Off the beaten path in Germany: Kaiserslautern’s Japanese Garden

If you are within driving distance of Kaiserslautern, I highly recommend the Japanese Garden. I have not been compensated in any way for this “promotion” of a peaceful oasis in a bustling city. If you like gardens at all, this place is worth a couple of hours of your time.

The entry fee of 5.50 Euro  per person may be offset if you have a coupon book (“Gutscheinbuch") for the greater K-town area. We got ours at a USO, and one of the coupons is a buy-one-get-one-free admission to the Japanese Garden. The website for the garden provides a map showing a free weekend/holiday parking lot directly across from their entrance gate. Please note that as of mid-May 2015, some minor construction work  on the building adjacent to the parking lot has resulted in a NARROW access ramp to the parking lot. I am not sure if a large vehicle could make the turn from the narrow street without a scrape.

Built on a hill, the gardens are comprised of well-kept paths, stairs, bridges, ponds, waterfalls, and brooks. Fish food is for sale at the admissions building and at the snack bar, so the large koi approach visitors with curiosity!

The flowers, trees, and shrubs are beautiful. Benches are placed throughout, and tables with benches are provided at the snack bar. Two delicious pieces of cake and two outstanding teas were 8 Euro. No coupon that I know of for those items, but it was worth it.

Since I was with friends, I didn’t bring a book or journal to write in, but I wouldn’t hesitate to visit again and spend some time relaxing alone. The garden is near the pedestrian shopping area, and you can see the new K-town mall from the front gate of the garden. We couldn’t hear the traffic passing by when we were in the garden. I hope that you can find a few moments of tranquility there.

Observations by the cats about life in our corner of Germany

We have beautiful church bells that ring in our town every morning at 6:30am. We used to think they were an alarm clock when we got here, so we would ask for breakfast then. Now the real alarm clock goes off way before 6:30 so we’ve already eaten by the time the church bells ring, and  we are settling down for our morning naps.

We think this is where the bells are ringing from

There is a nice small balcony that we are allowed to go out on, and we stay safe without jumping down. The balcony door lets cooler air into the upstairs, since many if not most German homes don’t have air conditioning. We already miss our Framingham a/c.

Why are people so excited about Polish pottery? If you want some, let us know, we have connections.

Our yard is nice, except there is no fence to let us roam free- we have to have a person at the other end of our leashes. We look out on a big cherry tree, and the neighbors 2 houses down have more cherry trees, so apparently there is cherry pie in the future. One neighbor’s dog likes to play in the meadow behind the house and say hi to us by barking loudly (but the dog only barks when he sees us). There are also 3 quiet chickens in a fenced-in yard across the meadow and lots of chirpy birds all over.

During our 2 stays in temporary quarters, Ida shared her cat bed with us (didn't before, and hasn't since!)

We have people offering left and right to cat-sit for us. So far, we have been fine with a 2-night weekend away with extra food and water, but eventually we’ll need help with the litter box when we’re alone for more than 2 nights. It looks like a high-school student from the Chapel will take care of us the first time, but we’ve got neighbors lined up down the street ready to worship….er, feed us.

In Temporary Quarters, we'd get scared and hide under the bedspread, but we don't do that anymore.

So far, we are sticking with our favorite American cat food and litter, but we do like German treats and some kinds of canned cat food. We are relieved that our favorite dry food and wet food is for sale at the Air Force base. We also think that the tap water in our town tastes delicious, along with the grass in the yard.

WHY didn't she share this seafood bisque with us? WHY?

Most German houses have exterior roll-down slatted shutters. When we first arrived at the end of March, the shutters were rolled down in the evening when it got dark out and we needed inside lights to be turned on. Now, it stays light out so late that the shades upstairs get rolled down so that it’s dark enough inside to go to sleep!

Top 10 meals in Germany so far

We've had plenty of good meals, and regular home-cooked dinners as well...here are the outstanding "write home about" choices. You're invited anytime! 

