Ludwigsburg Pumpkin Festival 2012

It's that time of the year again!  I LOVE FALL!  You guys might remember me posting about this last year. The Finch Family ladies drove down to visit and join us at the Ludwigsburg annual pumpkin festival.  We took Vaiosina for the first time last year and she loved it.  I swore last year to go again this year.  It was so fun to share this with our good friends yesterday afternoon.  The weather was absolutely beautiful too.

 

The festival is held at the Ludwigsburg Palace, which in and of itself is a sight to behold. Last year's theme was dinosaurs.  This year's was Switzerland.  We saw a Swiss Army knife made of pumpkins, as well as the Swiss Alps, some Swiss farmers, cows and other things we really couldn't figure out.  The fairy tale children's garden was there and we went on a boat ride and visited Rapunzel's tower.

 

The best part, of course, was the food.  We had pumpkin bratwurst (which Vaiosina enjoyed much more this year), pumpkin fries, pumpkin muffins, and pumpkin soups.  I even snagged 4 bottles of pumpkin wine, which I remembered from last year.  It's so crazy to see how much Vaiosina has grown from last year. 

 

Yesterday also made us miss Malu.  Last year, we went later in October and it was so much colder.  I have fond memories of sitting on haystacks near the bonfire with him and with Vaiosina staring so intently at the flames.  I also remember Malu trying to feed Vaiosina to one of the dinosaurs.  Fun times. 

 

Anyway, here are some pictures!

 

 

The pumpkin festival goes until the end of October.  My mom will be visiting us and arrives on Tuesday. I'm going to take her to see this.  No reason to limit this year to one visit.  Plus, I need a reason to go back and get more pumpkin wine!

 

Hope everyone is enjoying the weekend!

Summer Leave {Pt 1} : Munich

Two weeks before Malu departed to mobilize for his deployment, I took some much needed leave time from work so that we could spend some quality time together.  I always return from leave saying that I need "leave from my leave," because it was just downright exhausting.  It was tons of fun though.

 

The first couple days of leave, we drove to Bavaria to visit our friends, the beloved Finch Family, who make several appearances throughout this blog.  This family is near and dear to our hearts and they just wanted to see Malu for the last time before he deploys.  We ended up going to Munich!

 

I'd been to Munich several years ago, but merely passed through in-transit to Garmisch.  What a great city!  We didn't see even a quarter of the city because we were only there for the day.  We hopped on one of those free walking tours and left when the kids got antsy (or maybe when we adults were just plain tired lugging those antsy kids around).  A lot of people freak out in big cities or big crowds.  I love it.  There's always tons to see.

 

 

 

Munich is the capital of Bavaria and is the third largest German city behind Berlin and Hamberg.  It is home to the largest Oktoberfest celebration in the world at which the Hofbrauhaus holds the second largest beer tent.  The Hofbrauhaus am Platzl, located in the city center, is the most famous beer hall worldwide.  Apparently, in 1920, Hitler organized one of his first propaganda events at the Hofbrauhaus.  The place really does serve up some good food, in addition to their beers.  We know because we stopped by there!

 

 

I honestly don't like beer.  These are Radlers.  It's basically beer with sprite or lemonade mixed in.  I can [somewhat] handle the taste.

 

 Like every other German town or city, Munich has a Rathaus, or town/city hall.  The one we saw is supposedly the new Rathaus, although I'd hardly call it new.  It was built between 1867 and 1908.  I don't even recall seeing the old Rathaus.  The building was beautiful.  It has a glockenspiel that tells two 16th century stories. 

 

 

The Munich Frauenkirche, or Cathedral of Our Dear Lady, is a symbol of the Bavarian capital and one of the most famous landmarks in Munich.  The interior of the church highlights a "no-window" effect that is connected to the legend of the Teufelstritt, or Devil's Footstep.  At the nave of the church, lies a footprint on a square tile.  One version of the legend says that the devil made a deal with the builder to finance construction on the church on the condition that it contain no windows.  However, the builder tricked the devil by positioning the columns so that the devil could not see them from where he stood in the nave.  Upon discovering he had been tricked, the devil could not enter the already-consecrated church and was relegated to stomping furiously, leaving the dark footprint that remains today.  Pretty cool, huh?  The first picture below was taken outside the church.  The last picture is of the church standing on the Devil's Footstep.

 

 I think we hit up a palace before we decided to be done with the tour.  I don't have any pictures of the palace though.  No biggie.  But you guys get the gist.

 

Munich = Pretty Cool City

 

Whoa!  It's way past my bedtime!

 

Tomorrow's Friday!  Looking forward to the weekend.  The Finch Family (less Daddy Finch) will be visiting us here in Stuttgart for the Pumpkin Festival!  Yay!

