Author: jim

I know I just posted our Thanksgiving festivities, but presto, we are up to Christmas!
We went back to visit our friends the Herrmanns in Franconia (which is a part of Bavaria and as your random fact for the post it was one of the original 5 duchies of the Holy Roman Empire). They have a tradition of going on a Christmas hike (a wonderful idea I think we may carry on). So, Gabi, Anna and I went on a very pretty hike to two castle ruins (not something we could easily do back home in Wisconsin). Here are some images from the hike.




If you are up on your German, you can read all about the history of this castle. Fortunately for us, Gabi translated. Here’s the short version: it’s old, been fought over for centuries and was finally burned and destroyed in a dispute. 🙂

This is what it looks like today.




You can see the same castle here. This is also the stream that Rinehart fishes in (we sampled the tasty result during the last visit).

This is the view of the castle from another ruin on the opposite side of the valley.


Another village in the area.

This was a first for Anna and I, seeing a real May Pole. However, May Poles have been around in Bavaria since at least 1590. Bavaria is also where the tradition came from, with roots in Paganism.

Then, Christmas Eve, the fun began. We collected all the presents into piles for each person. At some point when no one is around (or when everyone congregates in the kitchen), Kristkindl (Christ Child) comes to deliver the presents for everyone. Also, different than Anna and my families, everyone tears into their presents at the same time (as opposed to waiting for each person to open them one at a time). The family also had a LARGE tree, which was very well decorated. There were even real candles to decorate it. Here are a few images from the evening.

Although there wasn’t any snow to make it a white Christmas (very unusual), it was plenty cold enough to enjoy a nice fire.




Christmas Day is a day to spend with family. The day after Christmas is apparently for the extended family. We were honored to spend Christmas Eve and Christmas day (usually only for immediate family) with the Herrmann Family. It was a wonderful trip filled with great food, thought provoking conversation, and of course great company. We look forward to learning more German so we can discuss in German as well!
So, until then, Grüß Gott!
–Jim

OK, so I know I am now more than a month behind (and a bit ironic to post Thanksgiving on Christmas), but I wanted to share with you all our wonderful trip to visit our good friends Tim and Dori.
Actually, this was Anna’s and my second trip to England. The first was way back when we were dating in 2002. So, we wanted to recreate a few of the memories. For example, here’s the classic red phone booth (which unfortunately, we heard are going away).

We enjoyed a lovely Thanksgiving dinner. Everything Dori and Tim created was scrumptious. Unfortunately, I realized after that I didn’t have a good image that showed the finished product. However, here’s the creation phase.

They live in a little town outside of London and were kind enough to show us around. Here are a few of the images from our sight seeing tour. 🙂

Yes, these ruins are several times older than the US.



Yes, this is the smallest bar I’ve ever seen (although I can’t say I’ve been to that many and certainly not all in England, but it’s small nonetheless).


Here’s the attractive Spaulding Family (little Oliver is resting cozily on Tim’s chest).

We also went on a very enjoyable hike through the English countryside. Here are a few of the images.

Almost good enough to eat…

Of course we knew where to go!!

The next day, we went into a local restaurant for a picture perfect English breakfast.



Here’s another quintessential English item, a London clock.

We also came upon a group of musicians raising money (perhaps for a charity or perhaps for themselves, but either way it was lots of fun to listen to).



Then, to a local pub for lunch. We learned that these unique instruments are to filter the beer before it’s poured.


