The thing about the German language, is that they love their consonants. All of them. And they don’t mind words with 4 or 5 in a row, and they do want you to use all of them. Occasionally in my German class, I would come across a word with somany sounds that I could only say the word very slowly. Too fast and I got tongue tied. It’s like the opposite of the Hawaiian language, all vowels. Have you noticed that certain consonants don’t exist? That why you get a fish named Humuhumunukunukuapua`a. After a while, I guess you get the hang of saying words with the back to back hard sounds like tscht.

When Will I and I left Prague, we actually went back to Germany. We went to Nürnberg and Frankfurt am Main. One thing we were excited about was staying in a hotel. We used my points to stay at a Hampton Inn, and even though Airbnbs are good for certain reasons, sometimes it’s nice to sleep on big hotel beds and have the few breakfast is in the morning. 

My husband had been to Germany before. He was stationed there, in the army. One of his main goals was to find himself a plate of jägerschnitzel. Schnitzel is pork that is pounded flat, breaded and fried. Jägerschitzel is that pork with mushroom gravy on it. It turned out to be very hard to find in cities farther from where he was stationed. The only mushroom gravy we found was a rahm or cream based gravy. But we tried. And we ate all of the pork. So much that when we left Nürnberg I was like, only salads for the next two days please. Ugh.

We also saw a lot of “old” buildings. I put old in quotes because what I learned in these Bavarian German cities is that most of the old building were partially or mostly destroyed by Allied bombing in WWII. So they were rebuilt it. Churches, houses, and even parts of castles.

Ex. View from the tower window of Nürnberg castle.

Picture of that view after WWII bombing.

So next time you day dream about old picturesque Bavaria, you might be day dreaming about something built in the 20th century.

We had fun in Germany. As usual, my favorite parts are times when I did almost nothing. Like when we found this sloped cobblestone covered corner of Nürnberg where everyone sat with their beer and dinner and picnicked. I sat with my coke and we people watched as the sun started to sink in the sky.