The Great Wall of Memmingen

This blog is dedicated to Mom & Dad and their love of snow. Here's a pic of how very much it was snowing. Look closely and you can see the big, fat flakes tumbling in the foreground.


I shoveled snow for the first time in my life this morning. I cleared the entrance to our apartment building, or well, at least half of it. Marty's the man, and he had to take over and finish it after I did about 3 scoops. Haha.


Before I start our snowy tour around town, here's one of my favorite sights... the Pizza Blitz car. It's sooo cute!


It's cool seeing snow sticking to the sides of the trees.


We took a historic walk around and through the city.


First, one of the many cool gates in the old wall built back in the 1400's.


We walked along the wall, much of which is bordered by parks, which look even better with a blanket of snow.



So Mom & Dad, I hope you like the pics so far. I think several are 1000 piece puzzle quality, don't you? Here's one I think would be especially difficult.


Another great tree picture. It reminds me of the gum tree we used to have in the back yard, only this one has much bigger gumball thingys.


More pictures of the parks...



Along the way, we happened upon this sign and found it terrible that Fussball is Forbidden (see last line) in the Stadt of Memmingen. Those big B thingys in the German alphabet equal two ss'es.


And now for the more personal touch, which my sister Alicia always requests, pictures with Marty (jumping for joy) and me in them:



Here we are at the main gate, the only one that people could get through at night in the old days.


And the towers... I like towers. Here's one of the towers in the wall, which lends it a sort of "castle" look.


And here's my favorite tower, the Swallow Tail tower. Very sweet!


A view along the inside of the wall, with another gate and a cool bridge over the little river that runs through Memmingen.


Next we reached one of our favorite gates to drive through, with it's mural portraying the entry of King Maximilian into his imperial city of Memmingen in 1489.


Then there was a small section of wall with the guard walkway on top still intact. I can imagine being a sentry on the night watch.


Finally, St. Martinskirche, much more picturesque when accented by snow. Marty likes it because it's named after him... err... well, you know.


And so we've enjoyed our first day of our "snowed in" weekend in Germany. There's not been as much snow nor as much cold as forecast, but we're sticking with our excuse for being lazy. =) Hope you're having a nice weekend as well.

Salzburg Saga

We had a fun week in Malmo Sweden. It had snowed a little every day. When we first visited Malmo in November, we were surprised that there was no snow. When you think of Sweden, you naturally think of a land white with snow, but NO! they told us that they only get a day or two of snow per year... much like Dallas. So this is the most snow they've ever seen. One of my co-workers who is from a snowy part of the U.S. made the comment "I can't believe they don't keep their sidewalks shoveled!" I laughed and retorted, "Maybe because no one OWNS a shovel."

Anywho, on Saturday we returned to Germany. And once again, we were rewarded with a Mercedes rental car. It's so nice to be working in Germany. Here's our sweet car.


We went and checked out another of King Ludwig's palaces, Nymphenburg, in Munich before heading home. I didn't have my camera, so no pics. Sorry! I should have had my camera in Malmo too, because all that snow covering the frozen canals and the bridges over them were beautiful!

On Sunday, we headed to Salzburg, Austria. It's only about a 3 hour drive. As we passed through Munich, I managed to get a pic of one of my favorite road signs. Cars are hitting each other, and what I can only assume is blood or something is coming out. The better sign is of two trucks crashing and it's actually red.


Salzburg was pretty. We walked along the river and saw cool parks full of statues and beautiful buildings.



We saw the house where Mozart lived and the Mozart museum. But we didn't visit it today, because we wanted to get to this:

Hohensalzburg Fortress - a cool castle type structure up on a bluff overlooking the city. It has cliffs all around, and we couldn't figure out how to get up there after a couple of loops around it and the city. That's what we get for not checking it out more thoroughly on the internet before taking off on our adventure. We only knew it closed at 5pm and it was already like 3:30. This is also a result of being so used to accessing the Internet from anywhere on our iPhones back in America, when we can't do that here in Europe. At least not without it costing like $20 per MB.

We'd seen a lift for Mönchburg, and we found a place to park and tried to walk there, but got lost. And it turned out that was a different bluff anyway. Darn these short winter days where everything closes earlier! We gave up and headed back home. We'd still enjoyed our adventure around the city and the drive across the wintercrusted Bavarian countryside.

On a side note, during our walk through Salzburg, Marty needed a restroom break, and the German I'm learning came in handy. We walking into a gas station and I was able to ask for the "Schlüssel für Toilette". Hehe

Missed It by That Much

After a week in the good ole U.S.A., followed by a cold week in the Great White North, Marty and I were once again on a plane winging our way across the Atlantic. We departed DFW on Saturday at 4:30pm and arrived in Frankfurt on Sunday at 9am.

We had free passes to the Lufthansa lounge, and looked forward to a place to hang out for our 3-1/2 hour layover before taking off to Copenhagen on Scandinavian Airlines. We arrived in the B terminal, and our SAS flight was out of a B gate, so we mistakenly thought it would be easy to get there and take off.

The lounge was packed and so the only place to sit was in the computer area. We surfed the web. Then at 11:15 we went to the desk to get our SAS boarding passes for our 12:25 flight. It took 10 minutes to deal with a problem with finding our tickets in the system. Then the lady at the counter told us to run.

It turned out we had to go through Passport Control and then through security... again! What was up with that?!?! It took 15 minutes to get through Immigration and then we hit the security line. We knew we were done for. It was so long, it reminded me of a line at Six Flags. We got through at exact 12:25 and burst forth running to our gate. We didn't make it.

Several ticket and transfer lines later, we had new tickets with Lufthansa for 4:50pm and we went to the gate early. As it was nearing the boarding time, they changed the gate and we had to take off again. We made it this time, boarded and took off to Copenhagen. We landed around 6pm, took the train, which was surprisingly fast, to Malmo, and then walked from the train station in the freezing cold, the 3 blocks to our hotel. I was so thankful for a hot shower and a soft bed after 28 hours without sleep.

I still don't know why God didn't help us get through to the SAS flight, costing us about 350 unexpected euros, despite many desperate prayers. I can only guess that someone else was pleading with Him for someone to not show up so they could make it from standby onto the oversold plane. Maybe I'll hear the story when I arrive at my final destination... some day. =)