End of July

We have now come to the end of July. These past couple of weeks have been quite hot (for us here) and we haven't had as much success in meeting people. It is the start of Urlaub (vacation) season. School was officially out last week and people really get into taking vacations. Quite often we hear the answer (when we call to ask for an appointment to come visit): "Sorry, we are leaving for Urlaub. Try again in 4 weeks. When they go, they are gone for 4 weeks, usually.

Here are a few more random pictures.

The first one is of Elder Herzog and Elder Kingery with Derick and Sister B. Elder Herzog was transferred to St. Pölten (new Vienna). The missionaries have a tradition of a Tschüss Book, a book where they get people to add pictures and write notes to them as they leave a place. Derick is writing something in Elder Herzog's Tschüss Book (Tschüss is the German word for Goodbye).

Here is our district meeting, held in our apartment yesterday. We now have three elders here in Ravensburg. Also in this group are the Elders from Dornbirn, Austria.

 I added this one because most every person here, as they read our name, says "Buchmann" instead of Buchanan. Buchmann literally means "Book man." There is a large meat-packing company here, famous for their wursts, named Buchmann.

 This grove is not far from our home. This time I hiked to the east. The other pictures from before are up the hill behind us to the west. This east hike is actually a little shorter distance from our apartment, but I had to cross a busy street and the hill climb is a little steeper than it is to the forest behind us. I love their forest hiking paths.

 In town a little ways, there is this intersection. It is rare for us to find a green light here. It is an intersection of a number of roads, coming in from varying angles and several pedestrian crossings. When we stop for this light, it is a LONG wait, because of all the other varying left turns, ped crossings, etc. At least it is a nice view of Frauen Tor (Women's gate) on the left and Grün Turm (green tower) on the right. Then there is the big beer haus on the right side, right next to the "Orient Pizza Kebap" fast food place (we stay away from those last two places).

Lastly, we had a nice visit with the Van der Heiden's and their dog, Rocco.

Rutenfest

We enjoyed the experience of Rutenfest, for the most part. It is a huge holiday here in Ravensburg and celebrates the end of the school year and tells a lot of the history of the city. The parade we saw on Monday is something like what we have in Utah for Pioneer Day (which happens to be today). So here I have a lot of pictures and movie so you can compare notes with the Pioneer Day parade.

There were lots of bands playing. They even went around the neighborhoods playing before and after the parade and on other days as well. The first picture is of a band that went down the street behind our house. This is looking out of our back windows.

Now here is a short movie I took of one of the bands in the actual parade.

Here are the rest of the pictures, with a comment here or there.

 We met near the "pin cushion" fountain with the elders. This is just before the beginning of the parade.

 Of course, they celebrate the local Ravensburger games and puzzles company (makers of Memory, Elferaus, Phase Ten, etc. and many very good puzzles)

 As you can tell, they used a LOT of children in the parade. We loved this group.

 and how many does it take to carry the spear?

 postal delivery

 May pole

 fire department, complete with a burning house

 I couldn't resist this guy giving his all in the bugle band

 for the boys at home

 Our famous Mehlsack tower. Mehlsack means "flour sack."

 A lot of the horses had little bonnets that covered their ears.

 Thumbing his nose at the crowd...

 Notice the crossbows. They take their shooting sports seriously here.

 These represent the shooting clubs. Armbruster means Crossbow. Adlerschiessen means Eagle shooting. They have a lot of shooting contests at Rutenfest.

 They have these young men who carry banners. A stick with a large banner attached. They are expert at tossing them way high in the air and then catching them. This banner is yellow and brown (wound around the stick before tossed. See it in the air, nearing the open windows on the pink building. The crowds really cheered them on.

More horse bonnets.

 It was a hot day. They looked pretty tired here.

Later in the parade they had more people dressed in various forms of armor. We were on our way home at this time. After 90 minutes, we were getting kind of tired and very hot.

I hope you enjoyed this!

Einige Kleinigkeiten

Don't get excited. We are still here. I just haven't gotten to writing anything. So here are a bunch of little reports and statements...

First of all. It is finally hot and dry here. Well, dry is relative term because the relative humidity is a lot higher than it is at home in Utah.

Sister B and I just got back from a walk into the inner city. We saw a lot of fun things and enjoyed the open-air market they have every Saturday. We picked up some vegetables, a sharp knife, a pair of bratwursts, a blue and white flag of Ravensburg and some ice-cream cones. And some hand knitted booties from a lady who was also selling brooms that looked like they were from Hogwarts (the simple ones like in the beginning of the first movie).

The walk back was long and hot. We were talking in German:  Ein Schritt nach ein andere.  and  Bis zum nachsten Shatten.  That is:  One step after another,  and  until the next shadow (shade). We survived the walk.

The Ravensburg flag is a blue and white flag with this symbol in the middle:

We like to have one flying from the antenna of our car (in the back).

Starting last night, and going until next Tuesday they have a huge festival called Rutenfest. It is kind of a "School's out" celebration beyond description. After this coming week, they have six weeks off from school. Ravensfest has a lot of history in its pageantry. They have a huge 10000 person parade on Monday, mostly children and marching bands. We hope to get a lot of pictures.

They had a web camera that gets refreshed every 30 seconds:

http://www.das-rutenfest.de/kontakt/webcams/

Now a little about the past couple of weeks...