1.  Schnitzel with fries and side salad at Waldgarten in Ramstein-Miesenbach

 2.     Lasagna at Pizzeria Milano in Kaiserslautersn (thanks to Jeff’s co-worker)

fields 3 blocks from our house; horses near the tree line

 3.     Fish with mushroom sauce and fried potato slices at Nordsee in Kaiserslautern (thanks, DB)

 4.     Salmon with veggies at Pizzeria Gabriella in Landstuhl (thanks, TT)

 5.              Smoked fish, asparagus soup at Hotel/Landgasthaus Pfeifertal in Eulenbis (next town over)

 6.     BBQ at Flying Pig on Ramstein AFB (taste of home even though I’m not from a BBQ state)

 7.             Pot luck meals at South Chapel on Ramstein during Lent and Bible Study

 8.     Salad with grilled shrimp at Saarland Therme

 9.     Another stupendous salad with grilled shrimp (ok, I am seeing a theme here!) at Nikos in Trier

 10.    Bread! It's beyond excellent here, no matter what style you like. We've been trying for a long time to eat less bread, but it's too good to pass up here- plus you need a sandwich every once in a while*. The first photo is American wheat bread, which we bought because German grocery stores are closed on Sundays, doing us no good when we come home from a weekend trip late on a Sunday. The second photo is "regular" German grocery store bread, pre-sliced and bagged. White bread and seedless bread is available but we don't tend to buy it. Many grocery stores sell fresh loaves, and of course the bakeries do too. The fresh loaves are usually too much for us. The last photo is clever marketing by a Germany grocery store: give out samples of freshly baked bread (with a smear of butter and store brand jam), sell the bread in smaller sizes, and inform customers that it can be frozen. Good thing, because we already had 2 loaves, and now we'll be all set the next time we go out of town an return on a Sunday! Can you see the steam at the bottom of the bag? I'll let you know if the freezer promise does not work out.

* also honey. It's not my fault that numerous people suggested that eating local honey helps minimize allergies! Local honey is super!

Too bad I couldn’t include France and Czech Republic meals in this post…maybe after 10 meals in nearby countries, I’ll summarize them.

Where and what was your best out-of-the USA meal?

Off the Beaten Path (not really?): Prague

We tried to see some “off the beaten path” parts of Prague, but we did cover many standard tourist attractions. Prior to travelling, we asked the advice of people who have been in the Kaiserslautern area longer than us about driving vs. flying vs. taking the train. We wanted to fly but decided to drive to Prague instead. We are looking forward to our first trip with Ryanair, but it doesn’t seem that they fly from near us to Prague. Regular airline tickets were pricey, and the train took way longer than the drive. If you can get a cheap flight to Prague, the time savings is worth it, but we appreciated the flexibility to have the car on hand and not wait around for striking workers in both airlines and trains!

The friend we were meeting in Prague recommended that we stay in the “Mala Strana” neighborhood, near the Charles Bridge. One of my colleagues took a bus tour to Prague recently, and didn’t sleep well in the different neighborhoods’ cheaper hotel with thin walls. So we splurged and stayed within walking distance of St. Nicholas church, and clocked 10 miles in one day crossing the Charles Bridge to the Powder Tower, up Paris Street to the river cruise docks, and back.

Mixed plate with 2 kinds of cabbage, duck, ham, potato pancake, dumpling, and more!

The first time I was in Prague back in 1990, I didn’t have an iPhone (or any phone for that matter), and didn’t take night photos. I’ve consistently been pleased with the quality of night pictures on the iphone, so I’ve not included “standard issue” daytime Prague photos here.

Our most interesting OBP experience this time was the KGB Museum in Mala Strana, which could also be known as 101 ways to kill someone. If you are squeamish (like me), this might not be for you, but it was historically interesting (not gory, just a reality of violence).

After 10 miles, my feet were ready for a break, so we opted for a foot massage. Unlike in Stockholm, where we sat in arm chairs near large windows to the street and had people staring at us as they passed by, our massage room in Prague was upstairs on a mattress on the floor. If I’d been alone, I would have felt kind of weird, but everything turned out fine. The foot massage included hip flexor stretches at the end, which were greatly needed and helpful. If you’d rather sit in an armchair with passers-by gawking at you, there are plenty of those places available in Prague as well.

The food was great and we enjoyed a river cruise at sunset. Do you have a favorite recommendation in Prague?

