The Spring We Felt the Love... (visits from our Amerikanische Freunde)

What fun we have had these past few weeks. Many of our dear friends made the trip across the Atlantic this Spring to check out our life in Germany and to experience some of the local culture. I continue to be touched and humbled that they would spend their limited free time and their hard-earned money to see us. We visited cities, villages, castles and biergartens. We walked and talked and ate and drank. My heart was filled.

Calw

Another one of our day trips took us to the northern part of the Black Forest to a small city called Calw (pronounced 'kalf'). The outskirts were very industrial, so we felt a little bummed driving into town..we even passed both a McDonalds and a Burger King. Not exactly what we were looking for! So of course we were pleasantly surprised to find the small village that sat a little further in, with an open air market, a green park, restaurants and eis cafes.  And even though the photos of these quaint towns are starting to run together, we still love the "going back in time feeling" we get each time we stumble upon these little pockets of German history.

Weiden and Nuremberg

CM has continued to travel a lot for work. This past trip, he stayed in a great little German hotel in a town named Weiden. He booked the family suite and asked us to join him. Weiden is a lovely small town with great restaurants, shopping and a large park with running/biking path that runs parallel to the village.  And although we stuck to our regular schedule, it was a welcome break from our normal routine. (We even had gelato, and only gelato, for lunch one day....we were crazy like that. It did put G in a short-lived sugar coma, however ...documented in pic below)

For the weekend, we headed to Nuremberg. Of all the larger cities we have been to in Germany so far, this is one of our favorites. It's a fantastic walkable city with a castle that sits on the edge of town high on a hill. Nuremberg is known for its Christmas Markets that are said to draw over a million people each winter. It was nice to see this city in the Spring but being only a two hour drive from Stuttgart, we plan to return for the markets next holiday season.