Oberfell is a picturesque town of about 1800 people in a few streets of tidy houses between the Mosel river and a steep hillside.  We are in wine country and the vines are everywhere.  We wander down by the river and find a restaurant.  Vines encircle the sign and patio and they can barely hold the clusters of grapes.  The hillside is steep enough that you are working to run up to the top of town from the river.

[villages along the Mosel]

[river right down the hill]

[cafe courtyard and church in town]

[backyard view up the slope, looking at Horst & Andrea’s place]

We walk down the street in the morning to get bread and rolls at the town baker. 

The baker lady sees Camille and Ana with me, and though she has no English, she manages to get across something like “choco-bröt ist gut fur kinder.”  She takes two tiny rolls studded with chocolate chips out of her display case and the girls erupt in huge smiles.  “Danke!” they say simultaneously.  The baker and I laugh uncontrollably at the happy sight. 

[soon, everybody wanted to go the baker’s in the morning]

The valley walls are narrow and steep enough that the sun doesn’t reach into our windows until 10 in the morning.  In the evening at about 1600, the air begins to cool significantly and we reach for light jackets. 

We are so fortunate to stay in this fantastic Ferienhaus Mosella.  Germany is very precise with the names of lodging so you can tell a lot by what they call the place.  A Ferienhaus is a holiday home.  And we are treated to the privilege of hanging out with the wonderful Horst & Andrea.  They greet us with a delicious bottle of local white wine and sweets for the children.  We talk about kids and school and jobs and travels and wine.  Homeschooling is absolutely novel to them as we’ve heard from other Germans.  No wonder, it’s illegal here.  To them, we must be the craziest loons this side of the Pecos.  Wait till they see my ‘Merica pants. 

We ask if there was WWII fighting in the area of this serene, little town on the river.  Horst’s father was only 16 in 1945 and was about to have to serve in the WWII German army.  The war ended before he was required to join up.  HIs father saw American artillery setting up on the valley top across the river.  One artillery shell fell short of its target and fell into the valley just next to the town but did not hit any houses.  The town behind Oberfell had SS troops in it and the townsfolk figured the American artillery had them in their sights. 

I run one morning and end up in the highest street of the small town.  Stomping downhill I come by the church’s graveyard and notice a name I recognize on the stone.  Sure enough, Horst’s family members are buried right there just stone’s throw from our place.

The route is part of a pilgrim’s route in Germany that people still travel.  Many pass through Oberfell for this route alone. 

A bell chimes over and over.  When we look out the window, we see the bell is attached to a truck.  The truck sells eggs and inches down the town streets advertising its wares.

Our kids were not so sure about playing with non-English speakers when we first arrived in August.  But now we can see they are up for the challenge and head over to play with the two small girls in our shared backyard.  One girl is 10 and the other seven and soon everyone is up in a tree.  Their son, 12, is on their back patio and before long Luke and Will are inside their house playing Minecraft with him. 

The first day the kids are all a bit shy around each other.  They can demonstrate they can each count from 1 to 12 in the others’ language.  By the second day, Camille is using more and more German words and though it’s not pretty they are all getting their point across.  The boys have fewer words they need to get out.  Seems like men, and little men, are like that worldwide.  I can see the girls in the backyard talking, smiling at each other, and playing together.  They do not speak the same language, so as a man, this is beyond me as they are somehow having full-on conversations. 

Their girls have guinea pigs named “Punnt” and the other “Knupf”. There are rabbits named Flicker and Sabrina.  The girls had pets so the big brother also wanted a pet.  His parents got him two mice.  They are females—named Uncle Henry and Ferdinand.  The German name for guinea pigs is “Meer schwein”, or ocean pigs. 

[Ana with Victoria in green and their friend Sarah]

One day, as soon as they are home from school the 7 year old runs over, holds out one of the little animals to our girls and says, “gihn-ee pig?”  A wonderful way to invite someone to play!

One afternoon the girls run over with their girls for the pizzeria/gelateria to get ice cream overlooking the river. Here’s just a quick shot I got of the shop’s deck the next day with the water in the background.

