This past weekend

Dear Adam,

I hope you had a nice weekend. Our weekend was relatively busy, so I won't talk about all the things we did over the weekend but I will give an overview...

Saturday

On Saturday, Andy went and had the driver's side mirror replaced on his car as someone hit it while driving by and cracked the mirror. Then we met up with him at a place called Götz & Moriz where we picked out the tiles for the bathroom at the new apartment. Since this will be done before I go back to Oklahoma, I will just wait to post pictures until the bathroom is finished so you can see the end product.

Later, in the early evening, we decided we wanted to go to Ikea. We needed to pick up a replacement kitchen cabinet door for one that was damaged in the building process and also to pick up a few other odds and ends (mainly two bookshelves for our living room). Unfortunately, one of the highway bridges was out and we found ourselves stuck in a huge "Stau" (prounounced sh-touw with an o like in ouch) or Traffic Jam. It took us 2 hours to go 30 kilometers which is roughly 18 miles. This trip should normally take us about 20 minutes.

Even though all the license plates are French in this picture - we were on the German "Autobahn" or Federal Highway the A5.

Needless-to-say, we never did make it to Ikea. By the time we'd have arrived it would have been more or less closing time. We were so tired after setting in that mess for two hours we decided to grab a bit to eat in a lovely little town called Neuenburg am Rhein (where we were able to exit the highway finally). This is about 1/3 of the journey into our drive to Ikea. Anyway, we decided to stop at a Greek restaurant and have some dinner. We were getting pretty hungry and at least it didn't make the trip seem like a total waste. It was almost 10 PM when we got back home (we started off at 6 PM) so we just decided to call it a night.

Here is a picture of us at the Greek restaurant just after finishing our dinner. I had the Gryos with Zaziki / Taziki sauce and a Greek Salad. They were really delicious.

Sunday

On Sunday, we had a typical breakfast of rolls with either cheese and meat or jelly. Then we got around and we called Andy's aunt and uncle about the apartment repairs we still have on-going. After that we went to Schopfheim to take all Jamie's boxes of books over there. Once we have the bookshelves from Ikea that I  mentioned earlier, we can put those books into the bookshelves and use those moving boxes for other things This means less boxes to purchase and less waste / unwanted cardboard at the end of the move. Germans in general are very green oriented and "sparsam" or thrifty / frugal.

On the way back from Schopfheim we stopped at a place called Burg Rötteln which is a Castle Ruin very close to where I am staying. You can read more about it here: here (wikipedia) and here (official website).  It's a really neat place and you can see for miles from the top. They also have a museum but the main reason we stopped was to grab some lunch at their little garden "Imbiss". Imbiss really has no good translation - though I guess you could say take-out. It's like a fast food place but you walk up to it rather than drive through. You'll just have to see the pictures.

Me at Burg Rötteln

This is a traditional meal from Bayern called "Weiße Würstle" or White Sausage. It tastes more like hotdog texturewise than what we think of as sausage back home. It is served with a "Süß-Senf Soße" or a Sweet Mustard Sauce which is almost like a dijon honey mustard. This is very typical in the Bayern area (where most the national soccer players come from) and it almost always served with a pretzel and beer. Jamie and I had an apple schorle which I talked about a few days ago in one of my posts.

This is a pretty typical "Imbiss"

This was the garden seating which is pretty much what the "Biergarten" or Beer Gardens look like.

Here is on of many brands of ready-made "Apfelschorle"

Me at the exit of the Burg.

Me again at the exit gate.

This was at the very bottom of the entrance by the parking. If you look down and to the right you can see very small the city of Lörrach in the background. If you click on the picture it will show you a larger, easier to see version.

Unfortunately we didn't have the time to do the museum on Sunday. Jamie and Andy had made some plans to meet with a neighbor. I was a little disappointed but was assured we would go back to see it before I leave Germany. So as I said, after that we met up with the neighbor to discuss the move (she is moving at the same time so we are making it a joint effort).

After that Jamie and Andy decided we should make a picnic at the Wiese. We took some pictures together while we were there. It was a really nice ending to the weekend.

I hope you enjoyed the pictures of our weekend. Again, you can click on any of the pictures to see a larger version. I will be going back to Burg Rötteln so you can see the view from the top. Jamie tells me it is really magnificent so I'm looking very much forward to it.

Tonight we have some visitors coming to view the old apartment. The owner wants to find new renters so we have a real-estate agent who will come and do a showing to interested parties. In the US when you have a house-showing it's not very common for the current owner/renter to be at home but here it is. The real-estate agents rarely get keys to the place as they do in the US. Also, over here apartments are not arranged in complexes as they are in the midwest. The apartments are in apartment buildings (like larger US cities) and some are rented and some are owned. It's interesting to me how different people around the world live.

After the apartment showing we may try our hand at travelling to Ikea again. They are open until 9 PM so we'll just have to see what we think. We may wait and go tomorrow night if we think it will be cutting it too close. Either way, I will let you know what we decide to do.

I hope you have a good day at school today. Talk to you soon.

Sincerely,
Stanley