Rome, Pompeii and Mt Vesuvious, Italy

[Disclaimer: I wrote most of this post a month ago and believed that I had already published it. Sadly, I hadn't and just realized that today!]

Fourth of July weekend was a four-day weekend for us, so we decided to take a trip. After reviewing a few different options, our best bet was a trip to Rome, Italy.

Berlin: ICE Trains and Beer Festivals

Fair warning, even though this was a short trip to Berlin, this will probably be a very long and detailed post. On Monday, I found a flier at the gym advertising the Berlin International Beer Festival this weekend. Since we've never been to Berlin, we figured this may be the best time to make a trip over to the east. The next day, we booked train tickets and a hotel. So, this was definitely a more spontaneous trip than we usually take. Aside from my trip via ICE train to Nuremberg to visit Greg when he was at training, this was our first long distance train adventure. There were a lot of bumps in the road along the way, but we made it there and had a pretty awesome time on our mini vacation.

Day Trip: Worms, Germany

One of the cool things about living in Europe is getting to go do and see some of the less popular or less "touristy" things. I can almost promise that no one has ever said they wanted to go to Germany so that they could visit Worms, but it was only a short drive for us to see. Worms was the (arguable) birthplace of the Lutheran Church and is the location of the oldest remaining Jewish cemetery in Europe. Neither of these things probably attract all that many visitors, but I have to make a very honest confession. I love cemeteries. At one point when I was a kid, I begged my dad to take me to Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta. While I can't remember much about the Louvre or Versailles from my trip to Paris in high school, I can still recall exactly what I was wearing when we went to Cimetière du Père Lachaise and how disappointed I was when we couldn't go into the catacombs. I've been to Bonaventure in Savannah multiple times for ghost tours when I lived nearby and was even excited to find out there was a private family cemetery behind my house in Augusta. I know, this whole paragraph comes across extremely creepy. Some people like the beach, other people like cemeteries... right?

Day Trip: Idar-Oberstein & Gemstone Mines

Last Saturday was a beautiful day to go Jeep-ing, so Greg planned for us to take a trip out to Idar-Oberstein. Greg frequently makes trips to another military base further west of us that requires him to drive through several small towns. That's how he discovered Idar-Oberstein, the capital of gemstone mining in Germany. It also happens to have the only gemstone mines in Europe open to the public. When we were dating, it became somewhat of a tradition of ours to collect gemstones from different places we visited, so it was fitting that we visit the Steinkaulenberg gemstone mine while living in Germany.

Did I mention there is a church built directly into the side of the mountain?

Nuremberg and Our First Train Experience

I have been a miserably bad blogger recently. I currently have at least 3 posts saved as drafts that I have yet to finish. I'd like to say that I have been busy lately, but that's not entirely true. Although I have been somewhat more busy over all, I also had enough free time to binge watch all of Dexter on Netflix last weekend and feel horrible about myself afterwords. One of these days, I may just pick up a hobby that doesn't involve my computer.

Anyway, Greg left several weeks ago to play Army at a school in Bavaria. He's nearly done and has been very proud of himself for everything he's accomplished, so we decided to have some fun this weekend while he was off. We decided to head to Nuremberg!

Fall, Frankfurt & Frankenstein

I haven't written recently because it seems every time we start planning something, it falls apart at the last minute, but that doesn't mean we haven't stayed busy. I was hoping for several weeks to take a trip down to the Black Forest to see the autumn leaves, but the weather here has been horrible the past few weeks. It's been cold, wet and miserable. Our front lawn is currently a sea of wet leaves that act almost like snow in how slippery and sticky they seem to stay. Fall appears to be just about over here in Germany and winter is quickly approaching. According to most of our friends, winter here tends to be cloud, cold and miserably but not particularly snowy. I personally hope we get some good snow!

Leaves in our neighborhood a few weeks ago.

Last weekend Greg had a four day. If you aren't familiar with the military, four day weekends are relatively common place and happen about once a month, usually around national holidays. Columbus Day warranted a 4 day here in Germany. To celebrate, we had a camp fire at our house, a party at a friend's house and went to Frankfurt with our friends and their children to check out the natural history museum. Germans have no issues with nudity or sexuality, so it was pretty interesting to see a whole area on how babies are made- explained to children- through the use of very "adult" pictures. We also got a good laugh at the American children's responses to said pictures. Needless to say, Germans aren't shy.

