Call me Hena.

I have a very common, unextraordinary name.

The name Heather is so basic, so average, so normal...so blah, in fact, that the name has absolutely no real meaning. I envy my friends and loved ones with names that have fascinating (and often amazingly appropriate) meanings: Karl = manly and strong; Sarah = princess; Susan = lily; Joseph = God will increase; Erik = honorable ruler; Ava = like a bird; Diana = divine;...and Heather = a flowering plant. Just a plain ol' plant.

I have never found a pop song with the name Heather in it, there are no great literary characters with the name Heather (although I was always delighted to occasionally read about characters walking through the heather on the moor, or lying down in the soft heather), and, of course, the only movie I know with the name Heather prominently featured is the 1989 cult classic Heathers, a "delightfully dark and deranged take on adolescent angst and isolation." Throughout high school and college my name was constantly being associated with a film about murder and teen suicide...("Hi! I'm so-and-so." - "Hello, I'm Heather." - "Heather? Hey! Have you seen that movie Heathers?! It was so cool when that one Heather drank the cleaning fluid and died!")...oh, yay.

However, I now find myself here in Germany with the most exotic-sounding name imaginable...Heather! Noone seems to have ever heard it before! It is so uncommon, I am often asked to repeat it once or twice! And now I am faced with a new problem...noone can pronounce it!! "Hallo! Ich heisse Heather." - (a confused look) - "Hea-ther." - "Heva?" - "Hea-THer" - "Hena?" - "Hea-THHHer" - "Heta?" - "um.....ok."

It's that nasty TH sound that gets them. Very few languages have that sound, and German is certainly not one of them. Earlier this week I got a ride to a church function from a German family that live near us. On the way home from Karlsruhe, I tried to teach the three children how to say my name. I had them put their tongue between their teeth and blow...after we spit all over each other, they repeated my name over and over again..."Heva, Hetah, Heterr, Henar"...and asked me over and over again if they were saying it right. I introduced myself to one of the older women who was riding with us, telling her (in German), "My name is Heather. It's kind of difficult to say." - "Oh, no! Hena...that's an easy name to say! Hena."

And don't get me started on how people pronounce my last name! ("Hairvoot?")

Ah, well...I still can't pronounce the name of my own town right. "Ich wohne in Bühl." - "Bohl?" - "Bühl." - "Bohl?" - "Büühl" - "Ach so! Bühl!" Those two little dots are hard to pronounce!



(My apologies to my wonderful parents, Don = world leader, and Kathleen = pure, who lovingly gave me my beautiful name. Of course, they were expecting me to be a boy and had planned to name me David = beloved, but upon receiving a daughter instead, took the suggestion of my aunt DeeDee [Dorothy] = gift of God, and named me Heather. Honestly, thank you for my beautiful [if meaningless] name!)

Grüße aus...beautiful Baden-Baden!

Our hometown of Bühl lies just a 10 minute drive from the beautiful city of Baden-Baden. Its name means "bathe-bathe" and that's exactly what people have been doing in Baden-Baden for two thousand years!

Underground hot springs were discoverd by the Romans under the rule of Emperor Caracalla (186-217 AD) and they named the area Aquae (water). The Germans of the Middle Ages renamed the city simply Baden and it received its repeated name of Baden-Baden (as in the city of Baden in the state of Baden) in 1931. The springs were rediscovered in the 19th century by the upper-class and the city became the unofficial summer residence for European royalty. The city thankfully managed to escape destruction in the World Wars. Baden-Baden is nestled in the Black Forest foothills so there is a lot of walking up and down hills through the city.



The city today is still best known for the life of lesiure it offers. There is a famous casino (Germany's oldest) that opened in 1855, decorated by the Parisians (beautiful!); the 19th century Theater modeled after the Paris Opera offering ballet, opera and dramatic performances and the Festspielhaus, a theater offering ballet, opera and music (a beautiful building that was once the central train station); a fantasitc pedestrian area with shopping galore; and, of course, there are the spas! People still come to Baden-Baden to bathe! The two spas in the city are Friedrichsbad and Caracalla. Friedrichsbad was built on top of the original Roman bath ruins (which have been excavated and can still be viewed today in the spa's basement) and opened its doors in 1877.



Mark Twain visited the spa during his journey through Germany and famously said of it: "Here at the Friedrichsbad you lose track of time within 10 minutes and track of the world within 20." Most Americans, however, don't feel very comfortable visiting Friedrichsbad because everyone is required to bathe naked (most days men and women bathe together but twice a week the sexes are separated for most of the bathing stages). At the nearby Caracalla spa, however, bathers wear a bathing suit. As you can see, people really just come to Baden-Baden to relax (the city is home to a lot of retirees).

There are, of course, castles and churchs to see as well. The Altes Schloss ("Old Castle") was built in 1102 and sits high in the hills overlooking the city--we haven't gotten to visit yet--and the Neues Schloss ("New Castle") sits on a hill within the city--but noone is able to visit it.



The Neues Scholss is privately owned and currently under renovation. But there are lovely pathways up and down the hill it sits on and it offers a lovely view of Baden-Baden as well as a nice place to eat your lunch (which I did last week).

Grüße aus...Karlsruhe!

