Where in the World Isn't Bob Saget?

Songbird76

Well-Known Member
That sounds awesome but to you it's probably the equivalent of when I go to New Jersey. :hilarious:
:hilarious: Well, it was awesome just because I hadn't seen my friend in 2 years. They are very adventurous people and her husband used to work for this company that sent him all over the world for months at a time. If he only worked 2 or 3 months in a place, then she stayed in the Netherlands (She's from Sri Lanka), but if it was longer, she and the kids went with him. So they lived in Qatar for a while, and they met when he was working in Sri Lanka, and I don't remember if she went to Mexico with him or not...I think that was one that wasn't supposed to take long, but they kept extending it. But one time when he was in between projects and got to come home, they went on vacation to Germany and fell in love with this house and bought it on the spot. He quit his job and got a new one here and I haven't seen them since their going away party. It's only a 4 hour drive there....I live 10 minutes from the German border, so really I can go to Germany whenever I want....I could probably ride my bike there if I wanted to. But I have to go pretty far in to see this friend and she lives in an isolated area right next to the Harz mountains. There is really nothing there but small villages and mountains. Very pretty to visit, though! I'll try to post some pictures tomorrow.
 

Songbird76

Well-Known Member
We got back from Germany yesterday, and I'm having some technical issues getting the pictures from my phone to the computer. I got the ones from the day we went hiking, but I can't get the ones from the monastery. I'll keep trying.

The area my friend lives in is a plaster stone mining area...all the houses are pretty much made up of wood and plaster. So all the stone is this really white stone, and there's one particular place where it's really pure, so they use that for medicinal purposes like plaster for casts. This lake was made by the monks from the Walkenreid Monastery. They built dams to divert the water accordimg to my friend's husband.

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The kiln to bake the plaster stone. My understanding is that they bake the stone and then smash it and then it becomes plaster, and you can basically recycle it as many times as you need to....just bake it again and crumble it and reform it.

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This is the view from the top of the hill. It's about a 10 to 15 minute hike from my friend's house. And I'll see if I can find the right picture, but if you look in the other direction, you can see the old border between East and West Germany.

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It's not the best picture, but if you look at the windmill just to the right of center, and then a bit to the left is a small section of trees in the middle of the field. You can't really see it in this picture, which is disappointing, but there's a line there that goes all the way along there and that line is left over from the border "wall". There's a museum somewhere in the area that tells all about it. Yu also can't see it in this picture, but on the left there's a little village and that was the first village you would come to if you crossed into East Germany. Apparently life there was not pleasant and as soon as they opened the border, hoardes of people came to the town where my friend now lives to find homes and jobs because it was so much better.

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This is the path by my friend's house...it's just about....3 minutes walking I guess? It was really close. We actually took our time and I dawdled taking pictures, but I think if you were actually walking at a normal pace, it would only be a minute or 3. It can't be much more than a few blocks. The one next to it is...the Priest's cave? I think that's the translation.

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Another of the priest's cave. Somewhere before this, we came across some sort of a bunker....could have been WWII. I didn't go in it, but the kids were climbing all over it and I forgot to take a picture.

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This is what is on the other side of the path from the stream where I said it was just a few minutes from my friend's house.
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Songbird76

Well-Known Member
Next time we visit, I want to go to the border museum. We didn't really have enough time to do much as my friend had to work on the Friday, and my husband didn't want to leave Wednesday night and get there late, so we spent Thursday driving instead of site-seeing, and everything is closed on Sundays. So her husband got home from work on Friday and took us hiking there behind their house. We basically made a big circle and ended up down by the stream where we started. And then Saturday, they were both off, so we went to the Monastery. When we go next time, I want to see the border museum, the Unicorn cave, and there was a tower up on a hill opposite where he said you could walk around it and have a view of the whole area. So there's still plenty to see next time.

This was behind that stream where we walked along the path. I just thought it looked like such a typical German building. I loved how picturesque everything is. Houses with the wooden balcony with window boxes of flowers, hand-painted signs like the " kartoffelen" one in the last post, villages built on the side of a big hill.
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The first house there behind the bridge, you can see a very small balcony. It was the most quaint house! Both the ground floor and the one above it had the same style wooden balcony and window boxes running along the railing. I half expected woodland creatures to be inside washing dishes for Snow White.

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This pole was pretty neat. It shows every club/activity in the town. So the shooting club, the farming association, the fisherman, etc. They are all represented on this post.
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Yay! I got the monastery pictures to work...most of them anyway. Disclaimer: I LOVE old castles and churches and ruins and such like this. So there may be a lot of pictures that you find very boring. Feel free to scroll past.
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My friend's husband, pretending to push over the very crooked wall!!
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DD sitting on a wall. And DS, same wall, different place on it.
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My friend's husband and oldest son, climbing on the wall.
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Songbird76

Well-Known Member
Inside: (Another disclaimer: I'm terrified of heights and this picture was very very hard for me to get as there was this open staircase and catwalk and you could look down into the display below, but I couldn't actually look down. It is therefore not the best depiction of the collection of artifacts, but the best I could get without actually looking..)
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Nemo14

Well-Known Member
It really is! And I LOVE history, and there is so much of it here. I think I missed my calling. I should have become an Anthropologist or something. I love to learn about the way other people lived. History was always one of my favorite subjects.
We went for a week several years ago, and hope to go back in a few years for a longer length of time - so much to see there!
 

Songbird76

Well-Known Member
We went for a week several years ago, and hope to go back in a few years for a longer length of time - so much to see there!
Where did you go? It's amazing to me that, even though it's a relatively small country, there's so much to see and a few days in one area is not enough! We went to Kassel in 2002 when I first moved here, and we spent a few days in Berlin, but not enough to see everything. We did a day trip to Köln, to see the cathedral there. We drove down to Bavaria and saw Neuschwanstein castle and Hohenschwangau. But there's still so much I want to do there!!
 

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