Truffle Hunters, Loose Change and Dave!

O.K. this is the last post about our trip, I promise!  These were just some of the silly things from our trip that I wanted to make sure we documented.  So, by all means, don’t feel like you need to read it, if you don’t want to. 

Truffle Hunters

Every Sunday morning, right in front of our little house, several men would congregate.  They were dressed for the outdoors, but European style.  Lots of green wool.  They drove what in European standards would be called a giant S.U.V., but they were small by U.S. standards.  They would just stand around for at least an hour drinking coffee, smoking pipes and watching their dogs play.   After a long social period they would walk off into the woods with their shotguns.  What they were doing, I don’t know!  I nicknamed them the truffle hunters before I saw the guns, after I saw the guns, I knew that this was much more than a hunt for fungi.  Then, on the day after Christmas, which is still a holiday in Germany, they showed up again in a much larger group.  

Notice all the fire power?  Now, if I was like my Mother, I would have marched right out the front door and asked what they were doing.  And, in doing so procure an invite to participate.  That’s just the way my Mom is.  I being a little more cowardly, stayed in my nice little warm house, and tried to take pictures of them without them noticing.  It was really rather entertaining, the girls would yell out, “Mom the Truffle Hunters are here!”  It’s funny what we find amusing when we have no T.V. to distract us from life.  The funniest guy of all, had to have been Mr. Beans brother.

Notice the resemblance?

Loose Change

Now, anyone who knows my Husband, knows that he is a penny pincher.  He is a real “waste not, want not,” kind of guy.  He’s also the type of guy who likes to have a coupon for everything that he does and if he doesn’t have one, he won’t do it.  It’s a really good thing for our family because, I am so not that way. 

Well, by the end of our trip Mike and I had noticed that we had accumulated a lot of loose change from all of our transactions.  This was the result of trying to keep every transaction as easy as possible.  When you are having a hard time communicating to begin with, the last thing you want to do is try and count out correct change in a foreign currency.   You tend to hand over a large bill, hope it covers the cost, and take whatever you get back. You know, keeping it simple for all involved.  Well, in the process we had accumulated about 30 euro.  Mike just couldn’t stomach just taking that amount of money home for a fancy coin collection.  That was his hard earned money, and if he couldn’t change it back into dollars, he was going to figure out how to spend it, somehow. 

Well, the first attempt was rather disastrous.   We decided to have lunch at a Burger King close to our house, and pay for it with our change.  The manger at Burger King, who didn’t speak any English, didn’t like the idea very much.  Apparently, not all Euros were created equal.  While we were sitting there eating our lunch, we devised a plan that was sure to work. 

We needed to purchase some items to restock the house.  Things like Shampoo and toilet paper.  We decided this was our opportunity to unload our heavy burden.  It really was heavy, a couple of pounds of loose change can really add up in ones purse.  Off to the Real to execute our plan.  We broke up the family into three groups.  Emily and I headed into the market to retrieve items to purchase.  Mike was at the check out stand with the coinage, to make the purchase.  Hannah and Haley were on the other side of the check out stand with a cart, to load up the merchandise.  So, systematically we started the process of getting rid of our loose change.  Mike would purchase one item at a time, at different check out stands until the change was gone.  They must have thought we were nuts, but the girls thought it was great, a real covert operation.

Dave

Dave is the newest member of the family.  He is really helpful and gives us all the guidance and direction that we may need.  He’s not perfect, but very rarely does he lead us astray. 

  Honestly, I have no idea how people traveled without GPS.  It was so wonderful to be able to leave the house, go and explore and then know that Dave would be able to get us home again.  It was wonderful.  Unfortunatly, Dave had to stay in Germany, he lives in the great Volvo that we rented.  Bye Dave, we will miss you!

Trip Recap

I have been meaning to write this post for days now but, you know how life kinda gets in the way.  We returned home from our trip in the evening on New Years Day.  And a long trip it was.  But, before I get into the trip home, I should recap the last little bit of our trip. 

We had been invited to attend a New Year’s Eve party at the little ward that we attended in Mannheim.  I was excited to receive the invitation, but realistically it wasn’t going to fit into our schedule.  We had to leave for the airport early the next morning, and we had a house to clean and close up, laundry to do and bags to pack.  Our friends at the ward kept saying that New Year’s was quite the bash and it would be a wonderful night.  Now I didn’t doubt that they would have a good time, but I was completely unaware how big of a holiday New Year’s is in Germany.  First of all, everything was closed.  All stores and a majority of restaurants.  This left us in quite a pickle, because we were planning on eating out that day in order to keep the kitchen clean.  Apparently, only the Turkish restaurants are open during this blessed holiday.  So, that’s what we had for both lunch and dinner.  Luckily it was cheap and good.

