Busy Weekend

This past weekend, we hosted a Thanksgiving dinner for our neighbors. I had taken them some pumpkin pie last year to sample, but I wanted to share the whole meal with them. The husband can't eat gluten, which provided some challenges. I prepared regular food for the rest of us, but I tried to make a gluten-free version of stuffing, gravy, and pumpkin pie crust.

The stuffing I made from some store-bought gluten-free bread, but the texture was definitely different than regular stuffing. It tasted good, though, and I was encouraged to make my own stuffing from scratch next year.

The gravy was a big fail. I added too much gluten-free flour and it turned transparent instead of the opaque pale brown I associate with turkey gravy. It wasn't like I had a whole lot of extra drippings to thin it out since I used them for the other gravy. Lesson learned: I hope. I should have used corn starch, but I didn't have any on hand.

The pumpkin pie was made with buckwheat flour, and I thought it tasted nasty at first. With the pumpkin filling, though, it was pallatable. It lacked the flaky, buttery texture I associate with a delicious crust, though. I only made one pumpkin pie, so everyone was stuck with the buckwheat crust. The pumpkin cheesecake was a different story. I used gingersnaps for the crust and gluten-free flour in the filling. I baked some of the filling in ramekins with no crust, and I baked the rest in a mouth-watering gluten-full concoction of deliciousness. :)

Overall, everyone enjoyed the food, and the kids had a great time playing with one another. AJ and the boy played the Wii, and K and the girl played doctor and school. Poor H was the only one left out.

SUNDAY, I got up early to get to church in time to practice my violin for the worship service. Timo came later with the kids, and this was the day when we finally became members of our church. K brought her camera, and she took a picture of me playing during the service. Enjoy the rare footage, if you can tell where I am. :) I really enjoyed playing, even though I could have used more practice time (and it had been at least a month since I had touched my violin... whoops!)

This was our last weekend home as a family this year, and I think we made the most of it.

Germany Trip Day 14: Nuremburg

Nuremberg was not the best of experiences. We arrived before dinnertime and had a difficult time locating our hotel. It turns out that it was down a walking street, so Timo had to find a place to park while I checked in. When I got up to the reception, there was no one there, no bell to ring, nor a sign indicating when they would be back. Someone finally came up (the reception was upstairs, inside a locked door, which someone had opened for me on their way out) and checked me in. Our room/apartment was located in the adjacent building, and I went up to check it out before heading to the parking lot to gather the bags, the kids, and my hubby.

After getting everything up to the room, we decided to go eat. I had looked at a few places in the guidebook on the way, but we ended up at a little restaurant famous for its Nuremberg sausages located in the Craftsman's Courtyard. The Courtyard itself is supposed to be a big tourist trap, but everything closed at 5, so we missed all the cheap souvenirs.

On the way, I took some pictures of churches and buildings, but our main goal was to get dinner. We all ordered some of the sausages, and the waitress also brought us some bread. What I didn't know until later is that she charged us extra for the bread, even though we didn't order it. I would have chosen a different assortment, and only ordered what we would eat. That was a surprise when the bill came, but what could we do?

St. Klarakirche: St. Clare's Church

Handwerkerhof: Craftsmen's Courtyard at Königstor Tower

At dinner

My dinner: the famous Nuremberg sausages

H and K playing in the Craftsmen's courtyard

The sign of the place where we ate

The tower right by the entrance of the Craftsmen's Courtyard

After leaving the restaurant, we ambled down the streets, looking around at the buildings and snapping some more photos. We stopped at a fruit stand and bought some strawberries for later, then continued on our way.

I thought this street looked picturesque, but when we started walking down it, we realized we were walking by some pretty shady stores. Whoops!

Looking down one of the main streets toward St. Lawrence Church

Lorenzkirche: St. Lawrence Church

St. Lawrence Church

St. Lawrence Church -- check out those flying buttresses.

Tugendbrunnen: Fountain of Virtues -- Yes, the water is coming out of their breasts.

