A Wonderful Weekend in Europe

Thought for the day:  Sartre went into a French cafe and asked for a cup of coffee without cream. The waitress said, "I'm sorry, monsieur, but we're out of cream. May I bring it to you without milk?"

No, Smarticus and I didn't go to France to celebrate our anniversary. It was more like... Germany. (NOT Germany, but kinda like it...)

Where we went was to the delightful alpine village of Helen, which is located in north Georgia. It's about all kinda things German: architecture, beer, food, clothing, beer, shops, music, more beer. Lots of flowers. Lots of walking. Lots of fun.

We got up there too early to check into the hotel, so we visited a place called Duke's Creek, a rock and gem grubbing place just outside of town. It's a little different from the places where we panned for gold and gems last year, because the owner laces the buckets of grubbing dirt with goodies he dug up in other states. In the picture is my favorite find: a hunk of turquoise as big as my hand, which he brought home from an Arizona dig.

Oh, by the way, she said breezily, we had lunch in Munich. Okay, okay, okay, so if ya want to be strictly technical about it, we went to Helen's version of Munich's famous Hofbrauhaus. A verrrrry neat place.

The sign over the front and side entrances says Gateway to Europe. Feels like it, too, when you walk inside. Lots of gorgeous dark woods, artwork and old photographs.

Check out this cool mural that's on the side of the restaurant.

Now, I wouldn't be me if I failed to show you this next picture...

This sign totally cracked me up. Know why? It was pointing the way to the... bathroom. (Ya gotta love the German language.)

Our table overlooked the river, where a couple fishermen in waders were trying (rather foolishly, I might add) to share the shallow water with a steady stream of rafters. Very entertaining! We even saw a dog  floating down the river in his very own tethered raft.  Oh, and of course, the food was yummy, especially the potato salad. (German, of course!) Alas, we were too full to sample the straight-from-Munich homemade apple strudel.

I didn't take this picture. It's courtesy of Wikimedia, and was obviously taken in December. But it gives you an idea of what some of the shop exteriors look like. There's all kinds of shops on a labyrinth of streets. Lots of musicians scattered here and there, too, but the music wasn't overpowering, and didn't overlap, even when the musicians were fairly close together. And very little of the music was of the oom-pa-pa variety. (I suspect tubas... and costumes... may be more prevalent during Oktoberfest.)

This sweet little Alana Falls and garden were located in a park at the side of the road. Lots of gardens and potted flowers abound in the village, making for a very picturesque ambiance. Plenty of benches scattered around, too, thank goodness, because we did a LOT of walking. (And resting.)

This is part of a mural painted on the exterior wall of a place called Charlemagne's Kingdom. Inside, the exhibit hall contains a massive HO gauge train layout, depicting Germany from the North Sea to the Alps.

No one photograph can fully capture the size and intricacy of this creation. Painstakingly built by owner Will Lindhorst, who came to the United States from Oldenburg, Germany in 1963, the layout measures twenty by fifty feet, and contains four hundred feet of railroad tracks. All the buildings are allegedly modeled after actual buildings in Germany, and there are 5000 hand-painted figures, hot air balloon, a three-ring circus, and just about everything else you can imagine.

Here's a better shot of the hot air balloons when they "floated" closer to where we were standing. Cool, huh? There were some other bits of whimsy here and there, too. Like a spiffy dragon beside an impressive castle on the side of the mountain.

Oh, and a couple of saucer-shaped UFOs, too. See them? One is in the air... and the other, crashed into the mountain, is engulfed in a ball of flame and smoke. I have a feeling Herr Lindhorst had a lot of fun creating his Kingdom, don't you? We sure had fun looking at it.

Here's a shot of some of the rafters coming down the river through town. Most of the groupings of rafts are actually tied together. For safety, I guess, although the water appears to be quite shallow.

This is what I had for dinner on our anniversary. ( I MEANT to take a picture of it as soon as the server brought it to me, but, um, I forgot.)  Anyhow, it's sauerbraten, a big half-eaten (erp) potato dumpling, and red cabbage. Very good. Our other option that evening was to go to a big Bavarian fest that was taking place, but since I don't drink beer, and Smarticus enjoyed a little too much of it the night before, we decided this lovely little restaurant was more to our liking. If I remember right, it was called Bodensee. Something like that... it's named after a river in Germany.

Smarticus opted for a wurst sampler platter... with sauerkraut and fried potatoes. It must have been very good. When I was taking a picture of it, he said oh-so-lovingly... Every hog to its own trough! HA! (I tell ya, such romance.)

Alas, once again, we had no room left for dessert. With such a mouth-watering selection of  decadent desserts offered in every restaurant, it's hard to believe we didn't sample a single one of them. Or any of the homemade candy and pastries offered in the shops, either. Oh well. Maybe next time. (Next time, I think I'll start with dessert.)

On the way home, we stopped at this antique mall just outside Helen. The house it's in is the oldest  in the county. (circa 1874, or so) Just look at those porches! The original wood floor inside is in surprisingly good condition, and every single room on every single floor is packed with wonderful, glorious antiques and collectibles. Decent prices, too!


All in all, it was a wunderbar way to get away from it all for a few days. Ya know, our wedding may have taken place over forty-five years ago, but the celebration ain't over yet. And I hope it never is.

