Day 4 Dachau and 5 Food and Cards

Dachau Train Ride

We got a Bayern Pass, which allows us to travel anywhere in this region with up to 5 people for about $40 and headed to Dachau via Munich. The trains in Europe are normally like clockwork they are so on time, but not that day. The first one was good, the second one broke down in Nuremberg and the one we ended up riding was much slower than our original schedule. Plus we realized the memorial closed at 5pm. We arrived at about 3pm and hopped a taxi to hurry out there.

the front gate

sculpture

The Perimeter Fence info

The "moat", fenceline and tower

The foundations of the old barracks

Krematorium

the Prisoner Statue

the creamatory includes a place to fumigate clothing, "shower" the prisoners, and burn the bodies.

Fumigation Room, where the Nazi's said they put the clothes to clean them of bugs by gassing them.

The Creamatory Ovens where they burned the bodies.

This is a marker for where the Liberators buried the bodies of those they could not identify.

We had enough time to see plenty of what we came for before the place closed. Then when we were headed back the first train was overloaded. Lots of students riding home from school is what we guessed. They go all year long here, but it was really late. All we know is the train was late leaving and crowded. Then because we were running late the train had to wait along the way to allow for other trains to make there runs. Plus there was a lightening strike somewhere that took out a line transformer, We made it back at about 11. Even with the train problems we had a good day, lots of things to think about.

Vacation Day 5

Raum schnitzel and Cards
We are on vacation so enjoying a quiet morning is nice! We did very little this morning. Lunch was a special treat. Greg really likes the Raum schnitzel at a place called Starks.

It was delicious, like everything has been. Jen and I had a bottle of wine that was OK.
Then we went shopping at the Real, which is like Wal-Mart. Lots of good stuff there. Then we went over to the Media Mart, like Best Buy. I was surprised that there are so many Nintendo DS games!

All sorts of them and not all in German, some are multi-language. The ones we have in the states seem to be a lot of Petz and kiddie games. I found some role player games that I have seen online, but were never available for purchase and certainly aren't at our local Wal-Mart. Then over to OBI, like Home Depot – Billy got some spacers for tile, that seems odd, but they are a little different than we can get at home. I went to a sports store and found some running stuff that seemed like a good buy until I converted the exchange rate. Yikes!
That evening we went to Bamberg to do a brewery history tour, no really, there is a lot of history to this town and one way to learn it is to do the tour. Turns out you have to buy the tickets earlier in the day than we wanted to do it.

So we went down town and looked around at some more of the sights.

And then we went to an Irish pub and ate German food. Then we finished the night at a local Gasthaus with a couple of decks of cards. We played the card game golf and enjoyed the evening.

Day 1 Flying, 2 Germany, and 3 Bamberg

Vacation day 1 and 2

We made it to Germany!

We didn't have any problems with our flight in Roanoke or Atlanta. I really like both of those airports, informative and interesting. The flights were pretty good. We had “complimentary” movies, TV, HBO, and games. Lots of games and movies for entertainment. We arrived in Frankfurt on schedule, breezed through security and met Greg on the other side.

We went to the base and got a quick tour while picking up the kids from school. Then we went out too lunch and had our first beer and schnitzel with pommes (fries). IT Was Delicious! We did some shopping and walking and sitting around on the patio that evening. We went to the grocery and picked up a case of assorted beers, some distilled water for Bill's machine and a bottle of wine. The Beer made it home, but we seem to have left the water and wine in the store. No big deal the bottle of Spatlese wine was $3, probably a $10 bottle at home. It was a really long day. We will have to get another one.

Vacation day 3

I went out running with Jen. She is doing awesome. I think we went about 4.5 miles! After having done nothing for the last couple of weeks, that was a lot. Then Billy and I walked about a mile down to the Bakery and got a coffee and pastry. Then we hoped on a bus and went walking around downtown Bamberg and did some window shopping.

Bamberg Market Plaza had shops with fruits, vegetables, and flowers along with food and "stuff".

We saw kayakers using this mini fall as practice.

