Sinsheim Auto & Technik Museum

It has been very cold and rainy here for the last week, but that does not stop us from checking out things. Doug on a previous visit to Germany had seen a Concorde displayed high above a building and was curious to check out this museum.

So on Tuesday we got into the car, drove about 150 kilometers in the rain and arrived at the Sinsheim Auto & Technik Museum. The museum is really two huge airplane hangers and you will be able to find just about anything that has a motor in it there. I thought we were going to see an airplane museum, but that is what I get for thinking. We started with some American oldie cars,

followed by a huge assortment of first and second World War memorabilia from Germany, Russia and USA.

There were planes above us and tractors on the ground.


There were trains and motorcycles.

At last we climbed into the Concorde (while it was still raining) and its Russian counterpart.



I never knew that the Russians had built a supersonic plane. It apparently had a lot of problems in the first two years of service and the project was scratched. I took over 50 pictures and will upload them to webshots when we get back to the States. It was an incredible day with way to much stuff to see and we drove back to Mainz in the rain and fog very tired. We will need a week of rest to recuperate from this trip when we get back!!

Harley Davidson Store

A few friends of ours at Retama Village are true Harley Davidson motorcycle riders. One day at Happy Hour Doug had his Harley shirt from Germany on (even though we don't own a Harley) and Gail was totally impressed and was wondering if we could get him one while we are over here.

Well, the store that we got them from was a ways away from here and I never really paid attention to motorcycles while I was living in Germany. Thank goodness for the internet. We found the closed store only about 20 minutes from my parents house. So we asked my dad to take us to the Harley store today.


I actually got to meet a biker there who had done a bike tour with a rented Harley from LA to Phoenix, Las Vegas, San Francisco and back to LA and had a blast. It was a pretty cool store and since we bought seven T-shirt, I actually was able to talk the guy into giving us a quantity discount. It never hurts to ask!!

Going for a Sunday stroll!!

It is good to be home for the holidays. We spend three days eating four times a day, since you have to have coffee and cake in the afternoon. My sister came to visit on the 25th for the day and the next day my aunt and her two kids came. I had not seen her son since he was 2 year old. He now is 35 and I know I would have never recognized him on the street.

So on Sunday we decided to get out of the house a little bit and enjoy the freezing cold. It was so cold that we never got above the freezing point. My nose was frozen stiff, I could not feel my feet anymore, but it was good to go for a walk after sitting in the house for four days. First we visited a protestant church, which had these beautiful glass windows.




Next mom had planned to take us on a tour of labyrinth below the city of Oppenheim. It was actually a lot more interesting than I first had thought. The people in the 12th century build these basement to store their goods and also trash and anything they had not room for. Eventually the managed to meet their neighbor underground and this is how this whole labyrinth got started. There was absolutely no planning involved and therefore we walked through a lot of winding passages with very low clearances. They actually made us where helmets, so we would not get hurt. We looked to funny!!!


The tour lasted for about 1 1/2 hours and at least in the cellars we did not freeze our butts off, since the temperature is a steady 60 degrees. It felt downright comfortable down there. We had done enough exercising and headed home for more coffee and cake. It is good to be home!!!

.. and a merry Christmas to all!!

It could not be a better Christmas for me to be at home with my husband and my parents. In Germany Christmas is celebrated in the evening of the 24th of December. The tree was always decorated by my father behind closed doors in the living room and at 6 pm a little bell would ring, my sister and I would play a Christmas song on our retainers, the door would open and you looked at this beautiful live tree with real candles. I have always missed the real candles on the tree in the States. This year I got the honor of lighting the candles on the tree.

To me there is nothing more beautiful and serene than the lit candles on a Christmas tree and some good Christmas music on the radio. Unfortunately it is hard to see the candles lit when the flash goes of.

And here are my dad, my mom and of course my dear hubby. Live it very good to me right now!!!

Christmas Market in Mainz

I could hardly wait to see the Christmas Market again and the 23rd of December was actually the last day it was open. The entrance is marked by this giant Christmas carousel and there are all these booths with Christmas decorations, candies nuts, hot spiced wine and lots of pork roast and Bratwurst sandwiches to eat. Across from the entrance is a beautiful Christmas tree in front of the city theater. It is so nice that some things will never change, does not matter how long a have been gone.


The Christmas market is on a big square, which is normally uses for the farmers market three times a week, in the middle of the town next to our beautiful catholic cathedral. It is one of the biggest three churches in Germany.

As it was getting darker it sure looked very festive with all the lights and the nativity scene in front of the church.


One last look back as we were leaving to go out for dinner to a local wine cellar in the old part of town. It is good to be home!!

Home for the Holidays!!!!!

As we were packing a couple of days ago I realized that it had been 17 years since I have been home for Christmas. We had visited a few times over the years and my parents have been to the US several times, but never for Christmas. So this visit was way overdue.

