Christmas Markets 2015

My dad came to visit this past weekend and he'd never been to a German Christmas market before, so we took him to 4 different markets in 3 days. I didn't take many pictures of the markets themselves, but figured I'd share the few I did take.

We started our tour in Schwetzingen, which is about 40 minutes away from Bad Dürkheim by car. There is a palace in Schwetzingen (currently closed for renovations) and the market is right in front of it. I managed to not take a single picture of the palace itself. I meant for us to walk in the palace gardens and take pictures from there, but we were hungry so we ate lunch at a nice brewery instead then just headed home. I only took one picture, of my dad and Martin enjoying some Glühwein. The Schwetzingen market was actually very small and did not have many things to buy - it was mostly food. I'm glad I went there and saw what it was like, but I don't feel the need to go back to it. The picture below is the only one I took! You can see a small bit of the palace in the background.



Next up was Freinsheim. We had also never been to this market so we were just checking it out to see what it was like. We had dinner at a nice restaurant, Restaurant zum Weingockel, and went an hour early to explore the market a bit. Freinsheim is a cute, cozy, walled village just a few miles away from Bad Dürkheim. Martin and I go there often in the summer on our bike rides. So, any market in this adorable village is great. And the Christmas market was quite atmospheric. Below are some pictures from it.



Here's Martin standing in front of the restaurant where we ate. Waiting for me to finish taking pictures ...



On Sunday, we went to our favorite local Christmas market in Deidesheim. We just love the atmosphere there, and it's always crowded and people are always having a good time. I didn't take many pictures here, again, but you can probably look at some of my older blogs to see pictures of it!



Finally, on Monday we went to Mannheim. We had dinner at C-Five restaurant, which is always amazing, but before dinner we wandered around Mannheim. Mannheim is the nearest "city" to us and it has a wonderful outdoor shopping area - complete with 3 Christmas markets. One of them is really small but the other two deserve a wander through. There are a lot of stalls selling unique, quality gifts.



I loved the stars in the trees here. It was hard to get a decent picture of them.



My dad wandering around. Couldn't stop him for a picture there was too much to look at! This was a whirlwind tour because we had a dinner reservation to make.



The water tower and large Christmas pyramid all lit up. The pyramid even changed color.



And that's it for Christmas markets in 2015.

Horse Hike 2015

This past weekend was Martin's old lab group's annual horse hike in Switzerland. It was started by Niko (our crazy Swiss mountain militia friend who plans the most challenging hikes for us); he found a restaurant in the mountains in western Switzerland that served really big horse steaks and he formed a hike around that. The hike consists of an hour or so of really steep uphill, then stops at 4 restaurants to eat and drink with the final restaurant serving the horse steaks for dinner (none for me of course - I can't bring myself to eat horse). Then, an after-sunset trek back down to the bus stop in the dark. The entire hike is maybe 6-7 miles long with 600m of ascent so you're earning all the food and alcohol that you ingest throughout the day.

This was the fourth or fifth year of the horse hike, and this was the first time the weather was sunny and warm for it! It's always done in the fall so the weather is hit or miss - it could be sunny and warm, as it was this time, or cold and snowy/rainy, as it was last year.

Here we are just getting started on the hike. It took us 3 trains and 1 bus to get to the start of the hike - I'd forgotten how well Swiss transportation works. We naturally climbed up the large hill/mountain in front of us in the first picture below. Note these are not the Alps - this hike is in the Jura which is in northwestern Switzerland. The Jura are like rolling hills compared to the Alps.



There are several trails and even a road that go up to the first restaurant but Niko opts to walk up a riverbed - which, when it's raining, is an actual river. Thankfully this time it was dry but all the leaves we were trekking through were still wet and slippery. After the riverbed we walk awhile through the forest, sometimes on an almost-trail and sometimes not on any trail. Thankfully somebody knew the way!



We eventually intercepted a really nice trail and followed that the rest of the way up to the first restaurant.



The restaurant, our snack of ham and cheese with really fresh delicious bread, and my new best friend.



