Fleischmarkt

Here's another one of those hard hitting news stories that Sandra didn't want to cover. So it's up to me again.

Fleischmarkt translates to meat market. We found this pamphlet on the counter of one of the food vendors at the Kaiserslautern Christkindlmarkt. This is an advertisement for the Fleischmarkt Aschara who happens to make a variety of pork sausages, including bratwurst. What I found most interesting about this whole layout was the rather humorous double entendre; meat market. Sausages versus a hot young lady. On top of that, there's a lot of suggestive imagery here too. Well, it certainly caught my eye so I guess it did its job.

Take a look at the company logo in the upper left. That red C, it's a sausage. Very clever again. German's can be funny people.

Oh, the . . . hmmm ist die aber lecker! translates to . . . hmmm but it is delicious! Is there another hidden meaning there?

You have to admit, it takes a smart advertising man to make sausages sexy.

Normandy - Thanksgiving 2010

No family visiting for the Thanksgiving weekend so we took off for the Normandy region of France. We planned to do the D-Day beaches and Mont St. Michel. It was a bit cold but a great weekend.

We got up Thanksgiving morning to the first snowfall of the season. We drove in pretty heavy snow the first couple hours but that eventually let up and the drive was non-eventful until we hit Paris. Paris has no orbital road and the shortest way to the highway leading out to the west and Normandy was through the southern part of the city. Our drive was already expected to take seven hours to get to Caen, France but the drive through Paris and the extremely congested traffic there cost us an additional 40 minutes to our expected arrival time.

Once west of Paris the drive went quite smoothly until we were about a half hour from Caen when we ran into snow again. Our plan was to stop at the Pegasus Bridge in Benouville which was just northeast of Caen and that’s what we did. The Pegasus Bridge operation is an incredible story of daring and precision when British forces in Horsa gliders landed in the early morning hours of June 6, 1944 to take control of a vital bridge crossing the Caen Canal just a few miles from the D-Day landing beaches. The museum there in Benouville is excellent, tells the story very well and was the perfect beginning of our D-Day experience.

This is what the Benouville Bridge, which it was known as then, looked like shortly after the operation in 1944. You can see some of the Horsa gliders in the background with their D-Day stripes. They landed at night, in an unpowered glider to within 47 meters of the bridge. British forces totally surprised the Germans and gained control of the bridge in just ten minutes.

Today, the original bridge, seen here, has been moved to the museum sight, very near where a new replacement bridge has been installed. The Pegasus Bridge was a draw bridge that pivoted up from a single side of the canal.

The bridge got it's name from the Pegasus patch worn by the British airborne unit that flew into D-Day in the Horsa gliders and took the bridge.

We had planned to drive up to Arromanches to see the Mulberry Harbor and Big Gun Batteries but since it was still snowing we thought it best to head to the hotel in Caen. That turned out to be a good decision since the six mile drive to the hotel took us two and half hours and since the first four miles was completed in ten minutes; the last two miles took us two hours, twenty minutes. The snow had caused severe problems in Caen and the slick roads slowed the traffic to a glacial pace. Happily, although we ran into some serious snow flurries later in the trip, it never again caused any impact on our time.

By the way, we stayed at the Kyriad City Center Hotel in Caen which was very nice. Good price and underground public parking across the street which included a hotel discount. One more, oh, by the way. We don’t know much French so wondered how to pronounce Caen: kān, kŏn? Neither, according the very nice folks at the hotel front desk, as close as I can show it here, kaw.

Friday was our D-Day experience. Jeff had built a nice plan and researched the information we needed at each stop. We drove direct to Omaha Beach, then to the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial, Pointe du Hoc, German Military Cemetery at La Cambe, Utah Beach and finally Ste. Mere-Eglise. That was a lot of stuff to do in one day and we had just enough time to make a little change in plans when we drove to Bayeux to see the nearly thousand year old Bayeux Tapestry. Back to Caen to the hotel and an evening meal. A truly awesome day complete.

Saturday morning we packed up and drove southeast to the English Channel and Mont St. Michel. We arrived there at 1030. The drive up to this tidal island and the first sight of the cathedral and surrounding village is truly amazing. Luckily, there were very few people already there so we had the place almost to ourselves. The narrow village streets with shops, hotels and restaurants are magnificent but also quite steep. There’s a great audio tour of the abbey with lots of history about the construction of the building and what life was like living there hundreds of years before. We left at 1330 (1:30PM) and started our eight hour drive home.

