Our neighborhood

Happy Reunification Day!

What? Today we had no idea that it was a national holiday until we tried to go to the grocery and hardware!! NOTHING was open. Later we found out that it's Reunification Day!! The wall actually came down on Nov. 9, 1990 but that was also the anniversary of the first large-scale Nazi-led pograms against Jews in 1938 (Kristallnicht), so the day was considered inappropriate as a national holiday. They chose to celebrate it on Oct. 3rd, the day of formal reunion. There's your little history lesson!


Loving this fall weather and wanted to show you the neighborhood where we live. We managed to find an aerial view and I'll try to orient you. You can click on the picture (or any picture on the blog) and it will enlarge. Looking at the aerial photo on the center left you will see a tall apartment building with a blue face. Our 4 story apartment is directly behind that. You'll see a road heading up from there to the top of the picture where the tiny village Waldhausen ("the farm" as the girls call it) lies. Check out Dayna and one of her bovine friends we routinely visit.


On the lower left of the aerial view you'll see a wooded area which marks the edge of the forest preserve. Our street goes right into it and Jay and Dayna are walking on it in the next picture. The trees are beautiful and it's so nice being so close to nature for a change. Certainly different than the treeless landscape in our neighborhood in Texas!! To the right of the forest preserve is the community garden. Germans love their flowers and these little plots let the city dwellers (most people live in apartments or attached homes) have their piece of the earth to cultivate. The individual gardens are beautiful and it's fun to walk through them.

On the right hand side of the aerial view you'll see two white round towers. The girls school is directly behind (or "above") the right one . It looks like 5 little rectangular buildings but they are all connected by walkways. You can see it's really close! So convenient since they never get out of school at the same time as one another. The market area, where our bank, post office, market, bakery, drug store etc. is lies right below those same two towers in the photo.

The next picture was taken from the top floor of the 14 story apartment next to us (student dormitory). The photo looks toward downtown Tübingen (pronounced "too bee gun" - at least by us English speakers! Add a cough in the middle and it sounds more German!) You can see that we are at the top of a hill in the city. So when we say we walk downtown we do mean down!


The fifth picture is from the main street running up and down the picture and looks back toward our apartment. You'll see the bus stop that we use and directly behind it through the trees is our backyard and our apartment. The kids in the picture are walking up the steps from the tunnel that goes under this busy street. That is the same tunnel that we walk through to get to the market and the school etc.

The last two pictures are taken from the bike path at the far upper left of the aerial view photo. The first looks toward our apartments and the other looks away. We have an awesome view from this path. Many people use these paths and there are benches everywhere for people to sit and enjoy the scenery. The tree in the picture is a pear tree and has been loaded with pears. This area has tons of plum, apple and pear trees plus a few peach trees. We've managed to eat a few of these freshly picked! Yum.

At some other time I'll show you around the market area and the girls' school so you can see the other places we wander almost daily! Our shoes are definitely getting a workout!