On the way back to the house our Hosts had a new experience. Somehow they had never taken the bus home. So we all found out that no matter what the German teacher tells you – the number 12 bus does NOT go through Erlau. We ended up getting off the bus about 2 miles from the house and walking. Just a block from the house is a BierGarten. After that walk we stopped and had a couple, with pommes of course, they are so good here!

Later we went back to the grocery and asked about yesterdays wine and water, the cashier was different, but he said he would ask his companions and we could come back later.

We are having a great time. More later!

Guess what? We got a new toy.
It is just a little camcorder. It fits in a pocket very nicely. Just for those quick videos while we are out on the road so that can show you our adventures. First came words, then came pictures, and now we have moving pictures! LOL
We are also loaded up with rechargable batteries and SD cards.

Come back next month for our travel show.

Gardening Season

This is the month for flowers and I have been busy lately.

We were gifted a Cherry tree to remember Oma by and a rose bush for our anniversary, 17 years it is hard to believe.

We got those in the ground a few days ago. So then today I added a whole bunch of petunias and some other flowers.

I put a dozen into hanging pots on the porch

and another dozen in the bed out front.

That bed also got another half dozen in coconut husk planters along with a couple salvia, vinca, and marigolds.

Oh and one impatience that Billy got from the PTO.

The parents are as humorous as their kids.

Jake wasn't too impressed with the whole picture taking adventure.

Can you tell?

Duck, Bunnies, Outside In, and Loaded Up Mixes

So this is my new thing, I run and lose weight and when I get a craving to be creative I start baking and share the wealth (and calories) with people at the school and office.
This time I made Bunnies and Ducks.
What?
You can't tell?
The bunnies are on the left, there is green grass under the face, which is made up of a pink nose and eyes, and the sky is blue over the head.

The Ducks have blue water under the face, which is made up of a orange bill and chocolate chip eyes, and green pond grass above the head
Except for the one at the very top, he seems to have water above his eyes, must be doing the backstroke. HA, I crack myself up sometimes!

To make the cookies I used the sugar cookie dough and added food coloring. Then I put wax paper in a loaf pan and started layering the colors in. That is the secret "layers".

A secret I learned is to color the roll and then put it in the fridge. The process of kneading the color into the dough makes it very pliable. Using that for a flat layer like I have in this picture is fine. I didn't do that and my layers got soft, the pink of the bunny is one example. It spread out too much and looks odd. If it was stiffer the spots would have stayed rounder. Lesson learned.
After you have the layers built put the pan in the refrigerator for a few hours so that the dough stiffens and will slice nicely.
I forgot to take a picture of the layered loaf, but it was interesting and you can see how the cookies turned out.
No matter what they were still sugar cookies.


Last weekend I decided to make a cake, but I couldn't make up my mind which of my favorites to make, so I made both of them.
The chocolate cake is unfrosted because the Pecan Coconut frosting is actually mixed in the cake mix. It is a delicious bundt cake!






This layered cake is a combination of two recipes. One is the Angel food frosted with pineapple and whipped topping recipe that you can find on the Kraft website.
The other is a variation of that which puts the pineapple in the cake mix instead of in the whipped topping.
Well, somehow I managed to have 4 cans of pineapple tidbits in the cabinet. I think Bill was trying to get me to make this cake and I wasn't getting the hint.
So I used both recipes. I put pineapple in both the cake and the frosting.

I also made a nice pasta salad for the dinner last weekend.
Yellow squash, zuchini, red pepper, green pepper, green onions, tri-colored rotini, bread crumbs, italian seasoning, and olive oil.
Delicious and potluck safe since there is really nothing that will "turn" too quickly such as eggs or mayo.

Those are my recent Made things. Billy has been working on fence and grading papers so nothing exciting there.
Take care everybody and come back hoping for something interesting next time.

Making stuff in 2008, Finally

Hi Everyone!

We are here and have been busy. Bill's school year is going okay. The kids are respectful most of the time and seem to appreciate him as much as possible for being a math teacher. He is fitting in well with the other teachers and administration. I send sweets up every now and then to remind them I am here. LOL it is all good. I like to bake these novelty type things and this month has Valentine's Day so I sent some cookies.

