Thursday, June 26, 2008

Man's Inhumanity to Man

One of B's many famous quotes which he borrowed from somewhere is: "I may not know art, but I know what I like."

I am taking an expression art course in the Westend part of Frankfurt. It's as bohemian as a banker's suburb could get, I guess. My first assignment was to paint a tree. And here it is:



Fortunately, B likes it and I absolutely love it. Anyone who knows my love of minimalism and my love for blue will like it too. The teach said, she's never seen a tree like mine.
Not sure if that is good or bad (but thinking makes it so).

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Burg Overdose
Click on Mrs. Big Ears above and see recent pictures of Limburg and Burg Falkenstein. Our navi system in the car has a neat feature that displays places of interest wherever we happen to be at the time.

Burg Falkenstein offers the best view over Frankfurt. Access to the top of the tower was closed but it's a beautiful place for a picnic. There are about a dozen Falkenstein castles in Germany but this one is the one closest to Frankfurt.

The town of Limburg that we were in is not the one where the smelly Limburger cheese originated. That honor is bestowed to another Limburg located on the border of Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands. The town we saw is about 45 minutes northwest of Frankfurt. Next time, B plans to take more pictures of the funny statues on the building in Limburg.

Has anyone ever picked up an English version of the driving rules in Germany?

Sunday, June 8, 2008

Heidelberg, Bad Wimpfen, Rothenburg o.d. Tauber



The start of the EM soccer championship fell on our 10th wedding anniversary and we see cars everywhere with (mostly) German flags attached to their windows and soccer fans all over-including this lady peeking out of a window in Rothenburg. I love the soccer ball hats.

For our anniversary trip, we started out in Heidelberg, where we stayed at the Ritter Hotel in the old part of the city. It was close to everything we wanted to see - the castle, the old bridge and the walk up to the Philosopher's Way. For more information and pictures on Heidelberg, also see Heidelbergerin's blog.


Our hotel is a building from 1592 and it was funny to watch the tourists take pictures of the facade - every time we looked out of our window, we got an impression of what the pope must feel like when he steps out on the balcony in Rome.

The next day, we drove through Bad Wimpfen (again, thanks to Heidelbergerin) and on to Rothenburg. We had seen Rothenburg 11 years ago and were surprised by the changes. All the building facades have been renovated and there seemed to be a lot more street traffic than we remembered. Also, the number of souvenir shops has increased ten-fold. It is still a very picturesque town. On our list of favorites is walking the city wall surrounding Rothenburg, climbing the city hall tower and walking the woodsy path down to the Toppler House, which sits on the base of a tower.

Since that day was our anniversary, we treated ourselves to a stay at the Burg Hotel with a beautiful view of the Tauber valley. It was a very quiet place to stay and the staff were very friendly. Since the hotel does not have a restaurant (just a breakfast buffet), we decided to have dinner on the outside terrace of another hotel nearby.

This four-day trip was very touristy but the nice thing about touristy towns is that they keep up appearances - the cobblestone streets lined with outdoor cafes and umbrellas, the flowers everywhere... Maybe it's fair to say that if it weren't for tourists, a lot of historic places would fall into decay and places like Rothenburg would not have the money to keep it up.