On the Road Again

Well, my computer is still struggling, but is now at least usable (most of the time).

Off to Val de Loire for the weekend. We will be visiting Château d'Amboise tomorrow, and Château de Chenonceau on Sunday. I can't wait! This is going to be a blast for me, seeing as I'm completely obsessed with history. I just hope all the striking in Paris and around France doesn't delay our journey!

God I Love My Computer

Experiencing technical difficulties...sorry for any delays in posting. But we may have lost my computer...not much of a loss really when it never worked properly to begin with...

The Story of the Nuremberg Bridal Beaker

"The story goes that a long time ago a goldsmith in the famous city of Nuremburg wanted to wed Kunigunde, a young lady of noble birth.


Her father, however, did not like the idea and resorted to a ruse to prevent his daughter from marrying the penniless artisan. He would only allow the wedding to take place on condition that the goldsmith succeeded in making a vessel from which two persons could drink together without spilling a drop of its contents.


The goldsmith succeeded, and the news of the happy ending spread quickly all over Bavaria, where the Bridal Beaker has been in use ever since."

"In the beginning, I looked around but couldn't find the car I dreamt of, so I decided to build it myself" ~ Ferry Porsche

Bright and early Saturday morning found us on our way to the Porsche museum in Germany.

The building itself is actually pretty neat. The architect was only given a small triangle of space to build a much anticipated museum, and so the buildings structure was considered. It's an obscurely shaped square of all glass mounted onto a base of leaning "sticks". When you enter, you pay and then take an escalator to the top, and you walk in a "spiral" around the building.
The design itself of the building is supposed to highlight the cars it houses (this was all explained to us by a very friendly young guy working at the museum, "greeting" everyone as they got to the top of the escalator. He talked our ears off for probably ten minutes, with interesting information about the place). There aren't any curves to the building, which is a direct (and intentional) contrast to Porsche cars, which are known for their curvature. The path you follow around, because of the shape of the building, gets tighter in areas, and widens in others. This simulates driving in the sense of slowing down at intersections and such, and speeding up on straights. At one point my dad commented on this, saying that he noticed how the smaller, more congested areas were where the faster cars were, while the wider quicker moving areas had slower cars. I have a feeling this was intentional as well.
Since I happen to know as much about cars as a horse knows about thumbs (useful and handy things they are!), my main objective was to take a picture of every car so that I could at least make John feel like he had been there. It was exhausting, but I succeeded!

After my dad finished ogling at the cars (and decided he needed to own one again), we went back downstairs and had lunch in one of the restaurants. It was cafeteria style, where you go to the counter of either the pizza/pasta, salad/sandwich or grill area and order what you'd like. The difference from cafeterias at home, is that here you give your order, then go sit down and when your food is finished, they serve it to you! The guy making my pasta was quite chatty...and chatted himself into asking me out. After having explained to him that we were here for another month and a half and staying in Strasbourg, he thought it was a perfect opportunity to make a friend, and apparently see Strasbourg for the first time. It was a good idea, except that I'm currently planning my wedding to someone I love...I felt bad for him. After turning him down, he asked if I had facebook, and so wrote down my name for him. It was the least I could do...since he was making my lunch and I had just turned down his offer for a date.
After lunch we went into the gift shop. We got a few things, and then headed out. Our new destination being Rothenburg, a medieval walled city.

We got there in early evening and found our hotel. Then we got all bundled up and headed into the dreary weather to look around at some shops and find dinner.

My mom had read online about a guided night tour by a "night watchmen" dressed all in medieval attire. It started at 8:00 (20:00) and went for an hour. This was our plan for the night, so we got some dinner at a really cool restaurant, and then went on the tour.
Despite the weather (which actually added to the ambience of it all) the tour was really fun. The guy was hilarious, and really entertaining. He also was full of some really interesting facts about the city. He told us about the night watchman's job in medieval times, talked about how long the city remained "unconquered" and what happened the first time they were, and pointed out one of the oldest buildings in the town that is divided into four apartments and houses, still, the original families.
This I found the most interesting of the whole tour. By original families, I mean the direct decedents of the families that lived there when the house was built (back in the 12 or 13 hundreds!). Awesome! Just imagine the stories they probably have, and they have to have letters and diaries and such of the people living back then, although they have probably donated them to museums and such. Still cool though!

He also showed us Hell. Which is the name of this bar/restaurant. No joke!

With the devil on the sign.






After the tour, we went back to our hotel and went to sleep. But not before I thoroughly got to enjoy the bath tub. Normally, bathtubs are a bit short to compensate for my long legs, but this tub was long enough for me to sit and not have to bend my knees. It was amazing. I will miss that bath...

The next morning we got up and had breakfast in the café connected to our hotel. Then we headed out and did some serious shopping. We also walked to a "castle"...that was located down a steep, LONG path outside the city...that we had to hike back up later...after seeing a "castle" that looked nothing like a castle. I won't elaborate any more on this...because my true feelings are screaming "Wasted Effort"...

We also bought something called Schneeball (pronounced exactly as it looks. Although we had a lot of fun calling them "schneezballs" and other such variations). They are strips of dough put together and fried and are about the size of a baseball, then covered in cinnamon and sugar, or powdered sugar, or chocolate...or tons of other things. They are like german donuts, except rather than being doughy, they are crunchy (and minus the curious hole in the middle). And delicious! I got a chocolate one, a cinnamon sugar one, and a powdered sugar one. My dad got a caramel walnut one. So we got a fifth one for free! Cinnamon sugar.
It was a very good trip. And considering my dad has been waiting 20 years to take my mom there, I would say it lived up to it's expectations!

Wedding:
While we were going into shop after shop in Rothenburg, we kept seeing these pewter sculpted women. In one shop we finally saw a little sign next to them explaining what they are. After reading this, I decided that we had to get one for the wedding...

...will post more about this tomorrow...