no shopping on sunday...

sundays in germany are a quiet day. no stores are open at all! and i mean nothing. there will be no running by the grocery to grab milk. there will be no running by the mall. when they say closed, they mean it...closed!

in this largely catholic population, german's see sunday as a day of rest. you can not wash your car, mow your lawn, drop off your glass bottles for recycling. you can do nothing that causes any kind of noise. great, so now i can't yell at my kids on sunday? well, maybe i can still do that, but only if i yell quietly.

when we first moved to germany i was really concerned with this whole "closed on sunday" thing. what if i forgot something at the grocery? what if i wanted to nip into the mall? well, it really didn't take long until i realized how to work with this. now sunday is our family road trip day! on cold rainy and wet sundays we hunker down, but on the wonderful fall and spring days, we take a day trip.

one of my favorite places that we have ventured to is only an hour and a half drive from dusseldorf; monschau germany!

monschau dates back over 300 years and was virtually untouched during the war. the original half timbered houses and narrow streets still remain and make it a wonderful day trip. if you go visit the mustard mill http://www.senfmuehle.de/start/index.html as well as the glass blowing factory http://www.glashuettemonschau.com/.

this is a great day trip for a quite sunday afternoon!