Steffi and Dietmar

Restaurant Bareiss

2012-01-07T19:51:00.001+01:00

As our Christmas gift to each other, Dietmar and I decided to take each other out to the 3 Star Restaurant Bareiss in the Black Forest. We have been watching a lot of cooking shows lately and wanted to know what the cream of the crop in the gourmet food world is really like. I was a little worried we would feel out of place (our little car certainly felt out of place), but all service staff made us feel very welcome and comfortable. The sommelier was probably a little disappointed that we were not interested in the huge wine menu, but we decided beforehand we were going to be ourselves, and wine is just not our interest. Instead we went all out on the food and decided on the 8 course "Degustationsmenu". But before the menu even started they served four very different and very delicious "Grüße aus der Küche" - we especially liked the steak tartare and a scallop on couscous. Initially we were too embarrased to take pictures of our food, but eventually we felt that it was just too fancy to not take pictures. So here are a few pictures of our visit and of the later courses.

This was our menu. My personal favorite was the second course. Dietmar really liked the third (I think it was the white truffle they grated over the food that impressed him the most).

This was course 4. The little dark piles on top of the meat is Périgord Truffle.

This was course 5, I'm still not sure about the chocolate sauce, but the meat was delicious.

Course 6 was a the cheese course. There were three huge trays full of various cheeses. Here are Dietmar's choices.

Course 7 and 8 were dessert courses. I had never eaten gold before.

They even brough little chocolates and a variety of sweet treats. You can see these in the background of this picture.

This was the view from our table at the end of our meal - we were the last guests to leave (we started our adventure at noon and were finished a little before 4 in the afternoon).

The restaurant is a part of a hotel. Here are a few pictures from the outside.

Wow, this was a very exciting and delicious experience! It was very worth it!

Visit to the States

2011-11-29T20:37:00.001+01:00

Getting ready to pick Max up from school.

Do you see him? YES!

What a nice uncle.

Max's basketball evaluations.

Action Shot.

Even Dietmar was allowed to help.

Good job, Max!

A natural!

We visited Erika's church for the Sunday evening service. Erika and I played a special, which was a lot of fun and reminded me of all the good times we played together as girls.

No, we did not color-coordinate.

During the week we were allowed to visit Max's class.

We had brought some treats from Germany to distribute. Max was able to share his expertise in how to "open" the Ritter Sport chocolate bars.

Look at all those happy kids.

Saying goodbye to Erika.

Heading back to the Chicago airport. Time just flies too quickly when you are having a good time! Thank you to all of you for making our visit so special!

Baking and Thanksgiving

2011-11-29T20:06:00.001+01:00

These are some recipes I have tried lately, they are from my all time favorite baking website.

Thumbprint Cookies

Speculaas

Dried Fruit and Nut Bread

Chocolate Chip Scones (with dried cherries). I made these for a special breakfast I hosted for the small group ladies, while the men were at a church men's retreat over the weekend.

My first pies, also from my favorite website.

This is the beginning the pumpkin pie.

The apple pie before it went into the oven.

Pumpkin Pie

Apple Pie

And the third was a Peanut Butter Pie. They were all very delicious!

Fun Thanksgiving decorations!

Don't mess with this Turkey!

This guy is tradition.

Name tags made by Nadine!

I did not get many pictures of the food, but here are a few.

Make sure to click "Older Posts".

Zach to visit

2011-11-29T19:44:00.000+01:00

So, I realize these pictures are really old, but I thought you would still enjoy them. Zach came to visit us for a weekend at the end of his summer break.

We tried our first passion fruit.

We made a successful trip to IKEA, Zach especially enjoyed that...ok maybe not!

We also experienced the corn field maze attraction in Ditzingen!! This year's theme was green energy!

Look how tall the corn was.

Where to go, where to go?

It looks like someone got desperate and needed some food.

We made it!!

A short trip to India

2011-10-15T18:05:00.006+02:00

Again my job brought me somewhere long distance - this time it was to Mumbai (Bombay) in India...

(a screenshot from googlemaps)

I did not have much opportunity to take pictures, I arrived at night and left at night again. But the few impressions I caught I am glad to share.

Arriving at the airport I realized that this would be a very "hot" visit. When I left the airport building my glasses fogged up immediately like someone just took a hot shower right next to me. During the three days the temperature was around 30°C (84 °F) in the mornings and towards the evenings it went up to 40°C (104 °F), all with a humidity of 75-90%.

Just to be safe I exchanged a few dollars (I was out of Euros) at the airport, the exchange rate between Euro and Indian Rupies is about 65 means You get about 65 Rupies per Euro. It is hard to tell how much that is for a person in India, but I think most people are very poor.

Just like the Chinese have "Mao" on all their bills so do the Indians have Ghandi on all of theirs.

Security is everywhere in India. This is probably due to the situation with Pakistan. The airports are entirely controlled by military and the way it looked they are only opened (international flights) in the evenings. Before You can exit the airport building Your luggage is x-rayed. Leaving three days later I realized that You cannot even enter the airport building without a valid ticket(!). Luckily I had with me not only the confirmation of an e-ticket but the actual ticket with the ticket code on it. That could have been tricky to get in otherwise.

Even at the hotel they had a security check frame and security personnel.

Mumbai is the "financial capital" of India, and that is why it is seen as the prime target for the neighbor Pakistan. From some conversations I had with Indians there they view the US as supporters of Pakistan and thus are not too happy with America.

I was picked up in a Suzuki which is one of the better kinds of car that is available there. The local religion is present everywhere, most of the time it is about Ganesha and Kali (also a name of a big river there). You can see the little Ganesha above the dashboard...

It was very hard to read the mindset of the people there, I was the guest from the West of course. Yet communicating was much easier there than in China, because the culture is much less demanding for guests and of course because English is an official language in India - a very interesting form of British English though... My hosts sometimes had trouble to undestand me and vice versa.

Despite of Mumbai being a modern city it is quite clear that people do not have much.

Downtown Mumbai there obviously are very modern and nice parts of the city, but this does not seem to be representative at all for how the people live. The roads are extremely rough, and that includes the toll roads.

What You see below is what I believe is reality for most Indians, those are conditions in which they live. I have never seen anything like this before.

Many people live under a tent-like piece of plastic foil, and I saw quite a few making fire on the piles of waste at the side of the road. How they wash themselves or clothes I just don´t know. How they deal with malaria, dengue, japanese encephalitis, ...etc. I also don´t know, but they obviously do. In the city apparently many people simply sleep on the street. The strange thing is that not many seem to be discontent with those conditions at all.

The traffic and road conditions are the worst I have ever experienced. Once You leave the city it is catastrophic. No wonder they carry their gods with them everywhere.

One really funny thing I noticed was that my guests when saying yes to something I asked they (in saying yes) shook or waggled their head - so it looked a lot like they meant "no", but they definitely meant "yes". A little odd...

