Day 1 - Meeting the Vicar of Gundelfingen

Pat dropped me off Wednesday night at Newark Airport to suffer through the long, long, long security lines. Every time they made me show my passport and ticket, I would then put them back into my purse. Two minutes later someone wanted to see it again. It was a pain. Bought a bottle of water for a shocking $4.00 - they really have you over a barrel with the "no liquids" rule - you are at their mercy once you pass through security, and they take full advantage of it.

Jane picked me up Thursday morning, after a not-so-bad flight (7 rather quick hours.) The meal was horrible but there was no one in the seat between me and my row-mate, so I had a little extra room, and slept fairly well.

On the way to Gundelfingen, I had to pee really bad. Jane pulled over into a rest area, but of course there were no toilets. So I had to go into the woods (and it was very apparent I wasn't the first.) Due to the steepness of the terrain and the angle of my sweatpants, I wet myself. Jane got a picture of me emerging from the woods, and thankfully it doesn't show my pee-pee pants. But I did have to sit on a towel all the way to her crib. Great way to start a vacation, don't you think?

Yes, at last I was to meet Gerald...of course, it wasn't until early Friday morning because he was out all night patrolling the perimeter, but he came in and curled up between my legs. He is so beautiful and so sweet, with a great purr. When we arrived he was out on his appointed rounds. He is the Vicar of Gundelfingen.

Jane and I walked through the village. It's really pretty with lots of flowers. I think everyone in the village has a few windowboxes dripping with flowers. I got some very nice pictures. Unfortunately, I missed the storks which roost on top of the church, they left for Africa 8/17. There is a big board by the church which lists the stork activities past and present. I got a picture of that and the nest, anyHOW. We walked up to the town center where I used my bankcard to get some Geoffrey Dollars and we had coffee and ice cream at an outdoor cafe. Gundelfingen is celebrating its 1000th anniversary in 2008! They are working on some of the older buildings in anticipation of the celebration next year.

The weather was sunny and warm - so lovely. We went over to the grocery store and picked up olives and chocolate, of course. I picked up one bottle cap for Cousin Dr. Donn.

Came back and sat on the balcony. Jane, Thomas and Gerald's crib is nice - roomy and with lots of light, a balcony that goes around 2 sides and has a nice view of the neighbor's garden, and a shrine to Aunt Evil's Mini-Me. It's like a Mike Hye Monkey Shrine. Unfortunately, upstairs is a family of mountain gorillas. They stomp, cry, whine, scream, hammer, yammer and yell in the stairway. Actually, I think mountain gorillas have much better manners.

Jane's next-door neighbors (the ones she calls "the kindergarten") called us over and gave us some of their home-grown grapes. We then went to the mineral bad (bath) and spent about 2 hours there. The water was fantastic. There is a circular area where there is an actual current. You don't have to do a thing and it just pushes you round and round. We made a lot of Germans laugh, I don't know why. There were a lot of young couples there who should have gotten a room, if you know what I mean. We left there around 9 pm. I released 2 bookcrossing books while I was there.

Came home and Jane made this really good stuff with sauerkraut, noodles (more like dumplings or gnocchi) and ham. She said it is a traditional festival food and that Thomas says she uses too much sauerkraut. What does he know? She had already made a terrific fruit salad. We got into our jammies and ate dinner in bed while we watched Ocean's 11, 12 or 13 (whatever it takes) until we couldn't hold our eyes open anymore.

Friday morning we had coffee and breakfast on the balcony. It was a little chilly. We planned on walking into the village to the Markt. Later, being the chips off the old Mutti that we are, we have a cemetery in Freiberg to explore. And we'll probably climb the Munst. And go to another grocery store. Or two.

We will meet up with Doo on Sunday. Tuesday and the rest of the week while Jane is working, Doo & I will explore Heidelberg. We'll come back here on the weekend and celebrate Jane's birthday with Thomas and Big G.

Sure miss my kitty and hope the bachelors are being good to him. The vet is supposed to call Pat and tell him what we should do next about his ear. His EAR, not his REAR.

Day 2 - It was a Graveyard Smash!

So…it turned out the baby storks may have flown the coop, but the big storks were still there! We started to walk up to the village center and I looked up and there they were! It was so exciting. Later I saw them fly into the nest. And Jane had told me that they make a clacking sound, and I was sitting on her balcony when I heard it. It is very distinctive.

There was a little Markt in the village – 2 or 3 cheese sellers, 2 vegetable sellers, a flower seller and a honey seller. We bought a bunch of cheese, olives, bread and other stuff (cheese-stuffed peppers, stuffed grape leaves, 2 kinds of olive tapenade) and the woman at the stand threw in a couple of containers of stuff. There is also a really weird fountain in the square, I took a picture of it. We went to a little grocery store and I got a pretty card to send to Aunt Bea. Also went into a book store where I guessed at the titles.

