Well, on the way to Germany we stopped in Baltimore and got to reconnect with an old friend :D. Here we are on a walk with the sweetest doggo in Hampden, a neighborhood with a somewhat (from a modern perspective) sordid past, but quite fun these days 😀
We got to spend some time playing scrabble as well. Michael got to go first and really took a strong lead that wasn’t overcome by Erika…
We also got to go walk around downtown and see the water. It wasn’t especially busy but there were people walking around the harbor area. Some of the usual activities were not available, as depicted below when the water touring boats had plants growing in them!
Well, then we had some delays and a bit of a thrash trying to get through the Rotator (a contracted DoD flight) process into Germany…
…but we made it! Here is the first picture we took after leaving the terminal. KMC stands for “Kaiserslautern Military Community”, which is the area we live in, affectionately known as “K-Town”. We were able to get directly into our house as they thought we’d be there in May (hah!) so had it reserved for some time.
As you can see, it’s quite green here! The above is the view from our backyard. There’s a little running trail there. We are working on getting the yard “up to snuff”, as since it was unoccupied for a few months the constant battle against weeds has been not appropriately reinforced.
After spending two weeks in Quarantine, we were finally safe enough to wander around! We scheduled a trip with Outdoor Recreation to do Stand Up Paddle-boarding (SUPing) on the Moselle river with some hiking to follow. As you can see, it was very pretty!
The area is super green and also great as vineyards. The name of the town was Traben, and then another grew up across the bridge called Trarbach. Over the years, the two town merged and became Traben-Trarbach, as referenced in the sign above.
Here we are on the water. It was a lot of fun even though it was pretty wobbly at times along the way!
After we got out of the water (and no one fell in…well, people fell in but not us!) it was time to do a little hiking and then explore around a ruined castle. The hike wasn’t bad (there was a trail), but after SUPing for a few hours our calves were quite sore.
The view from the top made it all worth it though! This ruin was established circa 1350, and then expanded but ultimately riven through by the French in 1734. The main Keep remained and was established as a restaurant sometime in the 20th century.
Aside from the main keep, the western wall remained as well. Everything else was either blown into the river below, or spread across the countryside on the southern face of the castle.
We explored through the area a bit and took some fun pictures in the various ruins. As an aside, it was about right now that we realized all of our stuff was locked in the van and we weren’t going to be headed back there until it was time to leave. Unfortunately for Michael, “all of our stuff” included his face mask, so the rest of the time spent wandering through the town would only include window shopping since he couldn’t go inside of anywhere. Also, most of the euro we took out for the trip was also safely locked inside the van. C’est la vie.
After the views at the top, we hiked down the other side of the mountain through some absolutely exquisite countryside. This land was in use as a vineyard and we were able to hike through the grapes. Someone might have even sampled a few grapes…
Hiking down the hill, we stopped frequently to just admire the scenery and take about a million pictures. The sun was just starting to sink and was casting just brilliant light over everything.
Eventually we made our way out of the mountains and back down to the street level. There was a long and winding staircase pathway that spat us out behind a dining hall, right into an alley way bustling with weekend shoppers.
We wandered around this area for quite some time until it was the hour to return to the van for our trip home. Thanks for reading!
