Of Sunshine and Walznudeln

We had a wonderful week of "it's-beginning-to-look-like-spring" weather. Not the April showers and gray skies spring, but the May flowers and sunshine spring. As mentioned before, when the only weather one experiences is walking from the car to work or the shop and back again, it may not feel so significant (believe me, I was one of those people for 15 years), but when walking, biking and public transport are your primary means of conveyance, you always have an eye out to the sky. So, for Delynn and I, the breaks of sunshine are a welcome change from the last winter's cold, wet grip. More rain will come, but the sun's touch feels so good on our skin.

This is a sunset in Lörrach-Stetten off of the balcony of our friends' home were we hold our weekly Life-Group. Lörrach incorporated this neighboring town of Stetten 100 years ago last week into the city itself and I hear some families from the former town of Stetten still hold a grudge. It seems like after 100 years you should just let it go. Lörrach also celebrated its Frühlingsfest (Spring Festival) this weekend. Delynn and I trammed over after church this afternoon to enjoy the sunshine and grab a wurst.

Have I mentioned that I really like that stores are closed on Sundays? Sure, it can be a pain when you didn't plan and run out of toilet paper at an inconvient time, but in general it is a nice change of pace. It forces us to slow down and enjoy the day of rest. I can see perhaps a little bit of the wisdom of God's directive.

So, apparently our family invented some new innovative type of noodles in the timeless past. They come in 8mm and 20mm widths. It feels so strange, but oddly comforting, to see our name on a package or a store (Baby-Walz is a chain of, well, baby clothing with stores throughout Germany). We have one just down the street and I don't even think about it much anymore.

Something also struck me this week about stores here in Germany that is so different than in the States. My local store ran out of coffee cream in the large (500ml) jar a couple of weeks ago. I like my morning German coffee with cream. Do you know that they still do not have any new stock? It simply is not anywhere to be found in the store. This would never happen at a Winco or Safeway - am I right? Another store in the neighborhood carries the product, so we can still get the coffee cream but it seems just so odd. When a product is sold out, the store clerks rearrange the remaining near-by stock items to cover the hole and they remove the shelf tag. You would never know that they even sold the product. This can go on for weeks before the product is replaced. Now, in all fairness, we DO go to the store much more often here than we would back in the US, so maybe we just never noticed it before but this has happened to more than one item that we purchase on a fairly regular basis.

Delynn and I took a quick trip Saturday to Liestal to see what it looks like during the day. Remember the fire parade (see 16. Feb 2008 blog entry) that took place down this street? It looks so normal now... Since we have a month-card for train/tram/bus travel, we like to make opportunites to take short explorations. As one walks around various towns and villages, you often come across memorials to folks with whom you have absolutely no frame of reference, but they have a nice flower arrangement, so why not take a picture? While I don't know who Herr Herwegh is, the townsfolk of Liestal must think enough of him to pay the gardener who provides this dazzling array of spring. (A quick google shows that Georg Herwegh was a 19th century poet who had to flee to the safe-haven of Switzerland)

As the rain showers turned to sunshine this week, the pre-school could not wait to get out to play. Here you can see most of our pre-school class prepared to go out and jump in puddles! What fun! These are the smiles that fuel our love for serving here in Germay. Each child is a precious gift from God and we see them as such. They are great fun and their smiles can melt your heart.

Have a blessed week. Love to all.

What a week!

I was remiss to not share about our school's Invention Convention we held a little over a week ago. The students were invited to come up with inventions or new games to share with each other. We were quite surprised by the really clever thinking of some kids. One 4th grade student (pictured below) was so excited about his invention that he brought it two days early - it is a shoulder mounted book holder. You can't quite see it, but the book rest back folds down flat AND it has a small metal bar that comes up to hold the pages open. If you knew this young man, you would understand why he would want a book holder that fits him standing up - he is a whirlwind of energy and activity, as well as a blessing to have at Rhein International Academy.


The students at RIA also hit another significant goal this last week, but more about that later... (OOOOOh! building anticipation)

One of our joys in living here is the ability to take short day trips to sweet little towns like Laufenburg, Switzerland/Germany. You see, there is this quaint town of Laufenburg that lies on both banks of the Rhein river about 30 minutes east of Basel. We had been promising to go explore it someday, so when we woke up Saturday morning to the promise of a nice day (according to the weather forecast) and no major chores to accomplish, we determined to take the train to Laufenburg to see what we could see. We rang up our friends, the Barbours, saddled up our backpacks and set our eyes for adventure.