At the airport (on the way back) I went through the military check in front of the building, and when the guard saw my passport he started to smile and asked me in German "How are You today?", and that opened a brief and very nice conversation - that was a neat experience. He told me that he had never learned German but only had picked up some of the language from the people coming through. Pretty amazing I thought.

Inside I payed some of my Rupies to an "airport agent" who made sure that I would notice on time when my check-in counter had "actually" opened now. When I gave him about 150 Rupies he asked if I also had Euro, but I didn´t have any so he left it at that...

Well, after this really short trip Stefanie was really happy that I got back, and I was too.
My respect for missionaries (e.g. CAR or Tschad) certainly increased during this trip. I surely had not to suffer from any permanent discomfort or health issue during my business stay, but I realize that this is a whole different ballgame to stay in a country like this for an extended term, e.g. like Wilfried does.

That´s all I have to report. Next time hopefully more pictures.

What would France be without Food

2011-08-15T20:22:00.000+02:00

This was the restaurant we ate at the first and last evening. It was sensational!

These were some of the ingredients to one of our picnics at the beach.

Goat Cheese Chips

Chocolate Mousse Pyramid

What is in here?

Wow, a chocolate raspberry tart.

This chocolate creation was so rich that even I (Steffi) could barely handle it, but of course, I did finish it. Three layers of meringue covered with a rich chocolate ganache and a dark chocolate wrapping. Wow!!!

These were from a chocolatier in Rennes. This one is a huge Nougat.

Normandy American Cemetery

2011-08-15T19:46:00.000+02:00

Being in the Normandy we took the opportunity to visit the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial.

Omaha Beach

The REAL Bellefontaine

2011-08-15T19:11:00.000+02:00

Iles Chaucey

2011-08-15T19:08:00.000+02:00

On one of the days we took a boat from Granville out to the Iles Chaucey. These are just the first pictures, I will be posting more from the island.

Mont Saint Michel

2011-08-15T18:43:00.001+02:00

According to our GPS, the parking lot of the Mont Saint Michel was in the water.

Mont Saint Michel

I still do not understand why the monks need a cannon.

Make sure to click on "Older Posts" to see the rest of the pictures.

Downtown Avranches

2011-08-15T18:25:00.000+02:00

A monument to commemorate the liberation of Avranches by the Allied Forces during World War II.

The beach

2011-08-15T18:04:00.000+02:00

During the day (low tide) - no water in sight, did someone swallow it?

The perfect time to collect sea shells.

Late afternoon, the tide moving in in Granville - there's the water.

In the evening, hight tide and beautiful sunsets.

Mont Saint Michel in the background.

So relaxed. We really enjoyed our time on the beach.

The journey begins...

2011-08-15T16:39:00.001+02:00

The first sign of France.

France! Only 60 minutes from our home; we should have known that, but we were both surprised when we passed this sign so early during our trip.

This was our room.

Relaxed and ready to start our vacation.

Here are a few more pictures from the outside of the hotel.

The breakfast area.

OUTLOOK Summer Vacation 2011

2011-07-17T22:05:00.002+02:00

In two weeks we will begin our Summer Vacation 2011, guess what - we`ll go to France! And this will be our hotel, soo cute - "La Ramade Hotel de Charme". More pictures once we are there, or back...

Trip back to Ditzingen

2011-06-29T21:12:00.000+02:00

After spending the night at "home" and a relaxing, very enjoyable day with Mommy, Daddy, and a little time with Zach I made my way back home to Ditzingen, this time on the train and just in time for Dietmar to get back.

The bike wagon on the train even has seat belts for the bikes, how cute!

Riding along in the train I saw the many places and paths I had been on the day before. Going along that stretch by train or car will never quite be the same again.

Me, my bike, and I

2011-06-29T21:03:00.000+02:00

Thursday last week was a holiday here in Germany and since Dietmar had to be in Switzerland for work, I was determined to see my plan through and take a bike trip from Waiblingen to Unterkochen - about 45 miles (or 75 km).

I started my journey with the train from Ditzingen to Waiblingen.

Then at around 9am my journey started down the Remstalradweg. It goes along the river Rems, the B29, and the train tracks.

This was a raspberry field.

Corn fields and vineyards outside of Schorndorf.

These are bike path signs. I was headed towards Schorndorf.

And this was my bike path symbol which led me to Schwäbisch Gmünd.

This was the first bigger town I came through (after about 20 km). Bike paths have their own town signs, I thought that was really cute.

You can guess what this symbol means...

...roundabout.

One of the few times I crossed the B29.

This was a nice cool little forest I rode through.

By the time I reached Schwäbisch Gmünd my legs felt like they were on fire. I was definitely in pain, but certainly not willing to quit or cave in and take the train the rest of the way. Shortly after leaving Gmünd I took a little lunch break. By this time it was a little after noon and I had been out a good 3 hours already.

Does anyone recognize this church building? The bike path took me through Böbingen and right past the church where we were married four years ago that same day and probably around that time, too!

Essingen was the highest (elevation) point of the trip, at least I think so, it sure felt that way. But it was also the last town before reaching Aalen.

One landmark in Essingen - my parents' favorite restaurant!

When I saw this view of downtown Aalen I almost cried for joy!!! What a glorious sight!

I also never thought I would appreciate this sign as much as I did!! After reaching Aalen (up by the Möbelhaus Rieger) the rest of the stretch seemed to go by so quickly.

I decided rather than going through the valley to reach Unterkochen (and to have to end my trip with a huge hill) I would go the "long" way around on the "cow way" to finish by riding down the hill to my parents' house. And here is how the path got it's name.

After 5 1/2 hours I finally arrived in the Liebigstrasse.

I was eagerly awaited!!

Anniversary Flowers

2011-06-29T19:46:00.000+02:00

Dietmar had these flowers delivered to my work for our anniversary!

Baking for the Kolster's visit

2011-06-29T19:42:00.000+02:00

I recently bought a mini-muffin pan. It turns out, they make the perfect sized cakes for kids...or it was the pink icing that made these little cupcakes a hit!

The skinny Gross'

2011-06-02T15:47:00.001+02:00

At my (Steffi) work they offer various professional development classes as well as several different kinds of health classes to encourage a healthy workforce (at least that's what I think). One of the new classes they offered was Weight Watchers at Work, a 14 week program! I had been trying to lose some weight on my own, but was not really succeeding so I decided, since it was free for me, I would join. It has been well worth it! It has been 12 weeks now and I have reached my goal. All in all I lost 13 pounds! A few weeks into the program Dietmar also got inspired and started counting his points, too! He has not quite reached his goal yet but has already lost 19 pounds!

Here you can see my progress.

And since I now reached my goal I got a new pass. Now I have to stay at my current weight for 6 consecutive weeks and then I become a gold star member.

Here's my prize! A little key chain.

And here are two of the many new recipes we have tried. This one is a Raspberry Auflauf (a type of sweet casserole). Very delicious.