The local villages hold an annual competition for village of the future.  Oberfell has won this year’s competition and Horst invites us to the town’s  get-together since the winning village has to host the ceremony.  The town’s mayor had been instrumental in getting a home built for older folks. Several of the burgermeisters (mayors) mill about, all dressed up and shaking hands before the town’s orchestra strikes up.  Next, we are treated to a dance by the town’s 9-11 year old girls, including Horst & Andrea’s daughter, Charlotte.  Both songs are from the movie Grease!  Go greased lightning! 

We are all sad to see the cute girls leave the stage and the speeches begin from behind the podium.  They give an exhaustive rundown of each village and a few stats about each one.  The towns are broken down by size.  It is a lot of German and I start to space out.  But it is clear, that they take this competition quite seriously.  Our kids are about the only children in the audience and they are hanging in there but we’ve all had enough so we beat a hasty retreat back to our cozy house. 

We decide to tour a local castle renowned for its interior—Burg Eltz.  You park the car and walk 45 minutes on a path through a pine forest.

A Dutch couple is walking out and stops to ask if we are Americans (probably pretty easy to tell since the kids are running and playing).  Once we confirm we are, he asks how so many Americans know about this place.  Hilarious and I wasn’t sure myself.  I’d read about it as one the world’s famous castles.

The medieval castle is located between Koblenz and Trier in Germany and is still owned by a branch of the same family that lived here in the 12th century.  The family still has flowers put out for visitors.

You round a corner and suddenly the castle is right in front of you rising from a rocky outcropping in a horseshoe of the river Eltz, a tributary of the Mosel river.  It’s a magical sight.  A basin lies around the castle within a wooded valley and provides the fortress with a commanding view.  The castle was also placed here for commercial reasons as the confluence of the Rhine and Mosel rivers formed an important trade route.  Castles could be used to protect trade routes and as a base to collect taxes from merchants. 

Burg Eltz was designed more for looks than for strategic defense.  It’s a grand home, instead of a medieval fortress, and provides a glimpse of the life of German nobility from centuries past.  The first foundations of the Burg were put down in 1157.  To share the costs, three family branches of the Eltz family collaborated to build three separate structures within the Burg Eltz.  The three sides of the clan—‘The House of the Golden Lion,’ ‘The House of the Silver Lion,’ and ‘The House of the Buffalo Horns.’   

[Burg Eltz later in the year]

You just don’t see a lot of crests based on squirrels, rabbits, ducks , beavers or guinea pigs, do you?       Go Oregon Ducks and Oregon State Beavers!

In 1815, the House of the Golden Lion had outlived one clan and had the resources to buy out the other.  So, the castle’s current owner in chief lives in a nearby town and has a normal day job. 

The castle has survived centuries of history with little military action or damage. The castle was besieged by the archbishop of Luxembourg in the 1300s over a dispute within the Holy Roman Empire.  A siege tower was erected outside of Burg Eltz and bombarded it with heavy stone balls.  He severed all the supply lines to the castle, forcing the knights to concede. 

Skillful diplomacy brought about the castle’s survival during the Thirty Years’ War of the 1600s when the French destroyed most of the Rhine castles.  During the early 19th century, a relative of the family was well connected to the Napoleon’s French army.  As Napoleon took possession of the German countryside he had many of the castles destroyed. This family member convinced Napoleon’s staff to let Burg Eltz survive. 

[fantastic dragon gargoyle on the drainspout]

Unfortunately, no pictures allowed inside, but I did scrounge up a few from online. 

[window seats all throughout the house since much of the castle would have been dark]

The boys are mesmerized by the weapons and armor when we first enter the armory from the central courtyard.  Hanging on the wall, you can spot medieval weapons from even the Turks.  The Knights Hall depicts panel paintings with scenes from the Old Testament.  The Knights Hall is still adorned with the Eltz family coat of arms. 

[weapons on the wall in the gift shop attracting the attention of two of the small people]

Over 80 rooms, 40 fireplaces and 20 toilets were constructed over 400 years in eight different towers. 