I had been soooo excited for the last few days that by the time we got to the airport in McAllen thanks to Larry driving us, I was tired already. The flight from McAllen was 20 minutes late leaving, but that is really nothing unusual. Flight to Houston was okay and luckily the wait for our next flight was not to long. The flight out of Houston left on time and we were of to our Christmas adventure. The flight turned out more of an adventure than I had hoped for since we hit a lot of turbulence and I was only able to sleep for 2 hours. For people that have never flown oversee, we left McAllen at 3:45 pm on Monday afternoon and arrived in Frankfurt at 12:30 pm Tuesday afternoon. The flight from Houston to Frankfurt ended up being closed to 11 hours.

So we landed in Frankfurt, plane landed just find and then we drove, and drove on the landing strip until I was wondering if the pilot had missed the gate since we kept on going. We were almost at the end of the airport until he finally turned left towards the gates. However, we never made it to the gates. They actually had us board buses to take us to the terminal. This has not happened to me since the 1980's. Come to find out, the had gotten so much snow the night before that the airport had shut down from 11 pm to 3 am so that the cleaning crews were able to clean the runways and so a lot of planes had not left the gates and the whole thing was a mess. To make a long story short, we got our luggage fairly fast and were able to find my parents happily waiting for us outside of customs.

Here are my two most favorite guys in the whole wide world, my dad and my husband, both working on their computers after breakfast this morning.

As you can see we will have a white Christmas unless the sun decides to come out. It is cloudy right now and somewhere right around freezing. Want to see a real traditional German Christmas tree??

Is it not beautiful!!! I still love the more elegant not so overdecorated trees that I grew up with.

Well today we will go to the Christmas market and out for dinner. Tomorrow will be a quiet Christmas eve with my parents and the following two days my sister and more of my relatives will come to visit. So stay tuned and I will try to post a lot as we get to see more over here.

When Poinsettia met the Frost

For all our friends in the east, yes I know that you normally don't plant any plants outside in October or November. However, this is the most southern part of Texas and even though it is supposed to get down into the low 50's and high 40's, it is not supposed to FREEZE down here. Well, to make a long story short, it actually got below freezing for one night and my poor flowers did not appreciate that one bit.

I had hope for my second poinsettia, but it gave up a couple of days later.

A lot of the small flowery shrubs have died throughout the community and it will be interesting to see what the landscape company is going to do. Since we never had such hard frost down here, I don't know if this plants can recuperate or need to be replaced.

Well, inside the rig all shades have been down for days to keep the heat in, the flannel sheets are on the bed and the thick winter blanket is back on the bed. I had replaced it once with our thinner one since the last blog entry, because it was in the 80's again in the daytime and only low 60's at night. So we defrosted for about three days and now we are back to high 40's and low 50's for overnight temperatures and high 50's in the daytime. They are predicting 80's again for next week. At least we have not gotten sick with all these temperature swings.

I am, however, getting very excited about going back to Germany for the holidays. It is only 10 days away and if I would have my way, we would be all packed already. Since that would drive Doug absolutely nuts, I will wait till Sunday in a week to get all the clothes for Germany together. If it stays this cold, at least we will not have a temperature shock when we get back to my home town. I have decided to take the camera with us and will try to blog from Germany. Since we are there for two weeks, I should find the time to keep you guys updated on our "adventure". Stay warm everybody and we will try to do the same!

Winter has arrived!!

We chose southern Texas for our winter spot, because it is not supposed to get this cold down here. Somebody forgot to tell the weather gods about this!!!. Not only have we had a lot of rain, which is slightly unusual, the temperatures for the next few days will not get out of the 40s. We actually have a frost warning for tonight!!!. I am so glad that we brought our stuff back from Sioux Falls, since I now have flannel sheets, a thick king size comforter for the bed and winter clothes. Who would have thought we would ever need them down here. Last year we were complaining about the heat at our Thanksgiving Dinner, this year we can't get enough heat.

Well, at least we were able to get the Christmas decorations up between the rain and the cold. I really like the lights in our big red truck.


The inside does not look so bad either, if I say so myself. I had to take the picture with the TV up, since my fake snow is in the way of the TV retracting. Oh well, we normally don't put it down at night anyway.

Last Wednesday we had a potluck dinner at the clubhouse, since Larry and Geri had arrived from South Dakota and Gina and Rollie were leaving the next day heading back to Louisiana. It was the first time that we actually had no leftovers, which was nice. We all had a great time and wished Gina and Rollie safe travels for the next day. Other than that, we really have not had much of a daily happy hour, since everybody is staying in their rigs with this cold weather.

So for right now we are huddled in blankets on the couch and are waiting for warmer weather. I just can't believe that it is colder here than in NJ!!! Something is totally wrong with that picture!!!!