Here’s a couple of observations. French high speed highways, at least outside of Paris, were very nice; smooth and very light traffic, nothing at all like the heavy German traffic. A good portion of these French high speed highways are toll roads. It cost us about 100 Euros total in tolls to drive out to French coast and back to Germany. French gas stations don’t sell beer, they do sell champagne though.

Following are some of our photos from our trip to the Normandy region of France. Click on the photo to see a larger image.

Of course, we were there during the off season and it certainly showed. All the restaurants, bars and hotels were closed. But, it was nice to be there all by ourselves; a very moving experience to think of the sounds and images of that day.

Jeff on Omaha Beach.

Entry to the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial. They have a modern, interactive facility that tells the tale of the men that landed on the beaches June 6, 1944. A very impressive presentation.

The memorial at the Normandy cemetery. A real inspiring structure.

The grave of Colonel Theodore Roosevelt Jr, son of former President, Teddy Roosevelt. Colonel Roosevelt was awarded the Medal of Honor for rallying and leading his troops through intense enemy fire during the first wave of landings on Omaha Beach. He died of a heart attack six weeks later. He's buried next to his brother Quentin who, as a fighter pilot, was killed in 1918 during a World War I dog fight.

The setting for the Normandy cemetery is beautiful on the bluffs over looking Omaha Beach. The care of the entire facility is impeccable. Although the cemetery is operated by the US government it brings great pride and satisfaction to see the care and respect that the French caretakers give to these men and the cause that they fought for. The 172 acre cemetary contains the graves of 9,387 American service men. A very humbling and proud stop.

Ponte du Hoc was the location of German 155mm guns that, given their placement, would be able to fire upon naval vessels near both Omaha and Utah beach. US Army Rangers scaled the 100 foot cliffs here to gain control of this vital vantage point between the two US landing sights. Navy guns bombarded Ponte du Hoc and you can still see the craters that resulted.

I'm standing in one of the huge bunkers at Pointe du Hoc.

One of the pivot points for the big German guns implacements. When the Rangers took the sight they found that the guns had already been moved rearward to protect them from any possible enemy naval fire. Guess it worked but the Rangers still found and destroyed them.

The cemetary at La Cambe holds over 20,000 German dead. Over 30% are unknown. Jeff thinks that's because very soon after the allied landings, German forces were in retreat and unable to immediately recover their dead and wounded. The mound in the middle is a large unknown grave with representative Mother and Father figures on top.

Utah Beach.

US Navy Memorial at Utah Beach to remember the officers and sailors that took part in the D-Day landing.

Jeff on Utah Beach. Yeah, it was chilly.

The 82nd Airborne missed their planned jump points on June 6, 1944 and many paratroopers came down in the center of St-Mere-Eglise, which was heavily occupied by the Germans, just a few miles inland from Utah Beach. One particular paratrooper got hung up on the church in the city center. He was the only survivor of those that landed in the town. St-Mere-Eglise keeps a replica of that trapped paratrooper hanging from the church even today.

Stained glass window in the same church showing paratroopers sent to free the town.

The 25th D-Day anniversary window in the church. Lots of reference to the airborne units that liberated St-Mere-Eglise.

We ended our Friday visits seeing the Bayeux Tapestry, not surprisingly in Bayeux. The tapestry is almost a 1000 years old, 1.5 feet x 224 feet, and depicts the story of William the Conqueror (formerly known as William the Bastard, no kidding) who invaded England and took the crown at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. We're big Great Britain history buffs so this was a really amazing stop. This is just a tiny little part of the tapestry.

Saturday we were at Mont St. Michel and the only word to descibe it; amazing.

Since Mont St. Michel is a tidal island they have to warn folks about swimming and quicksand. This sign was on the way in. Interesting universal image to warn of quicksand, there in the middle.

The grand staircase to the Abbey.

The Abbey.

The Abbey cloister.

A copy of the Archangel Michael that sits atop of the cathedral spire. The gold plated St. Michael had to be placed on top of the Mont St. Michel steeple using a helicpoter.

Just before we started our 8 hour drive home. What a great day and an incredible three day trip.

One last observation. We stopped once at a highway rest stop to use the facilities. The women's toilet was a modern, 21st century Turkish toilet, kind of a oxymoron. Very clean. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Christkindlmartk

Yea!! The Christkindlmartk season has started in Germany. Most of the cities in Germany start their Christkindlmartk around 22-24 November and run until just prior to Chritstmas, the 23rd or 24th of December. A few even run until the end of December. Even small towns and villages will have some type of Christmas or Advent festival that runs for one to three days over a weekend during late November or early December.

