The our friend from California arrived: Laura! She wanted to spend one week to get to know Lago di Garda and buy a house with us. Both of which a major adventure!

Getting to know the lake, ferry rides across, strolling through little towns, shopping, hiking, of course eating and drinking, we tried our best to share our love of this beautiful part of the world.

Laura is fun, she is very enthusiastic and easy going, and she also fell in love with Lago di Garda. It is October though, the weather is a hit and miss, but the amount of people is a blessing. Almost none! No problem to get a seat anywhere, no problem with parking, every store owner treats you as if they depend on you. Nice!

With Laura we attended a cooking class in Lazise that was a lot of fun. Cusina by Fracca is the name of the cooking school and it’s run by Ivan & Mirco, two brothers, who really know what they’re doing!

We learned to make gnocchi that we ate with sage butter and tagliatelle with tomato basil sauce. Rose and red wine made us all feel like the pros and lots of laughter made this class a full success!

And while we were cooking, we listened to this: “Felicita” by Albano and Romina Powers – a classic / throwback to my childhood: Die Hitparade im ZDF

https://open.spotify.com/artist/1c0wBsDBu0NqpvxBqjYjZS?si=0cCdJIGURyKOqyxbnvYIUA

As a little treat, they even asked me (3 times) to work with them next summer – hahaha! I feel flattered 😎

Last little adventure of this week with Laura: Alpe del Garda in Tremosine, a cheese & butter production place that has a nice restaurant (Tagliatelle con fungi porcini was delicious!) and a quite big specialty retail store with local honey, truffle, wine, cheeses, porcini mushrooms, spices, pasta, meat & salami, olive oil and everything else you think you’d like to taste!

Our time here is filled and almost overflowing! Usually I teach 3 classes in the fall semester, 2 of which require Zoom meetings. But then I was asked to teach an additional class that requires 2 Zoom meetings a week. That means not only preparing a new class, but also teaching 4 classes on Zoom per week. And because of the time difference to California, which is 9 hours, I teach 4 times at night. That sucks!

The good busy is that we really enjoy our company here and, despite the rainy weather, we do lots of fun things together.

Our first week here in Muslone we shared with Jürgen & Anja, my brother & sister-in-law. We ate a lot, drank a lot…..

….. and we were busy house hunting!

Some of the “houses” were loaded with projects …..

….. and others had top notch gorgeous views!

It was a very interesting week, I can tell you!

One time we waited for a real estate agent in front of the church, when an old woman came out of the church and said “casa casa casa”. My basic minimal Italian language skills told me: this woman is here to show us a house. She grabbed my hand and pulled me to a house, but it was not the house we had scheduled to see. Well, since our realtor didn’t show up, we thought we might as well look at her “casa casa casa” and see what she has to offer. That house we actually really liked and had a closer look at few days later with the official listing agent. We also brought in Filippo, a local contractor, who only speaks Italian. And Donatella, a local interpreter, who only speaks Italian and German, then it was me, who only speaks German and English and Ted, who speaks English. Can you imagine Ted asking a question to Filippo? And Filippo answering? And Donatella and the agent exchanging the latest gossip in town and me having creative ideas that I gestured to Filippo while Ted and the agent try to talk about cost? And everything simultaneously in the typical high volume Italian language with an abundance of hand gestures and laughter?!?! It was a blast! With conversations like that you don’t need a hearing aid, you need ear plugs!

There are three spots I travelled to that stood out to me for being absolutely quiet. So quiet that you only hear the blood pumping through your ears: one was in the western fjords in Iceland, one at the Sahara dessert in Morocco and then there is Muslone in Italy. High above the Lago di Garda, with amazing views to Monte Baldo at the opposite side of the Lake or all the villages lined up on the shore of the Lake like pearls on a string. It is beautiful in the morning, during the day and at night!

