Seiffen and More

Warning: This will be a long post!
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Kyle and I go church. We get our info. for the Advent Candle reading, and look it over and get instructions from the Chaplin. I read my part over out loud so I am familiar with the text and discuss with Kyle the order that things will be happening, specially when he is suppose to light the candles. So, church gets started and we are up. We get up there and Kyle is suppose to be lighting the candles while I am reading the first couple sentences, yet, he is still standing right next to me. So I figure that he is waiting for me to start reading then he will start lighting...nope, I finished reading my part and he just stands there. He doesn't light the candles, he doesn't read his part, just stands there. I keep looking at him, waiting for something and finally whisper (yet we are right in front of the microphone so everyone can hear) telling Kyle "you need to light the candles," but, he continues to stand there smiling. I had to tell him 4 times to get him moving. After that it went off without a hitch, but he said he had looked over his part and thought the candles were suppose to be lighted later....NOPE, that is exactly why I told him to read it before hand. Oh well, the congregation got to have a good laugh at us. I am pretty sure that the Advent Candle lighting is suppose to be serious, but they had to know when they ask us to do it, we would mess it up.
After church we came home, packed fast, loaded the dogs up and hit the road. We went to a little village about 3 1/2 hours away Seiffen. It is up in the mountains so the roads weren't the best, but manageable. We had a lazy Sunday evening, we didn't want to leave the hotel because of all the fog, so we had dinner and then watched MTV (the only Channel in at least a little English) and went to bed early.
Monday, December 22, 2008
We got up and had breakfast at the hotel, then went into the town of Seiffen. The area was once a mining center but residents turned to wood carving when the tin ore ran out. Seiffen soon became noted for its toys and Christmas crafts. Through the generations, Seiffen wood crafters became masters of their art producing a line of nutcrackers, smokers, candle arches (schwibbogen), and candle pyramids, as well as numerous varied Christmas tree ornaments and specialty holiday products. We knew going in we would spend to much money, so we only got out of the bank before we left what we thought was acceptable to spend, and we amazingly kept to our limit. The town was awesome, we became very picky shoppers only wanting hand carved items and not the laser cut. Because of out pickiness the things we liked became more expensive, so we didn't buy a lot, but LOVE the things we did find. The weather was awful and we both were soaked, so we were glad to leave when we did.
Here are some pictures of the large woodwork in town.

Here are some pictures of the things that we bought. We are really excited about them all. We were a little upset because the biggest and most expensive item, was packed horribly. She put no padding around it, just set it in a box. Part of it broke, but we were able to glue it back together...thank goodness!

When we left the rain was pouring down. We had talked about going to Dresden but with the weather so awful and two dogs (who thankfully who we left in the car, I hate wet dog smell) with us we decided we would rather go home and visit Dresden another time. About 45 minutes into the drive home our windshield wipers stopped working. I was so glad I wasn't driving. Going down the country roads was bad enough, but the autobahn was worse. People driving what would be over 100 mph with the rain is just insane. Plus the sun was so bright, it was reflecting off the road and at times we were completely blind. Sometimes the windshield would get so covered in rain we couldn't see, but with the sun, it was 1ox worse. It was really scary. We both did a lot of praying. About every 30 minutes we would get the wipers to go up and down once, which helped for about 10 seconds. Luckily we made it home safe and sound. Kyle informed me he is used to driving with not being able to see, apparently it is hard to see out of night vision googles, but when he is driving with those, I am pretty sure there aren't people driving by him at 100 mph.


Kyle goes in for his first appointment on his way to laser eye surgery tomorrow. This is the look he was sporting on the way home. He needed his glasses since the wipers weren't working (his eyes aren't that bad, but when your visibility is limited you should wear your glasses if you have them), but the sunglasses were also a must with the sun.

This was taken about 10 minutes before we got home. This isn't half as bad as it was during parts of the trip. This is when the sun was down, so we didn't have the sun to deal with. I didn't think about taking a picture earlier, I was to busy being worried and helping Kyle watch the lines and for cars.