My Sick Girl & Weekend Recap {Ramstein & Tubingen}

I spent today nursing my sick baby girl.  I suspected something was coming.  Over the weekend, she'd started coughing and complaining of a sore throat.  I suspect it's the change in weather (gotta love fall!) or maybe she just caught a bug at school.  Who knows?  All I know is that I was happy to be home from work taking care of her.  After work yesterday, I'd dragged her over to the PX to buy a few things (namely a much-needed pair of running shoes).  As soon as we walked through the door, the grabbed her bear-bear and climbed into her bed.  Shoes and all.  I had to pull her out to give her a bath; poor thing.

 

 

She woke up with a 102 degree fever, which broke by early afternoon.  I'd spent the day pushing tons of fluids and by evening, she was her usual springy self.  She is, however, a bit hoarse.  I'm taking her to the doctor in the morning just to see if we can rule out strep throat.  Let's cross our fingers for that!

 

As I sit here making this post, baby girl is sound asleep and I'm semi-watching the Hunger Games.  I figured I'd tell you guys about our weekend since I've seen the movie a few times already. 

 

On Saturday, I drove out to Ramstein Air Base for a bazaar.  It's basically the same bazaar we have here at Patch Barracks every spring.  The bazaar rotates through all the military bases in Europe (or maybe just Germany) and Ramstein is just a two-hour drive away.  A friend and I just figured that we'd head out there and see what we could find, if anything.  The PX at Ramstein is also tons better than ours.  We had to do the token stop at Johnny Rockets before even thinking about doing some shopping.  Nothing like a good American burger and a strawberry milkshake.  Vaiosina loved it!  After a good hour or so of shopping, we stopped to take a break and a pretty decent picture, if I may say so myself.  Love my little girl!

 

 

What's really cool about that day is that I actually drove to Ramstein and back to Stuttgart without any problems. Not sure if you guys remember, but I got into an accident over a year ago.  Since then, I basically have a stroke anytime I'm on the autobahn.  I finally made an entire trip without freaking out.  Go me!

 

On Sunday, Vaiosina and I ventured out to Tubingen, one of our favorite cities in Baden-Wurttemburg (our German state; of which Stuttgart is the capital).  We'd been to town a few other times and just love going back.  It's a sweet college town just 20 miles away from Stuttgart and is situated on a ridge between the Neckar and Ammer rivers.  As such, the town is very picturesque with buildings dating back centuries (like it's town hall, it's castle, and the University of Tubingen), streets lined with canals, cobblestone streets, narrow alleyways and the traditional half-timbered, medieval houses.  Actually, one of the times I was in Tubingen previously was for the same festival we returned to see on Sunday--the Umbrian-Provencal Market. 

Every year, Tubingen's partner cities--Aix en Provence and Perugia--present their regional and home-grown specialties.  I'm talking wines, cheeses, produce, spices--you name it.  Last year, I took some pictures, but never posted them.  This year, I totally forgot to bring my camera and ended up using my iPhone.  Still got some good ones.  It was an utterly perfect day in every way--the weather, the atmosphere, and the company :)

 

 

 

 Too bad all of this goodness turned sour with Vaiosina getting sick.

Let's hope the doctor gives us a thumbs down on strep throat tomorrow morning!

Have a happy hump day tomorrow everyone!

P.S.  Malu's doing well.  We hear from him every now and then when he has a spare moment from his training.  We'll be meeting up with him this weekend in Nurnberg.  We are very excited!

 

Venice Festival in Ludwigsburg

Every two years in September, the city of Ludwigsburg (which is about a 20-30 minute drive from Stuttgart) holds a Venetian Fair, or the Venezianische Messe Ludwigsburg.  The last time we were in Ludwigsburg was for last year's pumpkin festival--which actually kicks of in a few weeks (we'll definitely be going again!).  In any case, the festival dates all the way back to 1768 during Charles Eugene's (Duke of Wurttemburg) reign.  He thoroughly enjoyed his trips to Venice as well as the Venetian masked balls and decided to bring the show to his home in Ludwigsburg.  He held the first show in 1768 in celebration of his 40th birthday.  The celebration was a three-day period that he held over and over again.

 

In 1992, the tradition was revived.  As I said, the event is held every two years over a three-day period in September.  There is a masked feast on the streets as well as a marketplace with many attractions and events.  People show up wearing ornate and colorful masks and outfits.  I even read that people have to apply to participate and if they make it, they get in for free.

We went on Saturday afternoon. It was a beautiful, hot day and it wasn't very crowded. We actually left before things got busy. I had other friends who attended later than we did and got so many more pictures of better costumes than the ones we saw, but we still saw some good stuff.

