Wouldn't Madame Huey be proud?

I finally got the internet at home. I've been slightly reluctant to become completely connected again. I guess it wasn't "slight" since it took me six months to get here. But I'm here.

I can't go back and catch up on everything. But I'll tell you bits and pieces about the last few months. To start, I visited Ronda (Folk Alliance friend who lives in Austin) for a fun weekend in Paris. Here's an early December photo of me at L'Orangerie in Paris. I'm standing in front of one of Monet's "Water Lilies."

Apparently the museum's been closed for several years for renovation. I think I liked it better as it was 20 years ago. . . rather dark with a keen focus on these paintings in room after room. They used to say that you felt like you were really walking among the water lilies when you went through the Orangerie, and I agree.

This time around, I had talked up the paintings to friends Ronda, Emilie and Emilie, at least two of whom hadn't been there before. Once we got there, my sense was that they were thinking, "What's the big deal?" The rooms were so brightly lit that it felt obscene, obnoxious, or some other appropriate "O" word.

The longer we stayed, the more enchanted we became with those "Water Lilies." The magic was still there after all. Wouldn't Madame Huey be proud? (She was my h.s. French teacher who taught us about the Impressionists.) Mais oui.

The colors of fall

Both yesterday and today I drove through the Bavarian countryside for a couple of hours and reveled in the glory of fall colors. These past few weeks, the days have been mostly cool and crisp with the golds, oranges and reds of the leaves shimmering in the autumn sun.

Some hillsides were covered with pines or evergreens with a stripe here or there of the fall colors. Others were generously covered with reminders of the changing season. I thought of my day trips down the back roads of Vermont. The only thing missing here was a stop at the Apple Barn near Bennington for apple cider and fresh, cinnamon-frosted donuts.

Perhaps next Saturday I'll get up early and go to the bakery in Hohenfels or Schmidmuehlen or Parsberg for fresh pastries and a hot cup of good German coffee. Then I'll wander around the back roads again and snap a few shots of autumn before it passes.

I'm told that it snowed both Friday afternoon (but not at any point I was looking out my office window) and this morning when I was curled up in bed with a good movie. Winter is definitely on its way. Good thing my household goods may be delivered sometime in the near future. I've bought a few sweaters, gloves, a scarf, and a lightweight jacket and will welcome having my solid winter clothes at hand for the coming season.

The dream - the reality

Dream: The exception to policy was signed off on, and I'm going to be provided with an apartment post-haste. They called me about it last week.

Reality: I gave up on the request for exception to policy to get into a real apartment. Instead, I'm stuck in the archaic one-BR, which would be fine except it still just has a half-kitchen and no bathtub. I talked to the transportation office to have my household goods delivered on Monday. However, the delivery was postponed.

Dream: The housing manager, the commander, and everyone else who I e-mailed decided to have pity on me and found a lovely two-BR off post for me to move into. They postponed the delivery of my things until they could work out the details.

Reality: There's some legal issue with the company that held the contract to store household goods for my post. The delivery was delayed due to the legal issue, but I've been assured that they SHOULD be able to deliver my goods later this week. I'm supposed to go back in on Tuesday to see if they can arrange this for me.

The other reality: I've requested to go on deployment and am hoping it will happen sometime before next summer. I don't see how I can sit still in this place for three years.

Early October

I haven't written in a few weeks for several reasons:

1. I still don't have internet access at home and still can't see the newer posts or people's comments on my work computer. If the comments weren't automatically e-mailed to me, I wouldn't know they were there. Thanks, MS and Mony, for your thoughtful comments.

2. I'm doing day and weekend-long trips on the weekends and am taking German class two nights a week. I haven't had the energy to write much lately. (But FYI, I've been back to Regensburg. Back to Heidelberg. Went to a friend's vernissage in Mannheim -- check out Dietmar Brixy. Wandered around Kallmuenz, and visited the oldest monastic brewery in Germany or the world, not sure which -- the brew was excellent.)

3. A friend told me my blog is "nice." Ugh. N-I-C-E. The kiss of death. He encouraged me to embellish. Ah come on. Some of us know that I don't want to turn into my sister and embellish every story I ever tell whether it's an interesting story and worth the embellishment or not (hers are usually NOT). Okay, she and I are on the outs right now so I can say all that. And no, I won't 'fess up. It wouldn't be "nice."

More to follow.

At home in Heidelberg

You may know that I lived in and around Heidelberg, Germany, from 1985-1988 and loved it there. I always enjoy returning to visit this home away from home. Now I've learned that I have a real family connection to the area.

A cousin of mine who is doing some genealogy work on my family just e-mailed to say this:

"It happens that between Switzerland and America, your direct ancestors spent about a hundred years in the little town of Michelfeld, Germany, which is just about 10 kilometers due south of Heidelberg, just west of Sinsheim. Your 6th great grandparents were born there and baptized in the Michelfeld Lutheran Church. He was Johann Michael Näf (Neff), bn 21 Feb 1687/bp 23 Feb 1687. She was Anna Dorothea Saur, bn 10 Sept 1690/bp 26 Sept 1690. They were married 11 Nov 1710 in the same church. I believe the records are still there in case you should ever want to investigate."