In all, it was a spectacular visit. We look forward to spending more time with them. It’s nice to be close enough for a weekend trip to see them.
So, until then…
–Jim

What do you think of when you think of Germany? If it’s mountains (or at least rolling hills), Oktoberfest, castles, and lederhosen … well, those things that are all part of Bavaria. Last weekend, we received our first taste of Bavaria when we visited Anna’s long time friend (and someone I had heard so much about), Gabi and her family in Franconia (a part of Bavaria, or Bayern in German). She says it’s a very “special place” and was the one who pointed out to me that all those quintessential “German” things are actually Bavarian. We learned that they are a justifiably proud people who had an autonomous government until 1871 when Prussia won the Franco-Prussian war and the German states (including Bavaria) proclaimed their union under Prussian rule. This is after Bavaria had been defeated along with Austria in the Austro-Prussian War a decade before, where Prussia was deemed the aggressor. So, with that short history lesson, let me introduce you to our friend, Gabi, and the rest of her family. 🙂

These pictures are apropos as we spent many hours around the table catching up (as was the case for Anna and Gabi) and getting to know each other (for the rest of us). This is Gabi’s mother preparing one of the delicious meals we shared with them.

It was a great experience to stay with them. Their family owns a farm and many of the things we ate were either produced there or somewhere in the local area (plus her father is a hunter/fisherman … not an easy task in Germany). Being aware of where your food comes from was something that I often neglect (as I suspect most Americans do). However, that was not the case there. It was an interesting lesson to hear the virtues of knowing more about your food. Here is a picture of Gabi’s father.

While Anna wasn’t quite sure, at first, about the food recommendations that Gabi made, everything we tried at her house was delicious! I have to say, even though I love Wisconsin cheese … European cheese is WONDERFUL!

This image shows Gabi’s boyfriend, Phillip. He and Gabi met at the university and have now been dating for several years. They were very cute together, plus it looks like he fits in seamlessly as part of her family. Anna and I were very thankful that all four of them could speak English very well. Our German is progressing (albeit slowly) and if we would have had to rely on that, virtually nothing would have been communicated! It was also cute to watch as her father went from a little unsure of his English skills (he hadn’t spoken English in a while), to completely fluid by the end of the weekend.

Here is another image of her mother.

Of course, no trip would be complete without a little adventure, right??
Well, there is no shortage there. We got to visit a couple castles, a crypt and a beautiful opera house built by a princess.
Here was the crypt. As you can see, at some point, someone decided that all the bones should be neatly stacked up in the entranceway. I don’t know who that was, nor why, but it certainly made for an interesting sight.


This is the opera hall built in the mid 17th century by the Prussian Princess Wilhelmine of Bayreuth. She was the sister of Frederick the Great, the “Enlightened Despot.” Both Frederick and Wilhemine were close to another savant of the time, Voltaire. This friendship was a powerful influence on them personally and the building she created.
We learned much watching a video that details the history of the theater. While it was in German, Gabi was kind enough to offer us a translation. Here is the interior of the exquisite main hall.


With that stunning display of 17th century architecture, we bid Gabi and her lovely family farewell. We can’t wait until we go back again and explore more. Yes, Gabi, Bavaria certainly is “special.”
So, until our next adventure…
–Jim

OK, so, I know it’s been too long since my last post. For those of you who read the site regularly, my apologies. Since we just moved into our new house, it’s been a bit crazy, as you can probably imagine!
However, a couple weeks ago, we took our first “true” foray into the local culture with a trip to Trier, purported to be the oldest city in Germany. It was a provincial capital in the Roman Empire and the only city this far north. It’s a trip that’s offered to everyone when they arrive here. It’s a great way to get a guided perspective on the area and learn some basics and how to get around (we took a train into Trier).
Here is the gate of the city, Porta Nigra. It’s so called from the ages of fires that have blackened the stone. It was the city gate in Roman times.

This is our guide, Easter, who did a wonderful job showing us around the city.

You can see, she kept everyone raptly enthralled. 🙂

The market in the center of town had many great sights.

This couple was so cute.


This is the Jewish Alleyway. Before the war, there was a large Jewish population here. It hasn’t recovered.


This baroque sculpture shows that artists then certainly had a sense of humor. This piece survived both world wars (the second because the town dismantled it and brought it to the country to protect it from the bombing). If you look closely though, you’ll see behind the women, there are a couple monkeys doing very naughty things. Our friends here refer to it as the Dirty Monkey Fountain.

Although McDonald’s has invaded, there are rules (at least here) on how large the “Golden Arches” can be.

