germany day 7 & 8 part 1....

day 7 and 8 were spent doing various things, but one of the things i did was take lots and lots of pictures of Caesar. caesar is a german shepard. of course, in germany they call them shepard dogs, not germany shepards. it cracks me up. but that's just me. dogs don't get complexes like people when you take their photo, so they are easy targets for people like me. plus, onkel franco asked me to. i'm not sure if i got any that he liked, but it was fun and probably was good practice for me.

meet caesar, he's a cutie. and actually he lives in italy. so technically, he's not german....

look how sweet he is....he was like a big teddy bear....

and look how cute...hairy little feet...

he was very comfortable in the snow....

hans played with him, by tossing him snowballs...caesar loved it...and i thought this was a neat action shot....

but this one is even better....he was really good at catching....

and this is what caesar would look like, right before he ripped your face off.....i even think it would be all blurry like that....

just kidding. he'd never do that.

i hope.

(blogger isn't working with me on formatting tonight, so sorry about the lack of spaces...)

germany interrupted again....

yesterday was the 4th of july and while i know everyone is dying to see more photos of germany, i just have to share my fireworks pic.

i'm only going to share one. my favorite one. i think it is super-duper awesome.

we just watched everyone else's fireworks from our house. we watched from our living room, from our screened in porch, from our balcony (when we were snapping pics) and from our bed. the fireworks when until midnight here. it seemed that many people traveled outside the state to bring in the biggest and the best. hans and i were just glad to have so many to watch. (and that our house didn't burn down.)

there are probably 100 ways to get photos of fireworks, i went with this method. its too bad the 4th of july only comes once a year. because i feel like i could be a professional fireworks photographer and be happy the rest of my life. it was just so much fun.

i'm really proud of this one. what do you think? sweet, huh? (maybe i don't want to know if you think that it sucks.)

i took a whole bunch of pics....a bunch! and i think i have several to pick from that are good, but this one was my fav when i went through them this morning.

hope everyone had a good 4th!!!

(oh...and just an FYI....this is without major photo-shopping! (i only took out a couple really loud noisy spots) how cool is that!)

germany day 6....

day 6

we slept in. we were just so tired from the day before, that we took it easy and didn't rush.

we had lunch with oma and opa (grandma and grandpa).

i had the brook trout...this was so yummy...and really beautifully presented. i didn't eat the red hot peppers though!

we played cards with Tante Petra. i was busy playing, so no pics....

we wandered around O'gau (Oberammergau) in the rain. i didn't want to get my camera wet...

and then Tante Baerbi and Onkel Franco came up from italy. Baerbi made us an amazing dinner that included fresh buffalo mozzarella....so fresh that it was still warm when she bought it that morning! no pics to share, sorry....

sorry day 6 wasn't very exciting, at least it was easy to blog about!

germany day 5.....

....so we've been back from germany for months and months and months...and after being sick and getting better and being sick and being sick and having surgery and being sick....i'm FINALLY feeling pretty darn good! but with feeling better, you have to play catch up on everything you've been neglecting....and it seems that blogging gets neglected the most....

so, if you are interested in our germany trip still....feel free to read on, if not, just skip this post and hope i have something more interesting to write about later....

day 5

we got up and headed out of Ammerthal and to the 'german ranch'. (before we left the states i googled and searched and emailed people in germany to try and find a german angus ranch that was somewhere near where we were going to be.) one of them wrote back and were more than happy to have us stop by.

not only do they ranch, but they have a hotel, restaurant and sell their beef to local places....lots of work!

this is what we saw on right outside of the town the ranch was near. seriously....it looks spooky....people live CLOSE to this thing! well, too close for me!



we got to check out a bunch of cows....notice how their cows are in a shelter? they baby their cows a whole lot more than we do here. i think they put their cows in at night, every night...but they don't run 100's and 100's of cows either.


the babies are cute there too!


even a ranch dog. i think there was two running around....


we chatted...well, i should say that they chatted. most germans speak really, really good english but they get nervous. so there was a lot of german spoken. i think that evi learned more about ranching from having to translate than she knew from talking with hans. but that is kind of the way ranching is here, people just expect you to know things. i like to explain things to people. every time i talk to my grandma, i explain what we do, how we do it and why we do it. mostly because everything is new to me and i like to know things. so i explain them to my grandma and she really likes it because she's never been on a ranch and all of the terminology is new to her too.


this is a great photo to show you a little of germany...notice the sky, this might have been the best weather we had. and the semi in the background, a very rare sight in germany....and flat...here anyways, i'll have more pictures of mountains for you later. :)

these girls were curious...they even licked me....

i thought they had such cute faces....to me, a cute face is an important trait in cattle, especially females. no one wants bully looking cows!


this is one of his fields where a few of his cows were and one big bull. flat, flat....nice soil...not rocky like ours.


oh yeah...i know you've all been waiting for this....after we were done looking at the cows, we went back to their restaurant to chat. this is what they served us as a snack....holy moly...it was so amazing! i finished mine and our host promptly got up and got me another....i could have had a third, but i declined. it was soooooo good.....his wife made them. nothing beats homemade yummy-ness in germany.


and then after our chats and photos, we left....drove past the creepy nuclear power plant and saw this. it was just too crazy to pass up, so we stopped and snapped some pics. i think it was an artist's sculpture garden, but it just looked like a radioactive accident. i would have got the nuclear plant in the background, but there were trees in the way.

storks! they must have already dropped the babies off....

here's my favorite sign we found in germany....frog crossing. so apparently, they put up these signs to warn people of the migrating frogs. (squished frogs are slippery??) and once they really start migrating, they put up a little frog fence to keep them from crossing the road. then someone come by and picks up the frogs on one side and puts them on the other side of the road, all safe and sound. there was no fence yet and no frogs but the sign totally cracked me up.

finally, we made it to O'gau. visited with the grandparents, stuck our stuff in the house we were staying at and went to grab some grub.

and here's a cell phone pic to prove that i didn't just eat dessert the whole time. but check out this salad....veggies, a little lettuce (not the crappy iceberg) and a little dressing. you don't get to choose your dressing, but it was yummy. germans don't eat a ton of fruits and veggies, but they sure know to stay away from piles of iceberg!

scroll down

since i'm still fairly new to this blogging thing, my 'new' post, is below my 'old' post.

so, if you'd like to see/read about germany day 4, scroll down below 'pics by request only'.

sorry!