Happy Weekend!
So, we made our way back from Colmberg through Rothenburg and really enjoyed the drive. The area we saw (if you want to look it up) is best outlined by Heidelberg to the west, Heilbronn to the south and Colmberg to the east. We felt that geographically it reminded us of the the area east of a line from Buffalo-to-Pittsburgh and into central New York and central Pennsylvania.
There was lots of farm land, which is something that can be said of France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany, as a whole. They shouldn’t be looking for imports from the United States. And, there were some rolling hills, often including more creative farm land. We found the organization of living very interesting. We kept seeing how pristine the farm land was, with small asphalt roads (no dirt roads) and no fences or other barriers. We then realized that there also were no farm homes and barns. So, where were they? Yes, the farm homes are bunched in villages and sometimes small cities. The barns were typically attached to the homes, with these bunches usually being about ten units, but often times more. It was fascinating to see and we had no knowledge of this system of living and operating farms (maybe we’ve been living in a cave).
We stopped and looked around many of these villages and cities and were surprised to see so few people. We don’t know where they were? In one small city we stopped at a meat market and the meat looked great. We got some slices of bologna (not what they called it) and salami, which is what they call it in Germany. There’s no such thing as bologna in France and the salami doesn’t taste like U.S. and German salami. There was almost no multi-family housing and the single family homes were not leaning on each other as they are in France. There’s normal size roads and streets (like the U.S.) and usually plenty of places to park. None of that is true in France. Also, while almost all cars are very small in France with very small parking stalls, there are generally bigger cars in Germany (about like the U.S.), and from our experience yesterday and today, plenty of room to park and normal U.S. size parking stalls. See the photo of the homes in Aglasterhausen and an example of the barn being with the house right on the main street of town. And, a photo of the bakery we stopped at in Aglasterhausen.
Heidelberg is noted as a great tourist town. It has a rather substantial old town (didn’t get bombed), where our old hotel is located. We got some later afternoon and evening photos in old town, starting with an ice rink set-up for the holidays with the usual eating huts. The building lit up by a the Christmas tree is a hotel. You also see a church steeple (my gosh are there a lot of church steeples in Europe). You get a shot of the outside of the restaurant we just had dinner at (I love the Germans and their food), the inside of it and Marlene exhibiting her typical pleasantness. It’s so nice to be in a restaurant with any number of dishes you’d love to have. Marlene and Keaka (Sophia stayed in the hotel) had steak (one from Ireland and the other from Omaha), which Marlene said was okay, like her steak the other night in Dusseldorf. The specialty of the house was pork knuckle, which I had with bread dumplings and corn on the cob. Having had pork cordon bleu (the ham and cheese was great) with potato cakes last night at the castle, I’m getting spoiled. We joked with the waitress about German food being so good compared to the French food we’ve been eating. She perked up and told a couple of stories about bad French food and how her friend recently lived in France for six months and had problems with the food and was thrilled to get back to Germany. Back to French food for us in a few days.
On the German train to Karlsruhe tomorrow, transferring there to a French train to go to Strasbourg, just over the border into France. One night there and on the train home on Sunday.
The Wilsons
