New Grandchildren and An Old Castle Tour

What a great day we had on Saturday 8 August 2009. We found out that two of our children had their babies born that week. Adam’s new daughter Gwyneth Eloise Howlett was actually born on Thursday 6 August 2009 in Columbus, Ohio, but we didn't hear about it until Saturday.

Also our daughter Karen had her new baby son Benjamin Daniel Felt born on Saturday 8 August 2009.

Notice the big sisters’ smiles.

We knew the babies were coming but in our apartment our telephone and internet capabilities were down so we hadn’t had any updates for several days. As the senior missionaries had planned to visit Heidelberg and get a tour of its castle that day we took off early Saturday to be a part of it.

We rode down to Heidelberg with Dr. Douglas and Susanne Dye. Dr. Dye is one of the medical doctors for the Europe Area missionaries. The Dyes are from New Mexico and it was a pleasure to get to know them.
Once in Heidelberg the first interesting sight we saw was a bicycle parking lot by the Heidelberg “Haupt Bahnhof” (main train station). There were thousands of bicycles parked there, as you can see some of them in this shot. It looks like a place where they sell bicycles, but it is a parking lot for bikes. Being Saturday and not a day of commutes to work, it was only partly filled.
Heidelberg has the oldest university in Germany, and it is in the old city where the roads are not big enough for cars. Thousands of students live in the area, but there are also thousands of others in the city who also ride bikes. As many people use the trains in their commute to work, the bike parking lot at the train station is the biggest collection of bikes we have ever seen.

The tour was in English lead by a Canadian. We had not gone on a tour inside the castle when we were there earlier. One of the first things we were shown were models of what the castle looked like when it was in its prime and what it is now. As you can see it covered many acres and was a very commanding site. Heidelberg has a long history, with people living there well before Roman times, even before 200 BC. It changed hands among the dukes, kings, and emperors many times through the centuries. The castle on the hill was built before 1200 AD and was expanded many times by different royal families. It was partially destroyed several times. Twice it was hit by lightening and other times destroyed by war. It was in the Thirty Years War between the Protestants and the Pope that the castle was damaged so much that the king moved to a new castle that he had built about 30 miles away.

Here you can see Sister Howlett and Sister Dye looking at some of the ruins. Even as an empty castle, however, it was still impressive, and when the French armies invaded in the 17th century they wanted to destroy its value as a symbol of German greatness. They went to great lengths to try to destroy it. They set off several explosions inside trying to break down the walls, and finally in 1693succeeded in breaking off a piece of one of the towers. That piece, however was so strong it remained pretty much in one piece, and it can still be seen where it fell. They burned out the interior of the castle, and damaged the castle badly, but it is still an impressive site.In recent times they have rebuilt the interior of a few parts of the castle to provide an idea what it was like inside. They also have finished space where they now have frequent concerts and dramas. It continues to be one of Germany's greatest tourist attractions, and the University is still just below and well-known as one of the premier medical colleges of the world.Here you can see Elder Howlett on the bridge with the castle on the hill above the “Altstadt” or old city.
The Old Heidelberg Bridge provided a very important connection to the area across the Neckar River. It allowed for people to branch out in villages across the river and still be able to get back to the city. This bridge was a very important entrance to the city and therefore a special “Tor” or gate was built through which people had to travel in order to enter the city. Notice the white pillars in the background by the end of the bridge. Those are part of this special gate into the city. There was a gap on the bridge just before one would reach the gate into the city where a wooden drawbridge was let down for people to cross if the guards were to allow them across. Today that drawbridge is gone and replaced with a permanent extension of the road across the bridge, though the road is only for pedestrians now. Other sturdier bridges have been built to accommodate the enormous amount of traffic back and forth across the river today.
When we were up in the castle we got some great shots of the city and surrounding areas. Notice the city, the river, the bridge and the terrific view. No wonder kings, popes and dukes loved to live in this castle with the good view of anyone coming up the valley or the river. In this picture you can see the Heidelberg Cathedral or “Dom”, the river and the bridge. If you look closely you can see the white pillars of the gate by the bridge. What a beautiful site it all is.
While we were taking a tour of the castle a professional photographer offered to take a picture of our group. You can see our tour guide on the left side, second row. He’s the young one. He was from Canada and we could understand his English very well. Many thanks go to the Atkinsons who gave us a digital copy of their purchased portrait. They are the couple standing next to our tour guide.

When we got home that evening our son-in-law, John Oberting, called us on our cell (mobile) phone to tell us that both babies had been born and that there had been a problem with Benjamin in the birth. He also told us that our oldest daughter, Susan, was trying to contact us. She was in Washington State helping our daughter Karen in place of Sister Howlett who couldn’t be there. So at 10 pm our time we jumped in our car and drove to our office where we were able to get e-mail messages from both our children. We also learned that Benjamin, Karen’s baby, had gotten his right upper arm broken during the birth. They had rushed him to the Children’s hospital where the doctors confirmed it with x-rays and then just wrapped it in an ace bandage to keep it immobilized. It will take about 6 weeks but he will be fine. We called them to learn more about it all and we got to Skype with them for an hour. It was great to find all was well. We were so grateful to know both son and mom were doing good.

It was also great to know little Gwyneth and her mom are doing well. Missi, the mom, is happy to have her mother there from Georgia to help and Adam will be home for six weeks from work on paternity leave. What a joy it is to have two new grandchildren born within two days. Several of our grandchildren have been coming down in twos, so these two are joining the club. We wonder if our grandchildren were good friends before they came down to us. Hmm! Something to ponder about.

The other day we were notified that a German couple was going to have a Polterabend celebration in the parking lot next to our building. We were very curious as to what they were going to do, so we went down to see what was going on. An area in the parking lot was partitioned off and a trailer dumpster was set up next to it. When we got there people were coming up to a young man and young woman who were standing near the partitioned off area and the people were bringing some old pottery dishes, bowls, plates, cups, etc. and they would throw them on the ground breaking them in pieces. The young were working there sweeping up the mess and shoveling it into the dumpster. This continued to go on for hours as more people came and smashed their crockery on the ground. They also seemed to have a party going on in the adjacent fire house, but people kept bringing stuff to crash on the ground and the young couple continued to sweep and shovel. When we went to bed we could still hear the party and the crashing going on.

We tried to ask people there why they do that, and they just said that it is a tradition. At church we found a young lady who told us that it is a tradition with the young people in Germany now. It represents the idea that the more pottery that is crashed, the more good luck the new couple will have in their marriage. The young sister also said it is a good time for the new husband and wife to be to work together at cleaning up a place. “Polter” is a German word meaning crash about, and “abend” means evening. Thus, “Crash about evening” or Polterabend. It is also traditionally held on the eve of the wedding. We wonder if the movie “Poltergeist” had something to do with crashing ghosts? “Geist” in German means spirit. We never saw the movie, but we wonder if ghosts were flying around crashing things in that movie? Another Hmm.

Last we must tell how much we are enjoying Mugi Cha as a cool summer drink. In the Howlett family they had read in the Word of Wisdom that barley was for the making of mild drinks. They developed several recipes, and the drink was fairly well known in the family, especially popular as a hot drink in the winter. Karen had Japanese roommates at BYU and she made us a Japanese "Barley Tea" which was very similar, and she sent us a large supply of it. It is now quite hot here in Frankfurt, and we wanted something cool to make up for not having Air Conditioning. We started making it as a "sun tea" and we drink it cold. WoW! (Word of Wisdom!) It is a Word of Wisdom safe tea and we are loving it here. Thank you so much, Karen!