two months

um... no excuse for such a long pause!

And I know it would be ridiculous to try to "catch up" so I'm posting a fairly random collection of photos with explanations.  (and then hopefully simply getting back into the habit of posting... :))

 

We took a walk one Sunday afternoon to a little town just over the hill.  It happened to be the community Fire Department fest that day, so the fire trucks were all parked for viewing - including this old classic.

 

We couldn't help but think of all our firefighter friends...and wonder if any of their departments have Mercedes fire trucks.

 

The freshly shorn llama (or alpaca - I don't know the difference) was just too comical to pass without a photo.

  

We stepped out on the balcony one day to see this little bird just sitting there.  I took several photos as he just stared at me.  We guessed he was stunned from hitting the window or something.  Then he suddenly whizzed past my head and took off.  I was glad.  I don't think I would have had the heart to contend with it if he had been wounded and dying.

 

Friends were in town recently for a visit.  We drove a little ways across the border into France, where John got some great shots.  But that's not why I included this one of the cobblestones.  I put it in because we walk on them so often around here (not usually ones quite as old as in this particular photo), that they have already claimed the lives of TWO pairs of new shoes John arrived in Germany with.  Those nice cushy soles on American dress shoes were apparently not designed for all the jagged edges of cobble stones.  We are now on the hunt for European replacements...

For our driver's license tests we learned what the traffic signs mean, and in general we've kind of gotten a kick out of the graphics on the ones we see around us.  They have a sort of distinctive style that's appealing.  This one is saying that camping trailers aren't allowed....don't you love all those rounded shapes on the trailer?

 

This is on an old church - 1400's maybe?  The wood is obviously hand carved, and we were wondering just how old it is. Beautiful.

 

There are ways that although the landscape doesn't change dramatically, we can quickly tell we've crossed the border into France.  One thing I noticed in the small villages we drove through is that they aren't quite so "tidied up" as the German ones.  The buildings have been left as they are, and so in the old villages you are less likely to find renovated, brightly colored, modernized old houses in the mix.  There's something charming to me in these "dirty" French towns -- like maybe I feel a bit more like I stepped back in time.  How many history teachers did I have that said something to the effect of, "History smelled bad," as they tried to help us understand the reality of things like dumping sewage out the windows and the necessity of keeping Parisian trees a certain height for managing the odor?  I like seeing how many years and storms and wars and coal burning stoves and street torch lamps and mud from horse drawn carriages and everything else they've weathered. 

 

And this is just one stage of something I've been playing around with.  We'll see where it goes.