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.

Bacharach

We (Mom, Sydney, Adam, Rebecca, Noel, and Spencer) disembarked from the Rhein cruise at Bacharach, and decided to go exploring.

We walked through the city a little bit trying to find our way up to the castle where we were staying.

Most of the shops were closed because it was a holiday (All Saints Day, November 1).

There were lots of houses with dates and quotes on them (except I could not read them because they were in German).

There were some houses that were older than Columbus!

It took us quite a while to find the way up to the castle because it got closed off.

Once we found our way up, we had a really good view of the vineyards on the opposite mountains.
They were turning gold and red. The castle is on a mountain and then there is a valley and a mountain on the other side. If you looked down the valley there was this little classically German town.

Bacharach, the view out the window of our room

 
The castle was amazing.

The German youth hostel organization had converted it into a hotel. Our room was on the very top across from the tower.

Sunrise over the Rhein, the view out our room window.

We ate at the castle and the food was good. Staying in the castle was cool. It was warmer than I expected and smaller too. The tower was my favorite part. I went partway up the tower.

The castle tower from out our window.

We had a really good view of the river and the town from our rooms. It felt very normal; it did not feel like a castle inside. I expected rough stones or really fancy paintings and accommodations (like at Hohenzollern) but it just felt like a normal hotel room without a carpet and bunk beds.

The Heidelberg castle is huge but this did not feel as big inside. I think it looked more impressive on the outside and seemed more maze-like and confusing on the inside. There was a weird bathroom where you went in a door and then down a hall and at the end there was a little toilet and a sink.


If I went back I would like to walk around the city wall.

I would like to stay in a castle again.
--Sydney

Adam Ondi Ahman

These notes are coming a bit out of order. It has taken some time to get this up and get organized.

We visited Adam Ondi Ahman on 18 August 2016. We thought we had programmed the GPS to go to Far West and then Adam-Ondi-Ahman, but apparently we programmed it the other way around. The GPS apparently did not know the difference between a paved road and a dirt path. We were so glad that we did not get stuck. We did manage to get a thick layer of dust over everything. There are ways to drive there without all the dirt roads but we really did not see any of that.
--Dad

It is very peaceful there.

And we saw something that looked kind of like an altar.

There was a big field where Cain might have tended the sheep.

--Noel

It is easy to see (especially after looking at the soil in Vermont) why Joseph Smith was so impressed by the fertile fields of Missouri. The Great Basin must have really seemed a wilderness after living in Missouri.
--Dad

Der Igel Has Landed

I think about the first time that I visited Europe I noted a persistent fascination with hedgehogs (German: Igel). I never really understood it. Somewhere around the second week of September, when I was taking the trash out, I flipped on the light and noticed something moving around by the garbage. When the light came on, it just froze in place. It was a hedgehog. I had never seen one before. The amazing thing is it just stayed there (probably scared to death) and let us go around it and take pictures. Everyone in the family who wanted to look at it had the opportunity to do so. It did not move. They are cute little things and now I understand the fascination with them.

Waldenbuch

On October 1, we visited Waldenbuch, the home of Rittersport chocolate.

It was really fun. I found out that Rittersports were cheaper at the source (they were about a dollar). My favorite Rittersport was the Buttermilch-Zitrone. Es war sehr gut. One of my favorites was also the Edelbitter. Mom likes the Pfefferminz.

All of my candy bars were melted somewhat because I put them under my seat which was right by the heater.
--Samuel

It was fun. I liked the Pfefferminz. I liked the Straciatella Crisp. I liked the museum because I got to learn about chocolate.
--Spencer

That is the Rittersport shop and museum in the picture above. There were cheaper candy bars there.We did not actually take a picture of the factory part which is across the street. They have a wide selection of chocolate. The best one was Zitrone-Buttermilch. It is a summer special. Halbbitter is a replacement for semi-sweet. One of the stranger things is that they have tortilla chips or corn flakes in candy-bars.

Why, just why? It doesn't make any sense.

--Noel

I think that they taste good. The Knusper Tortilla Chips tasted so good. After a while they blend together. It is a bit of an acquired taste.
--Samuel

I love tortilla chips!
--Spencer

Plain cocoa beans taste surprisingly good (they had some to sample at the museum). The candy-bar I most want to try is the Pfefferminz-Marzipan that they had back in the 1970s or 1980s. It is my two favorites together.
--Sydney

The reason we don't have any more photos is that the camera ran out of batteries.
--Samuel

 Kathleen notes that the name for the store was clever: the Schoko-Laden. Translates into the Choco-store but sounds like the word for chocolate in German.

Homburg

On 10 September 2016 we visited Kathleen's cousins, Tom and Brianne and their family, and they took us out to Homburg.

Homburg is located in Saarland in southwest Germany. It is a beautiful area. Settlements go back at least to Roman times. There is a ruined castle on the hill, called the Schlossberg, that goes back to Medieval times.

You can see a long ways from the top of the castle ruins.

One of the surprising things is that the kitchen for the castle was so small. Yes, it is certainly bigger than our kitchen, but they were making food for the whole castle. The big round structure in the middle is a well. I could not tell where the oven was. Somewhere in this area Jacob cut his palm. Fortunately, I had some bandaids but trying to get a bandaid to stick on a three-year-old's palm is largely an exercise in futility.

From the remains, it is apparent that the castle was quite large. The castle would cover a couple of city blocks.

There are lots of stairs with guard rails but they can be fairly steep.

Some of the passages (like those shown in the picture below) are not very well lit (or not lit at all) and tourists would be advised to be careful because the stairs are not always even and there is some debris that it would be best not to step on, or climb on. A flashlight is helpful.

Even more to be avoided is the stinging nettle, which can be found in many places. Spencer found that out the hard way.

On one side of the castle (roughly east) there is a playground for kids. Unfortunately, I did not get pictures. The kids had a lot of fun on the zip-line.

There are also some caves below the castle, but the last tour starts at four so we just missed it; if you want a tour in English, you need to call ahead a day in advance.

Bathrooms are also scarce. We found some in the basement of a fancy hotel above the cave (on the east end of the castle) where they were getting ready for a big wedding party. It turns out that holding weddings at castles is a very romantic thing to do and thus seems to be popular.

Afterward, Tom provided some fabulous Döner, perhaps the best I have ever had.

The Girls Blogs

The girls are currently posting stuff on a personal blog. They will still be writing posts on this blog, but if you want to check out their personal blogs or get in touch with them, check out the links below.

Sydney:   http://horse16books.weebly.com/
Rebecca: http://thinkr20.weebly.com/

The other kids decided not to make one. Comment if you think they should, or if you have problems accessing the sites.