You may have seen them in a Pillsbury ad recently. Sugar cookies dipped in melted semi-sweet chocolate. Easy to hold without getting sticky while you enjoy the just right amount of chocolate. They were all supposed to have the red sugar sprinkles, but I forgot to put them on until the last batch was going in the oven and they don't stick afterwards so most of the cookies just did without. I left a few a that batch without chocolate for anyone that wanted to pretend they were being good - "could have been worse I didn't have a chocolate cookie" LOL. I tooks some to my office too, they were gone by 9am.

Bill has been busy making his own stuff. I might have told you he got this new metal cut off saw for Christmas, well it throws a lot of sparks so I asked him to build something he could set it on and shoot the sparks out the garage door instead of at the wooden benchtop.

This is the result. He used some of the old bedrail metal he got as scrap from the university and made himself a rolling table. Unfortunately the rails drew up some from the heat as he was welding the top plate on, but it still works very nicely for the intended purpose. It has lots of potential for his projects. The table is very sturdy and the height is above a normal bench top so there is less stooping over to deal with too.

So that is what we have been Making lately. I am also working on making less of myself available to the universe. That story is over at my other blog, Progress. The link is on the right. Later!

Present Cakes and Discoveries

Here they are! After I made the "Teacher's Desk" for Wonderful Hubby on the first day of school, my sister wanted me to make something special for Christmas. The plan I came up with was to make "Present Cakes" for everyone.
This was the final result. One for my brother and one for Mom. My sister and her husband couldn't make it this year.

Here is Mom "opening" her present.



















And here is what she found inside. She has collected some interesting tea sets in the past and this seemed to fit.


David was a little hard to gift this way, he collects farm toys, but I couldn't find anything that I wanted to put in the cake.
He ended up with an Austin Mini Van.
British for where he first was involved in young people's church activities and the van because that is his mode of transport to all those places he takes the kids.

How I made these is covered in another blog. Picture limits made me split the post up.
By the way, that freezer behind Mom is not there anymore! WooHoo! We moved it out to the garage. No more moving things from the freezer to the table to get things out and from the table to the freezer to eat dinner!
Of all the things that were cleaned out of that deep freeze, there was one historical artifact discovered.
Wonderful Hubby and I brought a few bricks of Jacobs Coffee with us when we moved back from Germany, in 1992. It seems that one of those freeze dried, vacuum sealed bricks ended up in Mom's Kansas freezer.
Several years ago, when she moved from Kansas to Georgia, the freezer and it's contents came along with her, an extension cord running out the U-Haul door wherever possible.
This week, when she was emptying that freezer in preperation for it to be moved out to the garage, this brick came out of the freezer! It is a little torn around the edges, but the seal was still good. There was much laughter and happiness at that time and this morning when we made a fresh pot there was great flavor to be enjoyed at our house.
Speaking of that, it might be time for another pot.

Making Present Cakes

You have seen the results in another post so here I have the whole project laid out if you are interested.
Basically you bake a cake and then put a present inside it before frosting it with fondant. This is a picture diary of how I did it.

Originally I was planning on making a cake for each of my family members for Christmas. My sister and her husband couldn't make it to Mom's for the holiday so I only made two of them; one for Mom and one for my brother.

I split the first cake mix into a round and a square cake. Those were combined into one cake, the round cake would be the bottom and the square cake was the top, since I ended up trimming the square one to match the bottom, I realize now that I should have made two round cakes, but I was experimenting.

The second cake mix was made into one large cake that I cut in half to be the top and bottom. The basic process is the same for both so you will get the idea for both of them.

The round cake is Mom's, the miniature teapot set is the present for her. She has collected a few teapots, so I thought this was a cute present.
I cut a hole in the middle of the cake and then put it on the cardboard covered foil bottom, which turned out to be too small and flimsy. I fixed that before I went further. The teapot was put inside a sandwich bag and placed inside the round cake. The square cake was first leveled off and then set on top of the round one and trimmed to fit the round base.



