Life on the Vine

Sometimes I think weather in Germany is schizophrenic.  I'm used to sudden changes in weather from my time living in Missouri.  They have a saying there, "If you don't like the weather, wait a while it'll change."  But I have to say that Missouri has nothing on Germany.  Well, at least Stuttgart, Germany.  Can't say I can talk for the entire country. Take today for instance.  This morning I walked to the farmers market a few blocks from our house to get farm fresh eggs and some produce.  When I left the house it was probably in the 50s, cloudy and had just finished raining.  By early afternoon it was warm and skies were blue.  I decided to go for an early evening walk, skies still blue but about half way through I noticed some ominous clouds on the horizon.  Figuring I had a 50/50 chance of making it back to the house without getting rained on so I picked up the pace a bit.  I had a windbreaker on but no umbrella.  Still about 15 minutes away from the house

Having blindly purchased 40 acres in southern Arizona, scouted for us by my trusted father-in-law, you'll have to forgive me for occassionally straying from the theme of this blog - Europe and Africa - and reflecting some on the land that we have purchased and the home we plan to one day build there.  Tom and I have started a house book where we are cutting and pasting potential floor plans into, drawing ideas and pasting photos.  As we are traveling, we are beginning to see things we like and getting ideas for what we might like to incorporate into our house.  In Heidelberg we saw an outdoor circular seating area with wrought iron and envisioned something similar, the color of the desert, draped instead with a Tombstone Rose rather than a vine.  We went on a day trip to Staufen, Germany last weekend.  Truthfully not one of our better trips.  I am seeing a trend though when a trip is not going well -- lack of photographic proof.  What took up almost an entire day, driving throug

You've got to love German words!  It seems to me that in the German language they are all about utility.  Why fill a page with a bunch of unnecessary words when one REALLY LONG word will do.  Exhibit A - Vierburgenbeleuchtung, the title of this post.  This lengthy word means "Four Fortresses Lit on Fire" and was the descriptor of our final destination last Saturday.  Before getting to the details of our actual journey, let me first breakdown this impressive word.  "Vier" is the number four.  "Burg"is the word for fortress or castle, and then "en" which is a connector meaning in or on, and then finally "Beleuchtung," which means lighting or illumination.  Slap them altogether and viola - you get Vierburgenbeleuchtung! I've joked with Tom that I'm going to start taking pictures of long German words found on advertising and see if I can find the longest one.  This one is 21 letters long.  I think that's a pretty good st