We ate lunch at an ancient restaurant. In fact, they recently excavated the basement. In doing so, they came across a huge number of priceless Roman artifacts. They have them on display in the restaurant. Included is this cookbook (although I don’t think it was actually excavated). Supposedly, this is the oldest printed cookbook in existence (printed, not written). It was printed in 1498 on a Guttenberg printing press and contains Roman recipes that are 2,000 years old! Also, every week, the restaurant cooks dishes made from recipes in here.

This relief was excavated.

Next, we visited a couple cathedrals.






Another interesting fact about Trier was that it was the seat of the Roman Emperor for a while. If you recall your European history, Constantine (who coincidentally made Christianity the state religion of Rome), was born and grew up here. This is an image of the building that was his throne room.

While the inside was completely gutted during the Middle Ages (nearly a whole village lived inside for a while), it’s now used as a protestant church.



That finished our tour of the historic city of Trier. We loved getting to visit someplace so fascinating and now, so close! It’s a taste of what’s to come for the next few years and we are excited!!
Until the next adventure…
–Jim

Last weekend, in celebration of Anna’s birthday, we took a road trip down to Paris. It’s about a four hour car ride and since we didn’t have a car then, our friend Jose was VERY generous and let us borrow his (including the GPS navigation), which made the trip much more enjoyable. 🙂
Although I have been to France a couple times before, it was Anna’s first time. So, we focused our short two-day stay on the big tourist destinations (that seems to be the case the last few trips … hopefully, we will be able to delve in a little deeper next time).
One of the great romantic icons of the world is the Eiffel Tower. We watched darkness fall over the tower with many other couples. Love seemed to be in the air throughout the whole city. 🙂

For the millennium celebration the French government placed strobe lights on the tower, and on the hour when it gets dark, they illuminate the sky. It’s very pretty (although perhaps a bit gaudy, but that has characterized the Eiffel Tower since it was built in 1889, when it replaced the Washington Monument as the world’s tallest structure).


Next stop was Napoleon’s famous Arc de Triomphe on the Champs-Élysées. An interesting fact: when Napoleon returned to Paris in 1810 with his bride, Archduchess Marie-Louise of Austria, he had a wooden mock-up of the completed Arc built as a wedding present.


After an exquisite dinner at Ladurée on the Champs-Élysées, we walked up the boulevard to purportedly the most famous cabaret in the world, The Lido. For those of you who aren’t familiar with it (we’ve found most Americans aren’t), it’s a show similar to the Moulin Rouge. It’s a bit risqué, but the costumes and sets were beautiful. We enjoyed the show, but it’s a bit expensive and we recommend the Moulin Rouge instead.

A view looking back up at the Arc from the Champs-Élysées.

Here is the view from our hotel balcony. It was in a perfect location, literally right next door to the Louvre and close to all the sights we wanted to visit.

Of course, one of the best parts of being in Europe (and Paris in particular) are the outdoor cafes. You can wake up and walk over to indulge in a hot chocolate (or coffee) and croissant. In Guam, it was waking up and walking down the beach for waffles. I don’t know which I like better, but the chocolate and croissant tasted fabulous on a cool, overcast morning here.

After our petit-déjeuner, it was across the street to spend the day at the Louvre. As you can see, the weather was perfect for museum exploring.

The line was a little long to get in (and a bit wet), but fortunately, we were admitted inside quickly.

Below are a couple pictures of a fashion that was very popular in France. It’s here in Germany too, but not quite to the same extent.


Even the security guards ride bikes here. I love it!

Here’s an aerial view of the entrance courtyard of the Louvre. As you can see, it’s dominated by the glass pyramid built in 1989. It’s a sharp contrast to the rest of the architecture. Personally, I think it’s a nice contrast. It stands about 70 feet high and serves as the main entrance.
Also interesting to note that since Dan Brown’s book the Da Vinci Code was published in 2003 (which opens in the Louvre and this pyramid plays a central role in the plot) visits to the museum have dramatically increased. In fact in 2005, there were 7.3 million visitors, a 22% increase to previous figures. That makes the Louvre the most popular tourist attraction in Paris.


