Driving in Germany...what a treat!

With the archive being closed for a few days during this holiday time, we have driven around a little more and have come to appreciate how nice it is to drive in Germany. 

Yes, they can drive very fast on the Autobahn, and yes, German people are general quite blunt - not rude but blunt if you have done something wrong. But we have come to appreciate the polite manner which most people drive here. 

Now, having said that I do want to clarify one thing - we are living in the country, not in a large city. But we have driven in Hamburg, Frankfurt, Dusseldorf and the areas in between on this mission, and we have had experience driving from Rotterdam through Belgium and The Netherlands into Amsterdam so we have some level of experience.

But we just want to share that overall, German people are good, safe, polite drivers who, for the most part, follow the speed limits and do not speed around other vehicles to get ahead or honk madly or yell (well, not too much) when we make a mistake.

Below are three photos showing the progression of the traffic light for those who are stopped at the red light: 

First the red light, so all the cars are stopped.

 Next the traffic light flashes from red to yellow.

The yellow light shows itself only for a moment, but it is enough to know that the green is next so you can be ready to accelerate into the intersection, or if you are driving up to an intersection you can prepare to continue driving knowing that you will have the green light.

After the green, the traffic light will turn to yellow which in Germany definitely means to stop, and then to red to cycle through the traffic signals again.

We are so happy to have the yellow signal before the green. It has helped us feel more confident with our driving. We have watched other drivers using this little tweak in the traffic situations we encounter in this country town with so many narrow, winding roads.

We also encountered another wonderful driving phenomenon just this week as we travelled from Detmold to Dusseldorf, a 2 1/2 hour drive. We were driving along on the Autobahn and saw that the traffic was slowing to a stop ahead of us so I (I'm still the driver in our family) slowed down with the traffic. About the time we slowed to a stop, I watched as the car in front of me moved onto the shoulder of the road on the right. At the same time, the cars in the left lane moved to the shoulder on the left. None of us could see anything wrong up ahead, no cars were trying to squeeze by and get a few cars ahead, everyone was polite and calm and just moved to the sides of the road, leaving the center between the two lanes totally clear. 

Obviously there had been some kind of accident up ahead and we sat for probably 10 min before the first police vehicle came screaming safely down the middle of the road at a high rate of speed.

Another 5-10 minutes went by and an ambulance came, then after more time another ambulance, more time then what looked like a fire marshall type car  whizzed by with a fire engine following after another minute or so. Another 10 minutes and two tow trucks came by. None of our vehicles had moved for about 30 minutes but soon after the tow trucks came both lines of cars began moving slowly back into the proper lanes and forward to continue our various journeys. Not one car tried to out-do another car in line, everyone just followed and waited until the roads were clear and then we moved at the fast speeds allowed.

We never did see much of what was a big accident, but on the other side of the Autobahn, moving the opposite direction, the traffic was stopped for a long way after we got moving so we don't know what happened, but the patience of every driver was impressive. We were just grateful that we were not involved in the accident and said a little prayer for those who may have been involved on Boxing Day, another day reserved for family.

The emergency responses are very quick because people obey the emergency plans and make the center of the roads clear for them. Good communities!

We love Germany!

Frohe Weinachten! Merry Christmas!

We have practiced saying Merry Christmas to everyone we meet this week. I think I have the gutteral part of the work down but I still have to pause and think about the pronunciation before saying it. Everyone is very patient. They love teaching us new quick phrases to learn.

This past week has been another busy one for us.  We did have some down time with car stuff, German registration (we now have our official German Registration cards so we are official until Nov 2026) and we had some days where we just got too tired to stay so long. 

We are feeling our age catching up with us for sure. 

We have been able to get a good amount of digitizing done ending the week with 22,000+ images to send in, but still have not had five full days of no problems, interruptions or health issues so we don't know how many images we will actually be able to do. Hopefully after the first of the year. Our biggest problem is the time it takes for Ed's machine to transfer to the hard drives. A good ten minutes per file and each file has between 300-600 images so it takes 2-3 times longer to transfer the same number of images than mine does. We had a lot of down time last week because we had in person and over the phone tech people trying to figure out why this was happening. Hopefully we can come up with a solution for the new year. 

In the forground are books we have completed. Ed will only have a few left on the wagon next to him. Each of these books is about 500 records. They weigh about 7lbs each.

This was my "wagon". I only have 5 books remaining to complete on of this group. 

Each Monday morning we walk our little box holding our two hard drives to the UPS store to send to Frankfurt. On our way home Monday we were treated to a little bit of snow.

This was not the first snow of the year, and it wasn't very much, but it was fun to be out and about when the snow came for a few minutes anyway. Mostly we have had rain and we will not have a white Christmas, but that is okay. We are in a beautiful place.

We had a surprise delivery from a wonderful Bielefeld Ward member after Church today. 

They apparently want to make sure we have enough food so two large bags of various food items were collected and brought to us. So sweet! 

We have been thinking about what we might do for a special meal on Christmas Day (25th) and Boxing Day (26th) because we have been told that here in this little town everything will be closed! Ed checked out one restaurant at a hotel that will be opened, but there is no room at that inn! (BTW it is called the Detmolder Hof :) 

Our name didn't make any difference there...

Obviously we have plenty of food at home, but we thought we would check out local fare.

We also have lots of liquid....

Nora only drinks still water 😊

We hope you each feel the joy and peace of our Savior Jesus Christ. We have enjoyed looking for ways to light the world with His Love this season. Thank you for sharing yours with us! 

