Random things....

 What is this?  This is our garbage schedule.  This is the whole year.  Orange is the Plastic/metal can, green is the bio can, black is the 'all other things' and blue is the paper items.  yes, we have that many cans as well.  A little hard to grasp at times, but we also have a three slot garbage are in the kitchen as well and a bio bucket on top of the counter to boot.

This is where I work... I was walking back from the garbage cans the other day and decided to snap a quick picture.  I'm in the building to the right... on the 2nd floor.  to the back of this building.  

These tress were outside the Boeblingen hospital when I went for my scans on Thursday.

To catch everyone up who's not in the email loop.  I have had my first checkup with my new oncologist.  It didn't go so well, not on a medical level, but on an emotional level.  I was a hot mess.  I went into the hospital, promptly got lost, got frustrated, cried and it was all downhill from there.  Really.  it was a bad day emotionally.  The doctor was nice and understanding and has set me up for my scans in July.  All is well, and he actually scheduled me for my follow up on the cyst on my ovary for the following day - thus this picture of the pretty flowering cherry trees!

Update on the cyst, it seems to have resolved fully and there is no need for any more follow up.

Yay!

 Lovely daffodils and some tulips on the way home from the market.  The tulips aren't quite in bloom.

 Flowering persimmon tree on the way home from the market... so pretty..

 There are daffodils on every corner in the spring... it's beautiful here!

OK, don't laugh at my expression.  I'm really intrigued by this TINY door behind me.  I would literally have to turn sideways to fit in there... it's so tiny... but someone lives behind that door!  Really... I wonder with a door that small how big is the apartment??  Every time I walk by it I wonder... so today it warranted a picture as I was walking home solo - :)

 THIS is part of what I got at the market.  I also got some bread and salami with pepper... but the majority of the haul is here.. The berries are SUPER sweet!  The flowers are just beautiful  Pricey for me (7.5 euros - $10) but they were so pretty I couldn't resist.

 SUPER fresh eggs, poop still in place.  They don't wash the eggs here, so they can be kept on the counter, but Butch prefers them washed and in the fridge, so that's what we do.

LOOK at those berries!!!  They're SO sweet!!!

Baby steps in progress...

OK, this was a little AFTER the move in... the under sink items are ones we purchased at one of the local stores here... they are nice, but when you have th under sink covers on, they don't quite fit.  Butch didn't like the way they looked without the covers on the pipes, so he modified the ones we have and widened the holes to fit the cover.  They both now fit with the covers... and the bathroom is now coming together much better.. not 100% yet, but getting there.

 Still little things laying all over, and a few options on trash cans - ha!

 MY closet is stuffed to the gills AND I pretty well stole the one downstairs that matches this in size for summer clothing as well... yeah, too many clothes!

Craft room is coming together slowly!!

Moving Day

I had gotten a notice that our household goods were in the country and they would be delivered on the 8th.... then they called Butch asking if they could deliver ONE box on the 5th - he agreed... then they showed up with all EIGHT of them.  Our whole house - two days earlier than planned!  yay!

I dashed home to help at the last minute!

 What a mess, eh?  They cleaned it all up and were on their way in a day ... 8 huge crates of stuff brought into the house on all four levels

They were HARD workers and didn't complain about having four stories of house to work in.  I guess they are used to it.  I had brought home some water only to find out it was berry flavored water - whoops!  Oh, well.  

Here they are taking a LARGE piece up the stairs!!

They made it up without killing themselves or the walls!  quite impressive!!

Check back tomorrow I will update with more pictures!!

Moving continued

WHAT a mess!!  The house is chuck full of STUFF and boxes and more boxes!! 

 You'll note there is a stack of folded boxes to the rear of those boxes, so we ARE making progress.... slowly, but progress at this point... Let me tell you it was a LOT of boxes!!!

 Boxes, bins and containers looking for a home... trying to figure out what fits where and what we will really use... that is a biggie... what will we REALLY use?  who the heck knows!  I know in my heart of hearts it's time to cull yet again and get rid of the extras but the hoarder in me keeps thinking "but what if I NEED it"... hum... I haven't needed a lot in the last few years...

All those boxes are kitchen things... wayyyy too many kitchen things!!

 Living room is coming together... fewer boxes for sure!!  Rug isn't down yet, however... that comes later, apparently.

The loaner bed stuffed in the corner awaiting pickup amid the boxes of stuff....
The living room furniture is in the garage at this point just to save space in the house.

Master bedroom awaiting the final decision on how we will put it all back together... - aka what will fit where....

The guest room - again, with the bed in one position until we decide just where it is going.  Hint we have figure that out, we simply haven't put the rest of that room together yet... so it is just waiting.  There is a wardrobe up there and all the blankets are there just waiting for visitors to come and visit.  May need a dresser as well!

