Wordless Wednesday

Hoffest 2010

Each fall a little farm near our village has a nice festival they call Hoffest. The festival mainly centers around pumpkins, or Kürbis in German. They have truck loads of pumpkins and gourds of all sizes and varieties there to buy. They have pumpkin wine, pumpkin bread, pumpkin jellies and spreads, pumpkin seeds and the most delicious pumpkin soup I've ever tasted. For the festival they have several craftsman and vendors selling their handmade goods and foods, that part is always fun to walk through.

This year the weather was not very nice to us, it was maybe 51 degrees out and drizzling rain, but we still had a good time. We mostly go for the food anyway, it's always so hard to decide what to eat. We ended up with flammkuchen, bratwurst, corn on the cob, pumpkin soup and neuer wein (translates to "new wine" and is a special wine available in the fall season). We were pretty stuffed! Colin liked checking out the pumpkins and playing in the huge hay pile with the other little kids.

All the rain made the field where people were parking pretty yucky. Depending on how cars were parked some of them were going to have an interesting time getting out of there. We drove the Jeep today so getting out was not a problem for us. As we were leaving we noticed a Ford Explorer that was stuck and having trouble. Their wheels wouldn't get enough traction on the mud and wet grass to back up and their wheels were just spinning. Shelby jumped at the chance to come to their rescue and actually put the Jeep to good use. He got to hook up the cable and pull them out with the winch while all the Germans (and some Americans) watched in awe. Funny thing is the Explorer had a big ugly Tennessee T sticker on the back of it, I'm sure the guy was less than thrilled a Gator had to fish him out of the mud. Shelby probably could have sat in that field and made a fortune pulling cars out all afternoon. Good day!

Wordless Wednesday

Berglangenbach Bauernmarkt

Berglangenbach Bauernmarkt

Today we went up to a Berglangenbach for their annual Bauernmarkt (farmer's market in English). We had read about it in a local paper and it seemed like a small thing but it mentioned pony rides, and given Colin's love of horses, we thought it was a must see. It turned out to be much bigger than we thought it would be and was very, very nice. There were over 100 booths of people selling their handmade goods. Crafts, knitted items, beeswax candles, and other items were for sale. There were lots of food booths selling homemade mustards, jellies, oils, pastas, dried fruits and nuts, schnapps, liqueurs, fresh made goat cheese and meat and other fresh meats and cheeses. There were several tents serving food and there was all kinds of things to choose from for lunch. I was torn between the wildgulasch mit spätzle and the (sorry I'm about to butcher the spelling and google searches turned up nothing) lionnepand. The gulasch is some kind of game meat in sauce over potato noodles and the lionnepand is a regional dish of pan-fried potatoes, onions and wurst. I ended up getting the lionnepand, which was a good choice. Shelby had a pork steak with potatoes and Colin shared with us.

Colin got to ride the pony (and it was free, you just donate what you want in the little bucket near the entrance) and get up close and personal with sheep, goats, chickens, owls and rabbits. Of course he tried to feed everything and his mission was to get the animals to eat the hay he had picked up off the ground. Lucky for him goats will eat anything and he managed to get them to eat. Colin laughed so hard I thought he was going to fall over when the pony leaned its nose over the fence and touched Colin's nose with it, when I told Colin the horse just kissed him he squealed and cracked up laughing. There were also about 40 antique tractors there and Colin was pretty excited about that also. Of course Colin found the playground, he's good at that where ever we go. It turned out to be a great little festival, despite the heat and the crowd. Colin is a little hard to handle in a crowd because he wants to walk by himself but he doesn't stay with us when he does. In a crowd of people he is much harder to keep up with so he has to ride on Daddy's shoulders and that makes him very unhappy. The heat, well it wasn't really hot, but considering we've been in the 50's and low 60's here for a while a day of 68 and sunny made us think we were melting! Maybe I am more ready for fall than I thought :)

Dürkheimer Wurstmarkt

Bad Dürkheim

The biggest wine festival in the world is held in Bad Dürkheim, and ironically it's called the Dürkheimer Wurstmarkt, which means Dürkheim sausage market. This has to do with the history of the festival, which over the years has less to do with sausage and more to do with wine. We went last year at night, which is when the festival grounds turn into one gigantic party. Last year Shelby partied a little too much left some party favors behind in one of the tents, ewww. This year we would be taking Colin with us so we headed out Friday, opening day and got there extra early. We ended up getting there about noon and thought it was to open at 11 that day. Our info turned out to be wrong and it didn't officially open until 5pm that night. This actually worked out quite well though because there were no crowds, just a handful of people wandering the booths and grounds. Vendor booths weren't crowded with people and Colin was able to run all over the place taking in the sights.