What an explosion of color!  I was going goo-goo ga-ga over the masks, but actually held off on buying any.  They were selling for three times what you can get them for in Venice.  Seriously!  I'm going to buy them when we make a trip out there.

 

 

Vaiosina clearly wanted nothing to do with these characters.  I mean, she was a tad bit hot.  Even I was pretty sweaty.  Frankly, these masked people freaked her out.  Whenever one came into full view, she hid her face in her stroller as seen here.  Poor girl.  Halloween's not looking too good right now.

 

 I'm glad we were stationed here in time to see one of these!

Now, I still have to go back and post about our summer leave.  I'll try to do it soon!

London {Part III}: Day 2

I hope you guys aren't getting sick of these London posts!  I last left off on our first day spent in London--the Tower of London, Tower Bridge, the Eye, a city bus tour, yada, yada, yada.  We spent our second (and final) day outside of London.  We signed up for a coach bus tour that took us to three different locations and lasted the entire day.  I think we boarded our bus by 9:00 and returned back to London at 19:30.  Yup...it was a long day.

The first stop was Windsor Castle, which is the largest inhabited castle in the world, the longest occupied castle in Europe, and a functioning royal home.  One of Britain's major tourist attractions, Windsor Castle is frequently used by the Queen as a royal palace as well as her weekend home. The castle is an important ceremonial location and is often used for state banquets and other official engagements.  We were told by our tour guide that the Queen was spending a lot of time at Windsor Castle to escape the hubbub of the Olympics  Games (at that time, the city was still preparing for it) and that we'd know she was at Windsor Castle if we saw her flag atop the castle's Round Tower.

Some of these photos are out of order and I couldn't get some of them to move into the right spot!

There is a nice little garden area in what used to be the moat. Apparently, the moat kept drying up, so some king (remember how I told you I'm not a good tour listener? that's where Wikipedia comes in handy for you, hence the link to Windsor Castle above) turned the moat into a garden for the queen. Pretty, huh?

On the way into the castle, we walked through the Windsor Royal Shopping Center, where there were some pretty cool shops and a really great place that we had lunch at.

There wasn't anything particularly fancy about this castle and let's face it, we
were tired from the bus ride and extremely hungry.  We just wanted to get our pictures and get out of there.  When we first got to London and toured the Tower, we saw all kinds of guardsmen in uniforms adorned with the letters E and R.  Similarly, the gates and buildings had the letters on them too.  We knew they had something to do with the royal family, but didn't know exactly what they stood for.  So we asked around.  We asked two British women and would you believe that they didn't even know?  Finally, someone told us that they stood for "Elizabeth Regina," regina being the Latin word for Queen.  So it means Queen Elizabeth.  And how fitting because...

You see that flag?  The Queen was in the house!  We didn't get to see her though.  You would have thought the place would have been a little bit busier with her there in terms of security and everything, but not really.  It was pretty quiet except for all us tourists!

The lights had cute little crowns on them.  Loved them!

Loved seeing the guards at their posts.  See how he's left a light white line on the ground?  That has to get tiresome and boring.  But that's coming from someone with no stamina.

After that, we rode another two hours to Bath, England to see the Roman Baths.  If you want to experience being two places at once, this is the place to be.  I mean, you're basically in Rome, in England!  The Roman Baths is just that--a complex once used by Romans for public bathing during the Roman occupation of Britain (under the rule of Emperor Claudius; apparently in 43 A.D.).  I was so intrigued by the place--not just the Roman Baths, but the city itself.  If I ever go back to England, I think I'm going to stay in Bath!

Typical European city...open square, live music, dominating cathedral--beautiful.

The Roman Baths staff thought of everything!  Free backpacks to lug our heavy kids up and down those stairs.  If only the places in Rome did this!

View of the baths from above.

Just hanging out with the locals!

Another 30-minute bus ride got us to our last stop--the Stone Henge!  Okay, so am I the only person who thought the Stone Henge was in Ireland? I was beyond thrilled to get to see this.  I'll let you guys read about this on your own (see link above) because, frankly, it took me three days to do this post.  Not sure why (connection really slow, photos too large?), but I'm just going to leave you with these awe-inspiring photos.  I'm so glad that Vaiosina could see this.  Not that she'd remember it at all years from now, but I just love my little world traveler!

Just....wow!

I'll never forget this trip and the wonderful time we had with our friends.  I definitely want to go back to England once more before we PCS.

Tomorrow, we start our summer leave!  For the next two weeks, our little family will be spending every waking moment together.  Unfortunately, the clock is ticking until Malu's deployment, but we won't be thinking about that over the next 5 days because we'll be soaking up some more sun in BARCELONA!

Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers as we travel.  I hate flying these days!

Talk to you guys soon!