Local Miscellenia

A lot of our work this past week has been around the area. This time we have more pictures of some of the unique and interesting sights near our city. As mentioned before, we are working more with some of the active members in doing their genealogy - and we have had some success in finding information, mainly through the Internet on Familysearch and Ancestry.com.

This area is mainly Roman Catholic with the minority being Lutheran (Evangelisch). Of course, we are an even smaller minority. Most of the local support structures of society are Catholic, e.g. Kindergartens, social help organizations, hospitals, customs, holidays, even the greetings on the street (Grüss-Gott!). In the next post I include the Fastnet or Fasching parade and preparations. It also means that the public records are mainly Catholic. Fortunately, a lot of the local birth/marriage/death records are filmed and indexed by the church and also by Ancestry.com.

Now here are the pictures.

Sister B took this shot as we drove by. It really came out fairly surrealistic in appearance, but it really is real, except for the small reflections in the sky from our window. We drive by this big blue house almost every day. It is interesting how well it blended with the sky in this photograph. It is completely untouched by Photoshop.

We visited Kochwerk where Derick works as a cook. This is Elder Kinghorn with Derick.

and this is Elder George overlooking "Derick's Valley," the valley next to where Derick lives.

On the road near where our church meets is this busy intersection, I think the warning sign is interesting.

Here is another sign along a road we take often on our way to and from Friedrichshafen. Watch out for that crazy tree!

Yes, we finally had a little snow. This is looking out our west window.

This is on the road on the way into the city from the west side. The Spital tower is on the right, the Mehlsack tower on the left.

This is the Gemalte (painted) tower.

This is Blaser (trumpet) tower 

These are interesting displays. The bear automatically dips the wand into the soap water and blows bubbles.

These are small little kids tricycles that you control with a tall handle. The name is interesting. Would you give your little child something called "Puky?"

A little local wildlife. Someone just had this camel on display in the city center and had a cup for people to put coins into.

This is near where the camel was. This is on a Saturday morning when they have a large market going in the middle of the city. This is the Marienplatz, mainly for pedestrians and a lot of shops along the way. People are always out walking around, even when it is cold.

This is looking towards the part of the market area where they have stands for selling Bratwursts and other local eats. The trailer on the far left sells Käsespätzele, or a local speciality of cheese noodles. These are nothing like noodles we had in America. They are what is meant in the Sound of Music song, "My Favorite Things" when they say "schnitzel with noodles." It really is a very tasty meal here.