We found an open food booth and had some excellent food for lunch, of course we had to sample some wine too...you can't come to the wine festival and not drink wine! After lunch we walked around the grounds some more before heading into the city park which backs up to one side of the festival. The park grounds were beautiful and made for some nice photo ops. Colin found the playground and was able to burn off some energy there before we had to get back in the car to head home.

We had such a good time we decided to come back again the next day. We wanted Colin to get to ride on some of the rides he missed out on yesterday when we were there too early. Day 2 at the festival was even better. Colin went on a bunch of rides and had so much fun. He even rode the huge (and famous) ferris wheel with us! It is 50 meters high (164 feet!)and didn't scare Colin a bit. He was pointing and telling it to go back up when we would start to descend. We ate more delicious food and had more wine, rode a few last rides and then headed back home to watch football. Shelby graduated just in time, he'd have been in BIG trouble if he had to decide between football and school work!

Graduation Day!

NCOA Graduation

Way back on August 2nd Shelby started NCO Academy. Since most of you probably don’t know what NCO Academy is, let me break it down for you :) NCO refers to the grade of rank Shelby holds, all Staff Sergeants and Technical Sergeants are considered NCOs. All Tech Sergeants must attend NCO Academy at some point before they can sew on the next rank of Master Sergeant. It just so happens that the NCOA for Europe is here at one of the local bases, so Shelby didn’t have to travel to attend. This had its perks and its drawbacks for sure. The people attending his class were from all over Europe and were temporarily assigned here for the 6 week duration of the course. Anyone not living in the local area was given a dorm room on base and had to stay there, away from their families. We were fortunate that Shelby didn’t have to leave us for 6 weeks, however the school is very demanding and time consuming and we didn’t get to see very much of him for the period.

The Academy isn’t quite as bad as going back to basic training, but it’s a lot like being back in technical school. Think mandatory study groups, service projects, extracurricular participation, organized physical fitness, fitness evaluations, uniform inspections and loads of tests and homework. Shelby was miserable most of the time, and I can’t say I blame him. Finally it was all over and we got to attend the graduation ceremony. Sometimes these things can really drag but this one wasn’t all that bad. The guest speaker was the 5th Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force, Robert Gaylor. He was hysterical, he had the crowd laughing the whole time and Shelby said he was by far the best guest speaker he’s seen in his 11 year career. On top of that Shelby got an award (imagine that! Lol) so that made the night better. The top 10% of the class is recognized for their academic achievements with a Distinguished Graduate Award. Shelby’s class had 140 people in it, so 14 were given the DG award for having the highest overall grade average. The recipients are not revealed until the graduation ceremony so Shelby did not know if he had made the cut until his name was called that evening. Hopefully it will come in handy down the career path. The next rank Shel will hold is Master Sergeant, and that one is obtained by scoring high enough on a test. However, the two ranks above Master are not earned by testing, they are awarded to deserving candidates after board review and interviews. So earning this DG Award will look very nice on those board packages in the future. After graduation Shelby has 4 days off before he has to report back to work in the tower (for the first time in over 2 months!) so we will be doing some long awaited family catch up time. Congrats Shelby!

Wordless Wednesday

Long Weekend

Labor Day Weekend

Saturday was one of my favorite wine festivals of the year, the Mittelmosel Weinfest in Bernkastel Kues. It has lots of delicious German festival food, lots of music, lots of wine and fireworks. We took a bunch of Shelby's NCO Academy classmates and our friend Lina too. It was fun and much less eventful than last year's fiasco! I made sure to see the fireworks this year and we got good seats and they were definitely worth it. We ate a lot of junk and sampled a lot of tasty wine, what more could you ask for?

Sunday morning after picking Colin up from the babysitter we went to a Medieval Festival in a village nearby. It is held at Burg Gräfenstein, which is castle ruins in the town of Merzalben. There were all kinds of people dressed up in the medieval clothes and you could buy all kinds of things related to the time. Lots of handwork demonstrations were going on, puppet shows for the kids, people reenacting scenes, music, and jesters entertaining the crowds. We ate lunch and wandered around for a while. Colin got a sword with his name burned on it that he thought was super cool.

After the medieval fest we headed over to the corn maze which just opened Sunday. We took Colin there last year to run though and later in the year this same place holds a huge fall festival that is my favorite thing to do in the fall. We head over to the farmhouse shop at least once a week to buy the fresh picked corn on the cob that they sell there. Colin first spotted the cows in the pasture by the parking area, so we had to go visit the cows first. Then we did the corn maze where he ran, and ran, and ran! He ran around the maze a dozen times and was so excited. He found other kids to run and chase, then he chased us, then we chased him, then he wanted to play a little game of hide and seek with us. For not having a nap and being up extra early he sure had loads of energy to run off! After we wore Colin out we bought a few ears of corn for dinner and headed home to fire up the grill for some bratwurst. Yum!