The Maginot Line

This weekend we decided to learn a little more about WWII and so we traveled an hour and a quarter south/west into France to take a tour of a fortress on the Marginot Line.

We took a German tour and the guide spoke Alsatian - which means he spoke a dialect of German but not high German. So I had a really hard time following him. We were given a nice english translation of the tour, so, here's the first page of it so you can learn a little bit about where we were:



Waiting to start the tour:



An American tank is hanging out near the parking lot. Not sure why.



The fortress was enormous. There were several hallways that were almost a half kilometer long.



This tour is long. And it's really cold in the fortress and I was wearing shorts. And I couldn't understand the guide. This sums up how I felt:



But it was pretty neat. Below are the beds where the soldiers slept. They slept 8 hours, worked 8 hours, and had 8 hours of free time. They each shared their bed with 2 other soldiers and they rotated through it every 8 hours - so your bed was always warm. But it also meant you could never relax in your bed or sleep in.



This diagram shows how the cannons were raised and lowered for use. Yep, it's only in French.



There was a huge lever that was used to raise and lower the cannons (left). That's our guide leaning on it. We had serious concerns about his ability to finish the tour without having a heart attack. The tower that was used to raise/lower the cannons weighed 70 tons (right). The counterweight on it weighed 17 tons.



Looking up into where the guys sat to man the cannons. They had to be small to fit in there. And it got so warm they had to be naked. (we assume they were wearing underwear but we have no proof)



Another long hallway - this one was slightly inclined so we had to walk down really tiny steps for 10 minutes straight. It's described below, known as "the incline".



Towards the end of the tour we wandered through a small museum. Here are a few various bits of ammunition. Not sure if any of them actually were used in the cannons or not.

Hiking in the Odenwald

After the wedding in Fischbachtal, we decided to go for a little hike on our way back to Bad Dürkheim on Sunday morning. We found what looked to be a relatively easy 3-mile hike around something called the "Felsenmeer" and went for it. I couldn't tell you exactly where this hike is as it's kind of in the middle of nowhere, but it was about 20 minutes southwest of Fischbachtal.

We had a mostly cloudy day for this walk, but since most of it was in the forest that was fine. The trees and soil and overall feel were different from our usual forest (the Palatinate) which was a nice change (and why we decided to do this hike in the first place).



So it turns out the Felsenmeer is an ocean or river of really large rocks. It's actually a really popular place for kids to play in and there were a lot of families hanging out there while the kids climbed all over the rocks.



Martin got in on the fun for a little bit too:



The end of the hike was through some farmland with lots of cows and horses. It was really pretty. Also, have no fear, as usual we ended up making this hike longer than it should have been. The trails were very well marked - much better than 99% of the Pfalz's trails for sure - but we didn't have a solid plan when we started out and the webpage we used to choose the hike wasn't very detailed so by the time we were done wandering around all the different trails we certainly hadn't done whatever the original 3-mile hike had been.



Note there were several huts and beer gardens and even an African restaurant!! on this hike. Distances between buildings and sites and parking lots were all really short (~1km or less) so this is a great place for anybody to have a nice hike.

Castle Wedding!

Martin's office mate just got married at Schloss Lichtenberg, which is located just south of Frankfurt in the village of Fischbachtal. So we got to attend our first wedding in a castle! It was, unfortunately, pouring rain with a bit of gusty winds the entire time we were at the wedding (all 10.5 hours, gotta love German weddings that go all night) so we didn't get many nice pictures outside. We also didn't take a tour of the inside of the castle, so, we are also lacking indoor pictures. But I took a few!

Here we are standing outside of the castle before the wedding began. This was the best we could do in the wind.



And a pic of the awesome weather from the room the wedding reception was in in the castle:



The bride rode up to the castle in an Aston Martin. Not caring the least about cars, I didn't even include the whole thing in this picture (sorry, was focused on the bride and groom) but I've been told the car was really nice. I think the wedding started late because they had to wait for a break in the rain before they could drive up with the top down...



The bride and groom walking down the aisle together.



After a brief ceremony in a small room of the castle, we were treated to a lot of Sekt, both alone and mixed with various juices, plus this lovely little table of goodies. These got us through the ~3 hours between the wedding ceremony and the reception.



Here we are enjoying this 3-hour break. It was actually really nice - we had several friends at the wedding, plenty to eat and drink, and a castle to enjoy.



The bride and groom were given many gifts and speeches and presentations throughout the evening. Here is the cousin of the groom gifting them with beach chairs and beachy drinks for their honeymoon to Cuba and The Bahamas. Germans are extremely creative with their gifts. Every gift we saw put every gift we've ever given for a wedding to shame.



Here, look at this creative gift:



The mother, aunt, and cousin of the bride put together a slide show complete with rhyming commentary interspersed with singing and piano playing (the mother and aunt sang while the cousin played the piano). It was a full half hour long and a) they had really nice voices and b) at the end, the parents of the groom and father of the bride joined them as well and they sang to the couple and it was really beautiful. Germans have so many thoughtful things like this in their weddings. There's always at least a few singing performances from friends and family.  There was a singing "flash mob" at this wedding as well, but I didn't get that on video since everybody had to participate in it.

There was a photo booth and a few other little entertaining things to do throughout the evening.



And the cake! To be honest, the icing was a bit too much especially after we had eaten so much throughout the afternoon and evening.  Every course, including dessert, had been a buffet so naturally we had overdone it with the eating by the time the cake was cut.  But look how big the pieces they were cutting were!



And finally, a picture looking back up to the castle that we took as we were talking out to the car around midnight (we left before the dancing had even begun!):