Amberg and Nurnberg

Yesterday, we were able to attend my mom's branch. It was cool for a couple of reasons. One, the building the members meet in was the old stomping ground of Elvis Presley. He played in the bar that was once in this building while he was stationed in Germany. Two, it was so neat form the kids to attend a service in a foreign country and see that the church is the same. The branch was on the same lesson the kids would have received had they been at our home ward, and they were practicing the same songs. It was so cute, because during sacrament, the kids sand "I'm so glad when Daddy Comes Home" for Father's Day, just as our home ward did. Noleigh and Hiram were to shy to sing, but that is okay. They enjoyed their sharing time and I went to Relief Society for the first time in . . .???, its been a while. I was also able to attend Sunday School. I'm looking forward to our meeting in Salzburg next Sunday- I hope they don't speak English!

After our church meeting we headed out to walk around the small town of Amberg, which is just a few miles from my mom's home. It was beautiful! It was fun too, as there was a festival going on and Elvis songs were being sung by German performers. I got a kick out of that.

I thought this villa was so beautiful!

As we were walking along the outer walls of the city, the kids spotted this watchman.


The towers entering the old part of Amberg

Bay windows are movable in Germany. If you move from apartment

to apartment you can take yours with you!

The view of the small river that runs through the town.


After a good nights rest, we headed to Nurnberg today. We took the train into town, which was great because we were able to look out the window and talk as we travelled. I am more and more becoming a proponent of train travel! Nurnberg was amazing. While there we toured the Kaiserberg, a castle built maybe around 1100. We took a tour of the castle and looked around the museum, which had armor and weapons from long ago. Hiram thought the weapons were so cool. Walking around, we saw some familiar things, some other amazing things, and some, well, very bizarre things!

The Train

The old village of Nurnberg

A Catholic Cathedral, so big I couldn't get it all in one shot. If you look closely, you see netting and wiring around the different features of the building, to prevent birds from nesting.

A beautiful fountain outside the cathedral. . . .

or maybe bizarre?

This building served as a hospital during different wars, and is now a restaurant

On the rocks at the bottom of the castle

Inside the castle walls

We climbed the tower in the background. There were 160 wooden, spiral steps to get to the top. The kids were so worried with how rickety it was inside, but only the kids, ha ha

The Kaiser's quarters in the castle. I have pictures of the inside, but it was too amazing to put them all on.

Outside the castle's walls

First Few Days

We are enjoying our first few days in Germany immensely. One of our first meals was on Thursday as we were traveling to Mom's house. We had authentic rest stop McDonald's. Nice! All the signs say Ich liebe es! (I'm loving it!)

After arriving at my mom's the kids went to play at the playground right behind her house. They had a great time on the see-saw, a park favorite not often found in the states anymore!



This is just a quick picture of the back of my mom's house and her yard. It is a beautiful home, and the view is amazing, as you can see from the kids picture above.



All of the following pictures were from our outing to day in the Medieval city of Rothenberg. We walked around and enjoyed just the beauty of the town and the old walls that surrounded it. The kids loved walking on the cobblestone streets and touching walls that children 700 years ago probably touched as they were walking the streets. The gardens were beautiful as well. Noleigh loved all the little Christmas ornament shops and Hiram loved all the nutcrackers. It was just a fun day! The weather cooperated, it was sunny and cool (low 60's) making it a wonderful day to be outside! We also enjoyed seeing the towns giant cuckoo cuckoo clock that chimes every hour and tells the story of the towns survival during the Hundred's Year War with France. The mayor of Rothenberg offered a truce to the French who were laying siege on the town by offering a beer drinking contest. Whoever finished the stein of beer first would win. The French readily took the deal, as they figured they could easily win. However, they were unaware of the capacity some of the Rothenberg's townspeople had for drinking beer and the town won, therefore winning the freedom of the town. I thought that was great! Who says beer can't solve problems. Ha ha ha!

These little balls in the window are the town's most famous treets, they are almost like rolled up funnel cake with chocolate, powdered sugar, cinnamon, and other flavors.

The giant cuckoo cuckoo clock

This is one of the tours you can get in the city.

The kids thought this looked like a dragon. . . I think they are right.

What a funny house!

This tree was amazing, it was flat against the house.

This house and tower are one of the most famous in the town.

View from the wall arond the city

Climbing to the wall

I just loved this house!

We're here!

First I have to say. . . .Happy Birthday to Noleigh! We were excited we go to spend her birthday with Nana. Unfortunately, a great part of the day was spent driving to Nana's house, but we still had time for birthday cake and presents. She was happy we didn't forget and that she got to be with both Nana and Grandma Ann. Nana has a surprise for her, but it won't be for a few more weeks. . . I wonder what it is.