Inside, we toured as much of the palace as we could, but since there are 73,000 works of art, we simply couldn’t see it all in a day. However, in my pictures below, you will notice that I have more of the sculpture. That’s not to mean that I didn’t enjoy the paintings and other works of art, it simply reflects that it’s easier to create an artistic image with sculptures. Plus, if you merely want to see the work of art, the Louvre publishes most of them on their website: http://www.louvre.fr/llv/musee/alaune.jsp
This is one sphinx of Ramses II (a similar larger version of this is in Egypt as well, in addition to the Great Sphinx of Gaza).

A statue of the Roman Emperor Constantine. He’s notable because he made Christianity the state religion of Rome and he began his rule nearby us in Trier before he went on to found the city of Constantinople.

Here’s Anna wandering the halls (which is a work of art by itself)…

Of course we had to see Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo. While we didn’t take any pictures of the Mona Lisa (the crowd surrounding it is perhaps the most impressive part). However, below is the ancient Greek sculpture probably depicting Aphrodite and most likely created by Alexandros of Antioch. However, since the arms and pedestal are missing no one is entirely sure on either count. I’ve always found it interesting a work of art can gain such fame without really knowing where it came from… 🙂

The crowd around the Venus de Milo was almost as large as the Mona Lisa.

A self portrait…

Another wing…

A whole room of art… 🙂

The father of our nation (George Washington) in the foreground and a like-minded, sharp-witted French philosopher from the same era (Voltaire) in the back.

My favorite museum-going partner.

This eight-foot tall stela of basalt is the codified laws of Hammurabi of ancient Mesopotamia (from about 1780 BC). There are 282 laws written on this stone. We found it fascinating in that it is one of the earliest sets of laws. Since the laws were carved into the stone, they were immutable and irrefutable. Also, supposedly, this is also where the term written in stone came from.
Not only is fascinating from a legal and social perspective, it is also quite a beautiful work of art.

Finally, there was a scary lion from Mesopotamia to complete our tour of the Louvre.

It was simply an amazing weekend to celebrate Anna’s birthday. Best of all, it was only a four-hour drive away!
So, until the next adventure…
–Jim

Well, Anna and I have finally made it to Germany! I know this isn’t really a trip (unless one can take a multi-year year trip), but I thought it was the appropriate category. 🙂
We’re still in the process of settling in, but we did get out and take a Sunday afternoon drive around the area. It’s funny, I remember dreading Sunday afternoon drives growing up, but this time it was quite enjoyable.
The Mosel River makes its way through the region we now live in. It traces a very scenic, meandering path through steep valleys and idyllic vineyards.
Here are a few typical views of the region.




So, hopefully, that gives you a little idea of what the area around us looks like.
Soon, I will have more (better) pictures of the region and our home.
Until then…
–Jim

For our last weekend in the States, Anna and I had the pleasure of visiting the Florida panhandle to visit our good friend, Tom. Since he was at SOS with us, it was convenient to follow him home after we graduated from the class. We drove the less than 3 hours down to the coast. He lives in a very nice condo right on the water in Fort Walton Beach. Since we got there in the late afternoon, we decided to watch the sunset at the Boardwalk. Here’s the pier at the beach.

Tom and Anna enjoying the cool evening.

My supermodelesque wife…

The next morning, Tom took us to the state park where he volunteers from time to time. We rented a canoe for Anna and me, while Tom took a kayak. Our goal was to see the “real” Florida. That meant paddling up a small tributary creek that feed into the bay. As you can see, we found the real Florida.

In the bay, there was lots of life. Fish jumped all around us, while pelicans and other birds worked to gorge themselves on all the fish.

Since Tom had the more nimble craft, we let him go in and explore the possible routes to take. However, after a short while, we found the large river that led us a mile or so up the river. The current wasn’t overwhelming, but it was present. So, that made the trip back down to the bay, very pleasant as we drifted along with the current. We didn’t see any alligators (we were hoping to), but we did find some fish and turtles.



