Meet me at the Schloss... it's goin' down.

Whaddup in the homes!!!  Hi guys, it's Nate.  So I'm bloggin' bout the last two days.  I'm sitting on a couch in our room at the Ramstein Airforce base.  Wayne is sitting on the floor next to me, chewing a Fiber One bar while brooding over a huge map of Germany that he bought today.  No surprise there.  Annie is reading a book by the lamp in her pajamas; she was all ready for bed within minutes of arrival here.  Germany hasn't changed us much I guess.

Yesterday, April 29th, we woke up and hit the road to Heidelburg.  That has been my favorite place of our trip so far.  We walked through the old university and then took the freidnshnelken (sorry, that's not actually the real name, but the word started with an 'f' and was quite long), which is just a tram that gets pulled up the hillside, up to . . . The Schloss!  Isn't that a great name?  A schloss is a castle.  This schloss was quite awesome.  Unfortunately you couldn't just go wild and explore the whole thing.  Most of it was closed off.  But we explored as much as we could, and we had a blast doing it.  Plus it had many incredible views overlooking Heidelburg and the Mosel river.

The quote of the day, (for yesterday) came when I was buying a t-shirt at the university gift shop.  I asked the woman in charge where the t-shirts were, and she pointed at a rack and said, "These are the models".  I proceeded over to the indicated rack and started perusing through the t-shirts.  She quickly approached me and again proclaimed, "THESE are the models."  I wanted to say, "I know, you already told me," but I simply said, "yes, thank you,:" and continued looking through the shirts.  I did not understand that she was upset that I was browsing and pulling off the folded t-shirts on the shelves, rather than the shirts that were on hangers right beneath the shelves.  Finally, nearly shouting this time, she grabbed hold of the hanging t-shirts and said, "THESE ARE THE MODELS!"  This time I understood.  "Oh, sorry."  Well, I ended up buying one of the shirts, and I made sure to show her the "model" that I wanted, and she did the honors of taking it off the shelf for me.

Anyway, 'These are the models'.  Quote of the day.  Don't you forget it baby.

After our Heidelburg excursion we drove to Burg Eltz.  A Burg is also like a castle.  I really don't know the what the technical differences are between the burg, the schloss, and the castle---i just know that they are all awesome.  Burg Eltz was beyond picturesque.  It was built on massive hunk of rock that jutted upward out of a valley.  So this castle just erupts out of this rock with beautiful medieval turrets and windows and stone architecture surrounded by lush green hills.  It is breathtaking.  Plus, our guide of the berg was this girl named Ellie, and she was super cute.  It was the first time she had given a tour in english and she did great, but she had lot of misprononunciations which just made her even cuter.

Okay on to today, April 30th.  We hit the road quick this morning, ate breakfast in the car, which consisted of  tasty european yogurt purchased from the Shoppette on the base and some smashed muffins.  We got to Trier  about an hour later.  Here we saw some amazing old roman structures, the Basilica and the Porta Nigra.  There is tons of history behind each one, because they've each been around for well over a thousand years.  Look em' up on wikipedia though because I'm not gonna tell you much about them, other than that they are huge, old, and incredible.  In Trier we got the mother of all french fries: Belgium fries.  Belgium fries are nice and thick, and they are served with a big old glob of mayonaisse on top and some ketchup and onions.  An excellent way to clog your arteries...mmmmm!

Next we went to Metz, which is in France, where we saw an amazing old cathedral.  I thought up on the coolness level with Westmister Abbey, and that's really saying something.  It has excellent stain-glass windows everywhere, and three of the big ones were done by Mark Chagall.  You can really tell that they are his; they stand out from the others with fervor.  That doesn't make much sense but oh well. . . it's late.  Oh, there was also this guy playing the organ, and Annie went over to him and started talking with him and he was super nice and charming, especially after he learned about her musical talents.  She asked him to play some Bach, and he did.  It was like a  live Cathedral Jukebox!