This is a Mexican style quiche with special Mexican spices from Thomas and Gina (Thank You!!)!!!

And if we were good throughout the day, this is our new favorite treat! Well worth the points!!!

New pictures!

2011-06-02T15:20:00.003+02:00

Finally! With today's holiday I finally have the time to post a few pictures! There are quite a few posts, make sure to click on "Older Posts" on the bottom to see them all!

Dining room face-lift

2011-06-02T15:14:00.001+02:00

I have toyed with the idea of re-upholstering our dining room furniture for a long time now. I had watched Monica re-upholster a chair during the summer (2003) I spent with them and remembered that it did not look too difficult (Thank You Monica for your inspiration and do-it-yourself spirit!!!). During our last visit to the States Dietmar and I went to Jo-Ann's and picked some fabric (with Freya's input as well). After Mommy had finished the pillow cases I was inspired to get started. Obviously, the furniture had been re-upholstered before!

I pulled out all the old staples and took the green fabric off.

Getting the new fabric ready and cutting it to size.

Here you go, it looks like new!!

Flowers

2011-06-02T15:02:00.000+02:00

Here are some flowers that Dietmar has got me over the past few months. The gerberas were from Aldi and lasted over 10 days!!

Chinese Treat

2011-06-02T14:58:00.000+02:00

These are Chinese chocolates Dietmar brought me from China. Like look super cute, but I am sorry to say, chocolate is not a Chinese specialty.

Out on our bikes again

2011-06-02T14:52:00.001+02:00

We have had an exceptionally sunny spring this year and we have taken every chance we get to go out on our bikes. Here are a few pictures of our tours so far.

This ICE bridge looked like it needed a little support!

The bike path that goes right through our town is called the Glems-Mühlen-Weg. This is the sign for it. The path runs parallel to the little river Glems and runs by several mills.

June 23rd is a holiday in Germany, but unfortunately not in Switzerland, where one of the customers of Dietmar's company is located. So, instead of sitting around all day by myself, I have made it my goal to ride my bike from Waiblingen to Aalen (about 65km) on that day, visit in Unterkochen and then take the train back home. I will be taking pictures along the way and will certainly post about it!

Mommy's Birthday

2011-06-02T14:29:00.000+02:00

It is always a special treat to be able to spend time in Aalen. Here we are celebrating Mommy's birthday!

These are German chocolate, cherry, nut muffins.

Brownies, one of Zach's favorites.

And a "must", strawberry cake!

Mommy's Mohrenkopftorte, yummy!!

Easter Sunrise Service

2011-06-02T14:13:00.000+02:00

On Easter Sunday our church has a special sunrise service on the "Birkenkopf", a hill overseeing Stuttgart. It was a little cold but definitely worth getting up a little earlier.

Easter Tombs

2011-06-02T14:03:00.000+02:00

Since it was going to be Easter soon we made this special "craft".

The crescent dough represents the linen cloth Jesus' body was wrapped in before he was placed in the tomb. It also represents the tomb itself.

The marshmallow is His body.

Here His body is embalmed with spices.

Then the body is wrapped in the linens and the tomb is sealed.

After a while in the oven....(representing the three days)...

....we found the tombs empty!!!

He is risen!!!

America Visit

2011-06-02T13:42:00.000+02:00

Back in April we were in Indiana for Grace Board Meetings. Our visit started with the meetings and then we had a week to spend time with family and friends!! Needless to say, our visit was very encouraging and special!

We were able to visit with Erika on Sunday and also visit her church for the Sunday evening service. We even got to experience her playing the cello for special music!

As a special treat for the kids (and adults) and for Dietmar to finally experience real American entertainment :-) we spent one evening at Chuck E Cheese.

Dietmar got the hang of it very quickly.

Somehow this looks a lot like gambling to me...

Freya hit the jackpot at least once!

Max and Henry also had fun!

Here they are making the difficult choice of choosing the prizes.

Chongqing, or should I say 重慶 / 重庆 ?

2011-05-29T20:03:00.017+02:00

Even though we still have to blog a bunch of pictures about e.g. our last very enjoyable bicycle trip, here I squeeze in some impressions from my recent trip, it was China again, I just got back on Saturday. Destination was the City of Chongqing - I flew from Frankfurt over Amsterdam - Beijing - to Chongqing.

With about 28,6 million people living there, Chongqing is the city with the largest population in China (even before Shanghai!). It seemed to be significantly cleaner and to a certain extent nicer than e.g. Harbin (a city of only million, I had been there in October 2010). However, it is significantly warmer and the humidity is at about 90% during most of the year. I was lucky, during my week there the temperatur had dropped to about 20-25°C (68-77°F). It went up again when I left.

This "little" statue in front of the hotel was as tall as I am.

At the hotel - the two pictures above - I noticed a lot of non-Chinese guests, among them Americans and Germans.

My hosts - this time I had to visit two companies - were as usual very pushy about exposing me to the local foods. Chongqing is famous for the spicy food of China..., oh boy!

It is amazing how much "scharf" you can get into food, any kind of food. This bowl was actually fish-soup, but it was like surface-shut by a floating layer of (very) hot peppers and peppercorns. I tried a piece of fish about the size of my little finger´s tip. And that was a wise decision, ... The next day even one of my hosts had stomach issues.

Another night they took me out to a hot-pot place. Supposedly Chongqing is the capital of the Chinese hot-pot tradition. But it seems wherever you are in China they tell you that this place is the best of something - always.
It was really good though. You can control very well what you actually eat.
The whitish holey slices on the left is "lotus root".

The variety of foods - as always - very nice. And it all goes into the hot-pot. The mushrooms are actually not even chewable unless boiled in that little pot for about 10 minutes. No chance of eating them otherwise. And probably not healthy either.

The probably weirdest things I tried the first time here were snail (from the shell, but still in the hot-pot for a few seconds), snake (I passed on snake SKIN though), and jellyfish.

Green dumplings, goes into the hot-pot too of course. You wonder what was inside? How in the world am I supposed to know!

And it all goes into the hot-pot. Chinese do not eat greens (for salad, like we know it, e.g. lettuce) if it´s not boiled. They fear the "bacteria", and I can understand why they do.
When I told one of my hosts that in the west (Germany or the US) we don´t cook the salad before we eat it he was very shocked.

In a supermarket I found Lay´s potato-chips. But look at the flavors...

Seriously refreshing..., or not!

Oh please...cucumber?!

My dear hosts wanted to show me a "traditional place", so they drove me to a spot in the middle of the city, a really nice place. But not at all representative for the city.

The place had several levels.

On the first level there were many traditional food places (what´s up with the Chinese and their food?!). It was fun to look at all of that.

This little store sold all kinds of traditional nut-candy. My hosts REALLY wanted to buy me some after I had subtly indicated that I liked the little piece that they gave me to try - I simply didn´t say "I don´t like it", and the deal was sealed, they bought me a bunch, wich I brought back home.