I've heard of Michelfeld -- may have even driven through it but never stopped. I may be going to the Heidelberg area in a couple of weeks and will try to visit the town. At the very least, I ought to be able to find a cemetery and say hello to the ancestors.

Another weekend excursion

I decided to stick close to home this weekend as I was rather tired this week. That long weekend wore me out. ha! I drove over to Neustadt (pron. "noy-shtott"), which the guy across the hall had mentioned as a place to shop.

I found the stadtmitte -- city middle -- which is where the shopping area is usually found. I was able to park right on the main street, which was just one-hour parking. That's okay. I did enough damage in the hour to justify leaving after that.

In the stadtmitte I found several clothing stores with which I'm familiar including H&M and C&A. I also found a new one, Woehle, which was quite nice. It's getting very chilly here, so I bought several sweaters.

I had a short chat in German with a friendly store clerk in Woehle. She was very complimentary of my German. I was able to say most of what I wanted and to understand most of what she said. However, my German leaves a LOT to be desired. Still, I'm sure most of the Americans she encounters can say nothing but "thank you" in German, so I'm not the norm. I'm glad I'm taking the German class, although truthfully, I'm not using much of what I'm learning yet. Still, I'm slowly building my vocabulary and brushing up on grammar, so it's worth it.

I'm sure I've mentioned this previously, but I'm STILL living in a temporary place so I don't have any of the things that I shipped over. In my suitcases and the couple of boxes I mailed, I included mostly summer clothes. Shortsighted on my part.

My plan was to leave the Neustadt stadtmitte and go to a Chinese restaurant I'd passed on the way into town. However, it was closed. I decided to check out a couple of other small towns I'd heard about, so I stopped in Parsberg at the autohof (place to get gas and food just off the autobahn, or major highway) for food since I was starving. The food offering there is McDonald's, my first time to eat at one here. I avoid American places off post, but given that it was mid-afternoon in a rural part of Germany, this was the best option (and, believe it or not, quite popular with the Germans, and I also heard Italian and another language spoken there). I will say that this McD's has a very nice coffee bar with coffee that's quite good, and the atmosphere is classier than with those in the US!

After a quick lunch of chicken McNuggets, I got a to-go latte and was on my way. I drove quickly through Kallmuenz and will return there some Saturday morning when I want to walk around. I also drove through Burglangenfeld, a larger town with a nice downtown. I drove up to the huge fortress above the town but didn't get out of the car. I'm going to return when I have my camera so I can document the exploration.

Okay, that's all for now. It's almost evening, and I'm going to go back to my room to read some more of "Outlander" by Diane Gabaldon. If you haven't heard of it, it's about a woman in Scotland who inadvertently touches a special rock and ends up traveling back 200 years. The story is fascinating. Apparently there are 6-7 books in the series. This first one is about 800 pages.

Bis spaeter! (Until later!)

Weekend in Chiemsee

I should start by saying that I've been updating this blog at work. For some strange reason, I can't SEE the updated blog. The last update it will show me is the Aug. 1 post. It's so annoying! I won't go into a permanent apartment until end of September. At that time, I'll get internet access at home and will update the blog regularly and with photos.

Saturday morning I drove down to Prien am Chiemsee, the town of Prien on the Chiemsee (lake), about a 3-hour drive. The hotel was supposed to be 4 star, but I'm not sure what made it thus. It was fine but nothing outstanding. The lake is sometimes called the Bavarian Sea and is about 30 square miles.

I took the ferry Saturday afternoon to Herrinsel and on Sunday to both Fraueninsel and Herreninsel. These are two islands in the lake. Herreninsel, or "men's island," is the larger of the two. It contains a former monastery and Mad King Ludwig's Herrenchiemsee castle. It was to be a replica of Versailles, but he ran out of money (and also died) so it was never finished. The island only contains the old monastery (now a museum and art gallery), the castle and grounds, a hotel, and a few other buildings.

Fraueninsel or "women's island" was smaller but much more interesting. It contained a thousand-year-old convent that's still active, several hotels or guesthouses, some restaurants, a couple of shops that sold local art, and some homes and summer homes. If I return to Chiemsee in good weather, I'll try to stay there.

About 21 years ago, I went to Chiemsee on a unit trip (a weekend organized by a military unit) with a young soldier I was seeing. We stayed at the US military hotel that was open there at the time (it was quite nice), and we went to the salt mines in Salzburg and to Berchtesgaden. We really didn't spend any time around the lake at all other than spending the night there, so it was nice to actually see the lay of the land this time. By the way, the last time I saw this guy was about 20 years ago when he left Germany. Then I ran into him when I was on a post in Kuwait in 2003. The army is a small world.