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 abou...

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...

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...

For a Sunday afternoon excursion Tom and I went exploring. Tom had an itch to go out and do something and pulled up Google Earth. He located our house and then just started looking at photos of places near us. He found a former monastery - the Kloster Bebenhausen - just about 30 minutes away from us. Bebenhausen is located on a highway that runs from the Alps to the Rhine valley. The surrounding forest is referred to as a great medieval empire forest. The monastery was founded in 1183 and construction started shortly thereafter. It served as a Cistercian monastery. The Order of the Cistercians is a Catholic religious order of enclosed monks and nuns. Bebenhausen was monks only. They are sometimes called the White Monks, because of the white habit they often wear. The emphasis of Cistercian life is on manual labor and self-sufficiency. This monastery managed a glass factory. After the Reformation there was an almost even split between the monks supporting Luther and those ...

For work Tom has traveled to Riga, Latvia a couple times.  The company that he has been doing security consulting work for since October is building the new U.S. Embassy there.  In April I took a long weekend and flew up to visit.  Tom had been in Riga for almost two weeks when I got there.  After the weekend we flew home together. The CIA World Factbook states that the name "Latvia" originates from the ancient Latgalians, one of four eastern Baltic tribes that formed the ethnic core of the Latvian people (8th-12th centuries AD).  The region subsequently came under the control of Germans, Poles, Swedes, and finally, Russians.  While a Latvian republic emerged following World War I, it was annexed by the USSR in 1940 - an action never recognized by the US and many other countries.  Latvia reestablished its independence in 1991 following the breakup of the Soviet Union. Tom was staying at the Elefant Hotel, which is less than a mile away from...