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!