Oh, two things I'd like to tell you before I go. One, I read an OUTSTANDING book of poetry that I think you might enjoy, too. It was written by fellow blogger Joanne Faries, and is called Wordsplash Poetry Puddle: Hazy Memory. She sure knows how to tap into familiar memories most of us share. I highly recommend it. You can get it on Amazon. She has a couple other poetry books there, too, but I haven't read them. Yet.

Second, Screwing Up Alexandria, Connie Keller's latest book in her Screwing Up Time series was released a couple days ago. I bought it, but haven't read it yet. Judging by her first two books, I'm sure to love this one, too. It's a YA time-travel through history kinda book suitable for all ages. Some humor, great sense of history, and lots of fun.

                                         Talking about fun, y'all have a great weekend!

                                   Until next time, take care of yourselves. And each other.

Serendipity Shines

Thought for the day:  It's a bizarre but wonderful feeling to arrive dead center of a target you  didn't even know you were aiming for.  [Lois McMaster Bujold]

The stones found in our first scoop of pay dirt.

Ms. Bujold is absolutely right, and what she's describing is what I'd call serendipity, which Lawrence Block defines as Look for something, find something else, and realize what you've found is more suited to your needs than what you thought you were looking for. 

Have you ever experienced something like that? Happens to me all the time.

As mentioned in a couple previous posts, for our forty-fourth anniversary, Smarticus and I decided to celebrate our golden years by going to the north Georgia mountains for a few days to try our hands at gold and gem panning.

 I promised to tell you today what kind of gem I picked to have cut, polished and mounted for a necklace. Although tempted to go with the large emerald, I decided on a garnet. Surprised? So was Smarticus. Before I show you the finished product, and tell you why it turned out to be such a serendipitous choice, how about some fun facts about gems?

• Sapphires come in all colors of the rainbow, not just blue. How 'bout that? And get this: know what red sapphires are? Rubies! Who knew?
• Amethyst (violet) and citrine (yellow) are made of the same mineral... beryl. Excessive heat can change a stone's color from one to the other. (Hmmm, that'd make for an interesting necklace choice for a woman experiencing hot flashes, eh?)
• Aquamarine and emerald also come from the same mineral.
• Violet-blue iolite has the same polarizing capability as a pair of sunglasss. Allegedly, Vikings used to look through a piece of iolite to help them locate the sun on a cloudy day.
• Ancient Greeks named amber from their word for electron, because if rubbed, it gives off static electricity. (I'll give ya some static if you rub me the wrong way, too.)
• Fossilized tree sap must be at least 30 million years old to be considered amber. (Prior to that, I guess it's just stale sap.)
• If you sand malachite, it can give off a poisonous dust.
• When exposed to radiation, diamonds turn green. (Hmm, I wonder if there's an industrial application to take advantage of this quality?)
• Marlene Dietrich was renown for her massive jewelry collection, especially her emeralds, which she wore in most of her movies. However, when hosting a dinner party one evening, she couldn't find her mega-carat emerald ring anywhere. (The report I read said 37.41 carats, but I find that hard to believe.) Anyhow, the ring turned up, safe and sound. Inside a guest's slice of cake. (I'm guessing there was no finders-keepers rule invoked.)
• The word amethyst comes from the Greek methustos, which means not intoxicated. The ancient Greeks often made their drinking vessels from amethyst, in the belief that using them would prevent imbibers from getting drunk. (But offither, you muthn't arreth me... I'm methustos.)

                                             Okay, ready to see my garnet necklace?

Beautiful, isn't it? It has a deep reddish purple color, and no, I didn't pick it because the color reminded me of a nice glass of merlot. Okay, so maybe I did. So sue me. It's a pretty color. But in spite of my shallow choice based on a pretty color, choosing a garnet for the occasion actually turned out to be ... how shall I put this?... a brilliant choice.

Are you familiar with the Greek myth about Persephone? She was the daughter of Demeter, the goddess of the harvest. When Persephone accidentally fell into the Underworld, Hades wanted her to stay and be his wife, but Demeter was so distraught, she said she wouldn't let anything grow on Earth until Persephone was returned to her. Before allowing her to leave him, Hades gave Persephone a pomegranate, the sweet fruit of the dead, in the belief that if she tasted it, she would come back to him. She ate six of its seeds, and as a result, she thereafter spent six months of the year with her mother, and the other six with Hades.

So what does that have to do with a garnet, you ask? The garnet got its name from the Latin punica garanatum, which means pomegranate... partly because the coloring of some garnets is similar to the color of pomegranate seeds, and partly because the ancient Greeks considered the garnet to be a symbol for lasting love, and would give them to their lovers to ensure their return.

See? A perfect anniversary present, right? Talk about serendipity! Sometimes serendipity is just intention unmasked. [Elizabeth Berg, The Year of Pleasures]

                                           Oh, and that's not ALL...

Here's a picture of three of our grandchildren taken a couple years ago. The cutie sitting on the toy car? Believe it or not, her name is...  Persephone.

Yep, serendipity out the wazoo.



Serendipity is looking in a haystack for a needle and discovering a farmer's daughter. [Julius Comroe, Jr.]

Serendipity is putting a quarter in the gumball machine and having three pieces come rattling out instead of one — all red. [Peter H. Reynolds]

Serendipity is having the good sense to fall in love with your best friend.  [me]

Oh, that necklace isn't the only perfect memento we brought home with us. We also found these smooching salt and pepper shakers in an antique shop. What can I say? I love whimsy.

                                    Until next time, take care of yourselves. And each other.

When love feels like magic, you call it destiny. When destiny has a sense of humor, you call it serendipity.