We’ve been in Muslone a few times – this time with my brother Jürgen. Ted and Jürgen – diehard brothers-in-law

Floating through Munich feels like stepping back into my past. I’ve lived here for 15 years, between finishing highschool and until I moved to the US when I was 33 years old. Some things never changed in Munich, like the Tram- or streetcar system, which was and still is my favorite means of transportation. Despite being the slowest, it has the best views, I love the squeaky sounds of it and the fresh air you get at each stop.

And then there are those wonderful discoveries, stores I never knew existed, which make Munich a unique destination. At least for me. Biggest discovery this time:

ORAG Schneiderzubehör („sewingsupplies“) was recommended by another cute store, the Wolltanke („yarngasstation“), where I stagged up on more materials for my next project. To my question where to find interesting buttons, the owner of Wolltanke told me about ORAG and where to find it. And ORAG just made me feel like in heaven!!!

ORAG has everything you need for people like me! This would be a perfect birthday: one day at ORAG, with a cup of tea here and there (and an unlimited budget of shopping of course 😁)

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Another surprise is the reconnection with my Highschool colleagues. Three months ago we had our 40th highschool reunion that was pre-shadowed with this strange mix of anticipation and anxiety, a nervousness of being judged, welcomed, envied or accepted, Three months later, another reunion, this time a mini version with 7 people instead of the 45 in June. We met at the beautiful Augustiner Beergarden in Munich, we had a tasty dinner and great conversations!

Getting to know my classmates now, so many years later, was interesting for a few reasons. One was that – way back when – we were not very interested in each other because our fields of interest didn’t overlap. My majors in highschool were Art and English, most of my classmates had chosen math, physics or biology. This and the low puberty self confidence made it impossible to mingle.

When we meet now, our fields of expertise is still a very wide range, some work as lawyers or engineers, they work at the radio station or at a college in California (hint: that would be me 🤨). And now we are not afraid to talk to each other. Lots of stories, adventures we had, anecdotes from way back when. We talk about our children, how many grey hair they caused us and how proud we are of them, mostly in that sequence. We talk about life, memories and we are thankful that one of us didn’t give up to organize all this: Roland, hardworking and dedicated reunion organizer, who doesn’t take no for an answer! Thank you!

Eschenbach is a cute town, near Grafenwöhr, an army playground where soldier can train and practice their skills. So Eschenbach is right next to it. It has a nice Oldtown area with colorful buildings lined all the way around the Marienplatz.

Each of those building had a plaque with its very own history: the year it was built, which profession the owners had, when other people moved in and which profession they had etc. it’s quite interesting to read all those butchers and bakers, linen weavers and taylors, where the mayor lived and the bar keeper from Italy!

And as I said, each house has its own plaque:

So far, so good! Eschenbach is nice, but you should not go visit when you’re hungry! Even at lunch, even on a Friday!!! We tried 7, SEVEN restaurants in and around Eschenbach before we found restaurant number 8 that was open. Weird!

Yes, there is a thing like the deepest hole in the world: it is 9101 meters (9953 yards) to be precise, a hole drilled into the crust of the world. Now you wonder: why? Me too! But once you visit the drillsite and walk through the information center, you’ll get a lot of answers to all the questions you’ve never even asked 🤩

Windischeschenbach is a small town in the northeastern corner of Bavaria. A stone throw away from Thuringia and the Czech republic. Before the wall between Eastern and Western Germany came down in 1989, this area was called “Ostzonenrandgebiet” (eastern zone border area), a neglected, unattractive and ugly area with lots of forests destroyed by acid rain that was caused by improper or non-existing industry emissions in Eastern Germany and the Czech Republic. Nobody wanted to live there, it was unattractive and unhealthy. Today it is beautiful! 35 years since the wall came down, 35 years of improvement and beautification. No acid rain, but rolling hills with pretty little villages, mostly farmland, crops and cows and: the drill tower of Windischeschenbach.

