Frühlingsfest & Easter

This past weekend was the kick off to the annual Frühlingsfest here in Stuttgart.  It's just like Oktoberfest, but on a smaller scale, and it runs from mid-April to mid-May.  Last year it was the first fest we went to since it started 5 days after we landed.  This year we arranged to meet up with some friends there.  Before we left for the fest, though, we had a mini-adventure.  Shanna wanted to pick up some soil and tomato plants, so she took the car & went to the Bauhaus while I stayed at home to do some of the yard work that needed to get done since we won't be in town this weekend.  A few hours after she left, the doorbell rings and I answer the door to find her standing at the door with nothing in hand.  Turns out her keys had fallen out of her purse when she got out of the car, and she'd left her phone in the car to charge, so when she got back to the car she'd locked her keys and phone inside.  Thankfully there was an Ubahn station nearby, so she was able to take that back to our house.  We took advantage of the situation and brought the dogs with us to get them tired out so they'd sleep that afternoon when we left for the festival.  We eventually got the car, drove home, and started to get ready for the fest.

Once ready, we met Jesse at his house (he lives 5 minutes from ours) and we all walked to the train station and headed to the fest.  We started off at a smaller, less busy tent and were met there by our friends Penny, Adam, and two of their friends.

We stayed there for about an hour, then headed the main tent.  Penny, Adam, & their friends had gotten tickets through work, but we found out about it too late.  So they walked right in, while we had to wait in the "general" line.  They would let a handful in at a time as people left, but after 45 minutes of waiting we'd barely moved.  At this point we noticed a guy walking near the line discreetly selling the wristbands needed to get inside.  We walked up and offered him 20 Euros for 3 wristbands, and he said ok.  We put them on and walked right in.  It wasn't until we found our friends and saw their wristbands that we realized the ones we had were fake.  They looked mostly the same, but under close scrutiny it was obvious they weren't real.  Thankfully the security people at the front were just glancing at the wristbands and didn't look closely.  We stayed there the rest of the night and had fun with the whole group.

The next day was just a relaxed day.  Because of the time difference we couldn't call anyone for Easter right away.  Shanna got creative with my Easter basket, not only with how she put it together, but also knowing that I always take a shower as soon as I get up in the morning, so she left it in the bathroom so I'd find it right away.

Later that afternoon when people in TX and DC were awake, we Skyped with the nieces & nephews.  After that I called and talked with my parents and grandmother down in Florida.  It was good to talk to everyone...turns out there's a good chance my Dad will be out in this area in mid-June, so hopefully that'll work out.  The last time he was here was the day our boxes arrived, so the house looks a little different then he remembers.

For dinner that night we fired up the grill for some steaks, and Shanna made garlic mashed potatoes and this great new recipe that was almost like a carrot/cheese/onion casserole.  We also opened one of the bottles of wine we'd been saving that we got from the Wine Expo in France a few months back.  For dessert, Shanna baked a lemon cake that was delicious.  Dinner is pictured below...and yes, that's the wedding china.  It's the first occasion we've brought them out.

The weather was perfect yesterday, sunny & 75 degrees, so we had to eat on the back deck.

That's it for this past weekend.  Friday we drop the dogs off at the kennel and head to Maastricht in The Netherlands for Queens Day Weekend, so I'll have another post next week about it.

Clicking the pictures above will take you to higher resolution versions of each one.  I also tried something different this time when I was referring to old blog posts, and it's what I'm going to do going forward.  Instead of saying "covered in a previous blog post" and making that the link, I'm just going make whatever sentence I use to talk about the previous experience into a link that you can click to read the previous blog post if you want.

Grilling weather

Just a quick blog post to say as I'm standing on the back deck, nothing beats grilling weather.

Mannheim

On Saturday some friends of ours gave us a call to see if we were free.  One of them, Penny, had recently changed jobs and was moving from Stuttgart to Heidelberg.  She wanted to know if we wanted to head up there with her and two other friends of ours to check an apartment out, then head over to Mannheim for an Easter Market.  We had nothing else going on, so we said sure.

The apartment we looked at with her was nice, and we think that's the one she's going to go with.  It's a new place, and is only a 5 minute walk from base.  After we were done there, we grabbed a bite to eat, and drove to Mannheim.

