A DAY FOR SERVICE

Thursday I fixed lunch and Elder T. and I headed to Rachelle Durtschi to share lunch with her.  We get together every Thursday.  We were joined by Elders Harrison and Aubrey.  After soup and salad, we headed outside to get some yard work done.  

The Elders were in charge of clearing out the garden.

Elder T. was in charge of the riding lawn mower.

Look at that!  A job well done.

Thursday evening we went to help Sister Young pack up her house.  She has lived in this house for 10 years and had accumulated lots of stuff.  Her house was not like those homes on TV where you can't make a path through the room, but from the attic to the basement it was packed.  (Today, Saturday we were there again with a good group from the ward.  I believe it is about 90% done now.  The Elders were helping again today and we were charge of clearing out the attic.  They spent 3 hours just hauling stuff out of the attic.  Her new house is smaller, and I just wonder where she is going to put everything.  She didn't get rid of anything.  We packed up every pencil and paper clip.

I had to post this picture to show you how narrow some of the country roads are.  It is more like a bicycle path.  It is a bit scary going around a corner.  You never know if you will meet a farmer on a big tractor or a Mercedes going way too fast.  It makes for interesting driving.  That is our little car that we drive around.

ANOTHER FUN DAY IN GERMANY

Monday we were lucky enough to have Rachelle Durtschi and little Julian drive us to Bayreuth to see the gardens.  This was once someone's amazing estate.  The grounds were partly manicured gardens and part was trails winding through the woods.  There were fountains and sculptures, and the main manor house.  They have tours, but only in German so we just walked around and enjoyed the sights.

Rachelle, Julian and Elder Toolson strolling through this amazing path-archway.

I wish I knew what these buildings were.  There was a little gift shop in one of them and a little cafe, but I did wonder what they were used for originally.

The outside of the buildings were covered with thee colored stones that sparkled.  It was really quite beautiful.
The above picture and the next few are of the fountains.  The water only shoots out on a scheduled time.  We were able to see both of them.

This is the back of the Manor House.  I saw some pictures of the inside and it looked amazing. Sometime I would like to go in, even if the tour is in German.

Just a touch of fall in the air.

Just relaxing waiting for the fountains to go off.  It was so kind of Rachelle to drive us.  She is always doing nice things for people.  She had just been to this garden the week before, but said she was happy to go again.  Bayreuth is not too far away, about 40 k.

NO FUN TRIP THIS P-DAY

Monday was a cold, wet rainy day, not inviting enough for an outing.  We just did some needed cleaning, laundry, and errands.

However, Tuesday was our District Meeting which is held here in Graf now. (I  rather miss the train trip into Nurnburg.)   We hold the meeting at the church.  Besides our district Elders, we were joined by the Zone Leaders, who did the teaching.  We had an informative meeting and then walked over to our apartment for lunch.

Don't they look like some serious, non-nonsense missionaries?

They are sure nice guys.  Everyone has to have a little fun now and then.

A FUN P-DAY

This is not the picture I intended to start my blog with, but here it is.  I had to put this in because this is how they lay many of their streets and sidewalks.  It is all done by hand laying each individual stone.   It looks like it would be back-breaking work as well as hard on the knees.  

The Germans have been working on a project like this right next to our house.  It has taken them two months to finish.  They begin bright and early each morning around 6:00 am and they have all kinds of equipment, trucks hauling sand, stone, dirt whatever.  We hear them going tap, tap, tap on each stone.   We will be very glad to have them finish their project.

This is the beautiful Danube River which runs through Regensburg.  We rode the train there along with Elder Aubrey and Elder Harrison to see the sights.  It was a beautiful day for a stroll through the city.  We loved this city maybe even better than Rothenburg. There was just something about it that was so beautiful.

 
This old stone bridge was built back in the 9th century.  It is still amazing to me how something could be built to last so long.  It is great that they preserved these old buildings and sites.  It seems like people like to tear down the old and build something modern in its place.

I had to at least stick my toe in the Danube River.

Of course, one of the highlights in Germany is their bratwurst.  Brian and the Elders had a bratwurst with sauerkraut on a bun, and said it was delicious.  I passed it up waiting for ice cream!  They have great ice as they call it.

How would you like to cook bratwurst all day?  This place is evidently very famous  as it was packed with people.
Elder Aubrey, Elder Toolson and Elder Harrison.  We dressed casual for the day as you can see.

The church in the background is the best representative of the Gothic style in all of Bavaria.  It is very impressive. There are so many wonderful churches to see.

A view inside the church.  Sorry, I forgot to rotate this picture.  It had some lovely windows as you can see a little of them in the background.

A front view of the church.

I have so many other pictures, but you have seen cute buildings, narrow streets, etc so they all probably start looking alike to you.  Each city, however, has its unique aspects

A HAPPY ENDING

The camera story has a happy ending.  We took the camera in to the PX.  We told them I had dropped it, which I did.  They said they would send it back to Nikon to see if  it could be fixed. We went home to get the box it came in so they could send it off.  When we got home from our visits we had a message to call the customer service department at the PX.  They said they had called Nikon and was told to just give us a new camera.  How about that.  We certainly didn't expect that.  Pretty cool huh!  Isn't it great when something good happens when you don't expect it.

My old one was a nice pink-purple color, but I said I would accept it in black.  Beggars can't be choosers.

DANUBE RIVER TRIP

P-day was a beautiful day, just right for a little river trip.  We drove to Kelheim which was about 1 1/2 hours away.  The city looks like a visit for another day.  We decided to take the boat trip up the Danube river.  The Danube runs through 3 or 4 countries.  It wasn't a long trip, maybe 45 minutes up and 20 minutes back.  The river ran through a beautiful gorge and ended up at an old Monastery.  The present buildings were built in the 1700's.  They had a beautiful church there; however, the big attraction was the beer garden they had there.  They are famous for their dark beer coming from the oldest monasatic brewery in the world.  (Everything is about beer here.) 

Everything looks lovely doesn't it?

Where are all the beautiful pictures of the river trip and monastery you ask?

Well,  I have another camera story.

Right after I took that picture of Brian sitting on the boat, a pesty bee attacked me.  It kept bothering me and I kept trying to shoo it away.  My camera was attached to the wrist strap which was attached to my wrist.  In my efforts to get the bee away, I swatted at the bee with the hand which has the camera.  The camera flew off  my hand and sailed across the boat and landed up with a thud on the other side.  Right, you guessed it.  It didn't work.! 

 Does it seem possible that I have lost or destroyed three cameras in the last few months?  I realize I don't deserve even a disposable camera at this point, but my loving husband let me buy the cheapest digital camera in the PX, so I am now waiting for the next adventure.  What can that be!.