Don & Karen Bushman: Traveling More of Germany

In April Karen's Niece, Annalea Cannon and her Son, Seth visited us. We spent some time with them and had a lot of fun. It was so good to see them!

Seth and Annalea at Saalburg, a Roman Fort close to Friedsrichdorf

Seth, Annalea, Karen and Don at Saalburg

Thanks for coming to visit--we had a wonderful time with you!

On April 26th we went with Ron and Carol Frost and took a long ride along the Rhein River and then over the mountain and along the Mosel River. The following pictures are of that trip.

This is on the Mosel River

This picture is of the Mosel River, but I think Don just wanted a picture of the red sports car.

This is going over the mountain between the two rivers. The yellow field is a field of Rapps. These yellow fields dot Germany during the agriculture season. Canola oil is made out of this crop.

There are many castles along the Rhein Rivers. We took these pictures from the car. There was a castle every few miles. It also amazes us how the people so long ago could build such huge buildings all of stone on the top of the mountains.

Several of the castles have towns below them.

And some of the castles have been turned into hotels.

In almost all of the cities in Germany there is property set aside for garden plots that the cities rent to their citizens. The plots cost about 90 Euro a year to rent which is about $130.00. The people build little houses on the property, they can put in barbeque pits, they can grow vegetables, flowers, fruit trees; whatever they want to grow. They use these places to go for relaxation.

We visit the one in Friedsrichdorf often to see the growing progress.

Lilacs are a favorite in Germany

We were surprised to see two colors of lilacs on the same bush. The man that rents this particular property was standing there and so Don asked him about the two colors. He said that he grafted in one of the colors. Since then we have noticed that many lilacs bushes have two colors on them--they are beautiful.

Pathway through gardens

On April 18th we visited Wuerzburg. This castle is one of the biggest we have seen. We were able to take a tour of several rooms in the castle and they are elaborate and beatiful. Unfortunately, we were not able to take pictures inside the castle.

The shell was built from 1720 to 1744. The interior was finished in 1780. It has been restored as close to the original as possible. The gardens are fantastic.

Interior of Cathederal at Wuerzburg

March 21st found us visiting Heidelberg.

This is one of our favorite cities. The castle ruins on the hill overlooking the city is magnificant.

Karen and Don in front of the castle

The castle is huge. Restoration is an ongoing process.

Heidelberg from the castle courtyard.

Karen and Don

In the Castle Courtyard

Notice the cat sunning itself.

March 14th we visited a little city name Gelnhausen.

We love this house--notice how straight the floors seem!!!!

One of the picturesque streets in the city

The city was holding a Middlealters Festival. This is where they show how things were done in the early times. It was very interesting.

This is a bakery!

Selling period clothing

These placques are placed in the sidewalks of many cities.
They are in remembrance of Jewish people that were arrested in the cities and that lost their lives in concentration camps.

Bad Vibel

This is the only castle ruin that we have seen where the moat still has water in it.

Michelstadt - February 28th

Don standing in the entrance to the wall of the city.

Budingen - February 14th.

This little city is very intersting. The castle is closed on Mondays but we called and they had a guide come in just for us. She spoke English and instead of the one hour tour, we got a 2 1/2 hour tour. It was great.

Inside the courtyard of the castle.

Guess who this is????

On many of the buildings in the city there are frogs such as the one in this picture and the next picture:

There is a story surrounding the frogs.

A Duke lived in the castle and he went to a distant city and married a princess. When they returned to the castle to live the Princess was very upset after the first night because she couldn't sleep. The frogs in the moat were too noisy and they kept her awake. She told her husband that she was going to return to her father's house. The Duke loved his princess and didn't want her to leave so he called the town's people together and told them what the problems was. The townspeople gathered nets, baskets, buckets, whatever they could find and went to work catching the frogs.

They caught thousands and put them in a cage in the middle of town--the frogs were so noisy that the townspeople couldn't sleep, so they called a meeting to see what they should do about the frogs. They decided to drown them in the river. (What, drown a frog?) They dumped the frogs into the river and many of them were swept away to the sea.

The Princess decided to stay and she went on to have 13 children!