The master bed is on a raised platform and shrouded with a heavy curtain.  You climbed a few steps to get up into bed.  This design kept you closer to the heat near the ceiling and away from the cold floor.

The three families lived in separate wings of the castle and would meet in a large “conference room” to iron out common problems—kind of like condo organizations today.  A carved jester and a rose adorn the table in the large room.  In those days, jesters could say anything to the king—“fool’s freedom”— reminding them they were free to discuss anything.  The “rose of silence” meant that nothing could leave the room.  Better than Vegas. 

A chapel is built into a bedroom but no one is allowed to live above a chapel because that would be living above God.  So the chapel had to built out into a “bay window” architecturally so that God was mainly above the chapel ceiling. 

The treasure chamber below displays an extensive collection of treasures collected by the Eltz family for nearly 900 years. 

[the family also has a statue commemorating the brave St John of Nepomuk who was thrown off the Charles Bridge in Prague for keeping his oath of confession]

[Here’s a suit of armor worn by a member of the family when he was knighted.  Notice how much smaller they were back then, and the suit is even on about a three-inch platform.  Glad the picture cut off that I’m on my tippy toes…]

Golden drinking vessels, anyone?  And yes, those really are cups shaped like boats.  

The boys loved seeing these—a gun and an axe!  It’s a boys dream.  I kept a close eye on those little people to make sure no one tried to play with these.

Back in Oberfell, nothing wrong with a little German bakery choco-brotchen every now and then!

Spangdahlem Air Base has the typical, wonderful American air base facilities—a base exchange (mini-mall), huge gym, outdoor recreation for renting equipment, tennis courts, child development centers, neighborhoods, you name it. It’s a town in and of itself.  Of course, for the pilot, it’s all about the beautiful iron on the flight line and the 10,000 foot runway.

I even drive by and see many young families out on a Saturday morning at a car trunk sale in the bowling alley.   People are out in their sweatpants with the kids early on a Saturday morning.

The morale and welfare folks have a family fitness challenge event underway and other people are all over the football field and soccer fields doing various athletic competitions.

The kids have been telling us, “You’ve got to see the Lego movie.”  One night, we find a place to rent the movie, and it’s the kids’ first movie in a while.  “Everything is awesome” rings through our apartment.

It’s also great to be able to spend our stowaway US dollars.  We end our search for tennis balls and pick up a few so we can play a little tennis on the base courts. 

Our family gets the chance to attend the small base chapel on a Sunday morning with a handful of other families.  The pastor, Sean, is a real encouragement and describes his son who his now at West Point.  It turns out we have mutual friends.  Several of my friends have ben stationed here and we loved seeing where they lived, even though they had moved on.

Spangdahlem is a Cold War base built in the early 1950s.  The US military has closed most of its European bases and its more difficult than a few decades ago to get an overseas assignment.   

It is still amazing to find this slice of Americana smack dab in southern Germany.  The opportunity to travel and even live overseas must be one of the unique advantages to military service. 

[washer, and a dryer!]

[ah, good ol’ directions in English]

I can’t help but drive by the flight line.  No surprise, I find I miss the flying and the camaraderie of military life.  Twenty-one years somehow flew by!  Lisa tells me she misses the on-base neighborhood we enjoyed in New Jersey.  I know we will find a community soon to put roots down into and that thought brings us both joy. 

We hardly leave the base at all.  It is comfortable here, but we remind ourselves we are not on this investment of family time for comfort.

I am glad we have not planned many days here on base!  Time to get back out to the adventure. 

Trier is likely the oldest city in Germany and was founded in or before 16 BC.  But there is a plaque on one of the medieval buildings in the main square that pays homage to the founding myth of the city’s Assyrian birth.  In Latin, the message says, “Thirteen hundred years before Rome, Trier stood / may it stand on and enjoy eternal peace, amen.”  Not far from this plaque, is a market cross that has stood here for over a thousand years. 

