rockover

Germany logs 1 & 2 that never made it the first time The first time I tried to send this, I did a spell check and the email blew up. Now I have to start again, only I don´t think this will be as good (not as animated, nor is ARO here to give me the correct names). It is a bit warmer here than anticipated, although when the wind blows, it gets chilly, also when the "sun" goes down, it gets chilly pretty quick. So far, we´ve seen the sun 2 times. We are staying in Frankfurt where Azucena´s company is doing a trade show. The first day, after freshening up, we went to the Christmas Market. Imagine Lakeline Mall with booths set up in the parking lot all around the mall. This is what it is like. Only it gets crowded because each aisle is about 10 - 15 feet wide. And rows upon rows of shopping pleasure. I´d divide the booths into 3 categories. Wine - hot wine, food (nuts; chocolate anything; and meat), and everything else (clothes; toys; ornaments; and lots of other stuff). Anyway, it´s been a fun few days. All taxi´s are beige and Mercedez. All. Got in a new one today that showed the fare on the mirror. There was some more from the original email, but I can´t recall so if I think of it later, I´ll include it if necessary. Log 2 Ok, now back to Germany. By the way, the Euro is roughly about 1-1 to the US dollar. We went downtown in Frankfurt the first day to the Christmas Market here. We didn´t buy anything, but just looked around to see what all there was and drink the wine. When we had enough, we started heading back and came to a section that we missed and it was more booths. So we followed and followed and kept going until we finally said enough. It´s cold and damp and the Market may never come to an end. Besides, once you´ve seen about 10 booths, they all are about the same, just different people. We traveled to Heidleburg and visited a castle there. I wasn´t too thrilled by it because we couldn´t get to a lot of places and a lot of the rooms had panelling covering the original. After the castle, we walked down to the town (over 300 steps, I know because they had numbers painted on the steps). In town, we went to the Christmas Market to meet some of ARO´s coworkers. They were at one end of the Market and we were at the other so it took about 15 minutes to meet up with them. Another thing about these markets is the Hot wine "gluhwein". You buy the wine in a small mug, which they charge a deposit for. You can take the mug to any other booth and get a refill for regular price. In Frankfurt, each booth had a different mug. I may like to collect things, but I´m not going to collect all the different wine mugs. That´s a lot of drinking. This stuff is actually pretty good. A red wine with something added to it and they keep them in crock pots. Each market has it´s own Christmas Tree(s) and a stage for Carolers. They've got lots of decorations. On top of the booths, some will have figurines and so of those are animated. There is at least one merry-go-round at each market. They all shut down at 9 pm also. By 9:10, the place is deserted. As you can see, we got our email problems resolved, but recreating what remains of the original emails is not easy. You've already gotten everything else and some of the above may be duplicated. Sorry about that. We really had a great time. Really. Azucena said so. Signing off (again...) Till next trip Randy and Azucena