one being in France. I wonder if that is a hint from the universe...

For our first evening, we walked around Munich near the Marienplatz and came across a rather good group of street musicians. More of a street quintet. It is hard to see in the video but the flute player appeared to have a broken finger. Talk about suffering for art. After we watched the group for a bit, we found some food that is hard for us to find in our hinterland: Japanese noodle soup. It was good and hit the spot on the chilly night.

The next day we walked over to the Bavarian National Museum, which is one of my favorite types of museums: those with rambling halls and a wide variety of a stuff that is well curated. We spent about 3 hours checking our the wide variety of stuff: from a Tiffany lamp to the statue of Death shown in the photo below. Death, here, is from a clock tower and the bone in his right hand rang the bell. I kinda want this in my living room.

Death Rings for his Supper

We took a walk from the museum to the downtown area, passing by one of Munich's larger parks. I had remembered reading briefly in our guidebook about the fact that you could go surfing at one of the parks. They have an artificial wave built up on one of the streams, and people grab their little surfboards and go at it. I was not expecting, though, for anyone to be out this time of year, especially in the 20-25 degree F weather that Munich was seeing that weekend. Well, as you can see in the video below, my expectations were wrong. These guys were out in their full-body wet suits, many with hoods, to surf in weather that was only borderline-good for being outdoors.

We spent a couple hours on Sunday at the Deutsches Museum, which is another museum of my ilk, with a huge amount of exhibit space and well curated collections. I was reminded of the Henry Ford Museum, which Jason and I had visited about a year ago in Dearborn, MI, but the Deutsches Museum was organized far better than the Henry Ford and did not have a vague smell of hot dogs from the Wienermobile permeating all the exhibits.

For those of you who are a fan of the Theater of Electricity at the Museum of Science in Boston, the Deutsches Museum had a bit of a smaller venue, but a similar show. We walked in in the middle, just as the host was getting his last shock in his Faraday cage (the ball on the left in the linked photo). Don't worry folks! He was fine--the Faraday cage protects you from the shocks. Once the host climbed out of the cage, there were a series of high voltage demos, that went as follows:

Host: "Achtung!"

Crowd: (Covers ears)

Electricity: "ZAP! POP!"

Displayed Item that was Just Hit by the Electricity: (Catches on fire)

which is always a good time. 

Week 27: Short Days

As winter is creeping up on us, our days are growing remarkably shorter, with the sun rising around eight in the morning and setting around 4:30 in the afternoon. We've also been having quite a bit of fog, which tends to last until around noon-time then comes back again after the sun sets. This gives us all the more reason to get outside while the sun is up. 

As I mentioned in an earlier post, many of the towns in our area have hiking/walking trials that take you through the countryside around the town. In our area, there are a series of nordic walking trails (yes, you use poles--it is crazy...just look at the link). Our town, like many of the other sites, has three: a 3.6 km, a 8 km and a 15.9 km. We decided to do the longest, which passes near our apartment, works its way down a significant hill, then follows along the Kyll River before coming back through the village of Preist and through fields back into our town.

One road proceeds through a yellow wood...

The weather was perfect for being out hiking: nice, crisp fall weather, with no clouds and bright sun. As the afternoon wore on, we noticed the moon in the sky...

...which stayed put as the sun set.

The last part of the hike was through the woods. With the sun setting, it was getting dark very quickly. Luckily, I had asked Jason to throw his headlamp in the bag we were carrying. He was very excited to use it, and tried many of the settings as we were walking along. For your own reference, a blinking-white headlamp does not give the best view of the upcoming trail.

This portion of the trail was well known to me, as it is where I go mountain biking during the week. Right near the main path into the woods, there is a shrine, as you often seen throughout the countryside here in Europe. This one looks like a tiny church and is very well maintained. It includes a small pew and some kneelers, along with some long burning candles and a number of plaques thanking for the help of Mary and Jesus. I have passed by it many times, but had never stopped for a close look. It was a nice place to rest for a few moments with the quiet autumn darkness closing in around us.

Our total hiking time was about 4.5 hours. We started at about 2pm with the mid-afternoon sun, and by the time we were back home, it was completely dark out.

On Sunday, we went to Vianden Castle in Vianden Luxembourg. You may recall that about a month ago, we were in Vianden for a hike. This time, I was flying out for a work trip for Luxembourg in the evening, so we decided to stop by and visit the castle itself. The castle was completely rebuilt in the 1970s and 80s from a complete ruin. Now it is quite nice, with a number of spaces that look like they are used for events and possibly even royal occasions.

