Things We Stumbled Upon

Over Conference weekend we all traveled with Jared to Bavaria where he was refereeing some High School soccer games. He was the ref for two games in Bamberg on Friday night and then four games in Vilseck on Saturday. Our initial plan was to stay on base in Vilseck and while it would have been very convenient, I didn't love the idea of two nights in a hotel room with one queen bed, a pull out couch, and a pull out chair. That would have left two kids sleeping on the floor and no room to move around. In the end I was happy to find a bed and breakfast apartment for the same price as the room on base. We had the top two floors of an old farmhouse, which gave us plenty of room to spread out and make ourselves comfortable in the two bedrooms (the kid's room had glow in the dark wallpaper!), office area, living room, bathroom, and kitchen/dining room. After the two evening games in Bamberg Friday night we were happy when we finally arrived at our bed and breakfast and appreciated the owner waiting up until 10 o'clock to show us around the place. We got up early Saturday morning, dropped Jared off at the field, and started looking for something to do. The whole weekend was very last minute and I hadn't taken the time to research things to do in the area. In the end I decided that we would ask people what might be fun to see, or look for signs to area attractions. Every person I asked said the same basic thing - there's not much to do in the Vilseck/Grafenwöhr area but my kids might like the big indoor play place in town. Well, I wasn't looking for an indoor play place, I can do that where we live, I can do that in America. I wanted to do something more . . . German.

Having had no luck with asking the locals what to do on a beautiful, sunny Saturday, we got in the van and drove from Vilseck to the other base at Grafenwöhr. I thought we might see something interesting along the way. Um yeah, there's just fields and forest between the two bases. Since we hadn't found anything to do, we decided to explore the base. We saw a sign for the thrift shop and were happy to find it open and having a ridiculously good sale - we bought a bag full of clothes and a baby doll for $4.50. As we drove further into the base I saw a sign for the arts and crafts store and it was also open. Amazing! I know it sounds strange to be happy that stores are open on a Saturday, I mean, why wouldn't they be open on Saturday? Many of the stores around here have crazy hours and they are only open on Wednesday afternoons and alternating Saturdays or something weird like that, so we were lucky to be there on a Saturday when they were open for business. Back to the wonderful, amazing, makes me want to move to Graf, craft store - we spent at least an hour looking around the place. I was most excited to see that they carried fabric and bought some to bring home and have fun with. Last week I made this tote bag with some of the fabric I found there.

After we were done aimlessly driving around we went back to Vilseck and saw something we had missed that morning - a base lake. So the girls and I stopped and spent some time at the lake where we decided to follow the nature path that goes around the lake. About ten minutes into our walk we stopped to look at a little waterfall and then we heard this strange crunchy, rustling noise. It was a little snake traveling through the reeds by the water. One snake sighting was all it took to end our lovely walk. We went to pick up Jared, grabbed some dinner, and went back to our bed and breakfast to relax and enjoy the rest of our time there. We explored the town we were staying in a little bit and then watched Tangled, the girls current favorite.

We didn't want to come home having done nothing special that weekend so the next day as we made our way home we continued to look for something, anything, to see and do before we got back. If there is something interesting nearby, there will be a large brown sign before the autobahn exit. We decided to follow the next brown sign we saw and ended up at a castle in some small town. It was fun to just make our way there without really knowing what we would find. The castle itself was pretty much like every other castle we've been to except this castle had a small museum. This particular town is known for a convent where, for about 500 years, a group of nuns have been teaching the women and girls of the town how to make lace. It was fun to see all the beautiful lace creations, try making our own lace (a craft at which none of us are gifted), and watch a video of women who are actually really, really good at making lace. It was crazy to see how quickly they wove the separate strands into these beautiful, intricate patterns.

Jared and Samantha making some lace

Also, the castle was a hotel and how cool would it be to stay at a castle? Who knows, maybe someday (if we can ever find that particular castle again) we'll go back and stay for a night or two. See the room at the top of the tower? That's the one I'd chose if we ever do stay at the castle.