Fortified with beer and a snack, we headed out towards the second restaurant which is across the fields and through the forest on the left of the second picture below.



After getting to the top of the saddle, we got the most amazing view of the Alps to the east. This view persisted until we arrived at the second restaurant, which was closed for some reason. So we had to immediately continue on to the third restaurant - where we still had the gorgeous view.



Climbing a final hill up to the third restaurant.



As the sun got low in the sky it got chilly out, so I decided to try some of the warm drinks. Below is "teawine", which is red wine mixed with tea. It was ... interesting. This is actually on the menu here and some of the Swiss must like it?



And this is Martin's "coffee schnapps", which is about 10% coffee and 90% schnapps, with a sugar cube mixed in. You can tell from its coloring that there isn't much coffee in it! While I had never heard of teawine before, coffee schnapps is really popular in the mountains in Switzerland and we had had it several times before while hiking. Or at least, Martin had had it before. I don't like coffee or schnapps.



The view we had from this restaurant:



This picture is of the guy standing behind the two guys at my table. His name is Ueli and he owns the restaurant. He stands outside drinking and smoking all day long and he just looks like he lives in the middle of the mountains. Super friendly guy though.



And a few pictures nearing sunset as we motivated ourselves to walk to the fourth, and final, restaurant.



Here's Martin's horse steak. And, he and our friend Matthias digesting after finishing all that meat.

Halloween at Frankenstein's Castle

So there is actually a castle in Germany called "Castle Frankenstein". It's just a ruin now but it used to be something more, obviously. Several decades ago, some Americans found out that this castle existed and they decided that there should be a Halloween celebration at this castle. So, for three weekends every fall, there is a Halloween "haunted house" at Frankenstein's castle. It's all outdoors, just wandering around the ruins, so it's not an actual haunted "house". There are about 100 "monsters" there who follow you around and scare you. And, since we're not in the US anymore, they are allowed to grab you, touch you, put you into a coffin or cage, etc, without you even having to sign any legal paperwork. Crazy, I know. No worries, parents, there is a special mid-afternoon "family time" at the castle where the monsters are supposedly gentler and less scary...

The castle ruins are divided up into different areas - there's the food/drink/dancing/party area, which is monster-free (usually), and then there's the monster area where you go through a forest filled with wolves, a swamp filled with swamp things, a serial killer area complete with the Texas chainsaw guy with a chainsaw, some sort of viking or "big scary woolly guy" area, etc. Every year there is a theme and this year that was "freakshow" so in the main area there were stalls like at a carnival where you could play some scary games and there was a stage set up where the freakshow monsters performed every half hour or so. They danced to thriller in one performance, of course.

This is the only picture I took of the castle ... just one side, with a few purple spotlights on it. We arrived right at sunset so the daylight faded quickly. Also, the castle is in the middle of the forest so unless you drive a few miles away you can't get a shot of the whole thing.



Below are some pictures of the monsters, most taken while they were on the stage as that was the only time they weren't attacking you so you could get a decent picture. Most pictures below are courtesy of our friend Christian Winter, who came with us and brought a nice camera and took the best pictures.



These two guys were willing to pose for a few pictures, which was nice. I was actually a little disappointed by the lack of scary clowns at a freakshow-themed event but I guess I was confusing freakshow with circus or carnival.



My iphone didn't capture this well, but the guy sitting up on the chair here was super scary. And you never knew when he was going to hop on down and grab you. This was in the "big scary guy" area. Maybe they were cannibals? Whatever - big scary guys.



This guy took Martin's hat. He took a lot of people's hats, actually. He would hold it out then when Martin went to grab it he'd pull it away. He probably had the most fun job of all the monsters. We decided the swamp monster had the least fun job, as that person had to stand in knee-deep water all night long. I'm just glad the swamp thing only splashed us and didn't drag us into that gross water. (sorry no pictures - he was too scary to stop and take a picture of I had to get by him as quickly as possible!)



One of the towers. This would have been much spookier if the people up there were real and moved every once in awhile. But they weren't. I waited a long time for one of them to move though.