Freilichtmuseum Detmold (Open Air Museum) Christmas Advent

 The Freilichtmuseum Detmold is only open to the public the beginning of April through the end of October except for a three day event during Advent. I have been very excited for the right time to visit the museum, but we had no time in October and then it was too late. We didn't learn of this special event held every year until friends at the archive told  us about it. 

The museum is a spacious spot on top of a fairly substantial hill very close to our apartment with around 100 houses and other buildings from around the Lippe area which have been dismantled and rebuilt  on the hill to provide a way to experience life over the last 500 years from this area. It began in 1960 and was opened to the public in 1971.

The special Christmas Advent event was last weekend and we decided to buy tickets for the first day which was last Friday, December 6th, St. Nickolas day. We bought tickets online and found out that there were special buses that we could ride for free with our tickets so we thought we could figure it all out, maybe even walk. Well....we were very blessed to find one of the parking lots for the museum and basically parked our car and followed the crowd. 

The security people directed us to the bus stop and hopped on the bus with the others and it took us part way up the hill to the entrance.

Oh. . . did I mention that it rained all day? Muddy and wet we departed from the bus and made our way into the park. It is uphill all the way.  I wasn't sure I would make it, but the rain stopped about the time we made it to the entrance so we trudged on.

The first building we saw was this wonderful mill. 

Next we followed some lights to another little community which was interesting because there were loud speakers with forest sounds (appropriate because we were in an actual forested area) including the howling of wolves.

An old well

Lovely wood carved doors on this very tall building 

This little house had it's own moat...very small space to play in around this house! 

It began to rain again but I could never get enough of these beautiful half-timbered buildings. 

Even a couple of windmills on the property. I will am anxious to visit again in the spring when the museum opens with animals, fruit trees, carriage rides, etc. It will be a wonderful place to visit.

Although there were many little shacks selling various gift-type items, this is the only display of the true purpose of Christmas. I am so disappointed that this wood carved nativity is missing the baby Jesus. (Here in Germany they add a baby Jesus figure on Christmas Eve, when He is born)

It was cold, rainy, wet and muddy, but we had a good time and we were happy we went. We look forward to another visit!

The Four Sundays of Advent

Today is the second Sunday of Advent. We were certainly not prepared for the local celebrations honoring the Advent of Christmas here in this little community. 

December 1st began the month and a member at Church gave us an Advent candle to burn each day until Christmas Day. 

 Sadly we had no matches or lighters so it took us a couple of days to be able to get started, but we got what we needed and began this tradition. 

We had learned about the kick off celebration of St. Andreas the weekend before Dec. 1, but then we were surprised that the really big deal is on December 6th, St. Nickolas Day. Everyone was so kind to us and but we totally lost out on putting our shoes/boots by the door to get goodies of chocolate, little gifts or oranges. (The sadest part is that we didn't give any to anyone else either )

I did learn about Krampus who is a really bad companion to St. Nicholas who is very good to all the children in particular. But Krampus can spoil a really good event if you have not been good. 

We have enjoyed visiting some of the little Christmas Markets close by.  This is a very small city with lots of little villages around it and out in the country, so there are many traditions that are kept here and the Markets are very homey and not very commercial. We have enjoyed them so far....even in the rain.

The Market held on the castle grounds here in Detmold was a real treat. We ate some wonderful traditional dishes that I think we will go back to eat again. 

The Prince of Lippe's family still lives in the Detmold Castle. It is literally the center of the town. 

Lippeshire Pickert is now a favorite of mine. It is a traditional food for poor farmers. It is made with potatoes , raisens, yeast, flour, milk and other good ingredients to supply energy to the farmers as they went out into the fields. It is like a pancake, but tastes different and warm and healthy.

Maybe you want to taste one too?  Come and visit!! :)

Living Around The Tower of Babel

We attend our regular church meetings as part of the Bielefeld Ward in Bielefeld which is about an hour away from our apartment. It has been exciting for us just to learn how to get to the building, but it is always a beautiful drive for me. The roads are narrow and the fields have so far been green and beautiful. The fall color is gone and the leaves have been raked and composted. Most of the trees are bare by now so it will be interesting to see what winter looks like here. 

For Sunday School classes we were invited to attend and "English" class which we were happy to do, but when we got into the class it was such a different experience! It was not an "English" class, but an international language class.  I really felt like I was at the tower of Babel!

Our teacher, Yurii, and his wife Darya are from Ukraine along with Vasily and his wife; we also have a wonderful young woman from Nigeria whose name is Sunday. There is a young man from Nigeria, a young man from Iran, a young man from Turkey, another young woman, Sophia, who is originally from a Russian speaking country but has been in Germany for about 15 years, the missionaries (one of whom is from New Zealand) and then us! So we have the lesson given in Ukrainian and translated into English, German and
Turkish. The Nigerians speak enough English and German to understand most of what goes on but I think we are the ones who understand the least of the conversations, but all of us have our scriptures in our respective languages.  

This was the most touching thing about our Sabbath Day worship...regardless of how little we understood each other's words, we understood each other's hearts. Our hearts were"knit together as one" as we each read sacred words. It may have been in our own language, but through these words from our own Savior all of us were united as members of the same fmaily.  

Interestingly we were studying in the class about the Jaredites and praying that their languages would not be confused. Well, we aren't confused anymore with the internet and more people who have skills in language due to education, business, and travel. 

Such a great group!  We love being here and lifting each other up through the Light of Christ in each of us.