The Easter Market was in a park, and it was one we'd never heard of it.  Turns out it's a HUGE park that has flowers, a mini-zoo, a Chinese garden, and large spaces for people to have picnics, relax, or do whatever you want.  There was even a boat ride you could take throughout the park.  The first thing we noticed when we walked in were all the tulips.

After a few minutes of walking around, we came to the indoor area where they had all the Easter Egg vendors set up.  The vendors came from all over Europe...they had signs up from Russia, The Netherlands, Germany, Austria, and more.  Painted Easter Eggs are a big deal over here...they can be little chicken eggs, or as large as Ostrich eggs..sometimes they are even made from wood.  The prices ranged too...the cheap small ones were a few Euros and larger more intricate ones were several hundred Euros.

We didn't end up buying any eggs because a few days prior Shanna had gotten a great deal on a bunch of eggs that someone was selling on Stuttgart Yard Sales (the local version of Craigslist).  But it was neat to see all the intricate designs and paintings that were there.  Afterwards we walked around the park, then it was time to head home.

The eggs Shanna got look pretty good...she still has some of the metal trees left over from the wedding, and she decorated one at the house and one at her office with the eggs.

There wasn't much else going on this past weekend.  This upcoming weekend kicks off Frühlingfest (Spring Fest), which runs from April 23 - May 15th.  It's basically the same thing as Oktoberfest, but in the Spring time.  And of course, Sunday is Easter.  I'll have a weekend recap up next Monday or Tuesday.

Tonight we're heading to a co-worker of Shanna's house for a cook out.  What makes this outing unique is he's German, so I'll have a chance to practice all night.

We didn't take too many pictures, but there was more then I could post here without it looking cluttered.  You can see them by clicking here or any pictures above.

Schwarzwald and 1 year in Germany

The weather here has been spectacular the past few weeks, and this previous weekend was no exception. On Saturday we had talked about going to an Easter Market in a small medieval town outside of Frankfurt, but then we remembered seeing advertisements all over town for something called Lange Nacht der Museen, or Long Night of the Museums. Once a year Stuttgart keeps all their museums open until 2am, and they provide bus transport between them all. You pay 15 Euros and you get a bracelet to wear that lets you ride the buses and get in to all the museums. The Easter Market was a 2 1/2 hour drive one way, so we decided to just stay local and go to the Museum exhibits. We worked in the yard that day, and that evening we got cleaned up and ready to head out.

We had researched out all the museums we wanted to hit and thought we were set. We saw a "harbor" tour mentioned that looked interesting, especially since we had no idea Stuttgart even had a harbor. We get down town, get our bracelets, then we see it...the HUGE line for the buses that were heading to the harbor. Apparently everyone else had the same idea as us. I noticed on the map that the first bus stop was less then a quarter mile from us, so we walked there thinking the first round of people would get off at that stop, and we could hop on. We waited there for 30 minutes and watched as bus after bus drove by us. We then decided to head back to the first stop and got lucky...we made it on the first bus that stopped there by pushing ourselves on. Once we got to the harbor, we were in another line to get in. We said we'd wait 15 minutes, and if the line didn't move, we'd just leave. 5 minutes later, the line moved substantially. The problem is then it didn't move again for another 30 minutes, but we felt like we had committed so much time already that it'd be a waste to turn around now. We got down to the initial bus station at 7pm, when the whole thing started. We didn't get on the harbor boat for the tour until almost 10 pm. The harbor tour itself was also a huge let down. Basically you sat on the boat and as it took you through a series of canals. They had some light show effects on the buildings you went by, but that was it. Afterwards, we had to wait in another line and got packed into a bus going back. We were finally back at the beginning at 11pm. So 4 hours just to take one short harbor boat ride. At that point we had no desire to go through that again for a museum, so we headed home.

Sunday was a much more relaxing day. After we ate lunch we got a call from one of Shanna's co-workers. He was in the city and wanted to know if we wanted to meet somewhere to grab a bite to eat. We had already eaten, but we met him up because the place he was going sells some great beer. It was a warm sunny day, so perfect for sitting outside and enjoying both the nice weather and good beer. Yes..we went to our favorite place, Zum Paulaner.

We were there most of the afternoon, then we took the train back to our house. We've been talking forever about trying this Turkish place by our house, and we figured now was finally the time to do it. It was DELICIOUS. To any of you reading this who visit us, if you're feeling adventurous and want to try Turkish, we are definitely taking you there.

