goat tracks

We couldn’t fit all our clothes in our luggage when we flew here, so we ended up having to send some packages. I was really surprised how much this cost, because before it was possible to ship packages by boat through the post office (you just had to wait a while for them to arrive!)  Everything goes by air now, unless you go with a shipping company that puts everything on a pallet for you. Not wanting to have to deal with all of that, we ended up shipping everything UPS, which took only 4 days and was actually cheaper than USPS! There was a lot of excitement in tracking our international packages and then here they were at our door! A big thank you goes to Mel and Diana for sending all of these for us!

Here you can see Daisy checking out the newly arrived packages. You can’t quite tell from the picture (but check out below!), but this big box was basically completely destroyed en route and was just held together by packing tape (and it was a brand new box before it was shipped!)

We are now big fans of the German Abendbrot for dinner. When you put together super tasty German Brötchen (rolls), fine assorted meats and cheeses, butter (or Annemarie’s new favorite Brotaufstrich Quark) how could you go wrong? Plus, this way you never have to ask what’s for dinner and it doesn’t require much effort.

We were very happy to have a visit from my cousin Charlie. Together we enjoyed sampling many different types of beer. At least my favorite was the “Schwarzer Hahn” (Black Rooster) that comes from a brewery in Fulda. It’s a really full tasting black beer that they happen to serve at the hotel bar down the street from us.

Annemarie also got Charlie to try everyone’s favorite specialty from Frankfurt: “Handkäse mit Musik”. I’m surprised that he is still talking to us!

We were surprised to find these very colorful birds next to the Catholic church in Cappel. They have a whole little bird outpost there. These just happened to be the most interesting looking.

Here’s a look at our colorful kitchen. I like how open it is. The only downsides are the electric stove (takes forever to boil pasta!) and the lack of any fan (boiling pasta easily steams everything up).