A Glimpse in the National Auto Museum of France

While in the Alsace we went to Mulhouse and visited the National Auto Museum of France. It is a collection compiled by the brothers Schlumpf and is one of the most prestigious in the world. It contains two Bugatti Royales, including the famous Coupé Napoléon, the 150 Bugatti, Hispano-Suiza, Ferrari, Rolls-Royce, Maserati, Maybach, Mercedes models, etc. It was basically an enormous warehouse filled with cars ... row upon row of car after car after car. It starts with some of the first cars ever made, which were pretty neat, and moves on through the years but there's nothing modern in there (thankfully or it would have taken us all day to get through it).

Anyway, enough about cars. Here are some pics. Thanks to Anke Brei for taking all of them:







The car on the right is called the whale and the car on the left is a cute little bubble:









And the Bugatti Royale:

Mmmm ... meat

While in Ingolstadt this past weekend we stayed at our friend Stefi's parents' house. They grilled up a large amount of meat on Saturday evening for dinner (which included sausages of course) then for the mid-day meal on Sunday Stefi's mom, Ludia (not sure if I'm spelling that right), made a Schweinebraten with Knödel. A Schweinebraten is baked pork and Knödel are extremely dense and sticky balls made out of potato or bread. They sit in your stomach like lead but it's impossible to stop eating them. Anyway, here are some pics of our meals from the weekend.

Here we are enjoying all the grilled meats on Saturday evening along with an awesome potato salad that I need to get the recipe for. Stefi's nephew Max is there as well, he was visiting his grandparents for the weekend:



Chrissy bought Stefi a dreamcatcher and Max decided it would make a good earring:



A little later that same night. There are 4-5 bottles of schnapps on the table, they are considered a digestif in Europe. And schnapps in Europe are not like schnapps in the US. European schnapps are distilled from different fruits and are high-proof liquor whereas US schnapps have a lot of sugar in them along with artificial (and sometimes natural) flavors.



Here's Martin relaxing on the back deck. Their house had two decks and nice landscaping and plants all over so it was quite relaxing to sit outside and just enjoy nature. See the woodpile, dad? That was only about a third of the amount of wood they had back there. And all the neighbors had huge woodpiles too. Which they had to order from somewhere because they're surrounded by farmland and no forest to be seen. It was almost more of a decoration than something they actually use there, woodpiles seemed to serve more as fences and decorative boundaries and were stacked creatively. Crazy.



Here's the awesome Schweinebraten. I'm not sure how she made it, what spices or concoction it baked in, but it had amazing flavor. We could smell it cooking in the oven all morning long and by noon it was like a race to the table so we could all finally eat it:



And the Knödel are the ball-shaped things in the bowl on the table:



Sorry I didn't get a close-up picture of them. I was in food coma.

Eichstätt

We spent this past weekend in southern Germany visiting with our friends Stefi and Chrissy. Martin met both of them while studying abroad in Germany and so we all decided to visit the town where they all met, Eichstätt.

Eichstätt is a small town and it's very clean. All the buildings are white or light-colored and they all look new (or at least new in comparison to the buildings we saw in, say, Colmar, that were obviously very old).

Here's the trio posing by the sign for their old university:



There are a lot of churches in Eichstätt. This one is filled with little gold angels all over the walls and ceiling:



Martin and Stefi being pious in the church:



Another church in the distance (this one had a wedding going on in it):



And another church, in the distance (Martin's at the fountain there):



Here's a house, for sale, that people were gluing paper moths to. Just for fun. I'm not sure who will buy the house like this but it looks kind of neat, and a little freaky too. At first I thought they were all real and they just really liked this house for some reason. Their wings flap in the breeze so they look real.



Martin, Stefi, and Chrissy posing in front of their old haunt, the Irish pub. The owner even remembered Chrissy after 10 years ... guess they were there quite often.

... and the Alps finally make an appearance!

We have lived in Zürich over a year now and a week ago was the first time I've seen all the Alps out around Lake Zürich! Sure we have lots of days with clear blue skies but it's always too hazy to make out the mountains so you need a day with no haze and few clouds in order to see them. It happens only a few times per year, no joke. On all the postcards of Zürich and on all the websites you see this perfect picture of the lake with snow-capped Alps in the background but your chances of seeing such a sight when you visit Zürich are slim to none. It's often that you get a glimpse of a few of the mountains but never the whole line of them stretching all the way across the southern horizon.

While we were driving back from France with Martin's parents we noticed that we saw Alps in the distance so we drove Larry and Frankie right up to the top of one of the hills that overlooks Zürich and had a look. It was still kind of hazy but by far the best I've seen yet!