Klassik am Berg

A very long time ago my mum and dad used to play music. Mum played the flute and dad played the tuba with an orchestra. We visited a practise of that orchestra - if you ask me it's too loud! On Thursday they played a concert in Erlangen, not inside a concert hall but outside on a bandstand. The area is called Der Berg which means mountain and it is sort of a hill. Inside the hill are a whole bunch of cellars. Mum told me they were originally for keeping drinks cool (especially beer), and when we walked past the cellar doors, we could feel a cool breeze. Today of course they have fridges, but in the olden days the breweries had ice cut in winter from ponds and stored it in icehouses or cellars for the summer so the beer wouldn't go off. Today the area around these cellars has tables and benches and there are rustic restaurants. Tizi and I went there with mum and dad who wanted to listen to the concert and just look in what they served our drinks!

Of courses we also need something to eat:

Friday 12 July 2013

Today we travelled by car to Forchheim. It was hot (like every day!). Here are some of the things we saw:

(Oops, you can see mum's finger in the photo!)

Can you tell from what year the crest up top is?

Yasha practising for being on stage :-)

This chain is heavy...

Can you see the pennyfarthing?

On the way back we stopped in a small town called Effeltrich:

This tree is estimated to be about 850 years old.

This church has a fortified wall around it and was defended when attacked. The villagers would gather here to be save as the village didn't have its own defences.

Bells

Tizan says Germany is obsessed with bells. Church bells seem to be ringing all the time. They are telling the time: 1 chime for quarter past, two chimes for half past, 3 chimes for quarter to, 4 chimes for the full hour and then another bell tolling as many times as the o'clock, so when it's 8 o'clock there are 4 of the one bell and then 8 of the other.

Sometimes there are more bells, e.g. to call people to mess (they seem to have a lot of mess here!). They also ring the bells lots at 11am and at 12pm. You have to know that in Germany they have their main (hot) meal at lunchtime so the 11am bell used to tell the farmers' wives to go home from the fields and cook lunch, and the 12pm bell called the farmers home for lunch.

We even saw a fire station with a bell on top instead of a siren! We have a little video from the church in Effeltrich from from last Friday at 12pm but we need to figure out how we can insert it here.