Black Forest - 24 March (Tue)

It snowed last night! The path that we had been able to see from the house down to the compost pile below the house was covered in several inches of snow. The rest of the yard was still thick with snow, but now had a new layer of nice powder on it. The boys were THRILLED! They gobbled their breakfast (remind me to figure out what Qwitter fruit is - like a pear/apple - nice jelly!) I felt terrible, but recovered by late in the morning. Angelica gave me some aspirin and gave me a Reiki treatment (which she had learned). It was a fantastic help. The Reiki and the snow and fresh air made me feel much better. Gerhard recommended "Schneekopf" - "snow head" for treatment of a hangover.

The boys had to improvise with the footwear. There were some big moon boots that had been left by Angelica's God children. They almost fit Finn. For Keane, we found some rubber boots that would have probably even been a little big on Penny. At least they weren't girly colors, so we got him to try them on. We stuffed socks in the toes and then he wore two pairs of socks on his feet and they worked pretty good. Climbing up the hill was a little bit of extra work, but he was having such a great time he didn't care.

Alex brought out three different kinds of sleds. One was a big wooden sled like we had used in Bavaria. One was a sled with a seat and steering wheel that was slightly broken, but still worked fine enough. The simplest sleds were like little plastic shovels that you sit on and slide on your butt. These worked pretty well on the hills that we had, so we had lots of fun.

Alex was also very good in the snow. He could smooth out the pathways and also showed us how to use the sleds. Eventually, the boys wanted to dig in the snow. Alex and I (mostly Alex) helped them start building a tunnel between two sides of a snow drift. It was over 15 feet across in the end and right in the center, we built a round room with an igloo top. It took a long time to build, but all of us pitched in. The boys had a great time! Alex was their hero!



We earned our lunch that day! Angelica had made a pumpkin soup that the boys loved. We also had bread. cold cuts and cheese. Gerhard came home at lunchtime. We got some rest while some of the clothes from the morning dried out a little bit. Finn was able to use their computer to update the blog at his school. His teacher had asked him to post a few blog entries for the class to see.

After resting, Alex and Keane went back outside. Finn and I watched a little television and I even fell asleep for 20 minutes. It was a nice recovery from last night and from an active morning!

Alex had made dinner reservations in Achern at a nice wine restaurant called Ihli. They serve a very popular local dish called Pfannenkuchen (pan cake). This is actually much more like a pizza. The basic variety doesn't have a marinara sauce, but has a cream/sour cream sauce with onions, bacon and maybe mushrooms. The crust is very thin. We ordered several different kinds and shared them.

After dinner, Angelica and Gerhard drove us to the train station in Achern. We waited on the Stuttgart train which left at 19:00. Angelica waited with us and then hugged us goodbye. She is definitely another generous, loving person. We would love to see her and Gerhard again. We can definitely see why Alex is such a nice guy!

We were able to buy a Baden-Wurtemburg ticket (state ticket) for the day for $28. This is great because it covered our U-Bahn/S-Bahn tickets when we got back to Stuttgart. We had to change trains in Karlsruhe (which I recognized from 20 years ago). The whole trip took less than two hours.

We got back to the apartment and Ramona. We put the kids to bed - they were exhausted! Then we stayed up late again with Alex and Ramona. We played a card game they taught us called Dog. We were back in Stuttgart to stay now.