Whatever the local community calls it, Christkindlmartk (Christ Child Market), Weihnachten (Christmas) Markt or Advent Markt, think of a wine festival with a winter theme and, of course, the winter temperatures to go along with it. Wine is still a major focal point of these festivals but this time of year they serve hot spiced wines and a favorite that all of these festivals serve is Glüwein, a hot, spiced, red wine. Glüwein is necessary to fend off the cold, damp air that's prevalent this time of year in Deutschland. Beyond that, the typical German festival faire is offered; schwein steak, bratwurst, pommes frites, sweets of all types, etc. Venders sell a lot more of the keep-warm kind of clothing; mittens, stocking caps, sweaters and more. Everything is decorated for the Christmas and winter season with lights, evergreen trees/branches, decorative glass balls, and all the other glitter and glitz.

Yeah, wine is still a big part of these winter festivals and Glüwein is king.

The first cup of Glüwein for 2010.

The big Christkindlmartk in our area is in Kaiserslautern which started last Monday night, 22 November. Jeff and I went to check it out Tuesday night. The K-Town festival takes place in the city center in the Schillerplatz. It winds around a few of the shopping streets that surround a large, gothic church. We checked out all the booths, had some food and, of course, Glüwein. The oldest gasthaus in Kaiserslautern, Spinnradl (Spinning Wheel), is right there in the middle of all the festivities so we just had to stop in for a König Pilsner.

Incredible backdrop to the entire festival.

Lots of fun things to see, eat, drink and buy.

Winter sweets same as the summer sweets, just better packaging.

Just looks like a great place to have fun.

Gotta have some rides for the kids.

Even the trash cans are in winter festival mode.

Here's a pretty cool, figuratively and literally, food and drink vendor set up. A huge German, pyramid Christmas windmill with a place to east and drink in the first level.

An interesting choice of yuletide incense for sale at one of the vendors.

Can't have a Christmas festival without some reindeers.

Who would have thought a couple of cold beers would be a great way to warm up? In the Spinnradl with a couple of König Pilsners.

There are three things at ever German festival, food, drinks and music. Here's the last ingrediant.

Hey, look at me, I'm with the band . . . again!

It was lots of fun. No snow yet but that's only a matter of time. This was just the first of many Christkindlmarkts. We've got a whole month to squeeze in as many as possible. Kind of sounds like August and September all over again.

It's Not Your Father's Autobahn

There are still sections of the German autobahn that have no posted speed limit which means you can drive as fast as you want; 120mph, 130mph even 150mph. However, because of posted speed limits, autobahn repair/construction and the volume of traffic itself, there are very limited opportunities to drive at those kinds of speeds.

Posted speed limits are the biggest buzz kill as far as driving fast on the autobahn. The recommended speed limit even when none is posted is 130 kph (82 mph). But a posted limit of 130 kph is now very common. Now, if there’s a curve, a steep hill, an on ramp, autobahn junction, rough road or a bridge, there can be posted speed limits down to 100 or 80 kph and in some extreme cases, 60 kph (37 mph). If you see this 60 kph sign to the right, you're in for some really slow autobahn driving.

The Germans take great pride in the quality of their autobahn and, as a result, road repairs are a common issue here in Deutschland. On a recent trip back from Munich, a 250 mile drive, we encountered ten repair/construction projects that slowed the traffic to 60 – 80 kph. One, at the junction of the A-7 and the A-6 just east of Heilbronn, where three lanes went down to just one, resulted in a one hour delay.

Of course, on any road, including high speed autobahns there are places that increase the risk of an accident; curves, hills, rough roads, junctions, merging lanes and areas of high winds. Other than the rough roads there are plenty of all these issues in Germany and the authorities have become very serious about reducing autobahn speeds in these areas. Because of that it’s very typical to see no posted speed become a posted 130, then 100, then 120, then no posted speed, then 100 and then 120, all within just a few kilometers. Very high Talbrucken (valley bridges) are common in Germany and with them, quite often, soaring winds occur, so a posted speed of 100 kph is typical.

