October 4, 2007

• I was wondering if someone could tell me why the whoppers are angry and are they angry everywhere or are only German whoppers angry?

  

   

   

  okay, on with todays’ nonsense.

  Last Sunday we took our first drive to look at the fall colors.  I feel officially older than dirt, we actually took a “drive” and it was on Sunday.  So next time your screaming at the car in front of you for being Sunday drivers think of me.  The trees and even some of the grapevines have started turning but we agreed we need to wait a couple of weeks for it to be full blown, knock your socks off color.   Our real motive for taking this little jaunt was to see how far Idar-Oberstein is from home.  Idar-Oberstein is home to the gem cutters center of Germany and at one time had working mineral mines of jasper, agate, amethyst, smoky quartz, etc.  It’s pretty much played out now and the local gem cutters get their rock mostly from Brazil.  On Mon. thru Fri. you can go out to the mine fields and dig around, though in all fairness they tell you up front that they “salt” the minefield.  In other words they put the rock there for you to find, still might be fun though.   

   

   

  The one thing we didn’t expect was the church. It was awesome! I don’t know if you can tell but it’s built into the side of the mountain.  We’ve decided to wait and go back next Spring and climb up to the church and castle on Sunday and go to the mine and the gem museum on Mon. There are plenty of three day weekend in the early part of the year  and that way we can just spend the night and not feel rushed.

  We left there amazed that one town can support so many rock shops. There were literally over a dozen just on the main shopping road. It was really nice that they were all open and actually quite surprising, in Germany most places are closed on Sunday. They take their day of rest seriously. 

  

   

   

   

  When we left we headed over to the Rammstein airbase and ate at Chilis. Now before everyone hollers at me for not eating the absolutely delicious German food try to remember we get paid in dollars and right now the exchange rate is at an all time low of 1.45 to 1 euro. So between that and the high vat tax we try to not spend a lot in euro if we can get away with going onto an army post or air force base. Believe me I would much rather have the local food and atmosphere but our less than 40 dollar meal would have cost us half as much again.  So we take advantage of having the privilege of using military facilities. 

  This is in the Hunsruck Mtns.  In far western Germany, almost to the Luxembourg border.  It’s just gorgeous and Zhenai I promise that one day I will go to an ugly place and take pictures to prove that they do exist here. It’s just so much pleasurable to see charming pretty places.

  

   

  One more shot of a very pretty almost fully changed hillside.

   

   

   

  We are so lucky, we may put up with a lot of junk but on the whole we are really very lucky to be where we are at this stage of our lives. 

   

  • 9:34 am
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