Idar Oberstein

On 2 November 2016 since we thought we were already in the neighborhood, we took the advice of our friends Mark Romney and Matti Frost to visit Idar Oberstein. There is actually a branch of the Church that meets in Idar Oberstein and it is in our stake. It did not seem like we were in the neighborhood as we drove there. As the crow flies, it was not far, but because of the mountains it was a lot of up and around and windy narrow roads. And it was raining a bit when we got there.

Idar Oberstein is most famous for its church carved into the rock. This is our bad picture of it, taken from the car since we did not actually visit it.

Idar Oberstein is the precious stone place for German. They still have a working mine although it is not really used right now.

We visited a mineral museum where they had precious stones, geodes, and fossils on display.

One of the more interesting things is that for a few euros each, you can let your children scrabble for half an hour in the gravel looking for fancy rocks. I actually recommend this. I thought it was better than the museum, or the store. For the same price that you could by a bag of pretty rocks, they can look for them. Some of them are buried quite far down and they have to work for them.

"One of the funny things is that you found as many rocks as you could and then they just filled your bags. I thought it was kind of cheating because you try to find some way to discover stones and in the end they just filled your bag." --Samuel

I have a little different take on the matter. We did not know when we started that that was going to happen. The kids had to work (sometimes together and sometimes on their own) to get something they wanted. It cost the same as the bags in the store but they worked for what they found and valued it a little more for the effort.

It also reminded me of doing research. You sift through piles of information hoping to find some gem, but you have to go through much more that seems less worthwhile to find the gems, and it helps to have a trained eye to recognize the gem when you find it.

"It was very pretty and awesome and really cool to see about all the different rocks there. The museum was very cool." --Rebecca

Some of the geodes were huge. This one was almost a meter across:

Geodes are a lot like some people, nothing much to look at on the outside but fairly dazzling on the inside.