Where's Ausfart Germany???

Where is Ausfart Germany? That took us quite a while to figure out...

Scott had some training to do in Germany and he was flying on the 135 so I was able to hop on the plane and join him. Right after takeoff, he took me into the boom pod and I pretended I was giving gas to another plane. It was great laying there looking down at the ground. Kinda crazy and you wouldn't want to do it if you were afraid of heights!

We arrived in at Ramstein Air Base early afternoon so we had lots of time to explore. The Mosel River wasn't too far away so we decided to drive along that. Once we were on the Autobahn, we kept seeing signs for Ausfart and we thought there must be a lot of ways to get to that town. It probably took us longer than it should have to realize that Ausfart is not a town, but the word for exit. We laughed quite a bit about that and then every time we saw the sign we just had to smile.
Driving along the Mosel River was incredible. It was one adorable town after another!!!

Every town had vineyards behind it. We couldn't believe how they got the vineyards up some of the steep hillsides. I guess Mosel wine is pretty famous. We found out later one of Scott's friends has an uncle that has a vineyard in the Mosel Valley.

This was our destination-where the Mosel River meets the mighty Rhine River.

This is along the Rhine and looked great as the sun was going down. Luckily it was summer and the sun stayed up a long time. This was about 9pm so we got to see everything in daylight!

This is a statue of Kaiser Wilhem. He was the person that united all the 800 something kingdoms into a unified Germany, I think in the 1800s.

Eating schnitzel on the Rhine with a beautiful sunset. I like Germany.

Oh Gelato!!! One of Europe's great treats! I know you can get it in the State's, but it seems to be everywhere here!

Scott's training was in the morning, so we had the afternoon to explore. We visited Trier, which apparently is the oldest city in Germany. It was a main Roman city back in the day and still has quite the Roman footprint. The large black thing behind Scott is the big Roman City Gate. It is one of the few that is still intact.

We wandered around for so long trying to find the main downtown area. We were looking at one of Rick Steve's drawn maps and found a basilica which we thought was the one on his map. We based our wandering off of that, and after wandering for a long time we realized we were way off. Somehow we found our way, but by that point we were hot and tired of walking. We saw this little trolley and decided to hop on because it hit all of the high points of the city. We saw a lot of Roman ruins including this Roman bath. We also saw where Karl Marx was born, not sure if that is a good thing or bad.

We decided to try a restaurant in Rick Steve's book, and we were so glad we did! It was in the courtyard of a huge church and it was the best food we have had since being in Europe! I didn't want dinner to end! Thanks Rick for the suggestion!

This was our view while we ate!

This was the cute town square. The buildings were just beautiful!

This was one of my better one-handed pictures, I actually got all of our heads and the object I hoped for. I've progressively gotten worse.

The next day our flight was delayed, because the plane hit a bird earlier, so we had an extra morning to explore. We decided to hit Worms to see where Martin Luther had been. There was actually a street with my name on it-I was pretty excited.

The town brought us back to the Reformation days. For a full history, please ask my Dad. I do know that Martin Luther had to come to Worms for a huge meeting after he did his 95 Theses. It was in Worms that he was told to recant what he said, and since he didn't, he was excommunicated by the Catholic Church. He said a person was saved by God's grace and faith in him for the forgiveness of sins and not by works. He later translated the Bible into the people's language, not Latin, so people would know what was in the scriptures.

This was a statue of him and other important protestant people.

After Worms, we drove up the Rhine River. There were many towns with a castle at the top. This would have been where the prince of that little kingdom lived, before Germany was united.

One of the ways that the princes made money was by charging a toll to any boat that passed by.

We didn't make it too far up the river, but thought that this looked like a cute town to eat lunch in.

A guy named Brad that Scott works with came with us that day. We found more schnitzel. That's always a safe thing to order when you can't read the menu. I had 4 different kinds of potatoes with my schnitzel today, I didn't realize how many ways one can prepare potatoes.

This was a neat cuckoo clock store. I would love one, but I think we'll wait to go to the Black Forest where they are made to get one.

What a fun quick trip, we were excited to be able to see so much on a work trip. I hope another one of these comes along soon. You can't pass up a free trip:)