Frankfurter Sauce - Update

Note: This post is a continuation of a saga which began several days ago.  To read the initial post, please click here. 


Based on the advice of our new German-American friend, Wifey did some additional research and identified around a half a dozen distributors of Kornmeyer sauce within the city limits of Frankfurt which opened for business on Friday prior to 9:00 am.  With a scheduled flight departure time of 11:30, Hubby preferred to arrive at the airport by 9:30 am, meaning we'd need to finish any shopping by 9:00.

The potential options were then mapped and an optimized driving route planned beginning with a Frankfurt location of Scheck-In opening at 7:00 am and ending with the only locations to open at 8:30.

Friday morning, we woke at 5:00 with a planned departure time of 5:30 to arrive at Scheck-In as it opened at 7:00.  From prior shopping experience, we knew this chain of stores was a large grocery store and not a boutique.  Rush hour traffic, road construction and leaving a bit late left us arriving at Scheck-In at about 7:30 (but in case it didn't actually have what we were looking for, still with plenty of time to drive to the next store by its opening time of 8:00 am).

We parked in the onsite garage (note, 7:30 am is still dark) and rode the escalator up to the store....

We began searching the store while guessing where we might find the prized sauce before Hubby asked a helpful employee for assistance.  They seemed to respond positively although of course, due to language barriers we had no idea what was actually said.  We followed.  

Success!!!!!!!

Now we know ... if in search of Kornmeyer Frankfurter Sauce Extra Scharf .... run by your local Scheck-In upon landing, before leaving Frankfurt!  

Dinosaurs and Legos

Note:  this blog post is still under construction. 

Our last full day in Germany - half of us were tired.  Wanting to make the most of our remaining time, but honestly not feeling up to an extended outing Wifey looked for something in neighboring Kaiserslautern to check out.  Upon the advice of TripAdvisor and proposing the destination to Hubby, we set out for the Gartenschau Kaiserslautern.  Per TripAdvisor reviews this is a park that has statues of various Dinosaurs throughout.  We expected to spend maybe an hour walking around and be on our way back 'home' to the hotel.  

Our first surprise was the ticket booth and admission.  We almost turned away at that point because  "meh".  But having nothing else planned we decided to go ahead and check it out.  

Just inside the gate, we began by exploring the first exhibition hall to our right.  The English! map provided at ticketing said this was a Lego show.  

Here is a sampling of the Lego exhibits.  The first is of various scenes from modern Germany.  The second, a traditional German village and last, scenes from Star Wars.  

Since we found the Legos and Dinosaurs to be surprisingly enthralling, we stuck around longer than planned and had to take a food break to avoid the appearance of Hangry! 

Pizzeria da carlo

For dinner tonight, I feared we were being led to our burial.  We left home base and drove for what seemed like HOURS into the middle of no-where.  It was dark when we left, and we snaked along a "two" lane road seemingly without end.   At last, we arrived in the metropolis of Trippstadt, DE at Pizzeria da Carlo.

Not pictured are the youth playing football ( soccer) in a field right next to the restaurant.  It was quaint.  We followed the stairs and small "restaurant" sign until we entered the upstairs seating area and took our seats.  

not our seats.  I didn't get a pic of the seating area. 

Hubby ate pizza with some sort of meet combination and Wifey had Tomato and Mozerella! Both were fantastic and we are happy to report that no ambush occurred during our outing.  

 Jealous yet?  

Zum Remigiusland

Wednesday we ventured to our favorite German restaurant for lunch.

An attempt at a panorama - as it approached the window, clearly the exposure got a bit overdone.  

We ordered the same dish as last year ... but the single portion.  Which was sufficient for feeding us both.  

Wifey again had hot chocolate and creme ... and enjoyed fantastic salad dressing!

We even got to sit at the same table as last year --- doesn't this look familiar?

 Success!!!

Joys of Vehicular Travel

Today's post includes a compilation of stories and images from our time on Germanies Autobahn.  

The below seemingly confusing speed limit signs took some getting used to.  The limit here is 80 for vehicles on the left of the divider and 60 to the right.  

Whenever there is a traffic jam that essentially stops all traffic, German drivers queue to the outside of the road, leaving space down the middle which emergency vehicles can use to make their way through the congestion if needed.  

