We arrived at Barb's sister's house yesterday in the tiny hamlet of Lenzhahn, a short distance from the famous middle ages towns of Idstein and Limburg and between the larger cities of Wiesbaden and Frankfurt in Germany. It's a typically solid duplex house of modern German architecture with warm radiant underfloor heating backed by a geothermal heat pump system that keeps it warm and cozy in winter (and cool in summer). Lots of space and light, sparsely and simply decorated. Very comfortable. We enjoyed a typical Germany breakfast with fresh brotchen, cheeses, hams, salami, and other fixin's, but it's those fresh brotchen (and vollkorn brot) that are so good here and rather unlike most anything we get in the states (unless you live in the Berkeley area and have had breads from Firebrand or Octoberfeast, which are pretty darn authentic!) The coffee is good, too, but it's the butter, milk and eggs that all seem a bit richer that our typical dairy products back home. The cream is especially noticeable when it's schlag or whipped cream. Soooo good! A good brisk walk in the woods with Charlie the dog helps work a bit of it off, but what we really need is a nice 30-40k on the bike!
And then the snow starts to fly.
Over night, the region was blanketed with at least 2-3 inches of the white stuff and it continued to snow all throughout the next day, accumulating another 5-6 inches. We headed out late that evening to Bremen, 4 and half hours to the north, only to turn around after a few slow miles on the snowy A3 freeway towards Köln. A radio report of a 100 car pileup in Hannover that evening didn't add to our enthusiasm for the road. No reason to slog it out, we'll wait until tomorrow with reports and hopes for less treacherous travel conditions.
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