After we got back, Big G dropped by to give us the gift that keeps on giving – a tiny dead mole. G was so proud. He came in, let us fuss over him for a minute, then went right outside to the balcony and sat by his mole until we came out to admire it and him.

We drove over to Freiberg to the oldest cemetery in Freiberg (the Alter Friedhof.) It was bigger than it looked from the outside, completely walled, with a plain-looking (from the outside) chapel. We couldn’t go in the chapel, but we peaked in the windows and it looked beautiful. Many of the gravestones were pretty crumbly, but they were very interesting, dating back to the 1700s and into the 1800s, I don’t remember anything newer.

There was a gravestone which said, "General A.B.L. Riquetti, Vicomte de Mirabeau, with a date of 1792." When I got back from the trip, I looked him up and found out he was a leader in the French Revolution, fought against the British in the American Revolutionary War, was nicknamed "Barrel Mirabeau" because of his corpulence (due to drink and died of either apoplexy or a duel in Freiburg! You can read more about him by clicking on his name in the "Links" section.

Many of the gravestones were "weird-scary-weird," with lots of skulls, caskets, skeletons and other creepy symbolism. There were also graves in the wall which surrounded the cemetery. There was a monument, not really a grave, which looked just like the top of the Munster.

We sat on a bench and had a picnic of our Markt cheeses, bread and some wine. As we sat there an picnicked, once in a while people would come along the cross walk and start to turn down the path where we were picnicking. Each and every one took one look and changed their minds. Hunh. On our way out of the cemetery we saw an interesting tree - it was a huge tree, and it was completely fallen, and yet it was still alive, with branches growing out of it. There was a plaque in front of it. The plaque indicated that a level 12 gale-force wind toppled the tree in 1999. The plaque also held a quotation from Job as follows:

"At least there is hope for a tree:
If it is cut down, it will sprout again,
and its new shoots will not fail."

(Job 1, 14:7)

Then (Mom would be proud) we drove over to Freiberg’s biggest cemetery. It’s much newer but the graves did go back to the early 1900s. It's called the Hauptfriedof (Main Cemetery). There was an entire section of WWI graves. Another area is dedicated to the people who were killed in the air-raids on Freiberg. There is a WWII section too.

The graves here go up to the present time and are incredibly well cared for. The flowers were fantastic. We saw impatiens, deep red, the size of chrysanthemums. The cemetery is huge, and contains the graves of many Freiberg notables, and we saw one grave of a Nobel prize winner. There were gorgeous sculptures. There was one gravestone in the shape of a donut. (Mmmmm...donuts....) We walked in there for a long time. Jane noticed that in many of the very well-kept graves there were markers from grave-tending companies. She didn't think that was right, that they should advertise on the graves, so she picked them out and put them on graves that were in ratty shape.

Then we hit a major grocery store – it used to be WalMart when Pat & the kids & I were here – all we picked up was 2 bars of chocolate and a bag of fruit & nuts. I did pick up some Germany grocery lists - I continued to do this, as is my habit, throughout my stay. I am looking for the German equivalent of the grocery list I found in the U.S. one time. One of the items listed was "fucking rolls." Jane sometimes sends me lists she finds in German grocery carts. She writes "fucking sauerkraut" on them. I actually got so I could read most of the grocery lists I found. After all, I speak several languages, as long as they use only food words.

Came home and ate baked cheese with jam, leftover sauerkraut stuff with chocolate for dessert while we watched a movie.

BTW, we were expecting Mike to be in tomorrow, but we got a panic IM from him yesterday – he took a look at his passport and it was EXPIRED! He has an emergency appointment to get a new one (I guess he told them he was needed on urgent space business) but we won’t see him until Thursday of next week. Poor little chucklehead. Jane had to call his hotel and make new arrangements. So I will be all by my lonesome in Heidelberg for a few days next week. Jane says everyone speaks-a-da-English so I guess I’ll make out all right. The gardens by the castle are said to be beautiful…I’ll bring my book and chill out. I could use some chillin’ out, I’ll be honest whicha.

I miss my kitten something awful, but I got major mojo from G this morning – Jane put him on my bed and he immediately made himself at home between my legs. He is perfect in every way. Meantime, the gorillas upstairs have been sawing, hammering, screaming and moving furniture since o’dark thirty.

More tomorrow. We be headed out to the PO, then to Freiberg’s Munsterplatz Markt, then this eve to a festival at a nearby village.

Day 4 - They Were Ruint When We Got There

Today (Sunday) was castle day. The weather was perfect – we both wore shorts – warm and sunny. As we were driving along, we saw a sign for Bimbo. I had to have a picture. Also, there was a house with its own quaint windmill in the backyard.