A noodle-maker, very loud and lots of fun to watch while at work. The pot on the right is the noodle-dough.

As You can see in the background, Chongqing is - like all the other cities - very big, extremely impersonal, and most of the people have to live from about 100 Euro a month, some of only 50 Euro. And even for China that is not much. And everything is very dirty. The huge rivers that flow through the city (Yangtse and Jialing) don´t help that picture, on the contrary.

Skyscrapers are the dominating buildings, but all grey and very simple buildings, for the most part they are appartment buildings.

China has huge environmental problems. I learned that the energy is not even the biggest issue, it is the water.

And I learned something about the attitude towards North Korea. Supposedly China does not "like" North Korea. It is a historically grown good relationship, but far from genuine sympathy.

I had a very good conversation with a representative from the second company that I visited. His non-Chinese name (they all have additional names like "Joy" or "Ann") was David. He picked up on my "strange" attitude towards alcohol and bacchanal night-life. We had quite some time to talk about Christianity, and the number of misconceptions that go around there is huge, beginning with people who predict the end of the world, to people that become Christians because they want God to solve all their problems. I think our talk reset his mind a little. Although he was extremely surprised that e.g. a "bodily" relationship with a woman outside of marriage was not something that God liked. Especially when you are already married... (!). That seemed very strange to him. Well, I guess you got to start somewhere...

I was happy - after a week of Chinese reveling - to finally fly home - to my lovely wife!

Trip to Tianjin

2011-04-23T14:57:00.006+02:00

This week I got to go to Tianjin, there they told me that with 10 million people living there Tianjin is the fourth largest city in China. And it is growing, I saw lots and lots of very large and very high buildings under construction - all appartment-buildings. Tianjin is in the south of Beijing, and it is about 12 miles from Tianjin to the ocean.

After a fairly pleasent trip with Air China my business partners picked me up at Beijing Airport around 7am, it takes about 2 hours to Tianjin City by car. On the way I noticed that China flags dominate everything, there are probably more China flags in China than US flags in the States. Even if there is a company flag on a building, there is always a China-flag right next to it - placed a little higher than the other flags. Pretty much everything seems to be owned and/or controlled by the government, and the funny thing is, I really did not get the impression that this bothers the people there at all. I actually sensed trust the government in some of the people whom I talked to this time.

I was happy with my hotel this time (no mold in the shower), only the air conditioning system was "under repair" by the Chinese government as it said on the note in my room.

Here a look into the hotel bathroom - please notice the phone right next to the toilet... (?)

In my closet I found an item that made me feel a little disturbed.

Tianjin is a very modern city, it felt a lot more clean and nicer than Harbin where I had gone before. Here a few picture I took the last evening there.

This is the Stadt-Theater.

I had two quite good work days at Tianjin. The communication was ok, English worked fairly well, although it cost a lot of time and patience to get the business-matters settled.
Over lunch time I had a chance to ask about "churches" in China, and they told me that they have churches, but none of the people in that group was involved in Christianity. It was very clear that this is not part of their reality. "Religion" is just not taken as part of real life. But I know of course - China is a little bigger than Tianjin.

As usual and as I expected, my hosts took me out to dinner every night.

Food is what the Chinese life seems to revolve around - it is what they are famous for and proud of. Eating is where "society happens". And as threatening as my trip to Harbin was (food-wise), this time the food was not just not bad, it was excellent(!). Yeah, a few dishes were a little weird, but still - this time I enjoyed it.

Here are some pictures from the last evening´s dinner table.

Believe it or not, this was a dish made of passion fruit, tasted like fruit-bread.

This is... fish. If You take a really close look at it You can see the fin of the fish. It looked a little extreme, but it tasted ok. It was the only dish with a decent amount of salt in it. Everything else was virtually saltless.

Obvious what this is - poor thing, what happened to you...

These king prawns were like honey-soaked and roasted. I don´t know how they did it, but even the shell was eatable and extremely tasty (honey-flavor, consistance like brittle). I only had a little of the shell though, the thought of eating a prawn-shell was just too weird.

This restaurant is the most famous restaurant in China for the Beijing-Duck, and even Richard Nixon, Pelé, Helmut Kohl, Fidel Castro, and lots of other publicly know people had this dish here before... well before I came :-).

And this is how You are supposed to eat the Beijing-Duck: You take a still hot piece of duck and dip it into this thick indefinable (maybe the pendant to the A1-steak-sauce) sauce and then dip it into white sugar, and I can tell You - this is good.
It is actually not so much about the duck meat, it is about the fat under the skin...!

Chinese chimichanga with Beijing-Duck, cucumber and green onions...

The Fire-Dragon-fruit tastes like a kiwi, a little less intense. You only eat the white part.

Chinese desserts are real culinary artwork. This is one example: it is a piece of deep fried papaya, don´t ask me how they did it to make it look so artsy. The individual pieces are only about 4cm long.

...after the meal.

The only food I could just not eat was the "Jack-fruit" or "Durian-fruit", in German it is also called "Stink-Frucht" or "Käsefrucht", and it surely lives up to it´s name..., it smells like ... I don´t know, a trash bag (with trash in it). They served it deep fried, the inside had liquidified, and after the first bite I folded. But they didn´t take it as an offense, even one of my Chinese hosts didn´t want to eat it.

I flew home with the big one. I had some time at the airport and so I called the Varnercrew on skype. Thanks guys for Your time.

It was amazing how quick the A380 is in the air, it took hardly half the runway.

This was a good experience, and I think not just because of the food. This was a part of the "modern China", Harbin was more the "communist China". I might be wrong in my perception, but that´s how I felt.

Basketball Game

2011-03-21T14:08:00.000+01:00

Yesterday we got to watch the Aalen Basketball Team play. Here are some impressions of the game. Unfortunately, the movie lost quite a bit of it's quality after being uploaded. So, even though you might not always recognize him, Zach is the one scoring in all the clips. And yes, Aalen won!!! Enjoy.

Quilt

2011-03-05T18:49:00.000+01:00

Just in case you were wondering, this piece of art was created by my mom and was a birthday gift!

Mommy, as you can see it has the perfect size for our table and the colors are beautiful. I cannot wait to display it with all the other Christmas decorations! Thank you for giving me such a meaningful and special present, it could not be more perfect!

This and That

2011-03-05T18:33:00.000+01:00

These are a little random, I know, but these are pictures I took with my cell phone. If you are looking for happiness, I guess this is the place to go.

What some of you might not have known, is that the Bürger manufacturing plant is in Ditzingen!! Yup, all those yummy Maultaschen come from Ditzingen. They even have an "outlet" store :-)!

Valentine's Day

2011-03-05T18:24:00.000+01:00

Dietmar went all out this year for Valentine's Day! He had this bouquet of flowers sent to my work. It was a very sweet surprise and made my office such a friendly place!

