It was quite a steep walk up to the castle, but it was well worth it. We all had a great time exploring. It's so nice having grown kids to experience these things with and not having to worry about keeping an eye on them constantly to make sure they don't get hurt or lost. This really is the perfect time for our family to be here!
These are pictures of the ruins and of the gorgeous views from the top.
I think we could have hung out up there for a very long time, but we were unsure about the legality of where we parked the car (we've already gotten one parking ticket...lol), plus it was getting late in the day.
We've been super busy with life stuff (boring!) since our day trip to Flossenburg, but yesterday took the cake! Of the four of us, everyone had a horrible day except for Austin. Don spent all morning trying to take possession of our car (which was a HUGE good thing), but of course the Army makes the process more painful than it has to be. Once he got the car, he discovered it had a dead battery and not a drop of gas in it. We were instructed to ship it with 1/4 tank of gas, so either they siphoned it or went for a joy ride. While he was dealing with the car, Laurel & I were preparing to ride the shuttle from our neighborhood onto post so that she could do her classwork for the day. I took out some trash on the way out and somehow slit my arm my wide open. I didn't even feel it or realize anything was wrong until Laurel pointed out that I was bleeding all over the place. We think I cut it on a broken plate that was sticking out of the bag. At that moment, the shuttle was scheduled to arrive in about 3 minutes, and we had to get on it because Laurel had a research paper she had to submit. We ran back in the house, and of course because our things aren't here yet, there were no bandaids to be found. I ran some water over my arm, then grabbed a paper towel. We flew back out the door, and I told her to go to the bus stop while I ran next door to see if my neighbor had a bandaid. Luckily, she did have a large one which she quickly slapped on my arm just as the shuttle bus pulled up. I ran to the bus, sat down, and saw that blood was coming out the sides of this huge bandaid. I was already pretty sure I needed stitches, but at that point I knew it. So we hopped off the shuttle at the health clinic on post. Laurel headed next door to the library to start working on her paper, only to discover they are closed on Mondays. She came back and sat with me while the hospital staff decided whether to take care of me there or send me to a German hospital. Thankfully they decided they could squeeze me in. Our health clinic is literally just that - a clinic with no ER - so I was fortunate that they took me in. I had texted Don, and he came over as soon as he got the car charged and gassed up. I ended up getting several stitches, and the lidocaine shots to deaden the area hurt way worse than the cut itself. Here's my battle wound!
After I got my stiches and my tetanus shot, we dropped Laurel off at the USO so she could use their internet access. Of course she got in there and discovered their internet wasn't working. So we had to take her to yet another spot on post where thankfully she was able to finish and submit her paper. While she was working on that, we had a whole bunch of stuff we had to do with regards to the car, and suffice it to say that none of it went smoothly. I honestly can't remember a day where so many things went wrong. We were definitely ready to go to bed last night and start fresh today.
Now that our car is here, we only have two big things left to do. One is to buy a second car for Don, and the other is to get our household goods from the states. Hopefully by October 1st, we'll have both of those checked off our list, and we can concentrate on travelling and enjoying ourselves!!