Vianden Castle

In the castle, there was an exhibit about Charlotte, the Grand Duchess of Luxembourg. Unfortunately, we could only understand snatches of it, as most of it was in Luxembourgish, with a smattering of French and German. Anyway, Charlotte was the leader of Luxembourg during WWII and, from what we could gather, she lived in exile during much of that time in England. From looking at the history, that makes sense, as the Germans invaded Luxembourg on their way to France. She later abdicated in favor of her son. The current ruler of Luxembourg is Henri, her grandson. The castle was a good visit and had some great views of the surrounding area.

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 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.

Week 15: The Tunnels Under Luxemburg

We spent some more time in Luxemburg this weekend, but in the capital city instead of one of the outlying towns. It was quite wet in our region of Europe, so we decided to visit more of an indoor attraction than we normally do for weekends, and visited the casements under the city.

There are two separate sites to visit. We weren't clear on that and visited the least popular first, which turned out in many ways to be the cooler of the two sites. First, there were fewer people around, so we could explore a bit easier without having lots of people in our way and second, they were darker and danker, as you can see in the photo of Jason below. It was very cool and only a little creepy. What kept the creepy factor a bit lower was that the casements are located in one of the city walls and intended for defensive purposes. If you want something to be defensive, at least in the 1600s when these were first built, you need a place to fire your cannons. As a result, as you work your way deeper into the tunnels, you find places with sunlight, which seems odd when you've spent 10 minutes walking in tunnels.

Jason in the Casements

The casements were also used during WWII as bomb shelters. Looking at them now, I think Londoners made out much better sitting the Tube than Luxemburgers did in these dank, narrow tunnels. One evidence of this is the sign shown on the wall in the photo below: "Don't forget the sand". It was how you "flushed" after doing your business--those cubicles would be the privy.

That is how you flush ("Don't forget the sand")

The second site wasn't nearly as grim, and is known as the Bock, and is located in between the two high points in the city. The Bock was also mined to prevent invading armies of the last century from making it into the city. The mines have been removed and you can go deep within the structure to the "mine gallery" and see where they used to be. There were quite a few.

The sun decided to come out as we finished up with the Bock, so we walked around the city a bit, coming across our first mime. The act had two mimes, but the portion of the video below only has the male lead. I think the performance was something about the relationship between the two mimes. There was definitely a mimed baby for a bit. And possibly the baby died. The bit below was the male trying to cheer the female up. I think. Other interpretations are welcome in the comments.

We did some more work on our projector screen this weekend, actually buying the required cloth, stretching it over the frame and painting it. In the process of stretching the cloth, the shape of the frame was altered, so it no longer fits between the two shelves. For that reason and to remove a bit of slack that emerged when I was painting, I'll need to remove some staples and restretch at least a portion. It will also need a second coat of paint. But, we did try it out with that latest episode of Torchwood and it is much better as a screen than that sheet I stole from pre-frosh weekend all those years ago...

Weeks 12 & 13: Lots 'o Luxemburg

You can tell I am living in Germany from how I spelled Luxemburg. The French add an o before the u in burg.

We spent the last two Sunday afternoons in Luxemburg. The first Sunday there, July 24th, was a bit of a serendipitous event. Our intent was to go to Beaufort Castle, but when we arrived, they were having a "Rock the Castle" music festival, which had an admission fee. So, instead, we drove back the way we came and stopped at a pretty cool rock formation that we had passed on the way in.

A car, a rock and Jason

That was pretty neat, but we did some more driving around and found some more amazing formations, again, right next to the road. This included a few trails that went to the top of big rocks and others that went into large cracks. As someone who grew up with only a single little rock in our yard (it was between the roots of a tree and about the size of a basketball--or at least that was what stuck out of the ground), the rest being sand, I still love climbing around on rocks. (I seem to remember that I might have asked for a big rock to climb on for a birthday present at some point.)

Jason in a crack

As we were driving out of that area, known as Little Switzerland, we saw more and more cool looking places to stop, but decided we would save them for another trip to the area, as it is very close to us (about 45 minutes away). We also wanted to look into where the good bouldering spots are, as it looks like it could be quite a lot of fun to get on the side of those rocks with the right shoes on.

Now, this weekend's Luxemburg adventure was less on the naturalist side. As Jason and I are both *terrible* at meeting people, we tried forcing the issue by joining a Meetup group. We found an expat group in Luxemburg city and figured we would try hanging out with them a bit to see about meeting some folks outside of the base. The group turned out to be quite mixed--a Briton, an Amerian, a Spaniard and an Ecuadorian by way of NYC.