Now, Mike and I aren’t really big New Year’s Eve type people.  We would rather have a good nights sleep and be refreshed and ready for a wonderful “day off” the following day.  That being said, we went to bed at our normal time so that we would be ready for our long day of travel the following day.  When midnight hit we were awoken by, all we could think of was, the end of the world!  German New Year puts our Forth of July to shame!!  I laid in bed for about ten minutes thinking that the fireworks would die down soon and I could go back to sleep.  After ten minutes, when it hadn’t died down, I decided I needed to see the show for myself.  The house that we were staying in, is a four story house on the side of a small mountain.  This gave me a great vantage point for the festivities.  I went upstairs and was completely blown away by what I saw.  I wish that words could describe the scene, but sadly, I know that they will do it a great injustice. All I could see was fireworks constantly going off as far as the eye could see.  Starting from the homes next door  and then blanketing the horizon,  an amazing fireworks display.  Now, I should have prefaced this section by telling you that, the Forth of July is one of my favorite holidays.  I love it, mainly because I love fireworks.  If you see me at a fireworks show, you would think that I was seven years old again.  I love the noise, the smell, the oo’s and ah’s, everything about them.  So for me, I was in total awe.  The rest of my family is blessed with the ability to sleep though a freight train going through their room, were sleeping though this whole thing!  I had to wake Mike up so that he could share in this amazing event  with me.  We watched for quite a while, until the sky was so filled with smoke that you could hardly see them anymore.  We went back to bed, but they went on for over an hour.  In my own little way, it felt like a magical send off for us.  Thanks Germany!  You really know how to show a girl a good time.

The next morning we headed off to the Frankfurt Airport, and the city was deserted.  We drove for several miles before we saw another car.  Those Germans know how to party hard!  The trip ran really smooth and the long flight wasn’t too bad at all.  Emily even managed to make friends with most of the people in our area, along with the flight crew.  Boy that girl has a talent with people.  We flew into Charlotte, North Carolina, made it through Customs, and were on our way home.  This trip for me anyway was rather rocky.  All three girls slept the entire time, which was lovely, but I had a major sinus explosion.  The day before, I was showing the signs of getting a cold, and apparently, riding on a plane for more than sixteen hours doesn’t help that situation, at all.  I felt like my face was going to explode.  By the time we got home I was done!  I was in bed for the next three days with a really bad sinus infection.  Yea me!  It made for a rather bumpy reentry back into life. 

Catch Up

Well, true to form I have fallen behind on my blogging goal for this trip.  We have been doing a lot of relaxing with a little site seeing peppered in.  Here is a quick run down of what we did in our last week in Germany.

This was the week of castles.  We visited Heidelberg Castle and a castle in the Hamlet of Heppenhiem.  Both were gorgeous is their own ways. 

Heppenhiem Pictures

Heidelberg and it’s Castle

 

We ate at some wonderful resturants, toured IKEA and generally had fun together.  It was a lovely week.

Christmas

With only one day to prepare we managed to have a wonderful Christmas!  We hope everyone had a magical one as well.  Love you all!!

Christmas Eve

We had a lovely Christmas Eve in Heidelberg.  We were looking for something to do and decided to try out a restaurant that a friend suggested, called the Bier Brezel.  When we first arrived most of the shops and restaurants were closed, so I was starting to get worried that our little outing was going to go bust.  But, No!  The Bier Brezel was open!  Just by looking at the front door you wouldn’t think that it would be much inside, but it was very charming.  I was glad that I had brought my camera.

 

After our fun lunch we headed home to finish decorating the house for Christmas!  I managed to find a cute little tree for 4 euro at the Real store here (that’s the one like Wal-Mart.)  Believe it or not, but they had all of their Christmas decorations on clearance the day before Christmas Eve, so I grabbed grabbed a few things.

 

The beautiful Christmas stars in the windows were purchased at the Christmas Markets here.  You see them hanging in windows all over the place here.  I just had to participate as well. 

We capped off the evening with  a reading of the “real” Christmas story, and then we watched “Mr. Krueger's Christmas” and “Little Women.” It was a lovely, quiet night.