You can see the beginnings of the trimmings in the container at the top of the picture. I used those as another dessert by breaking up the pieces and mixing them with cool whip and canned cherries mix.

The fondant frosting was made and colored with a lot of powdered sugar and elbow grease. The last time I did this I made marshmallow fondant, this time I had glycerin so I made it that way. It was a lot easier and pretty good too. The only problem I had was in the colors. I need to make them brighter. These seemed dull to me. I added more coloring, but the cornstarch that I used to keep the mix from sticking bleached it back out again.

So anyway, after I got the color mixed I rolled out the fondant and wrapped the present.
I forgot to put a nice layer of regular frosting on Mom's cake before I put the fondant on, which made the cake pretty dry when we had a piece. We didn't have any ice cream either, that might have helped, but a nice buttercream would have been great.

This final picture shows you both cakes. I wrapped the one to look like two seperate presents tied with a ribbon. I cut a ribbon of the fondant and ran it around the bottom of the cake and then tucked it in between the two layers. Then I rolled out the top covering and tucked it in too. The ribbons were just rolled out a little thick and layed out on edge to get some depth.

I think they turned out okay. Kind of folk artish, but that is my style.

Busy Weekend

We had a very busy weekend. Bill's actually started Thursday night when he tutored the kids in their Math Field Day lessons. Then Friday night he chaperoned a dance for the middle school. Saturday morning was Graduation Day at Concord.

Bill's sister has completed her Masters in Education. That is her walking across the stage to get hooded during the ceremony. She worked really hard for this degree. 10 years ago when she graduated with her Bachelors she said she was not interested in ever becoming a Principal, but now she is headed that way. Dean of Students to start with anyway. Of course Bill says the same thing now.

I have been baking and decorating again. Back before Thanksgiving, the teachers were having a lunch and Bill volunteered to bring cookies. Knowing that he doesn't bake at all it turned into me being volunteered to make him some cookies. I had fun with it when I found a Pillsbury recipe in the Sunday coupon section of the paper.

This is their website picture since I forgot to take one, but my cookies looked a lot like these. I used the refrigerated dough to make sugar cookies and then used frosting to "glue" the candy corn as feathers and mini M&Ms for eyes. I also got some frosting in a squeeze tube to do the feet and beak. I actually got Bill to help some. I put all the frosting on and he followed behind putting on the candy. I thought they turned out pretty cute.

Now that it is Christmas time I volunteered to make some Santa Cookies.

Look at all the Ho Hos!

This time I got my picture. I made the cookies Saturday after graduation and then Sunday I decorated them.

I bought two cans of fluffy white frosting and added color to one to make it red.

I "buttered" on the white beard and hat trim and then the red hat, added a mini marshmallow for the ball on the hat, and "glued" on the mini M&Ms for the eyes and nose.

In between the rounds with the cookies we went to my company Christmas party. It was held at Glade Springs Resort by Beckley. We had a great time. There was good food and company along with an open bar and bad weather expected over night, so rather than one of us being the driver when it might be icy out, we decided to stay overnight.

That was almost worth the money. The room was nice, but way overpriced, not like there is actually any walk in business, it is a gated community. The breakfast brunch was horrible and even more overpriced. I have had better food on continental bars at express hotels! We should have known when none of the resort residents bother to come for the food. It seems like the resort is missing a HUGE opportunity there they are wasting a lot of bad food when they could be selling a lot of good food. I might have to tell them about it.

When we got home from Beckley it was cold, but the ground was clear. By 430 this afternoon it looked like this outside. Bill went out to feed the cows under several layers of clothing. Jake goes with him, but if you notice he is nowhere in this picture. That is because as soon as Bill opened the truck door Jake zoomed over to the basement door to get let back into the house.

Then finally tonight we went to dinner with the in-laws. That is always an experience.

It has been a long weekend. I didn't even get my six mile run in, again.

