What's been going on lately...

     Leesa and I are hitting our stride here in Freiburg. We've found our way around, gotten acquainted with the Church members fairly well, and put on a lot of meals for folks, and Leesa has been getting a lot of knitting done. One of her key projects is the knitting of small washcloths in the shape of hearts, and giving them as small gifts.

(Heart in progress)

    In addition, she's come up with the idea of making gifts of them, along with chocolate bars, to our friends here on their birthdays. Which brings us to the next subject, going out to the birthday folks where they live. The Freiburg ward takes in a lot of territory (rough estimate: 400-500 square kilometers), and a lot of the members live in pretty rural areas. 

    Our first foray into presenting the birthday gifts took us out of town a fair piece, and along the way, we were rewarded with some absolutely gorgeous views of the Black Forest.

(East of Freiburg in St. Märgen)

    After this stop, we visited the fruit stand in the town of Himmelreich (Kingdom of Heaven) about 15 km east of us. How this tiny dorf got its name is a point of interest. As you follow the road (Hwy 31) east of town, you start climbing the mountain to go further eastward toward Munich, Austria, and farther out. As you climb, there are a number of hairpin turns, and in previous centuries, was a haven for highwaymen to rob wagons who had to ascend and descend the mountain slowly, making them easy to catch. Once clear of the turns, you were safe, and they likened the safety of the small town to being in Heaven, so they named it Himmelreich.

    On a trip out of town, I noticed the fruit stand as we passed by, and the size of the watermelons looked huge, and I made it a point to return. Well, last Friday, on our way to Neuschwanstein castle (more on that below), we did indeed stop and picked up a watermelon as big as any I'd ever bought in the U.S.A. The owner picked one out for us, thumped it with his finger, and it rang like a church bell. We also bought cherries the size of golf balls, some discount saffron (I'm getting into cooking risotto), dried cantaloupe wedges, and some really huge homegrown tomatoes.

    We saved the watermelon for our weekly Institute dinner on Wednesday, and it did not disappoint, sweet and crispy all the way. Best watermelon we'd had in years, and WAY better than those seedless, tasteless bowling balls they sell back in California.

    There is a big cultural difference between the German states of Baden-Württemberg (southwest, where we live) and Bayern (Bavaria) on the southeast corner, where München (Munich) is the capital. Bavaria is the home of Oktoberfest, lederhosen, and flower boxes in the windows of houses. We were reminded of this when we arrived at the town of Grainau, where our hotel was the night before our visit to Neuschwanstein.

    Seems like everywhere we drive in the Alpine German-speaking Mission, we are treated to beautiful scenery. Indeed, it's hard to keep from getting spoiled and taking it all for granted. The next day, we made our way to the castle.

    Past a certain point on the tour, they don't allow photography, but these were taken directly in front of the castle outside the tour entrance. 

    Closer to home, followers of this blog saw that in April, we bought Leesa a dirndl from a shop here in Freiburg. At the time, they didn't have any lederhosen in my size, so we special-ordered a pair. Well, we got a call last week, so we hustled on down to Leder Rees to pick them up. Here are the results:

    Our car's GPS has taken us to a lot of out-of-the-way places in its efforts to get around traffic jams, including a couple of gravel roads here and there, and through any number of colorful and interesting towns, We found this passing through one of them:

("Watch out for hedgehogs! Please drive slowly")

    California and many other states have deer crossings, Texas has armadillo crossings, but here in Germany, it's hedgehogs.

    Last Sunday after church, Leesa and I packed our bags for a two-night stay in Amsterdam. That would have been unthinkable back in the old days, to leave mission boundaries, but this is a new day and a new age, and as previously reported in these precincts, rules for senior couples are pretty much out the window. So we planned to meet our eldest and youngest children, Anna and Katy at a hotel in central Amsterdam, right on one of the canals on a street called Prinzengracht.

    We got in to the train station about 10 p.m., and took an Uber to the hotel. I promptly found that my cell phone had fallen out of my pocket in the Uber, which would have spelled untold misery if Mohammed, the driver, hadn't graciously returned it to us at the hotel. Yes, he got a big tip.

    We met Anna and Katy the following morning at breakfast, and saw the Anne Frank house, and took a tour of the canals in a boat. Leesa and the girls then went to the Rijksmuseum, where Leesa spent her time adoring the Rembrandts. I was kinda pooped from the walk to (and through) the Anne Frank house, so I grabbed a nap. We came home the next day, while the girls are off to Greece, then Italy.

    

    Lastly, we've been in Switzerland a lot at the Temple near Bern, doing work for my mom's German family. After that, we took a short hop over to Bonstetten, a suburb of Zürich, to visit one of the young sister missionaries to whom we'd gotten quite close in Freiburg, Sister Pérez, along with her companion, a young French girl named Sister Breant. 

    We wanted to visit with Sister Pérez one last time before she goes home on August 9th, to Mexico. So I found an adorable little restaurant, Felsenegg, on the side of a mountain overlooking Zürich. You can only get to the restaurant by riding a gondola up the mountainside, and then taking a short walk along a wooded gravel path, a fun adventure.

(Sisters Pérez and Breant in the gondola, along with a nice British family on vacation from London)

    Once at the restaurant (food was amazing!), we had a breathtaking view of Zürich.

    Well, that's just about it for this post, but be on the lookout for new stuff in the next two weeks, when we'll visit Leesa's greenie city on her first mission, Koblenz. Every August, they have what's called the Rhein in Flammen (Rhine in Flames) in which all the castles on the rivers are lit up with phosphorus to simulate them being on fire, along with big fireworks shows. We'll be on a tour boat on the river during that show. The next day, Sunday, we'll visit the Koblenz branch. Maybe there'll be somebody who remembers her, as some of the Frauenfeld members remembered me. 

    We take a one-day break, then we're off for a week to Dachau (one of the first Nazi concentration camps), Berchtesgaden (Hitler's Eagle's Nest, which was liberated by the famous Easy Company of the Band of Brothers TV series), Salzburg (home of the von Trapps), Chiemsee, and Innsbruck, Austria.

    See you soon!