Then when I came home these were waiting on the table for me. They lasted for two weeks and made the apartment smell so lovely!

Cross Bikes

2011-02-12T16:13:00.001+01:00

Both Dietmar and I need to be exercising a little more, so in order to do that, we went out and bought some bicycles today. Riding bikes is one sport we both enjoy and can do together. Here are a few pictures of our first bike ride. This path took us along the river from Ditzingen to Leonberg, about 6 km one way. It felt so good to be out and I was amazed at how I was able to handle even a fairly steep hill (I guess the many gears helped). I had not been on a bike in over 10 years and was surprised as to how sophisticated they have gotten.

On Monday last week we went to the nike outlet and got some fancy exercising gear. These jackets are super lightweight and even have reflectors.

The Birthday Cake

2011-02-07T11:59:00.000+01:00

If you mix all this with some of these....

...you get this cheesecake.

Then melt some caramel...

...and some chocolate

drizzle both over the cake...

then add some pecans and some mini chocolate chips and you have a Turtle Cheesecake!

There was quite some caramel and chocolate sauce left over and we didn't want it to go to waste so we did this...it was delicious and could be a new twist on our New Year's Eve tradition :-)

And of course I made some cookies as well.

Flooding in Backnang

2011-01-13T19:25:00.001+01:00

Today I had to leave work at 3:30 this afternoon and Tesat is closed tomorrow as well. Not because there is no work to do, but because of the flooding in Backnang (which is the town I work in). As I crossed the Murr river on my way to work this morning I was surprised to see how high the river was and by how much rain was coming down. Tesat is located directly by the river, so throughout the morning as it kept raining and raining we watched the river rise. Many bridges and roads were closed and the down-town area was flooded by the time we had to leave. We lost power at some point during the morning and there were several fire trucks standing outside our buildings pumping water out of flooded basement areas. Thankfully, the bridge I need to cross in order to get to the train station was still open when I left and I got home without any trouble. Here is an article in the Stuttgarter Nachrichten which also has several pictures (Picture 57, which was probably taken during the morning, gives you a good view of Tesat - with one of the buildings actually over the river). While I am pretty excited about not having to work tomorrow, I feel for the many families whose houses have been affected.

Helen and Zach to visit

2011-01-06T19:00:00.006+01:00

Helen and Zach came to visit us and we shared our recently acquired skills of pasta making with them. Dietmar was our master chef and demonstrated the pasta making and cooked up three different fillings for our ravioli.

The first steps of making the pasta dough.

Yes, these eggs were from happy chickens, can you tell?

Everyone got their chance to knead the dough.

This was the first time that Zach grated cheese, a true premiere! He did a fine job!

Chopping up the ingredients for the fillings.

The chefs at work.

Unfortunately, this is where the battery of my camera died. So we were not able to get any pictures of the finished products. But you have seen our ravioli before on older posts.

This was our dessert. We took this with Dietmar's camera. We didn't think to use his until we got to dessert and all the ravioli had been devoured.

Thanks Helen and Zach for coming to visit us! We always enjoy family visits!

Circus

2011-01-06T15:59:00.004+01:00

Dietmar received two tickets to the Stuttgarter Weihnachtscircus from his parents for his birthday. So, on January 2nd we made our way to the Cannstatter Wasen to the big circus tent. Neither Dietmar nor I had ever been to a professional circus before so we really did not know what to expect. After the 2 1/2 hour show (with a 25 minute intermission) we were both awe struck by what we had just seen and experienced. We had super seats probably some of the best. We were not way up front where the camels could spit on us or the clown mess up our hair, but we were on the first step up in the front.

We were not allowed to take any pictures, but so you can get a little taste of what we saw, here are a few you tube videos we found of some of the performers:

This guy is Canadian and holds the world record as human flag. The performance he did at the circus was considerably longer, but this will give you an idea:
Dominic Lacasse

These two Italians were just crazy. I'm still not sure how anyone would ever come up with the idea to do this:
Errani

These two were never hooked up to any security hooks. I still can't believe that he was holding both their weight with his mouth (teeth) only (on this video you will need to forward about 40 seconds, unless you want to listen to the Swiss announcer):
Flight of Passion

In addition there were acrobats, clowns, exotic animals, horses, a ballet on lights, flying trapeze acts, and many more performances.

Thanks again to Dietmar's parents! This was certainly an evening we will not forget!

New Year's Eve

2011-01-06T14:57:00.019+01:00

We spent New Year's Eve with the Liebigstrasse crew!

Dietmar was super excited about his party hat!

Playing a few rounds of Rook!

I can't think of a better way to end the year than with a big pot of chocolate.

We had lots of sparklers this year!

Let the new year begin!

Mercedes-Benz Museum

2010-12-30T19:09:00.008+01:00

After lunch and some coffee we spontaneously decided to go to the Mercedes-Benz Museum.

Making sure the headsets work properly.

Max the bus driver.

So many buttons to push.

Henry's turn

Driving the trash truck.

Steve up-close with the "Blitzer"!

This snow plow would certainly make the job of shoveling snow easier!

Dietmar and I obviously missed our calling!

This was the bus the German soccer team used during the 1974 World Cup.

The Varner Visit

2010-12-30T19:03:00.004+01:00

We were so happy the Varners were able to spend a day with us in Ditzingen. Thank you!
For those of you wondering where Lena is, she got to spend the day with Mimi and Papi.

On our way to the Mercedes-Benz Museum, Henry got a little sleepy!

Trip to the Hairdresser

2010-12-30T18:49:00.003+01:00

With every move to another city comes the challenge of finding a new hairdresser. Since I hadn't been to get my hair cut in quite some time, I decided it was time to venture out and start the search for a new haridresser. I was rather pleased with the one I found.
I usually let them dry my hair however they think is best, just to get some new ideas. This lady decided to straigthen it a little, and this was the result.
After having straight hair for a day I decided that my natural curly look is still the best.

Everyone likes ice cream!

2010-12-30T18:43:00.003+01:00

Steiff Museum

2010-12-30T17:12:00.006+01:00

These are some pictures of our adventure with the Varner Crew to the Steiff Museum in Giengen. The museum is interesting and fun for young and old and we definitely recommend it!

These are for Erika!

The boys got to ride all kinds of animals!

This one is for Daddy!

So soft!

These were my (Steffi) favorites!

In this room you could see how a bear is made, from choosing the right fabric and shape to the finishing touches.

What would a trip to Steiff be without getting one's very own Steiff teddy bear?

Christmas Decorations

2010-12-30T16:59:00.003+01:00

Here are some of the ornaments on our tree.

Winter

2010-12-30T16:52:00.004+01:00

Here are some of the first pictures with the new camera.

We had lots of snow on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day!

What's better than Christmas cookies from Dietmar's mom on a cold, wintry day.