Still Here

In case anyone is wondering we are still here. Haven't had a lot going on lately. Mom came up for Thanksgiving. We deep fried a turkey and had a quiet weekend. Projects have been slow too. I have to get a picture of Bill's new rails for his hay trailer. He said he needed a metal chop saw to build the rails with, so he caught me at a weak moment while we were in Georgia and got his Christmas present early. He thought he was building the rails for the truck bed, but they weren't tall enough so he used them as practice and put them on the trailer. The next project was to be the actual truck rails, but since the saw throws so many sparks Billy finally decided to make a project table that he can roll into the garage doorway so that the sparks go out into the gravel instead of inside the garage. It will be used for a lot of his projects.
Anyway, I will get some pictures posted one of these days.

Back to Georgia

We went to visit Mom for the weekend. It was a very calm trip. Billy wanted to go to a hardware store in Madison to get some chainsaw oil that he can't get up here. Then we went to an antique mall and looked at things we couldn't bring home. Well, I did get one thing can't tell you though it is going to be a present - funny though - looking at antiques and buy a $3 thing made in China.
On the way back to Mom's we saw lots of people heading toward Athens for the UGA - Auburn football game. I tried to get a picture of a funny fan bus that we saw, but missed it. Instead we stopped at this metal art store. Turns out a lot of the stuff was made in other countries.


The mixture of art on a wall was pretty cool though...











and this fish tree was fun.



Remember the pig on the roof from July?
This is a covered wagon next to the BBQ place under that roof. I forgot what it is called, the BBQ is pretty good though.
Other than that Billy installed an AC/Heater unit in the sunroom and then found out there was no outlet. He will be moving it to the other window at Christmas. He also changed a couple of lightbulbs and got lots of papers graded.
I managed to be there when the remote quit working on TV2. Now she has to go into the bedroom TV to turn the channel. Yeah Me!
We also went to Lowes and spent waaayyy to much money. That was our trip to GA. Later!

Fixing the "New" Truck

Wow, that was odd.

I got my blogs backwards and posted this information to the other one. Might be a sign of something, not sure what, but probably something.

Anyway, Bill has been working on his truck and finally got it to a point I could take pictures. Unfortunatly, I decided to do this when it started raining, but that is a good thing. We have needed rain for about 2 months now. That explains the streaks in the picture anyway.

The flat bed went on pretty well. He cleaned up the frame of the truck and the new bed and then sprayed them with rubberized underbody paint.

He also removed the front bumper and straightened it out.

The roof of the cab had some rust and was actually leaking in a spot so he sanded that off and fixed it. Then he sanded a bunch of other rough spots and painted the whole thing a nice Wal-Mart blue. It could use another $4 coat of paint, but it looks better than it did with the blue camoflage mess he had.

This is just the beginning of the rain. We got about an inch the first day and it looks like we will get at least another inch today. It is supposed to rain tomorrow too I think.

The ponds were all just about empty. Our spring was the only reliable source of open water left on the property.

The wells have all been fine so that was good, but it is great to be getting some rain.

Have a great Weekend.

The Calendar Says it is Fall

You couldn't tell it is Fall by the weather we have had lately. Warmest temperatures in recorded history according to the weather man. Kind of goes along with the lack of rain we have had. Barely able to remember when it rained last, can count about 4 times of measurable rain since June.

Billy and I haven't been doing much lately. He bought a new bed for his truck, nice metal flat bed. I will put some pictures of it on here when he gets it installed, should be this weekend. In the meantime here are some views of why the bed needs replaced.


The tail light was removed on purpose, but it was held in with a wire contraption. You might notice the excessive bondo around the wheel well.






This is the inside of that wheel well and more bondo on the other side.
















I have been walk/running quite a bit. There has been visible success, my clothes fit better and I am feeling a lot better. I think the first step to my change has been returning to an office of healthier people, that other office was crowded with less healthy people.

We went out on Bluestone Lake this weekend. Keith wanted to winterize his pontoon boat and it seemed like a good time to go out, sunny and 85 degrees. Since it is October and shouldn't be warm enough to be out on the water the lake wasn't real busy.



We went out with Keith and Carmen and some kids of a friend. First we headed up to Bull Falls, the water got pretty shallow there so we turned back and went back to the dam.







Every one had a good time, and yes it really was warm enough to swim.

I hope you have been having as much fun!