The last few days have been very interesting. It started Monday morning, as we were headed to Dover DE, where we going to catch our flight. We took the train from Newport News to Wilmington DE. That was a very nice ride actually. It was cool to see the States from a train window. It was nice to not have to drive, to be able to use the restroom without stopping, and to get up and walk around. If you have time, I recommend this route, however if you are in a hurry, do not take the train. It took us until 3:30 to get to Wilmington (about 6 hours 20 min). From Wilmington we took the 301 bus to Dover. It was a straight shot, though it took 1 hr 45 minutes. The bus ride was okay though, it got us where we needed to be and was only $4. You can't really complain about that. The bus dropped us of at Water St. Transfer Station in Dover, but we missed the last bus to the Dover Air Force Base, so we called a cab. It was nice because as we were waiting we were able to sit and eat our dinner and enjoy not moving for a few minutes.

The cab came and took us to our hotel for the night. I had already called to see if there was any Space A planes, but none were to fly out until Tuesday afternoon. Our hotel was great! We stayed on base in the Temporary Living Facility (TLF) and basically had a small apartment for only $40. The kids said they felt like they were living in a palace. We got a good nights rest and then headed to the airport in the hopes of catching a 9:40a.m. flight. The flight got delayed until 2 that afternoon, of course. The airport was pretty great though. There was plenty of seating, a children's room full of toys and books, and a very nice playground outside, where we could watch the planes take off (well, none that were headed in the direction we were trying to go or that were taking passengers, ha ha ha). The post exchange, commissary, and Burger King were a five minute walk, so that was great as well.

2 o'clock came and went and the flight was delayed until 11p.m. It was then that I found out that this flight was actually from Maguire AFB and had actually taken off to go to Germany the night before, flown two hours and then turned around and came back due to mechanical errors. So there were a lot of people stranded from that flight at Dover. Also, there were several people that had been waiting 3 or more days to catch a flight. . . GREAT I thought, we get to live in the airport. Fun, Fun, Fun. There were 3 other flights to Germany scheduled that day, none of which flew, well one did, but it was carrying explosives and thank goodness, wasn't taking any passengers. The flight from Maguire was set to take off at 7 in the morning with 40 extra seats, so we said prayer we'd get on and that it would take off,with all mechanical errors fixed... important. So we spent the night at the airport, catching very few ZZZZs, as you can imagine. Come 4 o'clock in the morning the kids and I woke up, had breakfast and began the wait for roll call to see if we'd get on. Roll call started at 6 and they were calling people up one every ten minutes. It was hard for me to keep track of the seats, because of how slow they were going. at 7:30 they said they were no longer taking anyone, because the plane had to take off. They weren't full, it was just time to go, because the guys checking people in didn't start early enough. Great!

So I call my mom and let her know we won't be on that flight and begin to sit and wait. When we see an officer in uniform start fussing at those guys to fill the plane, he wasn't flying a half empty plane when so many families were waiting to fly, oh yeah, and an air show was starting the next day and no more flights would be leaving for 1 week. Joy and pandemonium when people heard this. All but 3 people were taken on the flight. My mom called as were checking in so I was able to tell her we were on our way, good timing too, as she was so excited and anxious for us to come she was in the process of buying us tickets. As we were boarding the plane, Noleigh started to cry because she was scared of taking off, so when we sat down, we each took some Dramamine and promptly, from the drug and lack of sleep , passed out. I woke up 6 hours into the flight. Noleigh woke up and wanted to know if we had taken off yet, I was glad I could answer not only had we taken off, we were almost landing. Before landing some chick who had gone out partying with her friends the night before got sick and we had to have an ambulance waiting for her at the other end, and guess what?

That's right, because of the swine flu scare our whole flight was quarantined until they figured out if she was contagious. Once they found out the situation, they just had us fill out our personal information so they could contact us in case it was serious, and we were finally able to pass through customs, leave the airport terminal and be officially in Germany. So very exciting. We stayed the night at this beautiful German hotel (as it was at this point 1 o'clock a.m. in Germany). We got a good nights rest and headed to my mom's.

I am so thankful we got here by my target time. How blessed we were to get on the first flight that actually flew out, and as luck would have it was on a plane that should have left Maguire AFB, the other base I was debating to go to catch a flight. I will add pictures as soon as I can. It has been a true adventure with lots of suspense so far. I can't wait for tomorrow!

UP

Just as an update, I finally was able to see Up today with the kids and wanted to give it a quick review. First of all, its Pixar, so you know the animation is awesome. The story was very cute, though I would have to say it is more for adults than children. . . not that there is inappropriate material or anything, I think it just is over the heads of children. The premise of the movie is about an older gentleman heading out on his life long dream of an adventure, and of course has an unexpected tag a long. I think that this would be a great date night movie!