Boxes in my craft room on the 3rd floor waiting for me to unpack them and get settled.  The ones labeled "Blinders" are really vinyl.  Too funny!

This is what they jokingly called moving Bingo.  We were crossing the boxes as they were coming in.  I don't know if anything was really left behind, but nothing seems to be missing... well with the exception of my cords for my cutting machine.  Grrrr.  Oh, well, they are just cables and we have some substitutes for it, so all is well with the world on that one.

So, is the house put together and photo worthy now?  Uhm... heck no!!

Day Trip to Stuttgart

Stuttgart on the weekend is SUPER busy!  There were a ton of people in the walking district and shopping and wandering and "being seen".  The weather was (*I'm updating this much later) still cold at this point, but the sun was out after quite a bit of snow for the area.  SO - everyone was out.  I also noted that when the sun is out even if it is snowy in the grounds, everyone will come out as well.  With a lot of individuals living in apartments, they spend a lot of time wandering and seeing what they can see in the shops.

So - we joined the masses to get out and into the sunshine!

Why Stuttgart?  Well, they have a Flomart (aka flea market) on certain weekends... could be every weekend, but honestly I didn't look.  I just knew I wanted to go see the flea market.  It was fun to go and see what they had there.  There were a LOT of old pocket watches.  A favorite of mine for some odd reason I am drawn to them.  They had some very unique things as well such as this:

 Box of old gas masks!  I had to send a picture of them to the girls in reference to a Dr. Who episode where a little boy was wandering the streets looking for his mummy in a gas mask!  Creepy factor was high on that one... but it was a good show.  The kids got a kick out of the masks.  I didn't even look at the price, just noted them and took a pictures. 

 Also, amidst the rugs there was this atrocity... why on EARTH would you leave the hooves on a fur rug?  Really??? Suggestions from FaceBook were to hold it down in a strong wind or door stops - ha!  We will never know!!

WHAT is this??? This is curry wurst.  yummmy!!!  Butch got a Brat with a bun, but I chose the curry wurst.  It was the same sausage he had but this one was chopped and smothered in the curry sauce.  Very tasty!  

Parting shot of a hotel near the platz where the flea market was... cut gargoyle lizards.

All in all a fun day spent looking at things in the market, getting a router for the house to get internet and just wandering through Stuttgart.

A trip to the Black Forest

The first question is "is the Black Forest really black?"  Well, NOT really... but I digress.  we really started off by going to get gas, which seems on the surface like a simple thing to do, but NOT so my friends, not so.  You have to go to an Esso Station... and ONLY an Esso station.  Where are they you ask?  Well, that is the kicker.  The closest one was 10km away.  That, in and of it'self isn't so bad but it was in the opposite direction of where we were going.  BUT instead of complaining, we shall see this as an adventure!!  LOL

So... for your knowledge base, Boeblingen is where the base is and there IS an Esso station on the FAR side of Boeblingen... but it was about 5 more KM away so we opted for THIS route:

We start at our house in the upper left, drive over to the middle right where the red arrow is... over the hills and through the woods... really!!!  AND it's a narrow road and in fact it is one that was seen on a prior blog post about dropping down into a town out of the mountain areas... still a very nice drive through the woods and past the nature park - aka alllllll that green stuff there... there are a TON of walking paths through it... see the map to follow.  Right about that turn off that we took a left to go get gas off of the road through the woods is where this map is:

 We are where the orange arrow is to the left... on the top - well, in the nook on the top left - well, search for it, it's there... there is a tower up on this hill that we can actually see from our top floor as well - the ridge is in the distance... and this is the walking areas.

This is the cool road marker telling you how far to the town... along the ridge and down into the next valley. 

This is actually the roof of the little side "hut" that I took a picture of... well, I took a picture of the roof because I LOVE all of the lichens and moss... but the hut, not so much - it was built in 1997... not so very old, but to have this much growth in just that short amount of time is impressive and makes you think that the hut is much older than that.  I'm thinking it's just a way station to wait out of the weather if you are hiking and your ride is late coming to get you... in the snow perhaps?  Who knows.  I don't know that it snows THAT much down here, but then again, this is only February and we have only seen one week of intermittent snow that melts fairly fast... maybe it does get deeper?  I don't think so as no one is talking about blizzards... but there is a lot of rain here, so that could be it as well.  Anyway, we stopped here to let the map app catch up with Butch's phone so we could head off into the wild blue yonder.

Soooo this is where we went:

 Yes, this is a VERY round about way... and there were lots of DARK roads with lots of hill and mountains and TINY towns along the way that were very cool... here is one that Butch took a picture of to share with Angela via text during my drive out there... Yes, it was MY choice to take the scenic route.  Little did I know what I was getting myself into!

If you want to see some of the towns you can get lost in google maps and click on town after town and see cute valleys with very German buildings and actually some very modern ones too... we came down one hill and there was a huge manufacturing plant for mufflers of all things.  They were a well known one too as Butch said "Oh...xxxx, wow"  Yeah, there is industry tucked here there and everywhere and it doesn't seem to impact the environment at all - it's very nice.