Steffi's new camera

2010-12-30T16:48:00.003+01:00

This was Dietmar's gift to me this Christmas: My very first digital camera! Included in the gift was a 32 GB memory card. Now I can take lots of pictures!

Kamsa-Hamnida!

2010-12-18T12:46:00.090+01:00

The business traveling continues! This time I went with Asiana Airlines.

You might think I took this picture somewhere in the United States, however...

... it was in South Korea!

The difference between Korea and e.g. China is so drastic that You really think You are not in Asia. Korea has taken on a lot of Western civilization and structure, the roads look like in Germany, the road signs like in the US. The stores are just as modern as anywhere in Europe or in the States, the buildings in Seoul are impressive, I couldn´t take pictures, there was just no time, I was there on business after all. But I can tell You, everything is really nice, especially with all the crazy Christmas decorations right now!

Being barely half the country size of Germany, South Korea even has a high speed train that goes from Seoul to Busan if I remember it right (the second biggest city after Seoul) at a speed of 300 km/h (metric system in Korea, not the American System).
There is only a few self service gas stations, You will find two or three Koreans "serving" You when You get gas.

Once You find Jack Link`s Peppered Beef Jerky in the Snack Bar of Your hotel room You know for sure who influenced South Korea.

Chain Restaurants and Fast Food become more and more popular, I saw McD, Mc Cafe, BurgerKing, KFC, Outback, Starbucks, a sign for SUBWAY, and even DunkinDonuts!! Especially the younger generation increasingly enjoys eating junk food. And eating dogs is something that only the war generation (Korean War) had to get used to, due to the lack of food.

There is however one very distinct difference that tells You that You are actually not at home: the Food! Here a few examples of Korean beer and soft drinks...

The design of the beer brand "hite" reminded me a lot of "Bud Light"!

I didn´t try the isotonic sports drink, just didn´t feel like trying.

A Korean Barbecue is a very special meal. The griddle/grill is in the middle of the table, and You barbecue right there while eating.
And Koreans eat and eat and eat, I just don´t know how they do it!
It is quite normal to take scissors and just cut everything up that cannot be eaten with one or two bites, or if it is too big to take it with chopsticks.

Koreans are great hosts when it comes to food. The only problem is, for a Western palate Korean food is even more challenging than authentic Chinese food. A lot of dishes were very very good, but man - sure a lot of other ones I should not have tried! Imagine a mix of original Chinese foods and flavors with Mexican food flavors. And they are very clearly concerned with Your appetite - if You don´t eat much, that worries them a lot!

One thing that people warned me of before I went to Korea was a dish called Kimchi. It "...is a traditional fermented Korean dish, made of vegetables with varied seasonings. Kimchi may also refer to unfermented vegetable dishes." (Wiki). I did try it, but it was just too weird, it is extremely hot, and if You are not a big cabbage person then You just won´t be able to enjoy it as the Koreans do. In the picture above the Kimchi is in the little white bowl on the left - white cabbage pieces with red super hot something!

"Bulgogi" (translates Fire-Meat) is a traditional Korean "stew", and it´s very good: Beef in a nicely spiced fairly clear broth with interesting looking mushrooms and vegetables, what You can see in the picture (dark bowl) is actually only one(!) white mushroom with a lot of little heads!

Everytime my hosts offered me something really spicy they laughed a lot and told me that this was "anti-cancer-food" :-). Well, I want to believe them.

I gave it a chance with the octopus. In Korea it is a tradition to eat the little arms of the octopus while they are still moving. Quite a few people have died from the attempt of eating it, because the little sucking arms get attached to your esophagus. Well, my serving didn´t really move any more, and I made sure that I chewed it very thoroughly before I swallowed it.

A little Korean garden in the back of one of the restaurants.
In that restaurant I had some "Silk Tree Tea".

This is an employee of the company that I visited. It took a little more than two hours every morning and evening to get from the hotel to the site and back. So we had a lot of time to talk. We had a chance to talk about believe and I encourage You to pray for Him. This is a whole separate story.

Since I had a lot of time to talk to this very nice guy during the transfer every day, I learned a lot about Korean customs and culture.
One very interesting thing I learned was, that Koreans add the pregnancy time to their age, which means if a Korean tells You that he is 40 he is actually 39.
We talked a little about the situation with North Korea. I learned that in the North the people have to serve in the military for 7 years! However, noone seems to be really concerned about the situation. Since North Korea economically depends 100.00% on China they can´t really do much without their permission. So if they don´t still completely loose it up there, the South should be just fine.

It was a short but intense and great experience. Asia is definitely not just "one big pot", that´s for sure. Kamsahamnida (thank You very much) Mr Kwon!

A culture is a culture - no matter how big...

2010-10-30T22:26:00.009+02:00

"China is not a different world, it is a different planet." (quote from Dr. D).
47 Chinese "Yuan", that is about 5 Euros for a little souvenir from the Beijing (Peking) capital airport, and there it was - the next item to be added to our souvenir shelf in our living room.
I (Dietmar) had to go to the city of Harbin for business, and since it was my first time in China it was quite a different experience...

After flying into Frankfurt (from Stuttgart) I continued with Air China, and it was a good flight, actually quite restful. The service was great, only the food made me wonder what might be expecting me once I was gonna be actually there.

Not that it is really important, but fast food exists in China. I really didn´t want to try, but it was worth to take a little picture with my cell phone, the only camera I took, this time. The Peking airport is gigantic, on the way from the plane to the immigration point I had to pass several thermal camera check points, to make sure I didn´t carry any disease with me.

Harbin - my final destination - is far in the north-east of China. The temperature stretch between the south of China and the Harbin area is quite huge (e.g. Shanghai about 25°C vs Harbin -10°C).

It doesn´t matter how many great cultural things You might have heard or seen about China on TV or anywhere else, the reality is quite different from the image that might be produced in the West. It is not nice, it is not clean, it is not quiet.
To the Chinese, Harbin is a small city, ...of 8 Million people. The traffic is so insane that constant honking and flipping the brights is crucial in order not to run into another vehicle or not to be hit by a ancient model chinese truck. Buses packed with people are running around in the middle of the night without light. There are no traffic rules - NO rules. Only about 10% of the people can afford a car, and still the traffic in the city is so dense that you won´t be able to fit a bicycle (the width of a bicycle) between two cars at any time. Air filters don´t exist, and you just don´t want to breath the air - it is packed with dust and solvent fumes. It was kind of obvious that my business hosts did everything to keep me in the better spots of the city during the week.

The sun comes up really early in the morning, this picture I took around 6:00am out the window of my hotel room, a "Best Western". Don´t be deceived, this Best Western hotel was not very best western really.

Food and food habits were quite a challenge - and in the evenings I wrote email-updates to Steffi on the crazy and weird new things that I experienced during the day.
Here is a little sample:
After today´s work was done, I was taken to a "Sea Food Port" Restaurant, and they had even more variety and it was even fancier than the ones before.

