a grave hunting we will go...

my in-laws are visiting from australia and it was a long weekend in germany, so what did we do???  we headed south to the black forest to search for some long lost relatives!

i quickly learned that it is called the black forest due to the dense trees that literally make it difficult to see more than 5 feet in front of you.  the brother's grimm wrote their stories about these forests and you can see why.  as you hike through, you expect to catch a wicked witch or an evil step-mother peering out from behind the trees.  it is a reasonably safe place to let the kids run and explore as there aren't many animals, except for the occasional wild boar...i wasn't too worried, as i think we ate most of them during our visit!

our first stop on this visit of ours was the town of lauterbach to find my mother-in-laws, grandmother's grave.  there was only one catholic church in the village, so how hard could this be?  normally not hard at all, but we were soon to find out that in germany they used to cover graves up every fifteen years.  too bad we didn't learn this before we searched!  we offered both of the little expats a ice cream to the first one that found their great oma's grave.  well, soon they had everyone in the cemetery~yes, there were quite a few people tending graves~searching for their great oma!  we never did find her, but we spent a great day searching around the town and exploring the church that she attended every day!

after our family obligations we visited the triberg waterfalls, http://www.visiting-germany.de/triberg.html which were beautiful and quite a steep hike up to the top.  triberg is a wonderful little village with many cute cafes and of course many cuckoo clock shops.

then it was off to the town of titisee...you can only imagine the laughs that this got from my boys; hours and hours of laughs.  this town was a wonderful lakeside town that actually reminded me of the lake towns in colorado.  there were paddle boats and ice cream by the lake.  it was a wonderful day out.

then we got a strange text from my brother-in-law.  a high school friend of my husbands had just moved to stutgart and wanted to catch up with my hubby!  wow, now what are the chances of this?  we ended up meeting at the porsche museum and had a wonderful chat with a friend last seen 23 years ago.

who knew that a hunt for a grandma's grave would end in a connection with an old friend.

tune in tomorrow for lunch in the black forest...you won't be disappointed!!!!