Oh I had such fun making up that headline. I'm catching up on our time in Germany. Of course those three German words should appear somewhere in this post, ideally. This post is about
Friday, 15 July.
Brian had joined us at the Imigs' home on Thursday evening and was even able to dine with us for a late dinner. We got up on Friday morning, took our time with breakfast and since Michael had to work from home for a while and Silke had a full day in the office, I helped their au pair, Nadiia (from Ukraine), pack a snack and waters for a planned hike. All five children, Nadiia, Brian and I walked a few minutes through some lovely fields just outside their village to the edge of a forest. That juncture represents a marker along an ancient Roman Empire barricade called Limes, now just a minor mound of soil. We continued along the forest path until the kids begged for food, found a marginally suitable resting spot in the woods and snacked. On our return trip, Charlotte proudly led us to her Kindergarten (with minor
quatsch from her brother who tried to steal the lead) where she needed to pick up her things before summer break. She sweetly showed us all the rooms, her coat hook with her picture and her drawer. Then the kids played on the huge playground for a bit.
After lunch at their house, Michael joined us and Nadiia got the afternoon off. Michael drove the eight of us to a nearby village called Wetzlar. It was situated on a hill with remnants of the original wall and one tower visible. We visited the
dom, an interesting cathedral which, due to the length of its construction period, displayed three or four major differences in style. Strolling through the rest of the town, we saw many examples of
fachwerk, translated roughly to framework and similar to the Tudor style of our home in Maryland. We rewarded the kids and ourselves with
eis, some ordering the extravagant ice cream sundaes and such while others such as myself (see quotes to the right) only got regular old ice cream in a tiny cup.
Lisa's pronunciation guide to German words:
eis sounds like ice;
fachwerk has a kch sound way back in your throat for the "ch", then the w sounds like v, er like air, and a hard k;
quatsch is maybe as you imagine, without too much of the s being pronounced.
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