"...What did I have for dinner? Guess: I DON´T KNOW! And it is true - for most of the food they don´t either! They know the basics - like whether it is fish or porc or beef or surimi or shrimp or egg or vegetable. But that´s all they know. But it doesn´t matter to them, obviously. Whatever is in the dumplings - doesn´t matter - the only important thing is that it is dumplings.
At dinner I told the driver (he was with us for dinner) that he was doing a great job, and he had them translate to me that I was very "handsome"...(??). And then I said (laughing), "well thank You". Then the translator lady said (Head of QC): "we all think You are very handsome". I´m sure they didn´t mean it in a wrong way. Their english is just not quite fully developed, like really not..."

"...You probably received my picture - so You got an incling what dinner was and looked like - the restaurant was called "Fat Cow", it was a lot more shaggy than the other ones, but the one guy really wanted me to try his favorite - so we went there tonight.
And in addition to the meat we had lots of meat, and then we had lamb meat, with that we had beef - all cut up in very thin slices - and all raw, so we could through it into individual little chinese Brühe-stoves, the gas cooker was actually bigger than the little pot on it.
The waiter filled up the water in the pots - the juice that she filled in looked VERY milky - like I imagine Yang-Tse-Yang-river water (in spring)...

Well, the thing was: you had to dump everything into the pot to cook it for a few seconds - and the meat was done immediately.
The vegetables (mushrooms of all kinds - really, of ALL kinds!) and stuff that looked like a little too bright green Rucola we also dumped that into the Brühe (I passed on the Rucola).

The shrooms took really long to get done - like several minutes.

Then later they served starch-noodles and later "real" noodles (four different colors: grey, yellowish, green, and pink).
And I can tell You - it is not an easy task to get those noodles out of that pot with chopsticks again.

The beef was served on a platter with a really very suspiciously small dish with a very inapparent brown sauce in it, and they encouraged me to "try that!", which I did.
And it was the hottest more-power-horseraddish on the globe I believe. What a relieve - the beef that came with it was frozen, so that it wouldn´t be completely unbearable to eat it with that sauce.

Oh yeah, and on top of everything they served (as You know very well they just KEEP SERVING) a platter of rectangular tofu-pieces, that were also frozen and meant to be thrown into the Brühe too. And that actually didn´t taste too bad.

I am glad that this was all they ordered tonight, because they had some mighty wacko looking things on the menu card - looked a very lot like insects and diced bone marrow, whereas the insects might have been a genetically improved chimeric mix of Tausendfüssler and cockroach..."

Well, ... as a European or Western person about 90% of the food You won´t have seen before, and even if You have - You will not know what it will taste like. You expect salty - it will be cinnamon, You expect sweet it might be as hot as wasabi+chilli+everything else what could be possibly add to spicyness. Meat is part of almost every dish, and if it´s not meat, then it is seafood. And in China You will learn what seafood actually means. But to be honest - I actually ended up trying and liking quite a lot of the food there:-)! Once You figured out the chopstick-thing, You can eat greasy noodles one by one out of a boiling soup...!

The Chinese like to "have a smoke" now and then, and as You can see, even in the hotel they had a little ashtray - even in the bathroom. The funny thing about that was, my room also had a smoke detector, but there were matches available in the ashtray. I didn´t get that one...

One particular way of eating Chinese in Harbin is to just boil everything You get, and as You might have heard from Steffis experience in HongKong - the Chinese indeed "just keep serving", and of course it has a cultural background.

The English language is not mastered very well in the north, but supposedly it is a lot better in the south of China. What can I say - with one whole week of having 15 Chinese sitting around You in a conference room for 8 hours a day - I just had a blast! So much for now. I apologize (German Culture) for my typos, I´m just to tired to correct them today still. It was a great experience, and I dare you to try it some time...!

Our Piano

2010-10-30T21:42:00.003+02:00

We would like to introduce our newly restored piano!! It arrived on Thursday after several months in the shop and we are very pleased with the results. Now we can play again, how exciting!!!
With this we would like to thank Dietmar's parents for giving us this piano and for contributing greatly in getting it fixed up. THANK YOU!

Making ravioli at home

2010-09-19T20:47:00.004+02:00

Dietmar could not wait to try the ravioli recipe we learned at our cooking course this past Wednesday. So, yesterday he put our newly acquired knowledge to work and made up our own batch. Since I was baking cookies and brownies for our snack duty at church at the same time, he had to do the most of it by himself. I would say he did an excellent job!

We've owned this noodle maker for quite some time now. But have never used it. Now that we learned how easy it is to make your own pasta, it will be put to use much more often.

The pasta all rolled out and ready to be processed.

Ravioli ready to be cooked.

These were Dietmar's "Italian" Mautaschen. Dietmar's favorite food are Maultaschen and he also loves pasta, so this was a natural creation for him - Huge Maultaschen-shaped Ravioli!

Here the ravioli are cooking.

And here is the finished product. They look so delicious!!!

Cooking Class - Pasta

2010-09-19T19:27:00.004+02:00

I (Steffi) have always wanted to take professional cooking classes. After doing some online research I realized that the Stuttgart area does not really have much to offer along those lines. But about two months ago I did find this Italian restaurant that also offers cooking classes. One class that was not yet full and which sounded very interesting was the class on pasta. Dietmar loves pasta, so I thought this would be perfect. I did not want to go alone, so I signed us both up for the class. It turned out to be a very fun and educational evening. We learned to cook four different dishes and documented our adventure with some pictures below. We only had our cell phone, so the pictures might be a little fuzzy, but I wanted to make sure to post a few anyway! This is a date we will definitely have to repeat some time!

Risotto with chanterelle mushrooms (Pfifferlinge)

The second dish was a delicious pumkin soup with jumbo tiger prawns.

Making the pasta dough. It was much easier than I had always thought!

Dietmar getting ready to roll out the dough.

The dough is all rolled out and ready to go. Good job Dietmar!!!

Here the master cook is filling the ravioli.

We all got to make a few ravioli.

All ready to go.

Ravioli filled with ricotta, spinach, and parmesan served with melted butter, fresh sage, and tomato. It was so delicious we tried this recipe at home!

The mussels - before....

...and after

Cutting the octopus after it was cooked. The poor thing looked so sad when it was not cooked yet. I certainly had never cooked something like that before.

This was the last dish - Linguine with octopus and mussel. It didn't look quite as fancy as the other dishes, but it was still very good, definitely the most exotic of the four dishes.

Painting the new apartment

2010-09-19T19:22:00.003+02:00

This was the color of the living and dining room area before we painted. I think you will agree that this needed some serious painting!

Here you can see the first wall we painted. White is so much better!

The final little bit!

Rainbows

2010-09-19T19:01:00.002+02:00

This rainbow picture was taken from our apartment in Gaildorf.

These two pictures Dietmar took on his way back home from Switzerland. Both were bursts of color in the middle of a storm.

