We just took it easy today and saw some interesting sights. This is a village close to where we are staying. In the photo, you can see solar panels (grey areas) on the roofs of the houses. It's an interesting dichotomy...of old houses with tiled roofs & modern solar panels. Tap on the picture to enlarge it so you can see the solar panels.
We took a morning hike through the forest & here are some sights:
Close up of a tree trunk with shadows:
While on the hike, we heard the clank of cow bells on the hillside on the other side of the trees.
Here's Leo inspecting a wildlife viewing stand:
Delia, here's another marshmallow field. How would you like these in your hot chocolate??
Sara...here are some bee hives we saw along the way. They are very different from other hives I've seen.
If you look close, you can see the bees swarming.
Here's a very different butterfly:
Oh, and today I was finally able to make an appointment with a fussflege (reflexology person). Deb, it was very interesting (but not as good as you!). I sat in a chair (sort of like a dentist's chair). The lady was very nice...she spoke about as much English as I speak German so we got along fine! She spoke a lot of German with a little English and I spoke some of each and we each pretty much understood each other. She was asking about the name Sawatzki and said those names with zki came from Prussia (now Poland)...which I already knew. But then she told me something that I didn't know. She said that all the records of family births, deaths, marriages were either kept in the church or the main center of the area government and they usually can't find the information that someone is trying to find (ancestry stuff) because if someone came and said "I'm a descendent of Johann Sawatzki" and if he had owned some land, then the Polish government would be obliged to give you part of the land...so they often don't help with getting family information. Interesting. Also the reflex. lady said she knew an Anya Sawatzki and she lived in ...of all places...Tenningen (Joan, can you believe this!!). It's too bad we found this out this late (we leave here tomorrow)...and it's also too bad we didn't have time to see Inga in Tenningen...our days have been filled til about 8:00 pm every night! Also, she said there were Sawatzkis in either Denzingen or Kenzlingen.
So we continued our jaunt south, intending to go further south and explore around there, but we saw the remains of this castle:
and Grandpa wanted to stop and take pictures of the castle to show Delia where real princesses lived...so here it is.
This castle is called Hochburg & it's near Emmendingen. Joan, is this where Frank used to play as a little boy? I'm betting that it is. The castle was totally amazing! It was built around 1100 according to the sign here. Now that's just almost impossible to comprehend. Here, you can just explore as you want...inside the castle and outside. We had to climb quite a hill to get there, but it was definitely worth it.
Here are some (or many!) photos of it. This picture shows the height of the wall around the castle:
This is inside the castle:
Delia, do you think the princesses looked out from this window?
or maybe one of these?
or one of these?
or maybe she looked out one of these. Which one do you think?
And do you think the princess walked up these stairs in her long dress?
Here's a detail of the floor:
When you get to the top of the watch tower level, the view is amazing!
I think this is looking towards Emmendingen.
Leo had to take this picture of me in a tunnel in the castle leading to another room. Luckily, I turned around before he snapped the picture!
So we left the castle and started to head back. Other sights today:
Leo's new found word:
A chestnut tree:
Jesus of the cornfield:
We went to dinner at one of our favorite places:
They have our favorite beer here:
Came back to the house & tried drinking some of the teufel liquor (remember the 110 proof stuff?) Well, I put some in a dish & lit it on fire to burn off some of the alcohol.
Well, it burned for about 5 minutes and showed no signs of stopping so I had to douse it. And I don't think it got rid of any alcohol...it still tasted like hell fire (but with 42 herbs!) Dang! I'll bet that'll cure what ails ya! Leo said it burns like jet fuel. I think we could have roasted marshmallows on it the entire evening!
While doing this, we were doing a webchat with Sara (she was off work so she was able to chat in the middle of the day. She was quite amused with the fire lighting drink!
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