World's lonliest bench

I've always felt that this bench is a little sad. It's behind a locked gate in the property next to the local train stop. It looked even more miserable in the snow.

It doesn't even have any cat tracks around it.

Snowy weekend

We got quite a bit of snow (for this area), and I had a nice picture taking weekend. From Goelshausen to Kuepferhaelde, there's a little walking path along the forest behind the houses. This particular tree was fairly striking, I think.

The soccer field was completely deserted for a change. I felt weird taking pictures of all the sledding kids, so I didn't.

I really enjoyed some of the patterns on this retaining wall.

The shape of the snow made me think of bite marks, or inverted Santa beards.

A local kitty was here recently.

It's hard to capture the snow on the trees. Most of the shots just looked messy.

I only had the smaller lens with me. I think plant could have made some interesting macro shots.

It also reminds me of an xkcd stick figure, with his arms up like that.

Vacation in Baden-Wuerttenberg

Happy new year!

Since Erica's moved back to the states, I get to take over the blog for a few weeks until my trip is finished too. I was lucky and got to arrange a trip to stay with her for Christmas and New Year's, so I'm just getting to things now.

I got back to Germany on January 6, which happens to be a state holiday in BW.

The streets were basically empty. I couldn't go grocery shopping, so I decided to walk around town instead. Not too many interesting shots, though. Here's the Hundler Restaurant, with just a dusting of snow.

And here's the main Marktplatz, which is deserted compared to the farmer's market on an average Wednesday.

More snow pictures to come in the next post. This dusting is just the tip of the iceberg, as it were.

The details

What am I supposed to be blogging about? I know there was something…

We have about a million pictures, and I had a bunch of things to say about each one, but throw all the pictures in one folder, give me a week or two, and I can't come up with an interesting story to save my life.

I guess that's why you're supposed to keep travel diaries and blogs. So that you will always remember the stories that are so important you'll forget them a week later.

Yup. Blogging is all about the memorable things.

So…a post. How about some pictures?

A dragonfly.

Doesn't he have a funny little face?

Did you know that they can tilt their heads to look at you quizzically?

Me either.

We spent a long time sizing one another up on Saturday afternoon. I guess a macro lens must look pretty odd with all those eyes.

 

A sunset.

Gorgeous, impossible to adequately capture on film (or in pixels, if you want to be all accurate about it).

One thing I really love about this apartment is the west-facing window.

A cat.

Wondering why I think it's funny that she's tucked herself into bed and pulled up the covers, and why I'm disturbing her nap.

Small things.

The details of life.

Bruchsal

I promised you a post about Bruchsal, didn't I?

Well.

Bruchsal is another town close to Bretten, and not quite so small. The people that we met in Karlsruhe were from Bruchsal. We wanted to explore the town, and so we headed out a couple of weekends ago.

We left around mid-morning, and went for a wander.

Sometimes, we go to a new place with a plan. We do our research, find all the tourist spots, make ourselves a list, and strike out.

Other times, we don't. We go, we walk, and we see what we find. Our feet take us places without any real direction, and we get a better feel for a place than we would if we stuck to the tourist spots.

This first day, we just wandered. When we got off of the train, we followed the crowd of people until it thinned to just one or two. We walked through the Saturday market in the town square. We wandered down side streets, looking for something to catch our fancy, to cry out to be explored.

We walked up a long hill, and happened upon a Kindergarten museum.

We weren't in a museum kind of mood, so we didn't go in. But they had a beautiful garden.

Then, we found a church with onion-shaped steeples.

It's too bad it was closed, because the sign said it had an incredible interior.

We wandered some more, and found a park with a bike trail that ran along the river. We didn't take photos, but we stopped there for lunch. We picked Mirabelles from a now-wild tree.

They later became part of the stachelbeeren jelly. Small, sweet. For those of you that know Rainier cherries, these are very similar, except that you replace the cherry flavor with plum.

We stopped at a café, and Branden had an icecream. It's practically a national pastime here, apparently. On a sunny Saturday all the Eiscafes have outdoor tables full of people enjoying elaborate icecream sundaes. I didn't take a picture. Probably because I was jealous.

My non-dairy ice tea was also quite good.

When we'd walked enough, we went back to the train and headed home.

We mentioned our trip to some of our friends, and they were surprised we hadn't gone to the castle. So, when we were close by with them, we stopped in and had a look.

In all our wanderings, we'd somehow missed the palace. A whole little world unto itself.

Or, if you prefer, you can be in the center of it.

(Click and drag in the picture to look around. It's interactive!)

The funny thing is that the entire façade is painted onto a very simple, almost flat exterior wall. No marble necessary. I've never seen this in a castle before.

I guess it saves on decorations.

Of cabbages and cats

I like cabbage. The problem is, that cabbages are never small. In fact, they are usually downright huge.

We bought a cabbage last week that was very big. Like, as big as a cat.

See?

Artemis: You're comparing me to what??

Artemis: Oh. Ok. At least you're taking my picture.

Artemis: What is that thing, anyway?

We've been eating a lot of cabbage this week.

Comments?

It's been pretty quiet around here lately, and I've had one report of broken comments. We've checked, and are having no trouble from our end, so I'm not sure what's wrong. Send me an email (erica dot gunn at gmail dot com) if you're trying to comment and it's not working! (browser and login info would be helpful)