Info Flyer:

https://www.geozentrum-ktb.de/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/2015_Flyer-GeoTourGranit.pdf

‘Continental deep-drilling program of the Federal Republic of Germany’), abbreviated as the KTB borehole, was a scientific drillingproject carried out from 1987 to 1995 near Windischeschenbach, Bavaria. The main super-deep bore hole reached a depth of 9,101 m (29,859 feet) in the Earth’s continental crust.

The drill hole had a width of 70 cm at the beginning (27.5”) and narrowed down to 16 cm (6.3”) at the depth of 9101 meters. Conditions are very different and became more and more difficult the deeper you drill. Immense pressure and heat (275 Celsius = 527 F) made it impossible to drill deeper. The material of the drill itself and the sample tubes had to be changed as you go, delaying work, challenging circumstances.

When you arrive at the drilling site you wonder why it’s on top of a hill instead of a valley in-between – that could have saved them 50 meters of drilling, right? But everything made sense the more we learned at the information center.

The location of Windischeschenbach was not chosen to boost this poor, neglected Ostzonenrandgebiet and give them something to do and make them attractive. The reason for exact that location is that the earth crust is relatively cool there, making drilling easier. Another reason is that millions of years ago, when the continents were formed, they shifted and moved, they just didn’t float around on the surface like an oily dot in a broth. Plate dynamics happened deep down, pushing matter up to the surface and squeezing layers together, Windischeschenbach is in a location that started near Antarctica! It moved north to the Mediterranean, then further north to the Ostzonenrandgebiet. Little did they know! Well, here they are now and what is really interesting is the fact that all those layers, the plankton from Antarctica for example, were pressed together tightly und pushed up to the crust, right there in Windischeschenbach. On top of the hill and not in the valley. Drilling right there made the most sense: finding many layers in 9101 meters with relative cool temperatures was ideal! Right there in Windisch-you-know-where!

It’s actually funny when you drive to Windisch-you-know-where: most villages have very short names like Bach (stream) or Berg (hill), but nothing tongue breaking like you-know-the-town-with-the-drill tower…

Yesterday was the official opening ceremony of the 189th Oktoberfest with the mayor of Munich opening the first beer barrel at 12pm. It is always an important prediction of how many strokes he needs. The fewer strokes, the better a mayor he is. It shows that you have the priorities right, that you are a real Bavarian leader. Mayor Reiter only needed 2 strokes yesterday, showing that he is a good leader and will have another successful year reigning this 1.5 million city.

The inaugural Oktoberfest was first celebrated in Munich in 1810 in honor of Prince Ludwig’s marriage to Princess Therese von Sachsen-Hildburghausen. The festivities began October 12, 1810, and lasted nearly a week until October 17, ending with an exciting horse race.

A few years the festivities didn’t happen: wars, cholera outbreaks and the most recent Covid 19 made the Oktoberfest be cancelled.

https://www.oktoberfest.de/en/magazine/war-bombs-cholera-and-the-history-of-oktoberfest

The second day of the festival started with a big parade of folklore groups, marching bands, dance and – very importantly – the brewery horse carriages transporting the beer barrels to the fairgrounds. The parade is 7 km long with 1000 attendees. It’s spectacular, interesting, loud and amazing!

After the 3-hour spectacular parade we went to the Oktoberfest fairgrounds, „die Wiesn“ and had some fun right there:

What a great annual event this is that my sister Petra chose to visit: Mut zum Hut, The biggest hat and accessory event in Europe, with vendors from all over the place, fashion shown, entertainments, inspirations and AAAhs and OOOhs, look and this and have you seen thats. So much to see, how did they make that and what in the world were they thinking? Great art, supplies, ideas, all packed into a picturesque castle in Neubirg an der Donau. The show alternates annually and will be held inside the castle in Ingolstadt next year again. Of course I had to buy a hat, a necklace made of paper and some earrings….. Petra, her daughter Stephanie and I spent a whole day there, which required some tea and cake to keep us upright.

So we visited this cute little coffee house right across the castle in Neuburg, that is sooo charming. Right out of a picture book!