Hello from the Rheinland-Pfalz

We were able to get our van yesterday, and decided this morning to explore a little bit of the area.  The closest castle we could find was about 10 minutes away, on the edge of the village of Hohenecken.  The castle is not fully intact, but the outing to its ruins provided a good test of our new GPS and of Germany in general.  We parked at an old church whose bells were ringing as we climbed the incline with occasional stairs to the ruins, amid some amazing autumn colors.

The climate here is not drastically different from home in Eastern Washington, but as we approached the castle, the air felt different.  Older, maybe.

At the top of the hill is an old dungeon-looking door carved out of a big sandstone slab

The sign above the cell is all in German, so I could only imagine what it might say: "The Hohenecken dungeon was hewn out of sheer rock in the late 1100s, and housed some of the most feared criminals of that day, including Vodrich the Terrible, who killed and ate no fewer than seventeen other prisoners once inside."

You can imagine my disappointment when I went to Google translate with the above photo and found, (as those of you who read German already know) that it basically says, "Enter this area at your own risk. Don't climb on the ruins. Supervise your children."

I did eventually get some context in English, and it was actually pretty fascinating.  Overall, it was an amazing first experience in Germany.

Back at the church, we stopped to look at the statue of a German soldier.  To Germans, he is a symbol of stalwart strength in defending his homeland.  In my American mind, it seemed like some kind of nightmare.

Imagine how foolish and humbled I felt as I read the inscription (or at least the scripture reference at the end): "I have fought the good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith." 2 Tim 4:7

It was a clear example of the ethnocentrism we always hear about the rest of the world complaining about about us. This WWI soldier predated almost all of the bad we now associate with his nation (though it's clearly not its fault, either), and he never asked for any of it.  He was just courageous enough to answer his nation's call, and strong enough to keep the faith despite everything.

We left the church and went to look at a couple of houses.  We stopped by a market on the way and got some German candies, German soda, and some puffed corn snacks that are actually Russian, but that we'd never seen before.  Typical Americans, again: "If the label's not in English, it's in Foreign, and I'm here to have a foreign experience."  As a side note, if you ever have a chance to eat Russian sweetened corn puff snacks, jump on that.

Some new friends had us over for dinner later on, and we drove a short distance to a wooded area outside the village of Reichenbach-Steegen to look around while we waited.  We walked along an old roadway through fallen leaves to the intermittent humming of the giant windmills that lined the crest of the hill where we walked.  The leaves and the views were stunning again:

Aside from the air, there were some clear differences from our stateside world.  The windmills along this old roadway illustrated the way rural Germans (and who knows who else) have been able to maintain so much of their tradition and culture despite keeping abreast of a lot of the technological advances we enjoy.  So many people in this part of Germany live in villages of only a few hundred people.  Each village has a feel and an identity (and, in my limited experience, an awesome bakery). I feel like we either congregate in much larger numbers or separate altogether. Their houses are packed in close and surrounded by the land they live off of.  They satisfy our common need for association and society with a group that more closely resembles family.  If I were a drinker, I would raise a stein to the steady, faithful German and this beautiful country.