Germany is right in the middle of Europe and so there’s traffic from all parts of the continent driving to and through. There are big, long haul trucks from Norway to Portugal, Great Britain to Russia. Cars are small here but there are a lot of them. Natural traffic congestion areas even result in posted signs that warn of a Stau (traffic jam) and when you see one, plan on slowing down, maybe even coming to a stop. Even in the areas where there are no posted speed limits, slower cars or trucks passing even slower vehicles crowd the autobahns. So you might just get up to speed, 120mph, only to very quickly slow down for traffic.

This is the sign you want to see on the autobahn. No speed limit. Go as fast as you want.

The autobahn can still be fun when you’re lucky enough to hit a long, open stretch of road with no posted speed limit. The best possibility of that is a Sunday, when those long haul trucks are not allowed on the autobahn unless they’ve paid a high price for a permit which very, very few of them do. But, if you’re making a trip of a couple hundred miles, there’s going to be points of frustration and delay, it’s just a matter of how much and when.

You run into some interesting things on the autobahn that result in a stau. The video below is what happened to us recently on Veterans Day just outside Ramstein Air Base.

The cause of this very slow, moving stau? An unannounced visit by the 1st Lady, Michelle Obama to Ramstein. During her short stay she traveled from Ramstein, across the the A-6, which is the autobahn in the video, to Landstuhl Hospital to visit some of our wounded troops. The German police shut down all access to the area around the autobahn where her motorcade crossed under the A-6.

Speeding Tickets

We’ve been here, driving in Germany, just over three months and, to this point, we’ve received three speeding notices. I’ve gotten two, a 56 kph in a 50, and a 130 kph in a 120. Jeff got one for doing 60 kph in a 50. Translating kilometers per hour to miles per hour, my tickets were for exceeding the speed limit by 4 mph and 6 mph respectively. Jeff’s was also for exceeding the speed limit by just 6 mph. Really nothing all that excessive and maybe that’s why all three of our notifications were warnings rather than actual, much more costly, tickets. (A friend got a 136 kph in a 130 and a 140 Euro fine.) You’ll note that I’ve said notices, because in each case we were notified by mail of the incident and fined 15 Euros. Typically, here in Germany, you’re notified by mail of a speeding incident because most tickets are now the result of being observed and photographed by an automatic, remote camera.

The German police use a number of different types of cameras. They have permanently fixed cameras that may be placed in an actual speed limit sign, in a very nondescript gray cylinder or a simple box on a pole. They have portable cameras that they can quickly put up and take down so that they can place them at any location where they think there may be a speeding problem.

The autobahns have these high tech speed limit and traffic advisory overhead signs. They can change the speed limit based on traffic and conditions. Some of these also have a speed camera conveniently placed inside.

See that gray column with the dark stripes on the right. That's a permanently placed speed camera. They put them in between traffic directions so that it can photograph speeders no matter which way they're driving.

Speed box on a stick.

This is what the portable speed camera looks like but when the police put them out it's not placed this obvious. The portable camera is well hidden until the very last second.

The Germans call being observed speeding by one of these cameras as getting “Flashed” because, as you pass, if you’re speeding, a very bright flash can be seen as your picture is taken. It’s so bright you have a pretty good idea that you just got caught. When you receive your speeding notice in the mail, in addition to your license plate number, there will also be a little fuzzy picture of you sitting there behind the wheel of your vehicle. That's not me in this picture but it shows just about what your picture looks like when you get your speeding notice.

In some ways, Germans aren’t very different from Americans. They can get pretty angry about a speeding ticket too. Because these portable, remote cameras are place and leave devices, left completely unprotected, there have been a number of incidents after being flashed where a German driver became so incensed that they turned around, returned to the camera and proceeded to destroy it with a club or axe or setting it on fire.

We think because of these speed cameras, most Germans are much more diligent about adhering to posted speed limits, especially if there’s a permanently placed camera that’s become well known to the local drivers. There’s a bridge over the Rhine River between Mainz and Wiesbaden that I’ve driven across hundreds of times to and from work. Twenty years ago the traffic flew across that bridge, ignoring the posted speed limit signs. Just a few weeks ago, driving across that same bridge, we noticed the traffic was moving along right at the posted speed, 80 kph, then, when passing a new speed limit sign, slowed to 60 kph as we approached the north side of the river. Sure enough, right there on the barrier between the two directions of traffic was the infamous nondescript gray cylinder.

Well, I was just about done with this blog but guess what just showed up in the mail, speeding notice #4, 76kph in a 70. Again, just 4mph over the speed limit. 10 Euro fine. Just another case of the Deutscher man keeping us down.