A Week in Spring

The best part of the Spring season is not the allergies (achoooo!) but the bright yellow raps fields just like at home.  We have enjoyed seeing these.  They are now using raps oil for biofuel here.  Spring has also brought a seasonal cold so we have been a little down this week but we did go to Chemnitz for a Zone Conference and an interview with the mission president.

This is our district when the two in the middle first came here.  We now have a new DL,   Elder Lichner, a German from Stuttgart.

A part of the zone at conference in Chemnitz.  The two sisters are both new and serving in Chemnitz.  Sister Kosak is barely visible in the back.  Pres Kosak said we have about 270 missionaries in our mission with more coming.

We did visit some interesting places this week while trying to make contact with some inactive members.  One is the Fabar-Castelle plant in Geroldsgrun.  We bought some pencils and found a mushroom house.

Last weekend our Primary had their bike ride.  We met them at the park for lunch and brought the drinks.  I finally got a picture of the climbing part of the park.  There are zip lines across a part of the lake too and one near the kinderpark where we ate which Elder Anderson could not resist.

He is climbing out to retrieve the pulley (barely visible on the left) thinking he could hang on to it and ride...didn't work.

We also visited Zwickau city center and another museum castle in Oelsnitz which was disappointing because they only had rocks...it was a mineral museum in an old castle rather than a castle museum.

pictures from the middle ages....well sort of

This is the guy who went to Texas and made a bunch of money without getting out of the airport.

His stuff was classy.

Games for adults and children.  Don't really know which one these are.

This one is definitely a kid.  

The fun part about living here is there are actual vestiges of the Middle Ages still intact despite the many fires and sieges and wars.  This is part of the wall dating from the 1100's on the North end of the old city part and below is another part on the South end near our apartment.

The Day Dad Killed the Bread

Some days are memorable.
It all started with the birds - a 4:30 a.m. waking us up with their chirping and of course we couldn't go back to sleep so we got up, cleaned up, and drove to the temple in Freiburg, about 1 and 1/2 hours away.  We don't always trust 'Thelma', the navi we bought from the former couple here, so we didn't follow her directions but went through Chemnitz instead.  This worked out well because it took up the extra half hour we would have had to wait for the session to begin.

Of course our time at the temple was wonderful.  I am now able to sit through the whole thing in German and understand it.  We saw several of our JAE (YSA in English) because they were having a young adult conference at the temple.  We also saw two of the members from Chemnitz while we had lunch with the young adult group.  That is when we saw Daniel Lange who we had known as an 18 year old when we were in Chemnitz the last time.  It was also nice to visit with two other CES couples serving in Hamburg, the Nutalls, and in Dresden, the Tennys.

It was raining the whole time but that doesn't matter when there is sunshine in your soul.  The biggest accomplishment was staying awake the whole time.

We left about 2 and returned on the road toward Chemnitz becasue I wanted to get a picture of some decked logs I had seen.  We are collecting notations of things that are the same but different here.  Decked logs for instance. 

 Never would we see this neat of a pile in Idaho. The truck you see is also smaller than any of the trucks at home and the logs are cut to about 10 feet in length.  We have occasionally seen a truck load of longer logs but most are about this length and hauled in sections on the trucks.  The one below has two sections but we have seen up to four sections.

After we got the picture we decided to again ignore Thelma and head toward the freeway rather than back through the traffic of Chemnitz.  We turned off the main two lane road at Oederon and headed north on a little one lane road (with traffic going both ways at about 60 mph.  Then we came to the accident.  We only saw the police cars and a white van totally sideways on the roadway (remember it was raining).  So we followed the other cars down a dirt lane, luckily not meeting an oncoming traffic, and only bottomed out in the tiny Opel one time.  We finally got back on a larger road after going through a little village and ended up meeting the autobahn only 13 K from Chemnitz.

It is a good thing we enjoy the rural countryside.  We saw a lot of it today.  The raps fields are just starting to bloom.  This plant is also grown in Idaho and we can see the bright yellow fields in the distance on the prairie from our front window.  At home this plant is called variously rape or canola.