This post is getting long.  The last adventure I will mention happened on the autobahn.  A lady got out of control and crashed right in front of us on the autobahn.  We slowed down and stayed out of the way luckily.  And she was not hurt nor were we or anybody else, which we're very grateful for.  It was kinda crazy though.          

Okay, thus ends the day.  Big day.  3 countries: Germany, France, and Luxemborg.  Plus a U.S. Airforce base.  Bonjour!  Auf Wiedersehen!  Bye bye!  And Go Jazz!!!

-N.



Okay, the best part of today was hands down the Metz Cathedral.  Gothic style, buttresses flying, loads of stained glass windows including some by Chagall.  And that's not even the best part.  After we had walked down the Nave, the white-bearded man at the organ began playing.   He was playing this really modern but really beautiful organ piece.  I was dying to know who it was by, and I think he noticed me loitering around the organ and listening.  When he got to a pause that seemed like it could be the end - you never know with modern music - I asked him who composed it.  He let me cross the barrier and go talk with him, not a bit condescending that I only spoke English.  He had heard of Salt Lake City ("big organ there!"), and he has a student (he's an organ teacher here) from Utah.  The piece he had been playing was by Messiaen, and he had been improvising based on that piece.  It was totally awesome, even though I dislike the other work I have heard by Messiaen.  I asked him if he would play some Bach, and he obliged.  He was so nice.
-A

P.S. Wayne is getting good at German by now.  He already knows basic conjugations and stuff.  And Nate bought a pocket knife perfect for slicing European cheeses.  In a nutshell, we're having a blast.
P.P.S.  The name of the tram to the schloss was "funicular".  (see nate's post above)




I just can't resist adding a few notes:

Annie had to specify that the guy at the organ was not condescending because everyone else in France is.  Nate walked into a Pastelerie, or whatever it's called, and asked the lady behind the counter, "English?"  She frowned and said "non" and WALKED OFF.  She only had a tiny bit of space so it was quite a trick for her to pout and stomp off to show her utter disdain, but she did it.  I said in audible English, "they really are brats about it, aren't they?"  Does that mean Americans really are brats, too?  No, just me.

The accident was crazy.  It was this tall black van, sincerely it was the car right in front of us, we just saw it start swerving, hitting the barriers on both sides before swiveling around to a halt.  Really scary.  Debbie was really calm, just stopped with plenty of room and plenty gradually so we didn't get hit, but all the traffic behind us was lined up.  The police arrived, no joke, within two minutes, and we were probably there for ten minutes before the cops swept off the dirt and glass from the road.  And you know what?  No one honked.  Yay European drivers.

Do you guys even know who Debbie is?  She's mom's friend from college (they met on an anthropology field study) and her family lives here in Germany now.  She's getting us in to all the US Military bases.  Without her, this part of our trip would be impossible.  She is helping us out so much, and making it just really fun.  So be glad your parents are so incredible that people love them enough to do stuff like this for you just because you're their kids.  :)

K, I know this is already Mammoth Blog Post.  Zwei (two) more things:  US Military bases are their own country.  They're unreal.  They're like this ideal articulation of an America that doesn't actually even exist in America.  I actually have a lot to say and think about that, but for now let me just say it's been really fascinating to see, and it's made me love America even more.

Highlight of yesterday:  we were walking down to Burg Eltz, and Nate picks up a rock and says, "Let's play a game."  Annie and I know him well enough to expect something good after that sentence, and he didn't disappoint.  The game is this: Whoever has the rock has to sing, and when to pass it off to someone else, they have to pick up where you left off.  Like Round Robin stories, but with music improvised on the spot.  It was so funny that by the time we got to the castle Annie couldn't even catch the rock she was laughing so hard.

Love y'all madly.  Sorry we didn't have time for photos today.  I'll at least put captions on the ones from yesterday, so go back and look.

-W.


--tomorrow we're going to a lot of towns, so you'll have to try and figure out the german name of the forest we'll be driving through, puzzlemasters.  it's in southwest germany and it's famous for cuckoo clocks.  I think its biggest city is Freiburg.  it's also the name of a kind of ham.