Heilig-Geist-Spital: Hospice of the Holy Spirit

They day was hot, and we searched for a place to buy the kids ice cream as we walked. There were plenty of Italian ice cream places, but K had been suffering from some strange allergic reactions during the trip, so we decided not to take a chance with cross-contamination with her. Timo took the kids into a grocery store as I looked around a little more.

Frauenkirche: Church of our Lady

The Beautiful Fountain -- that's really what it is called

Another side of the Beautiful Fountain

The "Wishing Ring": a brass ring that you can wish on. Turn it three times, and your wish will supposedly come true. I turned it just to say I did, but I didn't make a wish.

Building across the street from St. Sebald

St. Sebald church

As I entered St. Sebald Church, I heard beautiful choir music. The church was hosting a choir concert, and I would have loved to stay and listen, but the timing was all wrong. Because the church was being used, I quickly and quietly looked around, and grudgingly left to meet Timothy and the kids again.

St. Sebald Church

Timo was unsuccessful at finding ice cream in the grocery store, and we didn't see any other stores that looked promising, so we plodded back to the hotel to unwind. Everyone was thirsty (they never give you enough to drink at European restaurants), so it was a good time to call it quits on the sight-seeing.

Our apartment consisted of a small living room, two bedrooms, a bathroom in two parts, a kitchenette, and a balcony. Both the kitchenette and the main bedroom opened onto the balcony, and the kids had a blast playing out there. They set up some chairs in a line (front to back) and played train while H ran in a circle, going in one door, and exiting the other. Meanwhile, I looked around a little more. I saw a familiar sight in the kitchen drawer, which made me think of my home in Sweden.

You can't escape IKEA

Occasionally, I would check on the kids outside and enjoy the view from the balcony. One advantage of having a balcony is that we could watch the sunset.

It was getting late, so Timo and I washed the strawberries, and we called the kids in to have a snack. They relished the huge berries, and I drank a special bottle of pear juice I had purchased a few days before. The juice was said to be from the pear orchards around Nonnenhorn, and I thought it would be fun to taste it.

One of the huge strawberries we bought at the open market on the way back to the hotel.

After snack time, we got the kids to bed and went to bed ourselves. The next day was to be full of driving and we really needed a good night's sleep. Unfortunately, that didn't happen. It was a Friday night, and the hotel restaurant didn't close until midnight. That wasn't the worst of it, though. There were a bunch of drunk people walking by in the middle of the night, yelling and being overall obnoxious to anyone trying to sleep. If it had been cool enough to shut the windows, this might not have been so loud, but it was hot.

Finally, it started to rain. Timo and I both thought that the rain would send people scurrying inside, but it didn't really help. Then we had thunder to deal with, too. We finally dozed off for a couple of hours of fitful slumber, but H woke up a couple of times during the night, cutting down on my sleep time even more. I was so glad when morning came, and we could get up and get out of there.

Nuremberg was not planned to be a tourist stop. We stayed there because it was a good stopping point on our way north. For the time we had, we saw a lot, but one could spend days there. If we were to do that, I would stay in a nice, quiet hotel outside of the city.

Germany Trip Day 14: Hohenschwangau to Dachau

We left our hotel shortly after breakfast, stopped at a nearby church to look around, then continued on toward Dachau. The church was actually locked, but I took some pictures of the exterior and attempted a picture of the interior through the window.







Visiting Dachau was a powerful moment, as one can imagine. Persecution of certain people groups is nothing new. K and I have been reading about Nero, and how he would coat Christians in pitch and tar, then set them on fire and use them as literal human torches. The people in charge here must have had similar mindsets to Nero to be able to treat other human beings so horribly.

I thought about converting the pictures I took of Dachau to black and white, but then I decided that color more accurately portrayed what people saw. Black and white makes it too easy to disassociate yourself from the images.

The day was hot, with little breeze or cloud cover to offer relief from the burning sun. We parked our car and walked to the information center of the former concentration camp. We had chosen to use the personal audio tour available in English, so we picked up our devices, and began our tour.

Foundation of one of the administrative buildings outside the camp.


Part of the old railway which brought in new prisoners

Former SS buildings. These are used by the Bavarian police and not open to the public.

