The Uhing Travels…

We are a little sad that this will be our last summer in Germany.  As such, we are doing our best to cram in a lot of trips before we go.  We first experienced the Wittlich Pig Fest last year, and had to go one last time.  The weather was perfect other than being in the upper 80s.

Wittlich is about 65 miles up the road, near Trier.  We started the road trip around 1pm, and got there right at 2pm.  Two construction areas slowed us down a bit, but got to love the speed of the autobahn! 

We met up with Josh, Barbara, and Lance.  Making our way towards the main square, we found a small table at one of the wine booths, where Jenny got herself a couple of glasses of wine.  Unfortunately, I was driving, so only Coke for me.  The parade started at 2:30, but took about 15 minutes to make it to the main square.  Plenty of horses, floats, people in costumes, and marching bands.  Each part of the parade made it to the main square, and the announcer said some things about them in German, where I only got a few words.  Once the parade wound down, we wandered our way through the rest of the fest.  We got slushies, habenero powder, mushrooms, and launched frogs.

To end the day, we spent our token and got a pig sammich, the pinnacle of the fest.  They are so tasty…worth the hour drive just for the food.  All in all, a great day!  Of course, I took plenty of pictures…

March took our travels to Holland and the village of Valkenburg. Beautiful sandstone caves weave intricately below this area creating a network of passages. This soft sandstone was created millions of years ago as a bottom of a sea and when the water dried up the soft sandstone remained. You can carve right into it and it is still mined today at a great cost so it is used today for decorative stonework. The caves are home to lots of little bats because of the humidity and climate and we even saw a little one on the ceiling!

There are charcoal paintings all over the tunnel dating back over a hundred years. The caves are placed directly under the castle. In the middle ages the knights and villagers would use these cave tunnels to carry in and out all sorts of supplies, food and weapons. During WW2 the caves were used as a safe haven for locals and the American Forces had a hospital set up inside the caves.

One story is that an invading army of a local villagers had the castle surrounded. The people in the castle were partying, singing and carrying on and the invaders couldn’t figure out why the castle supplies hadn’t run out and why they seemed so happy. Turns out the castle knights of Valkenburg had gone out through the tunnels and stole all of the invading villagers supplies from their village and brought it back up to the Valkenburg castle through the tunnels. They didn’t realize what had happened until they returned home to their own pillaged village!

Upon our return, we stopped in Aachen, Germany at the Lindt Chocolate factory and purchased all the chocolate we would ever want. They had more gold foiled signature Lindt Easter Bunnies then I’ve ever seen in my life! Some of the specialties were chili & mango chocolate and beautifully wrapped Easter chocolates like a little row of white lambs with one black wrapped one. I just loved all the packaging. Then we walked across the street to the Baklsen Cookie factory where we purchased even more little treats and German cookies. After shopping we put our box full of an insane amount of sweets on the bus and were headed for home.

Check out pictures of the caves here.

So at work we had our Thanksgiving pot luck lunch. A little early, perhaps, but next week will be short and a lot of folks out of the office. It turned out to be a great day to fry turkeys. We fried 6 in all, about 75 lbs worth, and it went fast! We had most of the seats filled, with bellies even fuller. Everyone enjoyed the food, company, and time away from work. I suspect we’ll do something similar for Christmas next month…can’t wait!