Our first adventure was when we arrived in Laufenburg, we got off the train and strolled around the Bahnhofplatz looking for the train schedule so we would get a feel for the departure times. When travelling by public transport, it is always prudent to know when and how late trains will be running to get one home. The ticket office was closed, but they had a schedule posted outside. After about three or four minutes of just wandering around the station, my friend Cam realized that we did not have our rucksacks - THEY WERE STILL ON THE TRAIN! Well, we scurried back to the track and jumped on the train. Cam went right and I went left, running through the cars to find our packs. The train could have started back toward Basel at any second. Cam found the packs and jumped off, I looked back and saw him, so I scooted to the nearest door and departed. The train left the station for Basel 3 minutes later (we had plenty of time...)

As I said, Laufenburg sits on both banks of the Rhein river, however in about 1800, Nepoleon ruled that the Rhein river would be the border between Switzerland and Germany (Not quite sure how the French got involved...) thus the town has been separated by nationality. A solid stone bridge connects the two sides making the passage pain-free (the border/customs houses are generally unstaffed with the border gate barriers raised.) The German side boasts the very nice Heilig-Geist Kirche (Holy Ghost Church) - a red stone building that dominates the hill. The Swiss side has more of the original wall along with the tower ruins shown below.


As you can see, the day turned out perfectly. Blue skies, temperatures in the mid-teens and lots of winding streets to explore. The only odd thing we noted is that just about all commerce concluded at noon. In Weil and Basel, most shops stay open until at least 1600 (4 pm) but in Laufenburg, we found only a couple of places still doing business in the afternoon.


Here are Delynn and Michael standing in two different countries (Delynn was in Germany at the time) with a little "hands across the border" thing going on. You might notice that Michael's hat is fitting a little looser than normal. Has his head shrunk?

Uh, no. Michael got an Extreme Hair Makeover when the RIA students made their Reading Challenge goal of reading 50,000 pages. By the way, that is us at the top of the tower in Laufenburg (CH)

"I regret that I have but one head of hair to give for my school"

This is the winning team of students at RIA, along with their very short-haired librarian. We decided to leave a little bit of hair (couple of millimeters), for which I am grateful as it is still a bit cool at times. I had to wear my wool cap (which Delynn knit for me) Friday morning at work while waiting for the heat to come up. But it is all worth it! The students really outdid themselves. One 5th grader read over 9,000 pages alone!

Whew! What a week. Love to all.

Interesting information about Germans

Delynn and I were watching a TV show the other evening and thought that our friends back in the States (and elsewhere around this ever-smaller globe) would be interested in this information. The program is called Galileo and is a Discovery-channel like show. Sometimes they do challenges, like having teams try to build a stove out of old junk-yard parts and see which one will fry a steak successfully. Well, one of the segments in last week's show was What Germans Eat. Now, cousin Donna will tell you that our family is obsessed about eating (and I grow to be more in agreement with her...) so this was a topic that caught my eye. There were some surprising items in the list, so here goes.

10. Pasta: the average Germans eats 7 kg (15.4 pounds) of pasta and noodles per year.

9. Chocolate: 9 kg (19.8 lbs) per year. This is 1.65 POUNDS per month! The Walz's in Germany are doing our level best to meet or beat this average.

8. Eggs: 12 kg (26.4 lbs) This surprised us a bit, but they do eat a lot of soft-boiled eggs for breakfast.

7. Fish: 15.5 kg (34.1 lbs - about 10.5 oz per week). Speaking of fish, I was able to show Delynn some whole smoked eel at the market yesterday. She wasn't too keen on it. I guess one could classify eel as fish...

6. Cheese: 22 kg (48.4 lbs) Nearly a pound per week of cheese. It must be all of the walking that keeps people slim.

5. Meat: (big jump) 60 kg (132 lbs) This still works out to a little less than 6 ounces per day. They further broke that down into types: 40 kg pork; 10 kg beef and 10 kg chicken. Given that Germany produces over 1,500 varieties of sausage, it is not terribly difficult to imagine the current pork consumption levels. Also, pork is the least expensive meat at the market. Fresh boneless, skinless chicken breasts cost €10/kg. Rather than leave that as an exercise to the reader, it works out to $7.18/pound. We bought pork for schnitzel last week that was 40% of the cost of chicken. Granted it was on sale, but even regular price is closer to 50%. We can find frozen, processed and boxed chicken for €8/kg. Good thing we like wurst!