Looking from the SS buildings toward the camp

Picture of people cheering when they were liberated in 1945. The camp, designed for about 6,000 people, held more than 30,000 upon liberation.

Plaque to honor the 42nd Rainbow Division

Plaque to honor the 20th Armored Division

The gates that many entered and never exited

Work makes you free

Inside one of windows of the gate house

The gatehouse, or jourhaus, with the guard tower on top

One of the first sites visible upon entering is the roll call area. Prisoners were forced to stand at attention in all kinds of weather for an hour or more while the guards counted them. Those that were too weak to stand were punished. Those that helped the weak were punished. On such a hot day as the day we visited, I truly empathized with those who were emprisoned here. I had water. They had none. I could stand in the shade. They had none. I had slathered myself with sunscreen to prevent burning. They had none.

Prisoners standing during roll call

The roll call area. The buildings to the right are now the museum, but used to house the laundry, kitchen, storage rooms for personal belongings of prisoners, and the shower baths where the prisoners were punished by flogging or hanging.

More roll call area. The buildings to the left are reconstructed barracks.

In front of the museum buildings lies the memorial.

"May the example of those who were exterminated here between 1933 and 1945 because they resisted Nazism help to unite the living for the defence of peace and freedom and in respect for their fellow men."

Memorial sculpture

The triangles represent the different-triangles that the various people groups were required to wear to identify them.

"Ashes of the Unknown Concentration Camp Prisoner"

Most of the barracks are gone. They were too dilapidated to keep when they turned the old camp into a memorial and museum in 1968. They have two reconstructed barracks to give people an idea of what they looked like. Inside one of them, they have the beds, locker rooms, and bathrooms. I think the toilets and sinks are original, but the beds are definitely newer.

One portion of the audio tour talked about how strict they were with bed-making. All of the beds had to be made according to exact specifications. It was unacceptable if all the lines of the blue and white checkered covers didn't line up across all the beds.

Reconstructed barracks

Looking out across the foundations of the original barracks.

First beds-- three high, but everyone had a place for personal things

Beds 2 -- personal space gone

Tables for eating, and wooden lockers against the wall.

Beds 3 -- there are not even any dividers between the beds. It is like one big area where everyone was crowded together.

Toilets

Wash basins

At the far end of the camp lie the memorials -- Catholic, Jewish, and Protestant. I walked by them, but, due to time, I didn't enter any of them.

Catholic Memorial

Jewish Memorial

The ditch and fence that separated prisoners from freedom.

Fence, guard tower, and perimeter fence. Anyone who stepped on the grass could be shot.

The crematorium, also known as Barrack X, lies at the far end of the camp, across a bridge, and hidden by the trees. It has been said that they sometimes burned several people at a time in each oven to keep up with the bodies. The building also contains the gas chambers.

The Crematorium

Memorial to four women serving in the armed forces murdered and cremated here

The sign over the "showers" (aka gas chamber)

The door to the gas chamber. Notice that the handles latch to trap people inside

Gas chamber that was never used for mass murders. That is not to say it wasn't used on individuals for human experimentation.

Two of the ovens in the new crematorium

Another oven in the new crematorium

The old crematorium. The sign nearby reads," This crematorium was built in the summer of 1940, after the foreign prisoners arrived and the mortality rate greatly increased. A year later it was already working beyond capacity. The crematorium was in operation until about April 1943. During this period approximately 11,000 prisoners were cremated here."

Bridge between the "camp" and the crematorium

Walking back from the crematorium toward the entrance. Guard tower and fence on the right; barrack foundations on the left.

The audio tour included several first-hand accounts of various aspects of the camp. The testimony of a lady named Edith who participated in the liberation of the camp brought tears to my eyes, as did many other things that day. Words cannot convey my sentiments of horror and sadness.

I didn't go through the museum. The kids were done, and I had seen most of what there was to see outside. We still had to drive to Nuremburg that afternoon, so we headed back to the car to complete our drive. We stopped at a grocery store in the town of Dachau for cold drinks and fruit, then headed north.