Our attendance has been a little low the past few weeks. Mainly our active members are not coming due to sickness, work, etc. We only had 13 at church last Sunday and 2 of them were investigators (and 4 missionaries). We are still getting out and visiting people and loving the work. We had a really nice Branch Council meeting this week and talked about the whole list of less-active members and learned more about them and talked about how we can move forward. It told them that we can make progress and work towards getting an actual church building. There is hope. A branch west of us just had a new building built this past year. We can do the same.

We did a 330 kilometer run yesterday, visiting 7 different missionary apartments in Switzerland and Austria, and then visited our own later that day - our regular apartment inspection tour.

Our daughter and family arrived in Utah these past couple of days. They moved back to their home in Kaysville after living in Hungary the past 9 months. At least we got to see her and two of the grandchildren while they were living in Europe.

The Lord is blessing us in the work here. With faith, we will see the fruits of the labors of the good people here. Thank you all for your prayers in our behalf (and the letters and emails - and Facebook comments).

Tschüss!

Senior Mini-conference

Yesterday and the day before, we met with 5 other couples and held a "mini-conference." Our big conference was in April and included all 20 + seniors and couples. This conference was hosted by the missionary couples in Singen and Schaffhausen and included only those who were part of the Swiss Stakes (St. Gallen, Zurich and Bern stakes). It was a wonderful experience where we learned from each other and got to feel more what others are experiencing. We had some wonderful spiritual discussions and presentations. One of our couples was the mission president  recently in Hungary.

We began by meeting at the Rheinfalls. Rheinfalls is the largest waterfall in Europe. It is along the Rhine River between Switzerland and Germany, near Schaffhausen, Switzerland. Here are some pictures and a small movie so you can hear it.

We had some sessions both Friday and Saturday in the Singen chapel

This chapel is quite new. They are still a branch, but are hoping soon to become a ward. As I was taking this picture (actually one before this), I noticed the castle ruin in the mountain off to the side and took the picture again from this angle so you could see it in the distance. According to Wikipedia, Hohentwiel is the biggest castle ruin of Germany. We haven't been up to see it yet.

Here is the chapel again, with our group of 12 missionaries in front (one of my first attempts at using a timer on my camera - it worked!).

Just before taking this picture, one of the men said that we should look off to the left (your right) to get a better lighting of our faces. That is why some of them seem to be interested in something off to the side.

Frist evening, we went to Radoflzell, on Lake Constance, where we had a hotel room and dinner at a local restaurant there. Here are a couple of pictures from there.

The second one is taken after sunset, with barely enough light for the picture (I was also fighting mosquitoes at the time).

After our conference, we all went to the island of Mainau in Lake Constance, near the city of Konstanz. There were lots of flower gardens and a butterfly exhibit. Here are some pictures.

Temple in June

I did not get this posted earlier. We went to the Bern, Switzerland temple again in June. One of the couples in the branch drove us there in their car. It was much better than the rental car experience and we are very grateful for this good couple. As it happened, another couple (Americans) with her visiting mother, also went. The first picture shows them together on the ferry boat ride across the Bodensee (Lake Constance).

We had a wonderful time at the temple. The first session was in German, the second in Italian.

As you can see, it was not raining that day.

On the way to and from the temple, we discovered Niederbipp, famous in song and story (well, not in song, but the Remembering Isaac books). Actually, the fictional place was supposed to be in Pennsylvania, but we found it in Switzerland.

Lastly, this was not actually taken that day, but I thought this was good as any place to put it, here is our dragon. It is a tree near our apartment. Somehow, the top decided to split and point to the North. It looks like a dragon roaring.

Unusual sights

This is a less serious post.

I have been wanting to get a marshmallows picture for sometime and finally got some today.

What do you think? Someone from the sky dropping marshmallows to the ground?

Maybe they came from the zeppelin...

... and why do all the apple orchards have nets or plastic covering them? Could it be to protect them from the falling marshmallows?

... and I have always wondered about the tilting blue house...

Well, here are some explanations. The farmers cut their hay/grass several times each year and stuff it into those white (and sometimes light green) plastic packages - that look like large marshmallows. Apparently, they are treated so that the hay "sours" making for a favorite food for the cows in the winter. Usually the "marshmallows" are collected and stored in rows at the end of the field, but at first they just look like marshmallows dropped from the sky.

The Zeppelin company (ZF) makes and flies zeppelins, mostly around the lake, Lake Constance, and we see them once in a while. They are pretty cool. I understand that people can go for rides in them but they are very expensive, probably 200 Euro (about $260) for one ride.

The apple orchards are usually covered by vast plastic sheeting or netting. At first I wondered whether that helped keep insects away, or possibly to guard against frost. I was told that the apple produce here is so important to the economy and one hail storm can ruin the whole thing. They figured it was cheaper to buy huge amounts of plastic and cover the trees, than to buy crop insurance. I guess the hail storms here are pretty fierce.

As for the blue house. I have no idea. It is just there on the corner near Ravensburg. I almost wonder whether it has anything to do with the Ravensburger game and puzzles company. It is the same color as their famous blue triangle. The house has no doors or windows. It just looks kind of like one of those Monopoly game houses.

Last is not really anything weird. It is a picture of the tunnel we go through to get to our Dornbirn, Austria Elders. We went there today for our district meeting. The tunnel is the Pfander Tunnel and runs for almost 7 kilometers (about 4 1/2 miles). Up until today, we (all traffic) has been able to run only through the west tunnel (the one of the right). Today, they finally opened up the east tunnel and we drove through it. I guess they are doing some more work on the west tunnel now that the new side is done. Hopefully we will soon have both tunnels working so we will be able to have two lanes each way.