special visitor

Our friend Lucy thought that Flat Stanley might like to come visit us in Kandern.  He arrived comfortably tucked away in a green envelope.  He was tired from such a long trip and took awhile to get over jet lag (its 9 hours later in Kandern than in Oregon!), but he was happy to arrive.

It was a nice fall day, so he started with a walk along the Kanderner, the river that the town is named after.

 

This part of the Kanderner had a cool covered bridge. 

  

Right by the covered bridge was the Rathaus.  At first he was excited, thinking it was a place to go see pet rats, but he was wrong.  Its the city hall, where everyone who lives in Kandern goes to register and pick up their recycling bags.

 

On another day, he took a walk past this big old church. His camera couldn't even fit the whole building in!  There's a clock tower at the top with bells that ring to count down the hours and quarter hours.  That means there are bells ringing every 15 minutes.  Sometimes they ring extra, like to wake everyone up at 7 in the morning, or to let everyone know there's a wedding or a funeral.

 

Next to the church he found these cool bells sitting outside with the year '1949' on the side.  During WWII, the German army came through and took the bells out of the churches to make weapons.  In Kandern they left the smallest bell behind, so the people from the city took the small bell down and hid it in the hillside.  That way, when the army came back, they couldn't steal the last bell.  While the little bell was hidden, it got broken.  But when the war was over, the people hung it up anyway so they could have a way to tell everyone when it was time to come to the church.  It didn't sound good, but people were happy to still have a bell.  After the war was over and they were rebuilding everything, they made new bells - but not fancy ones.  This is one of those bells.  One year ago, everyone from the church decided to put in new bells out of nice metal so that the bells would sound pretty ringing through town.  They had a special ceremony and the bells had special writing on them, saying "Peace" in several languages - including Hebrew, the language of the Jewish people who had been mistreated in the war. 

 

 

He got pretty excited when he spotted a library, and he thought these books looked like lots of fun to read -- if he could read German!

'I'm with you, you're with me'

 

'Why?'

'And me?'

He was feeling a little homesick and decided to make a quick call home from the T-mobile booth.

 He saw these huge snails and decided to climb the wall to check them out.  It turned out they were just made out of stone.  He'd never seen somebody glue stone snails to the side of their house before.

He was also a little bit surprised to see how many buildings had this fancy old writing painted on them.  This one tells the story about a blacksmith.

All these German names!  It was hard to keep track.  But he spotted the word "museum" in this one and was curious.  When he found the museum, it was closed for the winter, but he found out how old it was.  It opened as a museum in 1776.  The USA was about to become a brand new country the same time Kandern was old enough to have a whole museum about it's history!

It turns out Kandern is REALLY old.  In some historical writings its mentioned as early as 776.  That means the museum opened on the 1000 years later!  And it means that right now, Kandern is more than 1200 years old.  That explained why he kept finding so many old things.  Like this watering fountain/trough.

 

It was kinda hard to see, but it says 1766 on it.

Or this old sled that looked kind of strange to him with the animal head on the front.

And this old building had huge doors!  It was probably for bringing horses and wagons through.  People turned this building into offices and apartments, but it used to be part of brewery, where farmers brought in the ingredients for making beer.

 

Flat Stanley liked Kandern, but he's ready to fly back home!  He was kind of disappointed he couldn't find Lederhosen in his size or eat any sauerkraut, but he did have Fondue and Swiss chocolate!  Yum!  Kandern is in Germany, but its so close to France and Switzerland that they eat lots of Swiss and French foods like Roesti (kind of like hash browns) or Tarte Flambe (a tiny bit like a pizza with creme instead of pizza sauce).

Thanks for coming, Flat Stanley!