Trier was a residence of the Western Roman Emperor, after the Roman empire was “split” into two halves for administrative efficiency.  I write that like I know it, but I learned about such a split from Lisa and the kids as they did the history portion of their Classical Conversations curriculum last year!  In the 4th century AD, Trier was one of the five largest cities in the known world with a population of about 80,000. 

The Porta Nigra gate is the best preserved Roman city gate north of the Alps. 

This city gate was built between 186 and 200 AD.  It was part of a system of four gates controlling commerce and providing security to the city.  On the city side of the gate, the remnants of Roman columns have been left.  This colonnade would have stretched about 100 meters and had a “crowning cornice and parapet” to cover this Roman street approaching the gate. You can even glimpse parts of the old Roman road to the next city climbing into the surrounding hillside. 

The gate is enormous and it’s not difficult to imagine the imposing impression this would have made on a visitor coming upon this vestige of Roman engineering and strength.  There was a gigantic iron portcullis that could be dropped as well as open archways to launch attacks from. 

We’ve come across many Roman ruins that are torn apart by locals repurposing the building materials for other structures—like their own homes.  By the early Middle Ages (sometime around the 5th to 6th centuries) the gates were no longer in use for their designed purpose.  The Porta Nigra had some of its iron works removed and the damage is still visible.  The gate was built without mortar, utilizing iron spegs to keep the sandstone blocks together.  But the Porta Nigra likely survived because a Greek hermit chose one wing of the gate as his hermitage.  The monk’s name was Simeon and he took up residence in 1028.  He lived here for seven years before passing away and becoming beatified.  To honor him, a monastery was built right next to the Porta Nigra and the gate itself was converted into a church. 

About 1802, Napoleon ordered the monastery, the church dissolved and the gate returned to its Roman-era appearance.  What we see today, dates back to the end of this ‘renovation’ in the early 1800s. 

[I find a State of Oregon flag hanging up on a side street and have to get a picture with it.  Camille is looking suitable impressed. ]

Those Romans lived in style, there were three separate Roman baths here.  They intended to make this the largest network of Roman baths anywhere in the world.  The huge project was never finished, and when Constantine pulled out of Trier in 316 AD the Romans left behind over a mile of unfinished bath tunnels. 

The Roman amphitheater is built into the city wall.  The hillsides around the amphitheater would have been lined with stone seats but all the stones were hauled off through the centuries.  They still put on gladiator exhibitions here.  Which almost requires me to include the classic line from the movie Airplane—“Do you like movies about gladiators?”

The amphitheater would have seated 20,000 spectators when it was built the 2d century.  There are ground-level rooms where the gladiators prepared for battle. 

We crack up reading about the “vomitorium.”  The vomitorium is a passageway built under or behind a tier of seats to allow crowds to exit rapidly after a performance.  The Latin word vomitorium derive from a verb meaning to “spew forth.”  The kids love learning about something gross sounding but it’s also amazing to see how we still design many stadiums and theaters in this fashion. 

Beneath the amphitheater “floor” there is an underground cellar where animals, feed and props were stored.  The Romans had trapdoors and false floors so that things could pop up from below.  They would stage mock naval battles.  Particularly impressive, we see the deep circular shafts that are now full of water below the floor.  Each one had a large counterweight in it.  When they needed to quickly raise a large or tall artifice they’d drop the counterweight down the well shaft.  Amazing.  The Romans would keep prisoners sentenced to death alongside exotic wild animals like African lions or Asian tigers.  A moveable platform would bring them up to the amphitheater for the showdown. 

We run by the oldest cathedral in Germany as we are out of time.  I love to see the old churches and castles but we are certainly learning that too many and you just burn out the small people.  Better to just see a few things at a time.  They are doing so well on this big trip. 

We find a great playground near the back of the palace of Trier and the kids are off to the races.  Young mothers sit near us with their strollers and try to keep on a sharp eye on their own little wigglers. 

Trier sightseeing time is over and we pile into the welcome car seats to drive to the picturesque Mosel river valley.  We’ve booked a place in a small town called Oberfell.