Before Shanna's co-worker called us, I had thrown out the idea of going for a drive through Der Schwarzwald, or The Black Forest. It wasn't too far from the house. We'd have to first drive to Baden-Baden, which is a little over an hour away, then we could take the Schwarzwaldhochstrasse, which is the road that runs through the Black Forest, up a mountain. When you get to the top you have an amazing view. Shanna has a tendency to go to sleep as soon we start long car drives, so that got shot down. But Monday was another beautiful day, so I decided I'd just go by myself. I loaded the dogs up in the car, and we went for a drive. The first stop was in Baden-Baden so I could adjust the GPS to force it to take me the scenic route home. The town itself was neat little town. Every one was out because of the nice weather, and it had an authentic medieval feel to it. I definitely want to go back there. Once that was done, I hit the road.

The drive was, simply put, amazing. It reminded me of driving through Austria in the sense that it was hard to focus both on the road and the scenery around me. There were several points along the way where I could pull over, get out, and take pictures. There weren't many places to pull over for the dogs that also had a view, but we stopped at a few along the way. I can now say our dogs have gone to the bathroom in the Black Forest.

On my way back to Stuttgart to pick up Shanna from work I went through another town I'd like to come back and visit, Horb a.N., or the long version, Horb am Neckar, which means Horb on the Neckar (river). It looked like fun small German town that would be a fun day trip.

The timing worked out perfectly, and I pulled up at Shanna's office 10 minutes before she got off work.

And finally, a note about today, April 12th. Today marks the 1 year anniversary of us landing in Germany. It's hard to believe that an entire year has gone by. We are mini-celebrating it tonight by going to the hotel we stayed at when we first arrived for dinner, brining the dogs, and meeting our friend Penny who we first met because she was also staying in the hotel a year ago after having just moved here.

As Spring warms the area up, Shanna & I have some travels planned for the next month, so you'll see plenty of blog posts about it. The first weekend in May we are driving to Maastricht, NL, for Queens Day weekend. We were in Amsterdam for Queens Day a few years back and had a blast, so we're both looking forward to this. I'm going to Rome a week & a half later to visit some friends of ours who are vacationing down there. Shanna can't get the time off, but since she's been before and I haven't, I'm going. And finally, at the end of May for Memorial Day weekend, we had talked about visiting our friend from DC who was going to be in Lithuania that weekend, but the airfare prices were astronomical, so we had to pass. With that being the case, Shanna is going to take a few extra days off and we're going to drive to Vienna, Austria and spend two days there, then drive on to Bratislava, Slovakia, and spend 3 days there.

So a busy month coming up! On top of all that traveling, Frühlingfest starts at the end of April.

The Zum Paulaner picture above will take you to a higher res version if you click on it, the other two pictures will take you to the album with the Black Forest pictures. I wish I could have gotten some pictures of myself, but with two dogs and no where to really set the camera up for a timed shot, it just wasn't possible. Alternately, you can click here to see the pictures.

Picture update

Adam just sent me the pictures from our recent Münich meeting and I've added them to our previous pictures.  Click here or the picture below to see them!

Weekend Recap

This past weekend was the first beautiful weekend we've had of the Spring.  We've had some nice weather in the mid 60's, but this was past weekend was sunny and 75 degrees on both days, so we took full advantage of it.  We started off on Saturday meeting up with our friend Katia and her golden retriever, Heidi, at the dog park on the base near our house.  We'd taken the dogs there last fall and they loved it.  It's an enormous outdoor area completely fenced in, so the dogs can run all over the place without us having to worry about them getting out.  Heidi is Katia's first dog, so she was a little uncomfortable with how the other dogs at the park were playing rough with her, and after about 10 minutes she was too worried, so she took Heidi home.  Since we've had Milo for a year & a half now, we've gotten to know both his and Murphy's various barks & growls, so we knew when it was time to pull the dogs apart and when it was ok to just let them be.  The dogs at the dog park this past weekend were a playful group, so we ended up talking with the owners while the dogs ran around the park chasing each other and wrestling.  Both Milo & Murphy are naturally fast dogs, so it usually ended up being Milo taking the lead while all the other dogs chased him.

We stayed there for about an hour, then walked over to the community center where the 52nd Signal Command was having a fund raiser BBQ.  We got some great food and contributed to their cause.