4. Potatoes: 63 kg (138.6 lbs) per year. Not a big surprise here. One of our favorite ways to consume potatoes is called Roesti - a specialty of the Alsace region of Germany, France & Switzerland. The basic Roesti is a large pancake of finely shredded potato which fills the entire bottom of the frying pan. The number of different accompaniements can fill a cookbook (and they literally do). Onions, diced pork and cheese are favorites in the region.

3. Vegetables: 84 kg (184.8 lbs) Of course, with the excellent variety of fresh veggies available at the weekly markets, it is not hard to believe this. We love buying from the farmer's that grow the food themselves. It is just beginning to be asparagus (Spargel) season. Europeons treasure white asparagus - a larger variety than its green counterpart most often found in the States. Apparently, as the asparagus grows, the farmers mound the soil higher and higher to keep it from being exposed to direct sunlight. This keeps the asparagus from turning green. Another interesting item is that vegetables in the supermarket have the country of origin listed as part of the description. So, you can tell if that tomato came from Germany or Israel.

2. Bread: 87 kg (191.4 lbs). Ummmmm bread. The bread here is so fantastic. Luckily, the bread options in the States are getting better but they still don't compare. We, for instance, have 4 different bakeries within two blocks of our apartment. Bakeries are one of the few places allowed to open on Sunday, so we can get fresh bread any day of the week. And much of the bread is whole-grained, which is much more robust than much of what we have found in the States.

And the number one item? This one surprised us a bit also - especially the amount.

1. Fruit: 122 kg (268.4 lbs) per year. This is nearly 3/4 of a pound of fruit per day. Their favorites are similar to Americans: strawberries, bananas and apples. I wonder if this counts the fruit in ice cream. Hmmm. Our friend Karin's favorite snack is dried apricots and it is not at all unusual to see Germans eat an apple for a break or while walking down the street.

I poked around the web a bit to see if I could find a similar breakdown of what Americans eat but could only find stories that we don't eat enough fruits and veggies. Actually, it looks like the folks here do a good job of following the USDA food pyramid. Interesting.

On a note totally unrelated to food, our Oberbürgermeister (mayor) of Weil am Rhein, Wolfgang Dietz, was elected to a second 8 year term of office with over 99% of the vote. Herr Dietz is well liked and one of his many accomplishments in his first term was to balance the budget. Wouldn't it be nice if we in America had such lofty convictions. The main opposition party (SPD) also felt that he is such a good Oberbürgermeister that they didn't even place a candidate to compete against him. Personnally, we are also grateful to Herr Dietz because he is a huge supporter of international education and of the Rhein International Academy. He was personally involved in bringing RIA to Weil a. Rh.

We will update everyone this coming week on the number of pages the students read in our Reading Challenge (a.k.a. 'Will Mr. Walz shave his head? Challenge'). Due to the two week Easter holiday, we extended the reading period until tomorrow. We shall see... I seem to be growing more fond of my hair as the results get closer.

Love to all!

More Easter break pictures

I promised some more pictures from the trip we recently took over the Easter holiday break when Delynn's sisters were here for a visit. As you will be able to tell from just about every picture, it was rather cool (some would say cold) for the first days of spring. We heard from friends back in the states that it snowed there also. Overall, the weather here has been quite mixed. I was able to sit out on the balcony and enjoy a book in the sun last week - tomorrow morning we might have some snow showers. Oh well, the tram ride into church this morning was beautiful and sunny, so we just take it as we get it.



For those of you that don't know (probably only one or two of you), the house across that lake is the one used as the back of the Von Trapp home in the Sound of Music. The lake is the one on which the boat overturned, sending all of the children and Maria into the water. A house at an entirely different location was used for the front shots.

I don't think we will go swimming just today.

Surprisingly, I have finally found something new that is less expensive here than in the States. I went to the doctors office last December when I came down with sinusitis (one of my many maladies during the last fall-winter...). The doctor's practice is in the same building in which we live, so it was very convenient. I dropped by to make an appointment and they were able to fit me in the same day. I just came home and they gave me a call about 30 minutes later to come back up a flight of stairs to see the doctor. He speaks very good English and did a quick diagnosis and prescribed an antibiotic. I went back to see the doctor again in February to get a prescription refilled. We just received the bill this week covering both doctor visits (so much for German efficiency). I guess they aren't used to people having private insurance. Anyway, the cost of both visits was €32 (about $50). That was not the co-pay, that was the full cost of TWO visits. I couldn't believe it - it seems rather surreal when I think that in the states they charge the insurance company 100's of $$ for each visit. Amazing...


Not long ago, I posted a picture of Delynn, Deanne and myself enjoying a wurst at the market in Freiburg. Here is another, more traditional picture of the sisters at the Freiburger Münster - actually, Deanne and Denise look surprisingly well considering this was their first full day in country.