We pull up to Horst and Andrea’s house to get the key and they walk us down the house which is right behind their place.  She opens the door and asks, “where are the kids?” 

We bring them to the door and the family is so friendly.  They have kids the same ages as ours but our kids are still a bit hesitant to try and bridge that language barrier. 

The whole family walks us down to the house that used to be his parents’ place.  Horst & Andrea have left out for us a bottle of Mosel wine, sweets for the kids and even candy on each bed. We are in a tiny German town on the river with our car parked on a very quiet street.  Good thing we left Spangdahlem!

[the view out our front window]

We will miss Jolana & Jan but it is on to the next part of our adventure.  We do the familiar bag  loading calculus, let the kids get their nests built and settle in a for a journey back west.  We’ll practice our German via the coffee break German podcasts.  It feels good to be headed back to a language we’ve practiced a tiny bit.  Czech has been interesting, Polish a challenge and Hungarian is nothing like the language of its bordering countries.  Of course, that doesn’t really matter to us because we don’t know those bordering Slav languages anyway!

Every time I load up we clean everything out of the car again.  The cupholders and under the seats are treasure troves of legos, plastic animals and remnants of snacks that we keep trying not to eat in the car.  I bet that all sounds a bit familiar. 

The drive will take all day so we plan a stop about halfway at a small, walled town—Rothenburg ob der Tauber.  The name means something like “red fortress on the Tauber river”.  It will be about 3.5 hours there and another 3.5 after. 

[one of the entrances into the walled city–people actually drive right through here and under the arch]

Through these travels, we are consistently reminded of the pervasive power of stories to capture the imagination.  A few places we’ve visited are known because stories were told about them through the ages.  People are encouraged to visit Auschwitz and places like it so that the story of what happened there will live on.  Stories and myths are celebrated and passed along to satiate an appetite that must be hard-wired into us.  Of course, Jesus taught so many of his principles in parables.  Many of the buildings, churches and museum relics we’ve seen have certain elements that attract attention because of the story that’s involved.  For instance, we all know of Loch Ness and we all know why it is the most famous loch in Scotland.  Over 600 lochs reside in Scotland but I wonder how many others we could name.  The ancient sword in Vienna’s museum has more value because it may be associated with Charlemagne.  That same museum boasted a unicorn horn (read “narwhal’s tusk”). 

For the same reason, wherever we go, people explain what part of their village or their special interest is in a movie or a book.  Our own guidebooks expose us to the fame of many of a place.   The Harry Potter books and films are a link for our kids to many different places. 

As I check a few Rothenburg facts online to explain what it was like there, I stumble across—sure enough—the town was used in a “Harry Potter Deathly Hallows” film and was the fairytale village seen in the movie “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang”.  The brief Harry Potter scene of Gellert stealing the wand of Gregorovitch takes place in Rothenburg ob der Tauber. 

We spy a plaque at an ice cream place bearing a Rick Steves endorsement on our way into the town square.  He possesses a rare ability to communicate the nuances of traveling tips and specifically encapsulates European history into bitesize chunks for an American audience.  We frequently find his guidebooks in our hands and see them in others at many sights.  His success has even changed the experience of certain, smaller sites somewhat akin to a huge mutual fund finding it difficult to invest in a small company without changing the whole picture.  Another shop has his picture displayed on the door showing he’s been in the store.  

Rothenburg ob der Tauber is a top German tourist board site, an UNESCO world heritage site and also a stop on the Romantic Road, Germany’s north-south scenic route in the southern part of the country. Promotion-minded tour agencies devised the 350-kilometer stretch in the 1950s.  Brown signs bearing the “Romantische Straße” (often in Japanese too) mark sites such as Neuschwanstein, Wurzburg, Nördlingen and Rothenburg ob der Tauber.