That evening we had some friends over for dinner.  Shanna & I had gone through our cookbook and picked out a bunch of things we wanted to make both Saturday night, as well as the rest of this week.  For Saturday night Shanna made a taco meat casserole, lettuce wedge salad, and home made ice cream and cupcakes for dessert.  I was ecstatic because for the first time since we've been here, I saw genuine American Microbrew beer on base.  Rogue is one of my favorite breweries, based out of Oregon.  The case below was the last one they had in stock, and I couldn't grab it fast enough.

So Saturday afternoon I finished cleaning up the house while Shanna cooked everything.  That afternoon I drove down to the bottom of the hill to pick up our friend Penny who helped us out by looking after the dogs for part of the time we were in the U.S., and our friend Jesse.  Jesse is one of those "small world" stories.  I met him the same time I met Shanna when we played kickball together back in DC.  We were all friends for about a year, then he took a job in Miami and moved down there.  A month before we were getting ready to move to Germany he posted on Facebook that he had taken a new job and would be moving to Heidelberg, Germany.  He landed 2 weeks after we did.  For those not familiar with the area, Heidelberg is about an hour and 15 minute drive from us.  So we saw each other a couple times over the last year, but not much.  Two months ago he mentioned that his contract in Heidelberg was not going to be renewed, so he started looking for jobs in Stuttgart, and was able to transfer.  He got a place on the Marienplatz, where we live, and now, 4 years after we met and 3 years after he moved away from the DC area, he's only a 5 minute walk from our place.

Dinner was delicious.  The home made salad dressing Shanna made for the salad was delicious, as was the taco meat casserole.  And of course, home made ice cream from the kitchen aid is always delicious.  Plus it was our first chance since the fall to eat outside on the back deck.  Since the fall we'd gotten new deck furniture, so it was nice to be able to use it for the first time with guests.

The next day Shanna & I watched the Butler/VCU game from the night before, then hopped in the car and headed up to the Stuttgart Fernsehturm, or Stuttgart TV Tower.  It was built in 1956 and at the time was the largest TV tower in the world at 217 meters (711 feet) high.  If you remember some earlier blog posts, you'll recall that I went there last year shortly after we got here.  At the time, though, it was only me exploring, so Shanna hadn't been yet.  We figured with it being a beautiful day, this was the time to go.

There really isn't too much to describe about the tower.  You go inside, pay the 5 Euro fee, and then take the elevator to the top.  Last year when I went they had a descriptive panel going around the fence at the top of the tower that had various landmarks and the names of the cities you were seeing from up there, but for some reason they've since removed it.  I'm not sure why, that was useful the last time.  Now we had to rely on our knowledge of the terrain to find various landmarks.  We were able to spot the Hauptbahnhof, the Schlossplatz, the Rathaus, and our house.  Below are two pictures...the perspective of the TV tower from our house, then below it the perspective of our house from the TV tower.

Once we had seen enough we took the elevator back down and headed out.  The rest of the day was spent with all the windows open in the house, relaxing and enjoying the nice weather.

I'll have another post next week because this weekend Shanna & I are heading up to a town outside of Frankfurt called Seligenstadt for their annual Spring Market.

Click here to see larger Hi-Res pictures, or click any picture in the post above.

Weekend trip to Münich

This past weekend a good friend of ours and former room mate, Adam, was in Münich for work.  He didn't have to be there until Tuesday, but we had arranged to meet him Saturday morning in town and spend the weekend there so he came out a little early.

Saturday morning we got off to a great start.  We were packed & out the door 20 minutes before I estimated we needed to be to be in Münich by 11am.  We dropped the dogs off at the kennel, and for the first time Murphy didn't stand at the gate staring at us as we drove off.  He & Milo ran off and started playing with the other dogs, so we felt good about that.  We hope we can find a kennel like this back in the US when we move back home, the dogs absolutely love going there because they have all day to run around in a giant fenced in field and play with other dogs.  We hopped on the A8, and just had to stay on it all the way into Münich.  About 30 minutes in is when we hit a problem.  We came to a complete stop on the Autobahn in a traffic jam that stretch as far as I could see.  After 45 minutes we'd only moved about a kilometer.  At that point I pulled out my phone and found an App that gave Stau (German word for Traffic Jam) information.  The traffic jam we were in stretched for 6KM and so far we'd only gone 1.  According what I could read (it was in German) they had closed a section of the A8 off entirely for construction and were routing traffic through several small towns.  So you had all the traffic that drives on one of the busiest stretches of the Autobahn being singled down to a one lane exit that had a traffic light.  So you can imagine how slow going this was.  We eventually made it through, but thank goodness I could email back & forth with Adam because there was no way we were making the 11am meet time.  We didn't end up rolling into town until about 1:45.  What should have been a 2 hour drive ended up being 5 hours.  It ended up sort of working out, though, because it meant Adam could take a nap to fight off some of the jet lag.

