Schumann!!!

(sort of)

We've been looking for SCHUMANN or BAER signs everywhere and chris spotted this beauty in old town Nurnberg (although I wish "my" store was selling something cooler than expensive handbags - like sporting goods or cool gadgets or even shoes... I mean schuhs.)

We're thinking if we do find Baer, it will probably actually be "Bahr" - Our costa rica friend Sabina taught us all about that...

Day 3: Nurnberg (or Nuremberg)

Took the train into Nurnberg to spend the day. Spent several hours at the Nazi Documentation Center. Really interesting historical perspective on how Hitler and the Nazi party came into power. While this wasn't a "happy place", it wasn't the emotional type of experience we expect we'll have when we visit the Dachau concentration camp outside Munich. It's more factual, trying to answer the question - How did this happen? I have to say, I still don't really understand how it did, but when you see the videos and understand the background at the time... It's a little easier to somewhat grasp. Germany was in such bad shape after WW I, and although Hitler was an absolute lunatic tyrant etc, he was so passionate about Deutschland. His speeches were full of so much pride and patriotism, the German people were energized and frightened by him -all at once. (The exhibit is called Fascination and Terror.)

Nurnberg had a major role in all this - the Nurnberg Trials of course, and the Nurnberg Laws. But I didn't realize the Nazi rally grounds were here. The exhibit is actually housed in a really small portion of Congress Hall. A huge horseshoe-shaped building (sort of coliseum-ish) that Hitler had built. We walked the grounds to see Zeppelin field, which is the site of the big rallies you've likely seen footage of. It's monstrous with the huge grandstand he spoke from. He had plans for much much more to be built around all of this, but WW II halted plans. Crazy crazy to see all of this and realize how not-so-long-ago this all took place. So sad...

Afterwards, great dinner - pork shoulder,sausage, saurkraut, and potato dumplings - at Barfusser Beer Cellar. It's a microbrewery in the cellar of the old granary. They had a great dunkel that we enjoyed a few of before roaming the streets of Old Town, walking from one end to the Imperial Castle at the other end. Got my favorite gelato flavors - pistachio and choc/hazelnut... but didn't compare to Italy, Sada and Lauren (PS chris gets limon like you Sade and I almost got melone in your honor SmellJ). Then headed back to Sachsen bei Ansbach on the train. Leaving for the Rhine Valley in the morning.

Day 2: Rothenburg

After Dinkelsbuhl, it was on to Rothensburg (pronounced rote-inns-burg), the most famous town along the Romantic Road, and best preserved medieval town in Germany. The Lucas clan hung out with us for awhile, then headed home (stormy is 34 weeks pregnant and it was warm with lots of hill-walking).

We had a great dinner in the biergarten at Gasthof Goldener Greifen. Met a nice group of German folks, so I tried my go-to phrase: "Sprechen Sie Englisch?" A little, the man said. We get to talking, tell him we're from Texas. He says - "We're from an area called Braunfels." - Immediately I'm thinking - but of course you are! - "And we have a sister town in Texas called New Braunfels." I'm like - I know - my dad's entire side of the family lives in NB and they all emigrated from Braunfels! Small... Small world. They all play in a bowling league together, so we probably are related. 9-pin of course (except they said it's a smaller ball than our 9-pin and doesn't have holes. There's a challenge Voges boys!)

Then enjoyed some beer out in the main plaza where they had a nice little festival with live music and exhibitors. Afterwards, we did the highly recommended Night Watchman's Tour. Really great -funny and historical. Being a history nerd, I really loved this. Found out some really interesting stuff - won't bore you with it all, but one little [long] fact. Rothenburg basically exists as it is for 2 - no make it 4 -reasons: (1) devastation from 30 Years War - poverty caused the city not to be able to move forward/expand/update, thus time stood still, so it kept it's medieval charm. (2) In WW II, a major German general had fled there so the US troops flew over to bomb, but it was foggy and they missed most the city. (3) A few days later, we went in to finish the job but the commander's mom had visited Rot. years before and begged him not to destroy it in a letter, so he offered the city an opportunity to surrender instead. (4) As we all know, German troops were forbidden to surrender, even though they were losing dismally and the war was about to end. But fortunately the German commander had left for a few days and the officer in charge was a smart guy, so he rode out with the white flag. And that's why we have Rothensburg today - with it's Christmas markets and all its kitschy charm. Pretty cool huh?

Day 2: Dinkelsbuhl

Cute little medieval town along the "Romantic Road". Notice the street wedding procession below. Cars honking with lights on behind a front-end loader with a bride and groom sitting together in the front bucket/scoop. Are we in Shiner?

Pretty church here - St. Georg's. Pizza for lunch where I learned the word for tap water (free) from Nate - Leitungswasser. Very important and cost-saving lesson.

Any mobile blogging advice?

I tried to send the following post with 6 pictures attached. But I'm trying to post through blogger's email-to-post function, where you send the pucks to a personalized email and it auto creates a post. Anyone used this? There's major size limits so I can only send one pict at a time bc my pictures are so big.  I'd be happy to download one of the several iPad blogging apps, but they all say you import pictures to them from a website, flickr, picasa, etc. My problem is I'm uploading the Picts directly from my DSLR onto my mom's iPad, so don't know if it can pull them from there? Anyone know or have better ideas? I'm trying to pst pictures not only to share with yall but to serve as our travel journal to eventually go in and put more detail...

Back to Germany...

No sleep to speak on our overnight flight from Atlanta to Paris. Puddle jumper to Nuremberg. Delta lost Chris' bag. Had our first German beer and brats - every area has their own style of sausage. Nuremberg is known for its "little weenies" - they say size doesn't matter. Took the train from N. to Sachsen bei Ansbach, which is where chris' cousin Stormy, husband Nate, son Malachi, and baby due in June, live.  Stormy teaches on the base here. They own a beautiful home.