The original Käthe Wohlfahrt Christmas store displays its festive wares right down the cobbled street from the Old Town square.  There are more ornaments than you can shake a stick at.  No pictures allowed in most of the store.   A ten foot tall wooden Christmas pyramid carousel spins with motor power rather than candles.  There’s a Christmas museum too with fully decorated Christmas trees.  With the kids trying not to combust from all the Christmas energy in the place you keep looking over your shoulder worried that some hidden Elf security force isn’t about to storm out and stop everyone from touching the nutcrackers. 

The Marktplatz—Market square—clock puts on an hourly show much like Prague’s Astronomical clock.  But this one is far simpler—two windows open revealing two men drinking from tankards. They both drink till one falls over—the loser.

From the town’s tourism website, “Every hour on the hour between 10 a.m. and 10 p.m. the clockwork figures on the clock above the Ratstrinkstube entertain the public with the key scene from the legend of the Master Draught.  According to the story, former Mayor Nusch saved the town from destruction at the hands of the troops of Imperial General Tilly by winning a wager by drinking 3 1/4 liters of Franconian wine in October 1631. What is known for certain is that the women of Rothenburg and their children assembled in the Market Square to beg Tilly to spare the town.”

This threatened destruction of the town took place during the Thirty Years’ War as the villagers stayed the hand of the Catholic Tilly from burning the village.  To commemorate the event, people flock to the annual Meistertrunk festival.

Another great Rothenburg story is that the Americans bombed it in WWII but senior leadership advised army commanders on the ground not to use artillery against this culturally important city if at all possible.  A contingent of US troops marched in under the white flag to present terms to the Germans for their surrender.  The Americans announced that if they did not return to their lines in three hours that US artillery would begin to demolish the city.  The Germans deliberated and surrendered despite Hitler’s orders that no unit should surrender no matter what. 

This is the place to see a wealth of buildings from the middle ages.  We can’t stay for the night watchman’s tour but wish we could.  We are traveling this much and still can’t see it all.  Better to pick and choose your focus, just like so much of life!

But we can do one of the things we do best—run all over the place and enjoy the atmosphere. 

So we set out on exploring the wall that encircles the tiny town. 

The kids run ahead, then run back to us to show us some tucked-away corner.  We run up and down stairs and into dead-ends on the wall and have to backtrack to find the part that continues on.  It is all just plain fun. 

The kids, especially the boys, frequently have to pause to take some shots between turrets and arrow slits to defend the city. 

We climb medieval towers via sloping stairs and stoop beneath wooden beams to run along the walls. The boys are still discussing which of their sisters was hit by incoming artillery and why.  There are plaques everywhere celebrating the people and groups who donated to rebuild the walls (after WWII or just general repair).  The townsfolk are friendly and they know a thing or two about tourists.

The on the road planning is nonstop, obviously, for next lodging places and attractions to see.  We’ve got a few days before we can check into the small town in the Moselle valley that we’ve found.   Nuremberg was primarily booked up but we were able to get a few days at the affordable base TLF at Spangdahlem.  “TLF” is a great military acronym for “temporary living facility.” 

It’s a challenge to get a reservation at a base because the “standby” traveler is understandably not their priority.  They must keep rooms open and allow room for official business travelers and families moving in or out until relatively late in the game. We rightly get the leftover rooms, so you don’t know until just a few days prior.

We drive by signs for Kaiserslautern and its Ramstein Air Base where we started our European portion of the adventure about six weeks prior.  Finally arriving through the darkness after a hideous traffic jam, we drive up to a brightly lit gate bearing the name of Spangdahlem Air Base.  The American flag is prominently displayed here.  After our last three years living on base for the first time—at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey—it feels like driving up to your own neighborhood.  The American guard even speaks American!   And he gives clear directions to the lodging office on base.  Can’t hardly wait to go to the BX!

The room is great—strong wifi, two bathrooms, beds for everyone and English directions on the washing machine—and even cheap.

Thank you so much for your thoughts and prayers!  We received news that my lab results are all within the normal range.  It had been three months since my last check.  Thank you God!  We are so grateful.  Without realizing that it was really there, I’ll admit to feeling like a boulder has been lifted from my shoulders.  Thank you again for reading and joining us on this adventure.