Cooking and baking for a newcomer to Europe

It’s not THAT difficult, but I’ve learned a few things since we arrived from Massachusetts. Some people have strong preferences for gas or electric cooktops- I’ve always had electric so it was fine with me to get the same type here. Some kitchens don’t have major appliances in them upon arrival, so we were lucky to have a built-in oven/stove, fridge, and dishwasher. 

You can cook everything from scratch, of course, and there are plenty of semi-fully prepared foods on hand as well. I was a bit nervous to experiment with the oven, not only due to lack of familiarity with Celcius, but there are a bunch of different functions on the second oven knob. The user manual gives a chart, but trying to understand it in German was like having a lawyer or finance person write the instructions for baking! Lasagna was the first try, when I could keep an eye on the bubbling sauce to have a sense of “done-ness” while learning about the temperatures.

For baking, I elected to buy two boxes of German mix so I could read the directions on baking temps and times, hopefully bringing some edible snacks to church. How surprised was I to find a small cardboard baking dish inside the box of brownie mix! So much for the 9x13 pan I already had. FYI, the mix would not have filled my “oversized” American dish, but the cardboard one was just the right size for the mix. 

The box of lemon muffin mix also included 12 paper muffin liners that didn’t need to go into a muffin pan, just on a cookie sheet. Jeff and I disagreed about our refrigerator situation. I had hoped to go “European” and make due with the smaller fridge/freezer in the kitchen. Some of the houses we looked at had a second “normal” American fridge elsewhere in the house- because it wouldn’t fit in a regular (small-ish) German kitchen. For example, the second fridge was stashed in the dining room or basement. Jeff was convinced we would need additional cool storage space, and it turns out he was right. I had hoped to buy veggies from the farmer’s market and go to small local grocery stores perhaps more than once per week. Then I started working full time, and I quickly realized that I was back to a cooking marathon on Sunday afternoons, preparing at least two full dinners and numerous plastic food storage containers to bring to work with salads, leftovers, etc. in them. Plus some freezer containers with dinner portions for future meals. We haven’t used the second refrigerator section much, but the freezer in the basement holds some pizzas, larger bags of American frozen veggies,  leftovers, etc. 

Do you have any "get ready for the work week" food prep tips or any European cooking/food storage tips?

Off the beaten path in Germany: the city of “Mainz”

The Episcopal chapel service at one of the small military installations in Kaiserslautern set up a field trip to the Cathedral in Mainz, followed by a tour of the Gutenberg Museum around the corner. Mainz is a reasonable day-trip drive from the Kaiserslautern area, and the train is also an option. After a one hour car ride, we parked at a garage near the city center. We weren’t thrilled about the 12 Euro fee for 6 hours, but we couldn’t find an on-street spot due to the large farmer’s market just outside the Cathedral. Anyway, the garage was cheaper than the train.

The Cathedral was peaceful inside, unless a combination of Romanesque architecture and Gothic decorations would bother you. A beautiful cloister led to a “treasury” museum which we did not go to on this trip.

We had lunch at one of the numerous cafes on the square outside the Cathedral. Our group enjoyed sandwiches, pizza, 2 different hot meals, and desserts- but of course!

We’d highly recommend the Gutenberg Museum, even if your top priority is not  seeing the first printed Bibles. There were sections on the history of paper itself, printing presses, newspapers, and exhibits about the printed calligraphy of China, Japan, and Korea, along with European handwriting. The Bibles and other books showed how painted letters and vines decorated pages. It was also neat to see a printed copy of Luther’s 95 Theses! There were demonstrations of printing presses and a fun gift shop. Too bad we couldn’t take any photos inside the museum. 

After the museum, we walked around a bit, scoring on fruit and flowers. I’m not sure why the strawberry vendors were trying to convince me that 2 boxes of strawberries at 3.50 each were a bargain at 2 for 7 (I can do math in my head)? Miraculously, the oranges that were weighed in at over 4 Euro, suddenly were re-weighed and came in at closer to 3 Euro when we said we wouldn’t pay that much for 2 albeit large oranges. Finally, the flower vendors were packing up, and we couldn’t negotiate at the stand that had already removed their price tags, but we were able to have 2 bunches of flowers sold to us for less than the marked price of each separately, upon our offer to buy both at a named lower combination price. Paid full freight for asparagus, which is in season now, and delicious. One of my colleagues said there is a lovely Christmas Market in Mainz, too.