We went to Malachi's tee ball game on base (both teams won). Then caught up on our sleep in a big way from about 6:30pm - 8:00am, with a few hours of awake and cheerios in the middle. Woke up to chocolate croissants and a beautiful, beautiful day. Winter just broke and the tulips (my favorite) are all over the neighborhood along with fruit trees in bloom.  Even I can take decent pictures in these conditions.

I love tulips!

breaking it in: first dinner and first party

Okay, here's the last of the kitchen posts for a little while... pretty much caught up now.  We're taking a little break from the kitchen for a few weeks to celebrate our 2nd anniversary and get our 2nd wind to finish all the little things - we have quite a lengthy punchlist, but it's the little things that seem to take the most effort to get done.  But the good news is - we have a fully functioning kitchen!  Ben's parents, sister, and nieces were in town when our granite went in.  So everyone came over that night to celebrate and break-in the new kitchen!  They brought over steak and salad and sweet potato fries.  Thanks Sterns!

Grace and Chris were writing on the still-dusty oven.

Grace is an aspiring photographer - she got a hold of my camera and took some pretty good pics.
Grace: "Ben, Shoe - Pose!"

Cuter sisters-in-law Scout and Lauren

Gabby and Grace were cooking jenga blocks in the bottom drawer, which was their oven.

Looks delicious Gabby!

 

Baking in our new kitchen for the first time - so exciting, I love it!

I was making chocolate cupcakes for Beth and Shawn's engagement party.  It was on St. Patty's Day so the chocolate cupcakes had guinness in them and Bailey's cream cheese frosting.  Yumm!

Here's a shot of the kitchen's first real party - the girls (and Chris) gathered in the kitchen as usual.  Congrats Beth and Shawn!

odds and ends

Here's a few odds-and-ends updates to get us caught up.

 

It got hot quick!  And when my dad had come to test the freon before, he hadn't put any back in.  It's more of a process than you might imagine, and my Dad has all the necessary instruments.  It cost us about $80 I think for the the freon, and would have cost about four times that if we'd paid someone.  Friends in high places - thanks Pops

Mom and I took the girls to take pictures in the bluebonnets while the boys worked.  It didn't work out so well - it was so sunny!

 This seriously might be the best shot I got out of about 50...

 But this is definitely my favorite.  Greta all cutesy and Farah about to faceplant in the bluebonnets.

 Greta's become quite the chicken charmer.  Here she is with Chicken Nugget - the one she named.

 Farah fears nothing.  Even "Bossy the Hen".

I cleaned and spray painted the old vent - looks like new!

Chris is hooking up our new gas cooktop.

 He also did all the electrical work in the island in the subwall before the countertops went in.  He found a nice dark brown outlet to go on the front-side of our island.  It's a great spot to plug in our laptop to work (like right now).

Wiring and hooking up our oven.

Here's a glimpse of some of the electrical work and plumbing under the sink. I won't attempt to explain.  The plumber was going to come to finish it out once the sink went in but we didn't want to pay anymore$  and figured we (Chris) could do it on our own.  Which he did.  It took several hours but after awhile we had a functioning sink, dishwasher, and garbage disposal (I never knew how happy having running water in the kitchen could make me!)

flooring... anything but boring

We had two areas of flooring that didn't have hardwood on them because they were under the peninsula before, but that now needed wood flooring.  It was the area on the front side of the island and the area between the new bank of wall cabinets and the island.  Fortunately, we had enough wood that we'd pulled up from under the island and new cabinets that we were able to repurpose all of it without trying to match or have anything replicated (i.e. major cost savings!). 

First we realized we needed to get all the old dry glue off the bottom so it would sit right.  Chris used a wire brush for this and it seriously flung a million pieces of dry, black glue all over our garage.  He's in trouble for not wearing safety glasses with all these projectiles flying around.

 

Chris did the area on the front of the island on his own, he's almost done with it in the picture below.  It looks really good, you can't even tell it's different because he did such a great job of lining up the seams and making everything look uniform. 

 

Then his dad came into town one rainy Saturday and they tackled the larger area between the island and the cabinets. It's like a puzzle, just finding the best way to fit all the pieces into the gaps, and then cutting down those that needed to be shortened, etc. We labeled them so we didn't forget the order.
 

Checking the level-ness and using a straight-edge hoe to scrape down some of the bumps and unevenness.

 

Time for the liquid nails.  We went through about 7 tubes.

 Placing the pieces down, fitting the tongue into the groove, then hammering into place.

Now for the crazy part.  Once you get to the last piece in the middle, you can't really get the tongue of one side into the groove of the other, and vice versa on the other side since there's no wiggle room.  So we were planning to just cut the tongue off so once side would be attached with the tongue and groove, but the other wouldn't.  And it would just be glued down.  But Chris' dad had the idea to sort of prop the surrounding pieces up without gluing them down first, then squeeze the final panel into place, then fill in with liquid nails and press down.  It was a little complicated and I don't actually have a picture of this, because all hands were on deck.  But we did it!  Pretty cool.

We used our extra concrete bags to weigh the pieces down while the Liquid Nails dried.  And of course I haven't taken a great "after" picture so you can see how seamless it looks.  We still need to refinish our floors, so once we do that I'll post the truly finished product.

Chris' dad got some pics with his iPhone, so I'm actually in some of them... a little March Madness on Scott's ipad in the background.

Putting the cover back on the breaker box.  We're through with major electrical work... for now.