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Friday, January 12, 2007

Germany Day 1

After having slept and taken a shower, my German friend came around to pick us up for breakfast. He did this every morning that we stayed at the B&B. We had breakfast of this great granola with small chocolate chips in it. Although I usually do not have breakfast, I was starving. The food was definitely in abundance and was the first taste of the absolutely fantastic hospitality that my flatmate and I received while we were in Germany.

We piled into their car and we drove down to a place called Weilburg. The drive was my second on the Autobahn and I was surprised to see speed limit signs on it. The journey took about half an hour or forty-five minutes and we saw much of the Lahn valley. We went to see the Baroque style castle and the many half-timber buildings in the area. After taking many pictures, which you can see in my Flickr set Germany Day 1, we had a picnic on the banks of the Lahn River which flows around the town.

One of the things that I learned in this town was how to find the Men's and Women's bathroom. In German, the Men's bathroom is marked (usually, they often now just use pictures) with an H and the Women's is marked with a D. I very nearly walked right into a Woman's bathroom by mistake. I also discovered that German bathroom graffiti is multi-lingual and will often have English translations.

Also, we noticed that there were many different artistically painted Lions around town. Edinburgh had done something similar last August but with cows instead of lions. I found the lions much more interesting than the cows.

After the Baroque'ness of the last place, we went to Wetzlar. This city was the seat of the imperial High Court of the Holy Roman Empire and was the place where Goethe began his legal career. This was also were a Leica factory is and possibly where the lens for my new digital camera was constructed.

We had wanted to visit the Christmas Market but unfortunately, it had closed for the season. This was sad but there were many more where that one came from so we were able to make up for it later. What struck me about these towns were the closeness of everything in the old town. Edinburgh has a compact old town but these were even more compact than Edinburgh and for the most part made out of wood.

After this day trip, we made our way back to our hosts' home for another fantastic meal and conversation.


posted by Chris  #8:48 PM | 0 comments |