Anyway a GREAT LONG drive.  Mostly because I do NOT drive the speed they say on roads I'm not familiar with OR that are wet and going at a 12% grade.  OK, that was ONE hill that was 12% then you hit the bottom of a hill and it went form 70km/hr to 50 in two seconds... yeah, thanks!  Glad there was no ticket camera at that hill!! ha!

Anyway when we got to our destination it was a ski lift and the top of the mountain you could see both directions quite well for MILES... I think you really could see France from there... honestly.

 Parking was MAD here... the parking lot was full to the brim and they were parking on the edge of a very busy road with kids just piling out of cars and standing in traffic watching it all happen.  Like 3 and 4 year olds in ski outfits getting ready to hit the slopes.  The snow was HORRIBLE... it was very icy... granted thick, but super icy.  NOT something I would be clamoring over to ski in for sure!!  I'm sure on the slope they had some man made stuff, but still it was warm enough to stand out without jacket, so very slushy I'm sure.  Oh, well, to each their own  I would sit in a nice warm lodge and watch... that is my limit :)

We did continue on the road going to the south a bit, passed a HUGE hotel
https://www.schliffkopf.de/ is the site if you care to go check it out.  It looks great on the website.

 So this is when we finally pulled over to stetch our legs and switch drivers for the drive back home.

 Looking south over Germany... for MILES!!

You can see the wind mills in the distance!  very tiny in the distance.... but they are there...

And THIS is the way we came back home.  I didn't mind that we went a different way.. it was still just as nice and it was a few new places.  At some point we did get on 28 by mistake on the way to the mountains... but I don't feel like we missed anything skipping out of the valley and tiny town options. 

This was an all afternoon thing.  I think we left at noon and got back at 6pm... and we didn't reallys top more than 2 minutes to change out drivers and take a few pictures on the top of the one ridge.

Long fun day driving just to see what we could see.  It was weird to be at that peek and know you were probably looking out over france as he mounts just dropped away from where we were at that height...

And then I was in the passenger side coming back... so I took a few more pictures...

This was a very small bridge over a creek that we were stuck on during a detour.  I love that there is such a mix of old and new all around.

This is one I took of the double towers in this town.  I don't remember which it is, but it's on the 28, so should be easy to find with Google maps.  The town platz (square) was full of people out enjoying the pretty sunny day and warmer weather even with lots of snow on the grounds in the shade... they are a determined bunch about getting out and getting fresh air!

I think Butch took this one further up in the mountains...

OK this was just funny, I was taking a picture of the tall building as a typical building type we have seen here at times and Butch pointed out the lower slung building is a McDonalds.  You just can't escape McDonalds, can you?

What is this????
A castle???  why yes, it is Hodennagold Castle (ah, the grace of the internet to look things up AFTER the fact!).  Yes, this one is on our list of castles to visit!  It looks cool 

That and the Herrenberg castle now as well. 

Although the Herrenberg one is called: Herrenberg Pulverturm... what is that you ask?  Well, I asked Google and found this:
Pulverturm

The Pulverturm is a historic brick-built powder magazine in the city 

more research found this: 

Herrenberg Castle was located on the Schlossberg in Herrenberg in the district of Böblingen in Baden-Württemberg . The first documentary mention of the former castle dates back to 1220.

There are still ruins, remains of the walls and a cellar of the former mansion, which was incorporated into a restaurant in 1957. There are also remains of the Westzwingeranlage. There is also the Castle Mountain Tower , which is built on the stump of the former Pulverturm ; there is a dungeon under the tower. Single descriptions, six small drawings, cuts and engravings as well as paintings, an inaccurate fortress plan and the land register are available.And with that, we will end photo's for the day... the trip was good and very nice.  A few more places close to home to go visit in the near future - spring sounds good.

Sorry, no pictures of the Herrenberg one as it's close to home and I know we'll go there in the spring and when we saw it the first time it snuck up on us.. and the 2nd there was just lots of industry between me and the ruins... no good picture opportunities. 

This weekend I have heard Stuttgart is on the plans... if we can get up and out by a good hour we can go to the flea market - that would thrill me!!

On the "news" and what is really happening here... I am fighting getting my German number... they are having problems getting my phone to accept the eSIM card. Butch's accepted it just fine, but not mine. BUT we're working through it thus why I am just now getting blogging done and it's almost 10pm.  Couldn't be that I got home close to 7pm, helped make dinner then started this after dinner and dessert that I brought home from the BX... figured if I was there that late I deserved a treat (that and it is our 25th anniversary).  Yeah, we're a couple of wild people  We made dinner and ate a dessert... but we'll make up for it this weekend or even dinner at a local place tomorrow... it's all a party here :)