Teufelshoehle (Devil's Hole)

Weeks are starting to fly by, a good sign that we are getting into a routine.  The weather here has been great for the most part, sunny and in the 70s almost every day.  The last two days have been really windy though.  This past weekend we ventured out about 30 minutes away to a little town called Pottenstein.  I heard about it from our neighbor and it sounded like a fun little trip.  True to our experience so far, the 30 minutes turned into an hour as we hit some major road construction and had to take a detour.  It was a nice drive though, especially as we got closer to our destination and descended into a narrow and rocky valley. 

We heard that in Pottenstein there was a cave and a castle so drove we through the town looking for both and found neither.  Since by now it was lunch time we headed back to a restaurant we had seen driving in that  had a terrace above a little creek.  When we got there we realized that this was the cave we had heard about.  Somehow when we drove by the first time we didn't notice the gaping hole leading into the side of the hill right next to it.

We sat down to eat and the menu was completely in German.  We are going to need to pick up a menu reader, particularly for Carissa.  I can decipher some things with the little bit of German I learned in high school, but finding a vegetarian option between the schnitzels, wieners and wursts is a little more difficult.  I have to say to this point in our time here that I'm less than impressed with German cuisine.  It appears that all restaurants serve almost exactly the same items and I really can't eat that much sausage.  I'm also already tired of schnitzel.  Most of the dishes are extremely rich and filling too which really isn't what we typically eat.  Carissa ordered a spatzle dish that was gigantic and completely smothered in what looked like an incredibly rich and thick cream sauce.  Haaken liked it, Carissa did not.  I got a curry wurst which was pretty good, a lot like the bologna sausage with red sauce that my mom used to make except that it had curry powder sprinkled on top.  I managed to accidentally flip my sauce covered knife on to my cream colored shorts which was great.  Elise got spaghetti and Lyd got some weiners that were pretty charred and about the size of breakfast links.

The other thing we've noticed about German restaurants is they aren't very concerned about customer service.  Dishes don't come out at the same time, the waiters(resses) don't typically check on you, and they don't read the non-verbal cues that American servers pick up on (ie.  no one at the table is looking at the menu = we're ready to order; no one at the table is eating anymore = we're done eating; ; the plates are gone and we are just sitting here = we would like our bill).  Starting to get used to it, but it's a little annoying.  It's probably a good thing that the food isn't great because it's really expensive to eat out.

After eating we bought our tickets to the cave and waited for the tour to start.  Thankfully there was an English version - we just had to wait until the German version was done and everyone had left each stop for that version to begin.  Probably better because we were the only people that had kids on the tour.  It was an awesome cave, over a mile long, with some really cool stalactites/stalagmites.  We all loved it.

 Descending into the Devil's Hole - Ironically it's a constant 48 degrees

 13 years per millimeter for each of these

 150,000 years old!

Die Ausfahrt

After the cave we decided that instead of pushing the kids through nap we would cut out the castle tour and let them go on some alpine slides just down the street from the cave.  They were a lot of fun and pretty reasonable.  Since it's so close we decided to save the castle for another day and headed home.

When we got home we decided to hike on some trails that Carissa found while going out for a run in the woods behind our neighborhood.  There was a little nature trail with stations all along it that of course were in German so we didn't learn anything.  One of the stops was a really cool " Kathedrale der Natur" made out of branches.  We also found a nest of baby birds at another one of the stations.

Baby Birds - hopefully I didn't permanently blind them with the flash.

This week was the last week of school for the kids so it was pretty busy for them.  They had their field day the Friday before (Elise said it wasn't as good as Stonebridge's) and this week they had their class parties and then today the "Star Assembly" which they have each month I think to recognize outstanding students.  We were thrilled that both Elise and Lydia received Shining Stars for the past month.  They got to go up and get their certificate and get their picture taken with the principal.  Lydia also got lucky and had her name pulled out of a hat for a prize.

Tomorrow we finally get our kitchen appliances.  I'm praying everything goes smoothly because I'm sick of cooking on the hot plates and going to the grocery store everyday.  Also it would be nice to get some beer now that I've been here for a month and a half. :)

Carissa is getting used to her new job.  The Army Dental clinic does things a lot differently than private practice.  There is all this protocol and the charts are all done in pencil and paper instead of on the computer.  She says that the people she works with are nice and so are the patients - mostly soldiers.  It sounds like the dental health of the soldiers she has been seeing is horrible.  Lots of young kids in their early 20s with mouths full of cavities and tons of work needed.  It's pretty busy now because there are a lot of soldiers that are being deployed soon, but they can't go if they don't have their more serious dental work done.  Also, all of the Army dentists are leaving for one reason or another which means that the clinic will be down to the 3 contractors and one Army dentist that just arrived.  I think there were 6-8 general dentists when she started and they were busy then.  Overall it's going well though, and she's getting some experience doing some work she hasn't done in a long time which will be valuable when we get back.

Not sure what we are going to do this weekend.  Elise's birthday is tomorrow so we're kind of leaving it up to her.  Sounds like she wants to check out the farmer's market in Weiden but beyond that she's not sure.  Right now all three kids are over at a neighbors.  They have 2 girls about the same age as Elise and Lydia.  Neither speak any English, but apparently it doesn't matter.  They have hung out a couple times this past week with another girl from the neighborhood who speaks a little bit of English (not the one they met a couple weeks ago.)  It's been pretty fun to watch.  Hopefully they will pick up some German along the way.

That's probably enough for now.  I got a letter the other day from the phone company that we will be getting our phone and internet service next Tuesday which will be awesome.  The connection we have right now is horrible and not having a phone is really inconvenient.  Maybe once we get that I can post a little video or something.