Aside from that, there were some pretty cool exhibits about dinosaurs, sea life and oddly enough, preserved human and animal parts for medical experiments (?). Most of the descriptions were in German, so we were a little lost.

Halloween is quickly approaching. Apparently, Halloween is viewed as an American holiday here in Europe and isn't celebrated, but the younger and more "Americanized" generation of Germans seem to be catching on. Our neighbors have warned us that trick-or-treating around our homes will be flooded with confused German teenagers who want to participate in the festivities, but don't really understand the concept of dressing up. In recent years, the very real Frankenstein's Castle, which is about thirty minutes from our house, has started to cash in on the young German's sudden interest in the holiday by having an adult Halloween party and haunted house in October and November. The castle itself is not very magnificent, as it is mostly in ruins now, but it was pretty entertaining to go see how German's try to celebrate the holiday. The party had shuttle buses that proclaimed "This way to Halloween!" and a lot of the Germans dressed up like movie characters. All of the food was apparently supposed to be in some way horror themed, but we didn't always understand the analogies. Maybe they were German horror movies?

Hanging out with Frankenstein's monster at his castle.

The "haunted house" itself was pretty hilarious. In Georgia, I remember friends going to Netherworld every year where you would wait in line for an hour or more to walk through a house where they told you made up spooky stories and tried to jump out at you to scare you. At Frankenstein's Castle, it was mostly just people dressed up in crazy (and sometimes very realistic) outfits trying to touch you. At one point, I got shoved inside a metal cage by two of the actors for trying to out-smart one of them. An older bald man apparently took my earwax and turned it into a piece of amber, which he let me keep. At certain times of the night, all of the "monsters" came together to dance to "Thriller" which was pretty good. Pretty much all of the actors tried to come after me at some point to scare me, probably because they thought I was a 14 year old girl. It was a lot of fun, but kind of pricey so I doubt we'll go back.

 

So, this picture was taken in the pitch black chapel of the castle (one of the only parts still remaining.) I couldn't see this guy standing there until the flash went off, so we all had a good laugh at his great photo bomb.

Also this week, Greg had a very interesting Army experience that I don't think he would have in America. To make a long story short, Heidelberg is also pretty close to where we live and once had a huge military presence. It's a beautiful city that is apparently extremely friendly to Americans and tourists, unlike where we are right now. Anyway, a guy that Greg works with chose to have his re-enlistment ceremony at the castle there prompting a mini work field trip for them, in their uniforms. Usually, it's highly discouraged for them to walk around anywhere in uniform, so the response from the crowd was pretty comical. Greg came home saying that Germans were asking to take pictures with them, stopping to watch and take pictures of their ceremony, and swarms of elderly American tourists migrated over to shake all of their hands. When he told me the story, I pretty much laughed all the way through because I could imagine being one of those prying spectators stopping to get a good pictures. What was more fun was the way he described people trying to "discreetly" snap a photo by pulling out their phones and pretending to be texting or something while pointing the camera at them. I really wish I had gotten to witness this ordeal.


Now that the shut down is over, Greg gets to go back to school again. As much as I'll miss him, I'm glad he's going because we were getting concerned that the longer his classes got pushed back, the more likely they were to cut into Thanksgiving and our trip to Switzerland. As of right now, snowboarding in Switzerland is still the plan for next month. Hopefully, everything will work out. We also have a hotel booked for a four day in January to spend in Garmisch, which should be fun. I was hoping we could go over our anniversary weekend, but pretty much all of December is booked everywhere I looked into going. Next year, I guess I'll have to plan further in advance.

Speaking of planning, I'm crossing my fingers and hoping we can settle on a Mediterranean cruise sometime this upcoming spring or summer. I really want to see Greece and cruises over here are crazy inexpensive, but it always seems that cruise lines try to throw in extra destinations that you really would rather not see along with the best ones. For example, I don't have any desire to stop twice in Turkey on an 11 day cruise of the Greek islands and Greg would prefer to stay far away from the Middle East. The only cruise I've found that met our parameters was through Norwegian, which is more expensive than the European lines. I told Greg when we came to Germany that the only thing I really cared to do here was go on a cruise to Greece. Considering that a week long Mediterranean cruise is about the same price as 3 days snowboarding, I don't think that's an unobtainable request.