After our workout on the river, we decided that the beach sounded like a perfect destination. The sugar sand there was very enjoyable. When we first got there, dolphins greeted us from the distance. I jumped in the water for a swim, but unfortunately, they had already departed. In fact, I didn’t see any fish. After all my open water swimming in Guam surrounded by aquatic life, it was strange not to see anything in the water.

This couple had decided to take a dip in the water as well.

As Tom and Anna soaked up the sun, I went off to watch the ubiquitous seagulls. I really liked this image shows the distinctive gull wing, forward swept, as it took flight.

This is the sleepy-eyed seagull enjoying his day on the beach as well.

Even though the Gulf doesn’t really produce much in the way of waves, there was a group of teenagers scurfing.

Again, there were more pelicans.

Eventually, we followed the sound of music, and made our way to a nearby hotel. This man was a one-man band who sang his own version of country music, along with various covers of other artists. We listened to him for over an hour as we enjoyed the perfect weather on the beach.

The next morning, we got up and headed back to Montgomery. However, spending the weekend with Tom in Florida was a great send off before we left for Germany. Not only is Tom a good friend and host, we also learned that he’s quite a good tour guide.
Until the next adventure…
–Jim

Although I’ve spent the last 5 weeks in the city of Montgomery, in all honesty, I didn’t get to explore it in as much detail as I would have liked. However, here are a few of the images I made, that I thought you may enjoy.
Of course, Montgomery is the state capital of Alabama. This is the capital building is lit up very well.

This is a similar view, this time with a little “character.” 🙂

I thought this building was fitting, since I am such a fan of history. This is the state department of archives and history.

The 1960’s (as you may recall) brought a lot of national attention to Montgomery. It was the site of Rosa Parks famously defiant bus ride, and here you can see the church where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. first preached to a congregation.

Now, switching from the historic to the personal, these are our friends Tom and Kat.

Here we all are together.

This is our friend Sam whom we first met back in Guam, but now lives in Louisiana. She drove the several hours east to see spend a couple days with us in Alabama. We enjoyed spending time with her. 🙂

If you are a golfer, you have probably heard of a man named Robert Trent Jones. If you’re not, he’s a very famous golf course designer. Supposedly, he designed my favorite course at the Air Force Academy. More importantly, he also has several courses in the region. I was able to experience two while I was in Alabama. The first was with up in Birmingham at a course named Oxmoor Valley with our friends Eric and Sangreal. Here are a couple of images of our round.


The second was with a friend from SOS, Eddie. Eddie and I had already played the base course, which was nice, but no comparison to a RTJ course. This particular one was called Capital Hill and the 18 we played has the intimidating name of “The Judge.” Our golf cart warned us to “be prepared to be judged.” While it wasn’t the toughest course I’ve ever played, it was certainly a challenge and for a mere $40, well worth it.

Here are some of the images from our round there. As you will see, it wasn’t just about the golf. There was plenty of fauna around to entertain us while we waited to take our shots.
This is the first hole that overlooked the Alabama River.

Eddie and I taking our tee shots.



Here is some of that fauna I mentioned. The squirrels were much larger with very unique coloring.


Yes, Eddie did drain this putt. He was playing well. 🙂

However, this tee shot wasn’t “successful,” but at least he could laugh about it. If you recall the final Guam entry, this island green reminded me of hole 12 on Mangilao. Perhaps this one wasn’t quite as tough though. I actually managed to land my ball on the green, relatively close to the flag (although I didn’t make the birdie putt).


There were lots of cranes out on the course. They are very majestic creatures and very good fisher-animals. I watched them snag numerous small fish from the water.


One last image of a green on the course. It was a very enjoyable way to spend the last full day in Montgomery. The next day, we headed down to Florida to spend a couple days with our friend Tom.

Even though we didn’t get to explore Montgomery as much as we’d have liked, we did enjoy our time there.
Until the next adventure…
–Jim