Mischa Maisky Concert

2010-09-18T16:32:00.004+02:00

Yes, it is Mischa Maisky! I (Steffi) happended to see a poster on the train on my way to work yesterday advertising several different classical concerts during the month of September. When I glanced at it a little more closely I saw a picture of Mischa Maisky. That obviously caught my attention and I noticed that he was going to be giving two concerts, one on Thursday (which was already over) and one yesterday. He was going to be playing the Bach Suites in the Stiftskirche church in downtown Stuttgart. I texted the info to Dietmar so he could check it out online. He did and found that there were still quite a few tickets left. So, when I got home from work we rushed to the ticket office and were able to get tickets in the 6th row. Needless to say, we were very excited. Our efforts were rewarded by a wonderful concert. On this second night he played the Suite No. 2, 3 and 6. It was really cool to be able to hear just him play, without any piano or orchestra, and so up close too!
After the concert we noticed that a few people (who we found out later obviously knew him personally) were waiting at the front of the church for him. We decided to give it a shot and wait too. As you can see by the pictures, it was worth the wait. We both got to meet him, get his autograph and even get a few pictures with him. What an exciting evening that turned out to be!

Sneak Preview

2010-09-18T01:18:00.002+02:00

More to follow soon...

We are free!

2010-04-04T18:08:00.003+02:00

I just thought this was worth blogging!!! Yes, this is my total school loan balance :-). It feels pretty nice! The party is currently planned for May! We will make sure to document it with some pictures.

Happy Valentine's Day!!!

2010-02-14T15:58:00.002+01:00

Baking for Valentine's Day

2010-02-14T15:50:00.002+01:00

With Valentine's Day on a Sunday, I decided to bake some special treats for church. This batter will turn into delicious brownies. Please note the great bakeware from Daniel and Elizabeth! All the recipes I tried are from Joyofbaking.com. All in all, I made chocolate brownies with a chocolate ganache, chocolate cupcakes with chocolate fudge frosting, and for those people who are not quite the chocolate lovers like me, vanilla cupcakes with pink buttercream frosting!

Drugs

2010-02-14T15:47:00.002+01:00

With all the cold weather, Dietmar and I have been struggling with colds for several weeks now. As you can see, the pharmacy loves it when Dietmar is sick. What can I, say some people like to shop for clothes, others for drugs :-)!

More snow

2010-02-14T15:27:00.006+01:00

It's been snowing a lot lately. Here are just a few pictures of what it looks like around here.

Our balcony refrigerator/freezer

Extra comfortable benches.

Steffi's Birthday

2010-02-14T15:03:00.002+01:00

Thank you all for the many phone calls, cards, e-cards, and gifts. It was a very special day.

Dietmar took me out to eat in the evening and of course we had to get all dressed up...

...after dinner we stopped by the Gross' house and look what surprised us there....a huge dromedary Steiff animal. What a fun visit that was!

Dietmar's business trip to San Francisco

2010-02-02T20:05:00.012+01:00

It was very snowy when Dietmar left Stuttgart. Just a day later, there were significant delays and lots of cancelled flights.

The entrance to the hotel....pretty fancy!!!

The Cable Car

On this one, you can see the hotel he stayed at in the background.

Some Restaurants

He even found a good church to go to....and of course, he was invited for lunch at the pastor's house!!!

The Golden Gate Bridge

This one is to show he was actually there...

Some images from around town

Basketball Game

2010-02-01T21:28:00.002+01:00

During our Christmas break we took the opportunity to go to one of Zach's away games. It was worth it!

Daddy taking on the whole team during warm-ups....

Action shot!

With there being just a few fans for the Aalen team present, we were pretty excited to have helped them to victory!!!

Exiting the locker room...

Christmas Day at Dietmar's Parents

2010-02-01T21:24:00.002+01:00

Look at all these goodies!

Other Christmas Images

2010-02-01T21:11:00.004+01:00

The Family

2010-02-01T21:03:00.004+01:00

Our Christmas Orchestra

2010-02-01T20:56:00.004+01:00

Flowers

2010-02-01T20:54:00.002+01:00

Anyone recognize these?

Dr. D's Birthday Cake

2010-02-01T20:51:00.002+01:00

This is Dietmar's favorite cake - Russischer Zupfkuchen

Advent

2010-02-01T20:41:00.003+01:00

Making an advent calendar for Kelly Hausmann (she is my prayer daughter at church)

Some of our Advent and Christmas decorations.

First Snow

2010-02-01T20:37:00.003+01:00

This was our first snow from back before Christmas. It is nothing compared to the snow we have now, though. Hopefully we can get some pictures up of that too. Too bad, things don't shut down like in Greenboro!

Fall Walk

2010-02-01T20:28:00.003+01:00

These pictures are from our nature walk back in the fall, when we needed to collect some table decorations for a church event. We now know where every single Kastanien Tree is in our town and on our way to church!

ADAC MX Masters in Gaildorf

2009-09-04T22:14:00.009+02:00

So, here we are, off to the big event. This year Zach and Helen joined us for the weekend. I know I said this last year, but I can't believe that Gaildorf hosts this big Moto Cross event. I'm also amazed of how close we could get. Once again, it was pretty fun.

This was the younger group. The boy that won this race was only 11 years old.

Here they are lining up.

And there they go. That first curve is a very crucial spot.

Las Vegas

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This was our RV Spot in Vegas.

As you can see, it is the best RV Park in Vegas :-)!

After giving back our RV we took a taxi to the New York New York hotel in downtown Vegas where we spent our last night. The next day we flew out early, first to Minneapolis, then Detroit, and finally Frankfurt. There we caught a train to Gaildorf and there we took a taxi home. Wow what an adventure!

This was the view out our window. Yup, there's a roller-coaster on the roof.

And this was the entrance hall.

This gives you a good view of the hotel.

We had dinner at the Rainforest Restaurant

This was our appetizer sampler....yummy!

The MGM Lion

Vegas at Night

Check out the sign on the bottom right.

Back to Vegas

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This was our final stretch, from Park City to Las Vegas about 425 miles.

From Idaho Falls, Idaho to Park City, Utah - about 250 miles

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On our trip through Salt Lake City we decided to take a detour and stop in Park City to do some shopping at the famous Outlet Mall. The shopping was great fun and we found some very good deals but the best of that day was that Megan was able to come out and meet us for dinner! What a treat that was! Please notice the store we decided to pose in front of.

From Yellowstone to Idaho Falls

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The next stop after we left Yellowstone was Idaho Falls, about a 170 miles drive. These are some pictures of this stretch.

Look at this handsome man!!

After we left the Park we ran into some serious construction. It was gravel and pot holes for about 8 miles. But while we were waiting for our turn to go we made a friend.

Some more pictures from Yellowstone

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Our camping spot in Yellowstone

Another scary road

The Lower Falls

Upper Falls