The destination was Echternach, which Jason and I have visited a number of times before, but this trip was specifically for the balloon festival. I have never seen a hot-air balloon up close, so though they didn't get far into the air until just after Jason and I left, I enjoyed watching them fill up the balloons and getting things floating. The highlight was getting to step inside a balloon that was being inflated. Very cool.

It was a Paulaner balloon-- unfortunately no beer inside

I would be completely remiss if I didn't also mention our activity from this Saturday. The base had it's open house, where it invites Germans to visit and check out the planes with lots of airshow like activities. While we were there, we got to see an A-10 and an F-16 fly in formation. Jason was saying that the F-16 pilot probably had a hard time matching the slower speed of the A-10.

They also had a large number of static displays of planes and plane parts. I particularly liked the view of the A-10's gun outside of its packaging. Man, that thing looks like it can pack a wallop. They had the whole plane on display as well, but the interesting parts of the plane (other than the gun) are all in the redundant design features that are far more interesting to read (or hear) about than to see in person.

A-10 Gun

Oh, and we had some fantastic food while we were at the airshow. The different groups on base each had their own booths. The one that was selling hamburgers and hotdogs and another selling ribs had the longest lines. We instead chose to eat from the Filipino booth. And it was a good decision. On a final note, Jason heard from one of his colleagues that German teens caused his group's booth to sell out of Mountain Due and Doctor Pepper. Evidently, teens are the same everywhere. 

Week 4: Out and About in the Eifel

The area of Germany where we are living is the Eifel region. It has a lot of rolling hills, looking a lot to me like Pennsylvania or upstate New York. We had a long weekend for Memorial Day (yay US holidays!), so took a bit trip to a few interesting places in the area.

On Saturday we went to Luxembourg City and the Luxembourg American Cemetery and Memorial. The cemetery was having a Memorial Day service, of which we were able to see the last 30 or so minutes. We missed the flyover, but did get to hear Taps, the US National Anthem (really, after hearing that, it should only ever be played by military bands--there is no comparison to the tinny version played over loud speakers or sung a cappella at your favorite sporting event), the Luxembourg National Anthem and the 21 gun salute. There were a number of wreaths placed as well, with the oversea Boy and Girl Scouts helping to place them. They, luckily, had some Airmen helping them out, as in many cases, the wreaths were a bit much for 2 or 3 8-10 year-olds to manage.

The majority of the dead here were killed as part of battles in the Ardennes during late 1944 and early 1945. There is one particularly notable VIP here: Gen. Patton, whose grave (as you can see) got a lot of attention.

Gen. Patton's Grave

The other dead, while not forgotten, were not as heavily remembered.

Some of the 5,076 dead from the battles in the Ardennes

The tower in the back is the cemetery chapel. It is a nice little room with a guest book and space to contemplate and, if you are so inclined, pray. Jason took a look through the guest book and there were people from all over the world, including Europe, Australia and from all across the US. It was a nice, though somber, place to spend an afternoon.

On our way back home, we stopped in the town of Echternach, Luxembourg. Jason is planning to come back here later this summer for the dancing procession, during which time I will be in Chicago. We stopped by to stretch our legs a bit, and found there was a small festival going on in town, so we wondered through, had some beer and a bag full of cherries. There were a couple of bachelorette parties among the people groups, complete with coordinated t-shirts and glasses of Champaign--or more probably, Sekt (i.e. Champaign not from the Champaign region of France). We also heard, and then saw, the Dixie-Land style band pictured below, complete with banjo. I am a big fan of such, music, so we listened for a few minutes before moving on.

♪ I wanna go back to the southland,
That "y'all" and "shet-ma-mouth" land ♪

On Sunday, we went to the town of Pruem, where they were celebrating Rhineland-Pfalz Tag. It is a regional fair and had a fantastic parade where each community in the state of Rhineland-Pfalz had a separate float. I've captured a few of the best below. There was, of course, plenty of food--particularly Bratwurst--and an opportunity to see the wares of local vendors. The midway, though, was a bit weak, with only a Ferris Wheel. Each of the groups in the parade also had a booth, where they were handing out their local tourist information. We grabbed a few handfuls, to help us with trip ideas for the rest of the summer.

This alchemist is yelling at his grad student

Germany: Home of Dragons

Today we spent time closer to home, with a trip to Trier. I'll post more about Trier another time. It is the closest large city and has many interesting sites. We also received news that our stuff will finally be here on Friday--at last, the rest of my clothes, our computer and pots and pans. I have a feeling we will spend most of next weekend unpacking as a result. I really, though, am looking most forward to the arrival of my bike, hiking boots and rollerblades. I can't wait to get out on the countryside!