being a tourist again

I was playing hooky the last two weeks and took a mini vacation with my dear hubby. We visited a quaint little town along the Mosel where we tied the knot ten years ago. Since I am totally integrated into German society, it was fun playing the tourie. I spoke English the whole time and ease dropped on other English-speaking tourists. I even ordered my food in English...not really, but I could have. ;-)
Can you guess where we were??

We were in Cochem and there was a very nice little wine festival going on as well on exactly the same weekend! What a cooincidence and to our luck.

It was so enjoyable to spend time just with my husband listen to good music and sipping on great Mosel wine with such awesome weather! What had a very romantic weekend filled with a river boat excursion to a castle ruin, fine dining, a tour of the castle and walks along the Mosel. Life doesn't get any better than this!

Here are some impressions of our mini vacation. Sometimes I have to remind myself how great it is to be living my own dreams.

We took a little river boat cruise to Beilstein. It wanted to sprinkle a little, but stayed dry for the most part.

 

 

We visited the castle ruins and the church/monastery as well as having a little appetite refresher. I ate a most fabulous split pea soup with ham. Oh, yummy!

After lunch and a bit in our tummies, we tasted some award winning Mosel Riesling and a glass of Kerner.

Back to Cochem an der Mosel for a site seeing tour of the Reichsburg Cochem - the castle where we got married and had a champagne reception. We were very fortunate on our wedding day with great weather as well as on our second honeymoon.

Thank you for joining me on my little vacation tour. And thanks for dropping by!

WWII Bomb found in my neighborhood

Have you ever had one of these days?? I was working on sorting out all of my fabric and was progressing nicely, when I received a knock at the door and this notice was pushed into my hand. If you don't understand German, this is what it reads:

"Due to a bomb found in the vicinity of the Public Pool, the surrounding radius of 300 meters must immediately be evacuated! Please leave the marked area. The bomb will be defused at 2pm. We will inform you when the danger has passed."

Okay. It was 12:30pm and I was just starting to make lunch. I threw together some things and packed the kids up and left. We headed over to Günzburg to ate pizza in a nice café, a nice change in the daily pace. We arrived home a couple of hours later and fortunately, the bomb did not detonate.

We found out later that it was an Allied bomb from WWII that never exploded. I have encountered this before when we lived in Trier, but it was never so close to home at least not in my neighborhood and I didn't have to leave the house immediately with the kids.

You can read more about it here: Augsburger Allegemine in German, of course.

leipheimer kinderfest 2013

Hello everyone and welcome to the Karen Ackva's easypatchwork blogspot. Here I like to ramble on about (1) patchwork & quilting (2) my life in Germany as seen through the eyes of an American.

The weather has been really great the last couple of weeks. We have had barely any rain since the big flooding. (Our city water supply was washed out and now have to rely on a smaller emergency water reservoir; we have learned to live with less water!)

Last weekend we celebrated the Leipheimer Kinderfest which went on for three days. It was a huge event for the entire school, because the kids HAD to participate. They even had class on Saturday morning, because they practiced during regular school hours!

The Leipheimer Kinderfest is a festival primarily for the kids and seen as a thankfulness celebration. The first festival took place over 150 years after a long hunger period and is also seen as an Erntedankfest. For those of you in Germany, it is more like a Kürmis oder Jahresmarkt. For Americans it is more like a parade, dance show, carnival with a large Biergarten. The kids started out in unison from their school and walked to the center of the town where the mayor gave a short speech. We all proceeded with the parade of students and other important people throughout the town and down to the sports field where the students proceeded to perform dance and rhythm routines to bedazzle their audience.

My son's class worked on a scarf dance to "Walking on Sunshine." He had been practicing at home and in school for the last few weeks. And for a boy who doesn't like to dance too much, he performed very well!

I heard on the radio that over 40,000 people visited over the weekend. I think that is quite impressive. It is also host to the largest Biergarten in Schwaben! Biergarten(s) are really great in the summer months and you can enjoy the weather. My husband even put on his Lederhosen. I chose to leave my Dirdl at home. ;-) Yes, I do have one, but it is a little more "festive" and it was really hot. Excuses, excuses, I know!

If you live in the region or would like to visit something interesting on your vacation to Germany, check out the Leipheimer Kinderfest in July. It is something your really shouldn't miss.