Sometimes, the speed limit signs are just mocking you .... below is a stretch of Autobahn with a limit of 120 due to construction ...

As you can see ... we were in zero danger of exceeding this limit.  

German traffic engineers are excessively organized (or so it seems).  One tool at their disposal is easily portable traffic lights.  These are used below to automate two directions of traffic taking turns on a section of road which only allows one-way traffic around a blind curve.  because seriously, otherwise, they'd just expect you to take turns.  

Here, our lane crosses onto the left after the light turned green to pass through the one-way zone. 

One our way, no worries here, just a drop off into the Rhine river. 

And at the end, the other direction of traffic is waiting their turn to proceed once we all get out of their lane! 

Neuschwanstein Castle

Many little girls grow up dreaming of becoming a princess in the spirit of Cinderella and Disney's Magic Kingdom. Walt Disney was inspired to build his Magic Kingdom by the creation of another visionary, King Ludwig II of Bavaria. King Ludwig predated Disney's retelling of various fairy tales by a century or so but was himself obsessed with the similar stories from Wagner's operas.

In service to his interest - cough cough read obsession - King Ludwig built Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria (southern Germany, practically on the Austrian border).

It was a *bit* foggy when we visited :)

Stunning, I know, right?  

In all seriousness, a friend of Hubby recommended we visit this site and we set aside a day to make the 4 HOUR DRIVE there.  This was our first real experience with substantial traffic on the Autoban and ended up being a very very long day.  

This is one of our first views of the castle as we followed our GPS:

We continued to follow our GPS which directed us to drive basically TO the castle.  Yeah, that's not allowed.  You have to park down the mountain in this little tourist trap village and either walk, ride a bus or ride a horse-drawn carriage up.  We took the bus.  On a less cold, rainy, and generally "not in the mood to walk" day, the hike would be a pleasant challenge.  The day we visited it was not happening. The bus fare was reasonable and the round trip cost us about 6 € for both of us.

On the bus hitching a ride to the top of the Mountain

A wood carving of the Castle Complex.

Sadly, after the bus dropped us off at the "top" of the mountain, we had to still walk a bit to the castle, along with about 3 thousand other tourists.    

Wifey found the castle most interesting as in Engineering accomplishment.  It's a Castle.  Built into and on top of a Mountain!

Our tour tickets! We had to wait an hour and a half on an English tour.

Don't try and go through before your designated tour time ... the machine is far too smart for that!  

We were on tour 484 ... AKA the English one.

Photos were not allowed inside the Castle on the actual tour.  If you click on the link "Photos" to start this paragraph google image will provide an idea of what we visited.  We viewed the King's Bedchamber, dining room, man-"cave", servant quarters, and some other random rooms.  Most all were decorated with detailed murals and wood carvings and tapestries.  Its no wonder the bankers had King Ludwig declared incompetent so they could stop the outflow of cash.   In all only about 1/3 of the castle's rooms are finished and King Ludwig only spend about 6 months living in this castle.

Another view of the Castle.  

Leaving the castle, we walked back to the bus stop and noticed a side path which we decided to explore while we waited for the next bus.  It took us to a viewing bridge which theoretically allows for a great view of the Castle from the air!  Sadly, the photo which opened this blog was taken from there .... fog blocked our view. Never ones to miss an opportunity to have fun despite disappointment, we still took some photos of the surrounding scenery and ourselves.  

Selfie on the viewing bridge. 

SO FAR DOWN!

Hubby was a trooper for this selfie - the bridge on which we were standing was ... unstable. 

Panorama FTW

We enjoyed our visit to the castle ... mostly because we can have fun pretty well wherever.  That said, would we drive 4 hours each way to see it again ... probably not.  Had we gone during the peak season ... at least for Wifey, the experience sounds like it would have been worse.  Better views without the fog I'm sure but way more people.

One brief addition - Before this trip, but after the ISO Frankfurter sauce trip, Wifey read a blog, Brians Guide to Getting around Germany which focuses, among other things on German traffic laws and procedures. Well, technically she read parts of several blogs before finding the one linked which seemed credible and well written.  

The gained knowledge proved helpful as we ended up following a detour away from the Castle which saved a ton of stress and time.  Our GPS didn't have a record of a particular road outage.  So we followed the U32 signs back to an open road towards home.  Without knowing German detour signage conventions, nothing would have told us to follow these "U" signs.