Some Vineyard Pics

Just some pics from walks we took last weekend around the vineyards. It looks like you can ride around on a horse-drawn buggy:

There are signs on the posts in the vineyards that tell you whose vineyards they are. So we can go out and buy the wine that is growing right outside our front door and see if it's any good (so far, most of the whites and sparkling whites have been excellent ... haven't found a great red yet but have only tried one as this region is known more for whites). We've had a really good white wine made from red grapes though ... just don't remember the name of it. This particular vineyard, Vier Jahreszeiten, is growing Portuguese grapes:

Here is the Flaggenturm that you can see from our apartment and that we walked to the top of our first weekend here:

Here's a view from the vineyards looking towards Bad Dürkheim and our apartment (which is the taller white building on the left under the Flaggenturm). Straight ahead is the Klosterruine Limburgh. You can also see The Wachtenburg castle from our apartment but I couldn't get it in this picture. It's a little to the left:

Here's a closer pic of Klosterruine Limburgh:

And some more vineyards, looking north from Bad Dürkheim:

Some Dark Pictures of Our New Apartment

Since I might never get internet access at my apartment to post the video I took of the apartment on my iPhone, I took a few pictures.

Here's our west-facing balcony. I just need to buy a few more flowers for the empty flower boxes:

And the living room, which leads out onto the above west-facing balcony. We ordered an L-shaped sofa that will be delivered next week that will take up some more space in this enormous room. We haven't decided how to organize it yet we'll figure that out once the sofa arrives then we'll put things onto the walls:

The dining room, which leads out onto our east-facing balcony. The living room opens into the dining area:

The kitchen. Sorry all these pictures are pretty dark. It was cloudy outside and I was too lazy to deal with making the camera flash work and of course we have no lights in the apartment! Though when it's sunny out, since our apartment faces due east and due west, it's so bright that it's like you're standing inside the sun. No joke we have to close the blinds in the dining room in the mornings in order to eat breakfast.

Anyway here in the kitchen you can see the awesome desk our landlord put in instead of counter space ... not sure what was going through her mind when she did that:

Master bedroom:

Guest bedroom/Onyx's room:

And my office, which has gotten horribly little use thus far:

Our First Walk in Bad Dürkheim

On Sunday Martin and I went for a nice long walk in the hills to the west of Bad Dürkheim (it's *very* hilly in that direction, and completely flat to the east). There is a tower that we can see from our apartment that we wandered up to the top of. It's called Flaggenturm and this is a view of it from my office in our apartment (it's on the very top of the hill):

It's only a 15 minute walk from our apartment but from it you get a great view of all the surrounding vineyards. The tall white building in the left of the photo is our apartment building. Sorry it was cloudy when we started out on our walk so these pictures aren't all that breathtaking. I would like to add that we drank some wine that came from the vineyards right outside our apartment ... the white wine and sparkling white wine were very good ... we like to eat and drink local. :)

Here's a view of Bad Dürkheim from the top of the tower:

Next we walked to the ruins of an old monastery, Klosterruine Limburgh. Apparently the Limburgh family built this huge monastery and filled it with monks to pray that their family would be prosperous. I'm not sure how well it worked. Here are some pics of the ruins. They're easily visible from the vineyards right outside our front door:

It looks like events or concerts are held in here, there's a stage behind me in this picture:

And, two hours later, we had finished our walk.

Spargelfest!

Last Friday our realtor Isabelle and her boyfriend Hans took us to a Spargelfest in one of the villages near Bad Dürkheim. Spargel is the German word for asparagus and here it usually means white asparagus. Germans are crazy for white asparagus. It's harvested in March or April and then they have festivals to celebrate the harvest. It's nothing fancy, just some picnic tables set up in a field with games for the kids and booze for the adults and of course plenty of white asparagus to eat.

Here are some of the picnic tables:

Here are Isabelle and Hans:

Here are the kids participating in a spargel peeling contest ... actually I think they're done here and in the process of being judged. You have to peel white asparagus before you eat it and these kids are pretty good at it already. I bet they're all a big help in the kitchen:

Here's my dinner - pork schnitzel with potatoes and spargel in a sort of spargel soup sauce. It took me awhile but I eventually fit it all in:

Here is a really big wine glass and a bottle of Secco. Prosecco is sparkling white wine that is made in Italy, and something can only be called Prosecco if it comes from Italy. So if you use the same grapes to make sparkling wine in Germany, you have to call it something else. Hence the name "Secco". And the big wine glass, I forget the name of it, is what people drink wine out of at the wine festivals here. You're supposed to fill half of it with water and half with wine but I don't think that actually gets done too often. And it's not a good idea to drink those if you're DD either because it will still get you horribly drunk.

Farewell Switzerland ...

I just wanted to take a minute to post some of my favorite pictures and memories from Switzerland as a final farewell. Of course we will be back there at least once this summer so expect the blogs from Switzerland to continue indefinitely along with our many blogs that will start coming out from our adventures in Germany.

Lake Maggiore, Locarno:

Sunset over Lake Geneva, Montreux:

The Matterhorn, Zermatt:

Getting above the clouds on our hike to Wasserauen:

Almost dying on the group outing:

Cows and mountains:

Good friends, good hikes, good food, and great views:

The best bratwurst in Zürich:

The chocolate:

And who could forget our games of nailing (I think that's what it was called):

Martin's Apero

Friday evening was Martin's apero. His whole lab group came (plus some of their partners) and we had a little barbecue on the top floor of the chemistry building. Of course most of it was indoors because it was quite chilly out with occasional rain showers. Thomas (he's french so his name is pronounced Toe-mah with the stress on the mah part) gave Martin a 3-liter bottle of champagne so we started off all sharing that. Thomas was born and raised in the champagne fields so he knows his champagne.

Julian presented Martin with a farewell gift from the group which is a night with dinner at a nice hotel somewhere in Germany. They decided since we like to explore new places that this will help us start exploring Germany. The hotel has a spa so I'm all set! It's also surrounded by vineyards, biking/hiking trails, etc so it will be a good time.

Here is David, lighting the grill with various flammable chemicals. You'd never guess he's one of the most brilliant chemists, would you?

Here's a little rain cloud, doing his thing:

Here are a few of the nicer group photos. This is us posing with most of what is called the "French Connection" - there are a lot of french speaking people in Martin's lab. Martin is actually the only native English speaker in the lab right now. I'm not sure who will proof read all of their papers after he leaves.

People stayed out and partied until 3am so Martin had himself a good sendoff.

Bad Dürkheim: First Impressions

We drove to Bad Dürkheim yesterday and stayed overnight in order to have extra time to get a lot of paperwork done for our move there. Since we had a little extra time to wander around I actually took a few pictures. But only a few.

Bad Dürikheim is a spa town and there's this huge building in it the purpose of which we've been trying to determine since our first visit:



Turns out it's an inhalatorium. The dark sides of it are covered with something that looks like vines or maybe even grapes and water runs through them constantly and I guess you can go inside and just ... inhale? It costs money to go inside and we didn't feel the need to do it on this trip but we'll go after we move there and will hopefully have all of our ailments cured. We don't know the full purpose of this building yet because the sign on the outside was in German and while we're usually pretty good at German we didn't understand most of the words on the sign so we walked away still curious. It's part of the spa so it must be good for you somehow.

Anyway, here are some shots from the little pedestrian area downtown:





We ate dinner at this restaurant last night and the food was pretty good:



The search for our new favorite restaurant will be underway as soon as we move there.

There are also some churches that we will have to explore (spire of a big one in the background of this shot):



So ... more to come after our move!