When we got back to Hof we drove through town to the park where our ward is having an activity tomorrow.  We are in charge of getting the barbeque going and we wanted to pick out a place at the park.  While we were there  we got distracted watching people in the climbing park.  I didn't take pictures but here is the web site  www.kletterpark-untreusee.de  This looked so fun.  We spent about an hour watching a father and daughter climb and talking to a man up in a tree about 30 feet above us.  We have got to do this before we go home.  Don't tell the mission president.

We got to the apartment about 6 and then had to go grocery shopping.  We couldn't yesterday because it was another holiday - another same but different.  They have about 20x more days off than we do.  So now we come to the bread.  They sell their bread in whole loaves and you can use the slicer to cut the loaves you choose to buy.  Dad sliced one loaf and then found another one which was still warm.  It ended up looking like this.

When he showed it to me it was all smashed up it a plastic bag.  The clerk couldn't even tell which bread it was in order to charge us for it.  They have about 35 different kinds of bread so it was no easy task to figure out which one to run through the register and of course the line behind us was very long.  Everyone was patient though so that was good.  Dad has learned you cannot slice warm bread.  Another small event during the shopping trip.  A young man tapped me on the shoulder and told me the tag on my shirt was sticking up and I UNDERSTOOD WHAT HE WAS TELLING ME.  Made my day.

Last weekend we went to a Middle Ages Fest at the park here in Hof.  It reminded us of the Rendezvous at home.  One man we spoke to had a booth of helmets, mail, and weapons.  He said he had taken his ware to a show in Dallas and made a lot of money but the show had to be on the airport grounds because the authorities wouldn't let them take all those weapons into the country.  Afraid of guys with swords taking over Texas I guess.

Germany is much better than Idaho about signs telling you where you need to go, like this one which is easily translatable.

And they do have a marvelous sense of humor.  How is this for a tool shed in your yard?


Actually today was a great day and we are having a marvelous time.  We are making progress in the work as well. 

SPRING

 Yeah spring!  After so many gray days sunshine is very welcome.  The first gloriously sunny day we drove out away from town and took a walk in the country.  This is one of the farmsteads called a Dreieck or three corner.  The three buildings include the house and barns and create a Hof or farmyard in the middle.  the word hof is basically 'yard' but is used for train station and farmyard and several other meanings.  I think this city may have gotten the name because in the early middle ages it had a place to stop for pilgrims who were sick.  The oldest buildings outside the city walls were a hospital church.

 The trees are beginning to leaf out.  This view of the center of town is from the opposite end to where we live.  The two towers furthest away are those out our window, the Catholic Church built in the 1700's.  The white tower is the city hall and the other church is the Lutheran church originally built in the 1500's.

 Theresienstein is a palace built on the hillside south of the city center.  We walked around the park on another sunny day and enjoyed the gardens and spring flowers.  My allergies didn't enjoy the pollens, my eyes especially, so this week we are having our first experience visiting a German doctor.

Theresienstein includes a fake fortress ruin built in the 1800's as a monument to a visit from some king.  They are having a middle ages fair there this weekend.

 As you can see the farmers are beginning to work their fields.  Dave calls this vehicle a 'honeydew' wagon.  It is animal waste fertilizer which is hauled to the fields making a springlike aroma not so common in the cities.  We followed this one as we went to Selb to teach our investigator, Mr. Bär.  (pronounced bear)

 Spring also means we had to take the mission vehicle to Schwarzenburg, one of our favorite towns, to have the tires changed.  Several other mission couples were scheduled on the same day so afterwards we all went out to lunch and visited Schwarzenburg Castle and museum.

 May first is a holiday here.  Various small towns have a Maypole and a Hexenfeuer (witch's fire).  We took the young elders with us to Burgk, a castle we wanted to see.  We saw a giant fire pit where the small town had their Hexenfeuer the night before.  Originally the belief was that on the night of April 30 to May first the witches meet with the devil.  So now they have a bonfire, burn a witch effigy, and party all night.  Our apartment building had a barbeque in the garage because (guess what?) it was raining again like it did all week.

Burgk is an old castle originally from the 1100's built on a bluff above the Saale River, which runs through Hof as well. It has been added to over the centuries but still has evidence of the medieval fortifications such as two outer walls, a draw bridge, the original keep, interior wells, gardens and kitchens.  It is off the beaten path so is not invaded by Japanese tourists toting cameras.  We ate in the local restaurant, originally the stables, and enjoyed venison and wild boar steaks.  I love spring!