While we visited the town of Oberammergau, just after parking the car, we found a local church down the road. From the outside, it looked like a normal church, nothing really special but it did have a very beautifully cared for Friedhof (cemetary). We walked through the cemetary and took some pictures (the image of the cross and Alps a couple of entries ago was taken there). As we finished with the cemetary, we were walking back to the street when we decided, rather on a whim, to go ahead and take a peek inside - to think, we almost bypassed this incredible sight! The picture below really doesn't do the church justice - our jaws literally dropped with we first glimpsed this glorious interior.

Guess where we stayed in Salzburg? The Hotel Goldene Krone (Golden Crown) is located on a pedestrian area in the "new" city (dates back to the 14th century...). Deanne and Denise had the room next to ours. There are actually two sets of windows each sister is leaning through - separated by a wide sill (about 10 inches deep). The double windows did a great job of keeping out the cold and we could use the space between the windows as an ad hoc refrigerator. Our water, juice and fruit stayed pleasently cool all day (they don't have in-room fridges). We thought ourselves quite clever.

This last picture is one I rather like of Neuschwanstein. I believe this was taken from the terrace at Hohenschwangau. It is a rather moody, mysterious image don't you think?

Thanks for reading. Blessings to all who visit and enjoy our blog. We are excited to share our life with you. Thank you for your prayers.

Did we say Wow!?

Delynn pointed out that we (uh, that would be me) forgot to post one of the pictures we had chosen to share. Did I mention that between Denise, Deanne and myself, we had over 600 pictures? It took quite some time to work though them all to find a nice sampling without overwhelming everyone. In the weeks ahead, I may be pulling additional pictures to liven up the blog.

So, I mentioned in the last entry that on the SOM tour the clouds were low and thick. At one spot, we were overlooking a town on a lake but we couldn't see the lake (and we could barely see the church steeple just a few hundred meters away). Well, imagine our delight when the next day broke clear with huge patches of blue sky. It was the day we had chosen to travel up to Königsee in the Berchtesgarten region of SE Germany. Actually, Berchtesgarten is a little peninsula of Germany that pokes into Austria just south of Salzburg. It is an area of breathtaking Alps and lakes.

We got up to Königsee early for the electric-boat trip out to the St. Bartholomä monastery. Only electric-powered (or human powered) boats are allowed on the German Alpine lakes to keep them unpolluted, the monastery being accessible only by boat at the far end of the lake. We silently cut through the water until the mid-point where the boat stopped. One of the boat captains then played a trumpet so that we could hear the echoes off of the shear cliff walls.

On a more somber note, we also visited the Nazi Documentation Center in Obersalzburg. It houses a display discussing the history of the Nazi use of the Obersalzburg region (the location of Hitler's Eagles Nest) and progression of how the National Socialist party took over and consumed the German people during the 30's and 40's. Much of what the did (social help for widows and orphans, institution of vacation time and better working conditions) on the surface was seemingly for good and noble purposes, but just under the facade, where most people really could not (or would not) see, the political party's purpose was evil. I am thankful that over the last decade or so, Germans have been begun to reexamine this part of their collective history in a healthy, more open manner. Whenever I visit places like the Documentation Center, it reaffirms in me the call to look at our own country's attitudes and government institutions with a more discerning eye.

As part of the tour, a small portion of the vast underground bunker complex is open to the public. Unfortunately, the Eagle's Nest was closed for the season (too much snow...). We also didn't get a chance to visit the Salt Mines that are located in this area of Berchtesgarten. I have been on the tour before and it is also well worth the time. So much to see and so little time. We recommend a trip to Berchtesgarten and Königsee to anyone that is traveling in this part of Germany.

What can we say but Wow!

We have had the most wonderful Easter holiday break. For those of you that don't know, Delynn's sisters, Deanne and Denise, flew over from Vancouver, Washington to give us a visit. They were staying for 10 days (which is not nearly long enough), so we planned to show them around the Swiss, French, German, Austrian area since it is all so close at hand. We started off slow, taking a quick trip up to Freiburg for their first full day in country. This allowed them to experience the regional train, see a little country side and see the Alt Stadt (Old Town). Oh, yeah, Delynn also wanted to show them the yarn store there... Go figure... In the center of the Alt Stadt stands the Münster (Cathedral) with its daily market on the Münsterplatz. They have probably been holding markets there for the last 500 years, so we joined in. And what does one do at the market? Eat of course! This was the girls first experience with wurst (sausage), leberkäse (can't explain), brotchen (fresh rolls), senf (mustard) and Apfelschorle (Apple juice & mineral water concoction). After explaining all the different options, we settled on various wursts for our lunch. Here we see the happy travelers - makes you kind of hungry, doesn't it?

