Visit with Good Friends!

Ryan and Angela of Jetsliketaxis.com came to visit us here in Freiburg! We know them from Sevilla. Yeah!  We had a Kir Royale to celebrate their arrival and had dinner. 

Happy People!

Saturday we went to the Munster Market, lovely sunny day and lots of people out to enjoy it. Divan, Turkish, for lunch where Ryan bravely killed a wasp that was really after my lunch. Went to Schlappen for a drink and noticed they have Tinto de Verano on the extensive drink menu. Since we drink those in Sevilla we decided to have one, Bruce was the smart one and ordered a beer. Well our drinks were so horrible we couldn’t drink them! We kicked ourselves for ordering a non-native drink and ordered beer and wine. 

Ryan found lemon soda so we enjoyed properly made ones at home, yummy!

Mundenhof - Sunday, we packed up a picnic lunch (chicken strips, carrot and cucumber spears with dip, egg salad and lovely bread they brought) we bought beers for beverages, walked around to see many cute animals. Angela wanted to take home a meercat and a monkey, hmm, wonder what Louis would think about that! Being Sunday and a sunny day the park was choc-o-block with children, some not so very happy ones too, noisy.

Shalimar - Indian food Monday for lunch and dinner! Shalimar has good food as I’ve mentioned before so since we can’t get good Indian in Sevilla we went. Bruce ordered a dish for take-home and we all ate it for dinner. In fact they did get a feed of it since they returned with friends the next night.

Harvest time!

 Kaiserstuhl - Tuesday I relied on my memory, always a dangerous thing, but we had a GPS in the car which helped to get us to Bahlingen for lunch at Gasthaus Zum Lamm. 

Farm Sculpture

Really well prepared German food with good service, the waitress had a sense of humour. Then we drove through the Kaiserstuhl to Breisach, for a coffee, in view of the castle we’ve all visited before so didn’t again. They enjoyed the drive through the grape farms, some of which had been harvested, some not. We saw many tractors with large vats of grapes but actually didn’t see anyone in the fields.

Grapes and raisins

Wednesday, sadly they left for Frankfurt after dropping by to say Bye for now, we’ll see them in Sevilla beginning of November.

It was a really lovely visit with two lovely, interesting, people who’s company we treasure. Weather held up, it was sunny, just as Angela asked me for, "with a cherry on top", guess that did the trick!

German Unification Day, Monday October 3rd is a holiday celebrating when the wall between East and West came down in Berlin. We went out with Christoph to Staufen for lunch at the Kornhaus. The whole village was out for a local race, seemed to be run by age group, small kids to adults, made parking a challenge but we worked around it and were able to get a seat at the restaurant. 

We had lunch in Staufen to facilitate a visit to a silver mine Bruce had looked up and thought it might be interesting. It is just outside Staufen but into the mountain a bit so the houses we saw are like those of the Schwarzwald, Black Forest, with the low hanging roofs, the town is Münstertal. It was a beautiful fall day and the colours very vivid on the fields and flowers. There are fields of “pick for yourself” flowers, many along this route. The gladioli are beautiful right now, they were my Dad’s favourite flower. Sunflowers are beautiful too but not quite as “stately”. 

www.besuchsbergwerk-teufelsgrund.de At the mine we ran out of time to explore it fully but Christoph appreciated the chance to see it for his future tours. 

Entry, as far as I went...

He currently takes them to a coal mine but says it has more difficult and uncomfortable access, he was impressed with this silver mine. While neither is a working mine now there are different processes to collect the coal or silver, no gases are used in silver mining which make it much less dangerous. 

Alternative use for the old cart, note the duck...

So how did people find where to start digging for silver 1000 years ago? They knew of plants that thrived on it and looked for those plants in the hillsides. The Romans were the first to dig here and then people were brought from Switzerland to dig, perhaps there is a lot of silver in the Alps or conditions were close to what they were used to.

Driving through rows of grapes and I said the blue netting used on some was to protect the grapes from birds. In fact it is also to protect from wild boars in this region and Alsace, France. They will suck on the grapes! Christoph talked to a woman in Alsace who said the boars are really quite smart. When one is killed in an area they won’t return there for a couple of weeks. They also know most hunting for them happens on weekends so they stay “home” on Saturday and Sunday! My only guess on that one is they can hear gunshots… There are signs on the highway that picture a wild boar hitting a car, boars are mostly nocturnal so a hazard at night. Bruce read a train hit one in Alsace recently.

My apologies for being tardy in writing lately. We had our lovely guests here, no excuse, then I had no pictures, then went out with Christoph, got pictures, the next day I contacted the worst cold I think I’ve ever had! Has a flu component which makes it very nasty. The last three days I’ve stuck to home and hope to be better soon. I am grateful it hit after Ryan and Angela's visit!

Bruce did the food shopping and in taking a basket, (we now have to pay two Euro for, returned when you return the basket) got a surprise to find a Samsung tablet in the bottom of the basket! He turned it into the cashier and someone is going to be very glad he did I'm sure. Of course it's not so much the device's value, the value is in what is stored on it. 

All for now, Cheers Bx2 and Lexi Cat