Franfurt Temple/Friedrichsdorf

Wednesday night, we took the train 20 minutes north of Frankfurt to Friedrichsdorf. We then wheeled our suitcases over cobblestone sidewalks and streets for 15 minutes until we found the temple. Attached to the temple there is patron housing or the temple hostel as they called it.The building just to the left of the steeple is the entrance to the temple hostel. There are 3 floors of rooms and an underground hallway to the temple so the patrons can go back and forth easily.
Everyone was SO kind. The hostel was full of members from the Dusseldorf stake (2 1/2 hours away). It was their stake's temple week and several families babies, teenagers and all got to stay in the hostel. They also have several full time couples serving in the temple and living in temple housing.
The town was so quaint and quiet. This little shopping town square area was a half mile from the temple. We got some groceries and let the kids play on the play ground.
Isabelle just couldn't wait to try german chocolate. This was not anything fancy, just a store brand, but she was thrilled to try it. She sat in our room all day watching movies while we did temple work. The bedroom had a bunk bed, and two single beds and a separate bathroom. It was a very nice and comfortable room. There was a kitchen and dining area downstairs for everyone to share.
Taylor got to go to the temple in the morning with us to do baptisms with a group of German youth. There were 4 other boys and 1 girl from the stake and a few other adults. We did part of it in German, and then Danny did some of the baptisms in english. He really struggled pronouncing the german names, but everyone gave him kudos for even trying! The german youth enjoyed hearing the english as well.

These lockers behind Danny are numbered with the room numbers so you can put your food in them. Also there a refrigerators with numbered cabinets. Everyone made food and cleaned up for themselves in the kitchen.
After lunch, Danny and I got to do sealings and initiatories. Most of it was in German, but everyone was so accommodating and kind. We met some lovely people and really enjoyed our time with them. It really made me think how EASY we have it being members in Las Vegas. Although our kids are not surrounded by LDS friends, they are not the ONLY ones in their school. These families spend their whole week serving in the temple. Most of them were trained to do be temple workers for some part of it, and so they take turns being workers and patrons. We enjoyed a lovely Italian restaurant with one couple and talked all about their day to day life as LDS people with 6 children outside of Dusseldorf, Germany. I have so much respect for those saints that work so hard in their own little part of the kingdom.

Frankfurt

The Main River in Frankfurt. There was a foot bridge that took us across the river.
The weather was quite lovely in the afternoon. We enjoyed walking all over downtown looking at the sights.
On this bridge there were hundreds of padlocks, many of them are engraved with people's names. There were a lot with a man and woman's name and a wedding date. We saw other bridges with the same thing!

This was the coolest part of Frankfurt. It is called Romerberg, and is located in the city hall square.

Taylor was sure this was a good place to try another "wurst". This time it was a beef bratwurst and was much more like he was expecting! It was a huge one sold with a hard roll and mustard.
There were several beautiful churches here, and we could go inside most of them.

When we first walked into this square, we all kind of got excited realizing we were actually in Germany! It was neat to see the detail in each building. There was a lot of construction going on to restore other buildings around this area. There were several restaurants and souvenir shops in the bottom parts of all these buildings.

Day 2

Here is the restaurant from last night. It was pouring rain as we were leaving, so we didn't take any pictures. This area was surrounded by camp grounds...some of them seemed like permanent residences...tiny little campers with tents built right out from them.

The Holiday Inn had an interesting breakfast buffet. Taylor really loved the croissants with jam. I think they wanted to fool people into drinking whole milk by calling it 3.5%!
There was an interesting array of meats and cheeses for breakfast. Nutella spread, yogurt and granola with chocolate were some of our favorites.

Instead of "planking" the new fad is "owling" Taylor is displaying a perfect owl pose in the Frankfurt train station.

EUROPE 2011

Gutentag! We just spent our first night in Germany and we woke up (quite early thanks to jet lag) feeling ready to go!

We first flew to DC and then embarked on the 7 hour overnight flight to Frankfurt. After settling down, Isabelle fell asleep on mom's lap, and Taylor kept sinking lower and lower in his seat until he was kneeling on the floor with his head on his seat...totally asleep for several hours. I wish we could have taken a picture, but I couldn't get to my camera!

They served breakfast right before we landed, but it was actually lunch time, and so we were pretty messed up timewise by the time we got to the hotel.

Walking through the Frankfurt airport, the kids were surprised that most signs were in German and English, and that most people we talked to spoke English. We were glad about that, because we had to find out where to go for the shuttle bus to the hotel.

We each took a nap and woke up starving. The Holiday Inn Express is outside of Frankfurt and we are surrounded by trees and fields. Down a tree lined path, there were two restaurants, an Italian one, and a German one. We decided that we should definitely have our first authentic German meal.

Isabelle stayed safe with chicken with spaetzle noodles. She liked the chicken, but "the noodles tasted like boiled potatoes and looked like soggy french fries"

Taylor: "I ordered my meal because it had the english words bread, butter and salad. The other words I didn't know, so it came out and it looked like stringy bologna and onions. There were blocks of butter on the lettuce and the bread was hard like jerkey. The funny thing was that it was called "Wurstsalat" and I think it was the "worst salad" I have ever had!"

Danny had delicious schnitzel and mom had yummy bratwurst, both served over potato salad. There was plenty of food to go around and we enjoyed the quaint german restaurant and walked back to our hotel in the rain!