Delay

Sorry for the delay in blog posts recently.  My computer has decided to die slowly, so we recently purchased a new one.  Unfortunately, Brian has to pick it up in the States next week when he travels there on business, so we won't have it here until the end of next week.  I am waiting to put my pictures onto the new computer and then continue blogging because it is much easier to do that than put some of the pictures on Brian's old computer just to blog.  We have many more adventures to catch up on and blog about, but you'll have to be a bit patient with us!

Visit from Dave

At the end of May, our friend Dave came to visit us and see some of Europe for about 2 weeks.  We had met Dave the previous summer on a backpacking trip to the Adirondacks with Nick, Kelly, and Joel.  Nick and Dave were friends at Calvin and we quickly got to know Dave on that trip because we rode together to New York and spent two hours at the Canada/US border waiting to get through.  Needless to say, we were all a bit loopy after being stopped in the car for so long and quickly became friends.

Dave started his trip by flying to Zurich and spending a few days in Luzern before taking the train and ferry to us.  Much of the time that Dave was by us, he spent riding Brian's bike to different places to see things.  Most of it I had already seen, so I let him explore them on his own.  We did take two longer and farther trips with Dave on the weekends when Brian had off.  We went to Cinque Terre, Italy the first weekend and to Salzburg, Austria the second weekend.  We had a lot of fun on these longer trips, but also enjoyed the time we had while at our house.

We went out for dinner one night in Tettnang and thoroughly enjoyed the great German food we got!

We also enjoyed our share of German ice cream.  :)  The first night we even walked in a drizzle to get ice cream just before the stores closed.  We also had some at home, it was that good!

Our next several blogs will be about our longer trips with Dave, so stay tuned for more adventures.  I will also put the pictures onto our Share site so that you can see all our pictures instead of only a few.  Enjoy!

Grilling and Hiking

The weekend after we went to Copenhagen, we were actually at home!  This hadn't happened for quite a while, so it was nice to do things with people who live around here that we hadn't done anything with for a while.  There was some new expats here from Detroit that I had never met, so we did things with them and Gus and Lindsay.  Brian knew Sandeep and Nidhi from Detroit and it was nice to finally put faces with these names.  They are originally from India, but worked and lived in Detroit for MTU and had recently moved to Aiken, SC where MTU has a new plant.  They are here for about 6 months and then will move back to Aiken.

On Friday night, we had a grill night.  We had all sorts of different kinds of foods including s'mores!  I had been wanting these, but there are no graham crackers here.  Since Brian had gotten home from Mankato that morning, he had brought some graham crackers and we were able to have s'mores!  It was fun to spend some time with friends.

On Saturday, Gus went with some friends to do the klettersteig that him and Brian had started with their friends previously.  Since Brian was pretty jetlagged after his quick trip to the States, he decided not to do that and hang out with the rest of us who were planning to do not quite so strenuous activities.  We started the morning by heading to the floh markt to find some deals on things.  We then headed to the Dornbirn area to do some hiking.  There is a canyon with bridges through it that you can hike on, but when we got there, we discovered that there had been a massive avalanche and most of the trail was closed.  I'm glad we weren't in there when the avalanche happened because there were rocks covering everything!

Instead, we walked on some other paths through little towns and along a stream.  It was quite warm and I had never zipped my new pants into shorts, so I finally did that.  Lindsay thought it was pretty funny that I was zipping my pants off and here's the picture Brian took of us.

The boys also had to show us how strong they were.

We could walk partway to the canyon along some bridges on the edges of rocks and over the stream, so here's a picture of the others.  This was a first hike for Sandeep and Nidhi, so we had to take lots of pictures of them.  :)

While walking through one of the little towns, there were some pretty cute sheep, so we asked the owners if we could look at the sheep.  I think they thought we were pretty funny because we were so excited about the sheep, but I'm glad we got to see them!

After the hike, we headed into Bregenz for some dinner at a Mexican restaurant that Sandeep and Nidhi had been to.  It was the first time that Brian and I had eaten Mexican in Germany and it was actually very good!  A great end to the day!

Self-Cut Flowers

One thing that I love about Germany is the self-cut fields of flowers.  We drive past one every Sunday on our way to and from church, but we have never actually stopped.  I love seeing the flowers and the possibility of cutting some to bring home, but it wasn't until several Sundays ago that we actually stopped!  Lindsay and I were pretty excited to have some gladiolas for our houses.

There is a box that you pay for the flowers in per stem and they even provide you with knives for cutting the flowers.

Lindsay and I then went on the search for the best flowers through a pretty muddy field.  It was definitely worth it though!

And here is the final product in my Delft vase a few days after picking so that more of the blooms could come out!