Once we checked in to the hotel and met up in Adam's room, we hit the town.  First up was lunch, we were all hungry.  I'd checked on the map the day before and found an Augustiner Brew Pub around the corner, so we went there.  It was busy, but the food was delicious.  I had a quarter duck, quarter chicken and a kartoffel knoedel.  It's hard to describe the kartoffel knoedel...in fact, I've re-written this sentence five times trying to describe it and I just don't have the words other then it's a ball...made of potatoes.  How about a picture?

After that we took the train to the BMW museum.  The first thing I noticed about Münich's U-Bahn & S-Bahn system is how huge it is.  True, we were in the heart of the city, but the trains and the stations were enormous.  MUCH bigger the Stuttgart's.  Eventually we made it to the museum.

Shanna & I aren't big car people, but we both wanted to visit the "Big 3" while in Germany.  We'd been to Porche and Mercedes, which were located in Stuttgart, so now we had the last one to visit, BMW.  It was a neat museum.  If I had to rank the three, the Mercedes was by far the most impressive, then the BMW one, and finally the Porche museum.  One of the neat cars that stood out to me was this one below, the car Pierce Brosnan drove in the 1999 Bond film The World is Not Enough (notice the license plate).

At the end of the museum the had a special temporary exhibit where they had given BMW cars to artists and basically told them to use the car as their canvas.   They even had one that Andy Worhol had hand painted.

After the museum we went to a Paulaner restaurant.  I'd read that they were having a big Starkbier festival, but when we got there, it didn't seem like anything special was going on.  We had one drink, then decided to leave & head back to the hotel.  Once back at the hotel we asked the staff about the Starkbier fest.  Apparently it's outside town and only accessible by cab or car.  At this point it was almost 8pm and we didn't feel like going that far out when there was a good chance it'd be too packed to get in.  So I'd found a Hacker-Pschorr brewpub right around the corner.  We went in and this place was HUGE.  It also had a fancy sports bar in the back.  They had a special seasonal beer on tap called a Helles Weizenbock that was DELICIOUS.  One of the best German beers I've ever had.

After dinner we walked to the back where the sports bar was and caught the last 20 minutes of the Germany Vs. Kazakstan soccer game.  There was a pretty big crowd in there watching.  I'm not a big soccer fan, but when you're watching any sport with a passionate group it's hard not to have fun and cheer for Germany.  We ended up staying there the whole night because the service was fast, the beer was great, and it was nice to sit and catch up with Adam.

The next morning we got up and headed down to the S-bahn.  Adam had heard about a "Science Museum" he wanted to visit.  After doing some research I found it was called the Deutsches Museum and wasn't too far away.  This museum was absolutely enormous.  There wasn't enough time in the day to go through the entire thing.  It would easily take several trips.  They had some neat things in there, including Sputnik 1.  I'm not sure if it's a replica or the same thing...there was nothing on the sign to indicate it wasn't the real thing, but I've heard (and read on Wikipedia) that the real one is in the UN Building in New York.  They also had a training plane that the Wright Bro's used.

One of the neatest things there was the desk used by Ernest Walton and John Cockroft when they split the atom for the first time.

We were in the museum all morning and a large chunk of the afternoon.  Afterwards we decided to have a late lunch since we hadn't eaten yet and headed over to the Marienplatz.  That's the location of the famous Hofbrauhaus.

We were lucky and got a table immediately despite it being packed.  Lunch was great beer and traditional German food.

Afterwards we walked around the Marienplatz for a bit, but since it was raining we didn't stay long.

That was it...we headed back to the hotel, said our goodbyes to Adam, then drove home.  Thankfully the trip home didn't take nearly as long, only the expected 2 hours.  But we did drive by the same spot we got held up at, and it was still backed up for just as long.  I was glad we didn't have to sit in that both directions.

Click here to see the pictures, or any picture above.  There are more coming.  Adam took pictures with his camera, so when he gets back home and uploads them I'll merge them with our pictures and post an update that they are available for viewing.