Each Sunday we drive about 30 minutes north on the Autobahn to Karlsruhe for church. This past Sunday we packed a lunch with us and after church we did a little exploring of Karl's namesake.

Karlsruhe is a young city (young, at least, for Europe) being founded in 1715 by Margrave Karl Wilhelm. The name Karlsruhe means "Karl's Rest". Today the city makes its mark on Germany's map as the seat of the German Supreme Court. The ciy grew around the palace in the center of the city. Thirty-two avenues fan out from the palace (hence Karlruhe's nickname as the Fächerstadt or "fan city")--23 of the avenues extend into the palace gardens while the others form the grid of the oldest part of the city.



Karl and I ate our lunch in the beautiful palace gardens. It was a gorgeous day (unlike the typical fog and rain that we've been getting) and the gardens were crowded. A fun steam-engine train makes its way through the gardens for passengers. Visitors are also welcome inside the palace as well as in the botanical gardens on the grounds, but we saved those treasures for another day!

Another Burg and the Black Forest

Bühl is located very conveniently off of the A5 - the freeway that will take us straight up to Northern Germany, or south to Switzerland. We are just east of the Rhine river, thus just minutes away from all lovely things French, and just west of the gorgeous hills of the Black Forest. We are quite centrally located in the middle of all of Europe! But this past Sunday Karl and I explored the Europe a little closer to home.

The ruins of what was once Burg Windeck stands in the Black Forest looking down onto Bühl. It is not nearly as impressive as the castles we saw up in the Rhineland, but it was far closer to home. The burg is really nothing but a few ruined walls and a couple of tall towers that were originally built around 1200, but there is a hotel and restaurant, a playground for children, and a few paths winding through the forest nearby...so Windeck becomes a busy place on a Sunday afternoon.



We explored the burg including it's two remaining towers. One tower is completely empty and you can look up and out into the sky. The other has stairs to climb up to the top and from there you can look out over Bühl and over to France...unfortunately it was a foggy day and France was just a haze.





After our visit to Windeck, we drove up farther into the Black Forest. The Black Forest begins north of us at about the city of Pforzheim (between the larger cities of Karlsruhe and Stuttgart) and spreads south all the way to the Swiss border. It's a beautiful forest that seems to have a lot to offer. There are, of course, a lot of hiking trails and biking trails, and there are also ski slopes, hotels (big and small), horseback riding, hang gliding, fishing, castles, wineries, lakes, saunas, Black Forest cake (chocolate, cherries, whipped cream...and schnapps!...but here's a schnapps-free version of the recipe), and of course the city Rottweil...the hometown of the Rottweiler dog (oh, yeah...and I guess they've got some pretty annoying cuckoo clocks) . Karl and I found the Schwarzwaldhochstrasse (Black Forest High street) which winds through the forest and made a short walk down one of the footpaths near a motorcycle hang-out before driving back home.



We're excited to live so close to such a beautiful part of the world and look forward to exploring the forest much more!

Grüße aus...Burg Eltz & Burg Thurant!

On Saturday, October 14th, Karl and I drove north to the Rhineland...a beautiful stretch of the Rhine and Mosel rivers surrounded by hills, vineyards and castles! I especially wanted to see Burg Eltz (burg=fortress). It's a rare castle because, not only has it never been destroyed, it has also remained in the Eltz family since it was founded 850 years ago! By 1472 it looked like it does today. To reach the castle we drove down the Mosel river (which branches off of the Rhine and eventually makes its way to Luxembourg), then away from the river through a few little dorfs (villages) until, suddenly we came to a parking lot in the middle of the forest. We walked through the forest until we suddenly came around a corner and saw this:



The castle is stunning! The path winds down the hillside into this beautiful valley with nothing but trees and tourists in sight. Down the path we walked alongside a family with four children with toy swords and bows, pretending to storm the castle! Actually the castle had only one serious attack in the 1300s when Baldwin of Luxembourg built a smaller fortress at the top of the hill (there are only ruins today) and laid siege to Burg Eltz...after five years he gave up. We took a tour through the interoir of the castle, but unfortunately we were not allowed to take any photos. But click here to see more of the exterior of the castle.

After visiting the Eltz, we drove back to the Mosel river and stopped at another burg we had noticed on the way in:



Burg Thurant was built around 1200 overlooking the Mosel River, became a ruin in the 19th century, then was rebuilt in the 20th century. Although this castle had been ruined, there were still some wonderful original details such as the Roseneck (Rose Corner) in the courtyard where roses had been growing since the middle ages as well as a human skeleton in the dungeon that also dates from the middle ages! Click here for more photos.

We had a beautiful day!

Grüße aus...Deutschland!

As Karl has mentioned to most of you, I had been hoping to develop a website while we lived our 2 years here in Germany. After much research, I have decided that a blog would be a more speedy and cost-efficient beginning to what may eventually become a website (we'll see how much interest I can keep in the project and how much interest I can keep you, our readers, in the project!).

This blog is still under development and I'm still learning how to use it, but I plan to add updates at least weekly (if not more often) including photos and descriptions of our everyday lives and our travels around Germany and Europe! Thus, I hope to help keep our long-long distance phone bills down, and help all of you feel that, although Karl and I are on the other side of the globe, we are really not that far away!