In case you’ve been living in a bubble, or not
watching news, or just not interested as I have been before, Germany won the
World Cup 2014 with a 1-0 in overtime. Must have been nail biting because there
were scores on each side deemed faults. Big party in Berlin to welcome the team back and gradually the German flag paraphanalia is disappearing from the
streets.
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| Edge of the Black Forest with church spire, every village has a church. |
We drove out to the edge of the Schwarzwald, Black
Forest to St. Ulrich to Katholische Pfarrkirche erbaut von Peter Thumb, 1740,
Catholic Parish Church, built by Peter Thumb. It, again, is rather plain on the outside but
Rocco inside the webside calls it Baroque but we all agreed it was Rococo. Rococo
is 18th century artistic movement and style that came after Baroque
and even more highly decorated, hard to believe! Read and see the pictures here.
Read about the style here.
Lovely, if one should call it so, graveyard with
elaborate small gardens in front of the stones.
Christoph said this is a dying,
pun intended, tradition as many families are not around to keep the grave sites
neat and well tended. I suppose it’s that way all over the world. People also
have different choices now, well I won’t go on… We think the gardens are paid
for, at least some, in perpetual care. The family pays someone to keep them up
to the standard they set. i.e. “Driving Ms. Daisy” movie where she keeps up the
garden for her husband but expects her grave to go to perpetual care from her
son. Okay, said I wouldn’t go on and did, but it was a lovely stretch of
flowering patches.
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| Elaborate spire at the top of the church |
While it seems that with Christoph all we see are
churches but he does pick out the lovely ones and the insides are works of art
that are always welcome to my eyes. They even have individual hooks on the pews
for holding prayer knee pads, so orderly!
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| Mural ceiling |
The countryside is really beautiful this time of
year, still very green, rolling hills and small townships with old style
Germanic buildings. The area of the Black Forest we were in is fairly high so
the long sloping roofs of the homes are very evident and one needs a 4x4 to
drive in the area in winter.
We did have a bit of trouble finding a place for
lunch, Ivan, you are not the only one! In these small villages everything
closes up from 1400 (2 o’clock) or 1430 for proprietors lunch, re-opening usually
around 1700 (5 o’clock). Town after town we were getting later and later and
had almost decided to go back to Freiburg, but found this place at the end of
their lunch time still serving.
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| Napkin folded like a tuxedo jacket, yes, that's chocolate... |
Over another wonderful, but too much lunch, at Zum
Ochsen, restaurant and hotel in Schallstadt we had a good discussion about
Christoph and his partner’s touring business.
They will be doing multi-city European tours by plane, rail, tour boat,
and bus next year. We gave him some ideas of what we think Canadians want. I do
enjoy talking about ideas for business!
Another great day with Christoph seeing the
countryside around Freiburg! We really are not going that far away but
landscape changes rather dramatically and we enjoy it very much. Christoph said
that in previous farming communities in the area, land and housing was
inexpensive to buy. With Freiburg growing outward so much that has changed and now it is expensive. He agreed we made a good purchase in the flat here,
relatively new, no maintenance issues with an old building, and a view. Perhaps
viewing cattle and horses isn’t everyone’s “cup of tea” but we enjoy it.
Slow travel, staying in one place for a greater
period of time means a person has household chores, shopping, general daily
things need doing that you do at “home”. Every day is not a vacation but I do
like living in a different country, always learning, culture and language even
doing every day things. Example, I needed a hair cut, went back to the fellow
that did such a good job last time. http://www.bevbrucelexi.blogspot.de/2014_05_01_archive.html
Aside - Hah! I’m a semi-real blogger now, I found
out how to insert a previous post, easy really and feel free to ignore since the
subject isn’t really all that important. Now I know how, be warned…
The hair dresser was running late and got quite
stressed about it. Again, language barrier but I was able to calm him down and
say no worries, I’m not in a rush. Dual purpose for that, he didn’t cut off my
ear! And gave me another good hair cut, once he relaxed some.
Aside - Germans are typically right on time, to the
minute really. Personally I’m always early and some people I know are typically
late. Bruce read the story Winston Churchill
and his wife Clemintine who were getting ready to go out for an evening.
Winston was fiddling about, probably working, but running very late, as
apparently he often was. So when he was finally ready, Clementine said “Are you
ready?”, “Yes”. She went back to the bedroom, stripped down and started readying
of herself all over again. This is from a book called “My Darling Clementine”
by a biographer named Jack Fishman, and yes, I looked it up. Christoph is
usually late but he is relying on a train and two trams, then picking up the
car, which is not always where it is supposed to be, so we don’t fault him on
it.
Cheers, Bx2 & Lexi Cat
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