So, our big excursion was a trip to Salzburg, just across the border in Austria. We chose it primarily, not because it is the birthplace of Morzart, oh no. Not because it has a magnificently complete fortress that has never been taken by force, oh no. (Well, they did surrender it to Nepolean without firing a shot...). Not because it has a wonderfully preserved old city with a Cathedral and churches dating back 1100 years, oh no. We went to Salzburg because it is the backdrop for the Sound of Music!

Even though it was the first days of spring, the weather took a definate winter-like turn for us but we loved it. We agreed that if it is going to precipitate, it is best to come down as snow rather than rain (we can get all the rain we want in the Northwest U.S.). We took the Sound of Music tour to see the various sites in Salzburg and in the surrounding Salzkammergut. Unfortunately, the clouds hung so low in the sky that we were unable to get a view of the Alps, but that was okay because we could ride along and sing the "I am sixteen..." and the "Do rae mi" songs without getting pulled over by the police.

It is very sad, but visiters can no longer go into the Sound of Music (SOM) gazebo. Apparently, there have been a couple of accidents recently; you know - fifty or sixty-something folks thinking they are Liesel or Rolf and that they can jump from bench to bench. So, they had to lock the doors for public safety reasons. Above is a picture of the Salzburg fortress from the Mirabelle gardens (another SOM backdrop). You can see that we had bits of snow hanging around but the city was just as magical as ever. We had the good fortune of being in Salzburg for Easter Sunday. To celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, we attended worship at the Salzburg Cathedral. They were celebrating a Mass in music. It was one of Hyden's with an orchestra, choir and soloists. It was wonderful. The voices and music soared within the cathedral's high ceilings, the praises (much of it in Latin) joined all of our souls together - it was a once in a lifetime experience. One of the really magical things about Salzburg is the number of churches that all toll the time as well as call the faithful to worship. It was exceptional on the Easter weekend. The video below is of St. Sebastian's church which was taken from the window of our hotel. Imagine these bells tolling for 10 minutes! It was sooooo cool.

After Salzburg, we drove down to the "castles". The castles are called Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau and were the homes of King Ludwig II of Bavaria. He was the king of Bayern in the 1870's and nearly bankrupted his kingdom by building elaborate fantasy castles. Neuschwanstein was the inspiration for Walt Disney's Sleeping Beauty Castle. We stayed the night in the nearby town of Reutte. We awoke to about 6 inches of fresh snow that had fallen overnight. I was a little stressed because I haven't driven in that much snow since living in Augsburg, but we went ahead with our plans to tour the castles and, as you can see by the pictures, we were not disappointed.

One very interesting item: at the hotel in Salzburg, we met another family visiting the area and found out they were from Beaverton, Oregon. It seemed like a very improbable occurance until we went to Reutte. There we met a family that came from Vancouver, Washington! They live in the Fisher's Landing area - what are the chances of that?

Anyway, here are the pictures.

Neuschwanstein castle in the snow...

Ludwig II lived in the castle slightly less than six months before he died under mysterious circumstances. At the time, only about 10% of the 200 rooms in the castle were complete. Within six weeks of his death, the castle was opened to the public. I think they have made back their money by now...

Plansee - on the road to Reutte. This is the kind of stuff one comes across in the Alps. You are just driving along the road between two towns and then something like this just explodes in front of you. The lake is slightly frozen but I wouldn't venture out upon it.

Hohenschwangau - this is where Ludwig grew up. Nice digs.

Oberammergau, Germany. This is the town that was spared from the Black Death in the 17th century. As a result, they have held the Passion play every 10 years since that time.

Delynn and I are preparing to return to school tomorrow. We are very excited as we race toward the finish of this school year in about 10 weeks. Thank you for your thoughts, prayers and support, they have sustained us and blessed us beyond what we can say. Love to all.

Here are the pictures (finally)

It has been a busy week here, so I'll spare you the gory details, but the pictures finally uploaded successfully. We will work on another update soon.

See - it really did snow! You can see the staff parking lot to the right...

Our friend Jennifer coming in from the cold. This is after about a 6 minute ride. Brrrr. Someone told her it would be easy riding a bike in the snow.

Below are our pictures from the retreat at Lagenbruck.

When the fog lifted, it was a beautiful view into the valley.

Here's the group.

It is a nice group of friends.