We were headed out for Hochberg, a castle ruin perched on one edge of a ridge of Black Forest mountains. You are just driving along and you turn a corner and WHAM! There is it is. It’s really huge and spectacular. Naturally, I wanted a picture, so Jane pulled over onto a side street and backed up a bit. We sat there for quite a while waiting for a little cloud to finish passing over the sun. After 4 bicycles passed us, we realized that Jane had pulled over onto the bike path. We got back on the main drag and just a little bit down the road there was an actual pullover specifically for stopping and viewing the ruins.

We drove around to the other side of the end of the ridge and parked and walked up a fairly steep switchback to the castle ruins. It turned out that they were having a fest so the place was crowded and there were all kinds of reenactors in MedEEEval costume doing period things, musicians, and some crafters. Also because it was a fest there was food so we had weinerschnitzel on a roll, a ground pork patty thingy (Frikadella) on a roll and apple juice with mineral water (Apfelsaft Schorle). We walked up to the next level of the castle and found coffee and cake, so we had coffee and cheesecake. There was a pretty view of a long, wide valley, not very populated. We could see the bike path on which we had pulled over.

There is a tiny museum with the artifacts they found when they began restoration (really just trying to keep it from crumbling further.) There was crockery, weaponry, Delft and Venetian pottery and glass, etc. There also was a model of what the castle was supposed to have looked like.

When we got back to the car there was a dairy right there which was open for visitors so we took a stroll through there. There were goats, cows and chickens. Smell that dairy air! There was a tiny fridge with milk and lots of different cheeses. You took what you wanted and left your money in a bowl. Cheese on the honor system.

From there we drove to Waldkirch, the village we had driven through the night before looking for a post-tug-of-war fest. We had seen a castle ruin lit up on the mountain and were determined to find and climb it. (It turns out to be called "Kastelburg.") We parked on the main street. Waldkirch is a very pretty and large village but it being Sunday, most places were closed. There is a river and a canal. Canal would be good for you. We stepped into a biergarten where there was a great view of the castle. I took a picture from the biergarten, then we asked the proprietor how to get up to the castle. He said, “Bei FUSS???????” (By foot?) Clearly he didn’t expect we could do it. HA.

We walked way down the main street, turned, walked the wrong way for a while, came back, and finally saw a tiny, steep path with a woman descending it. This path was about 2’ wide, very steep, rocky and with roots and stuff exposed. She was puffing and wheezing, her face was red, and she was coming down at a snail’s pace. The path was to the left, and to the right was a broad, smooth path. We asked her how to get to the ruins and she said that the broad smooth path would get you there, but her path was a shortcut - “keep going up and PPPPPPPFFT! There’s the castle.” Naturally, we went with her path.

For some reason, we had the path all to ourselves. Hmmm. Up and up and pppppffft! There it was. It’s really tiny compared to Hochberg, but pretty cool. The view is spectacular; we had no idea that Waldkirch was as big as it was. Across the broad valley there was another set of Black Forest mountains, and I counted 8 paragliders riding the thermals and landing in a meadow. Jane and I each took a picture of where we thought the biergarten was, and it turned out both of us took a picture of the same place.

Just before we left the ruins, we stuck our head in an opening and found a steep, dark staircase up to the top of the tower. So up we went, 6 flights in the dark. The only light was from slits in the wall. Spectacular view when we got up there, though, and then I descended so I could get a picture of Jane waving from the top of the tower.

We came back down the steep path (easier going down) and took a different route back into the village. One of the things we learned about Waldkirch is that it is where fairground organs are still manufactured, and in a square we saw two children enjoying a see-saw which had an organ grinder sculpture.

We stopped at our biergarten and sure enough, our pictures were of the right place! The owner was so excited that we had pictures of his biergarten from the top of the castle! We got his e-mail address and will send him the pictures.

We came back home and took a nice stroll. Jane’s village is so pretty – everyone has beautiful flowers and flower boxes – and everyone we spoke to asked about Gerald. He is a local celeb. I said he is the Vicar of Gundelfingen, making his appointed rounds to visit the sick and infirm. We never saw him, but we did run into some of his katzen kohorts.

Next we fired up the raclette grille. We got everything ready – 3 kinds of raclette cheese, ham, shrimp, herbs, veggies, etc., and then realized we’d forgotten to cook the potatoes, an essential part of the raclette. Had to back up and get the taters on. That done, we had a feast and watched “American Dreamer.”

Big G came in around 5 am, meowing, got a treat and beat paws back out to patrol the perimeter. I woke up around 6 with my right shoulder (not the arthritic one!) absolutely frozen. I am in agony but Jana is taking care of me. We are cleaning and packing and getting ready to head to Heidelberg.