Crooked houses....and nightmare traffic!

There was a crooked man, and he walked a crooked mile.
He found a crooked sixpence upon a crooked stile.
He bought a crooked cat, which caught a crooked mouse,
and they all lived together in a crooked little house.



Guten Tag!

Decided on a mid-week jaunt (after Norbert got home from work) to a nearby village called Alsfeld as it is known for its 'crooked houses'....half-timbered houses which escaped wars and are still standing, some built as early as the late 1400's! But boy are they crooked! I took the photo on the right but as it was dusk the light wasn't the best for taking good photos so I have 'borrowed' the one below from another Flickr photographer, as it is an excellent photo which shows clearly the completely 'out-of-square' lines of many of these old buildings.

Makes you wonder if the floors are sloping inside, how they manage to put square windows and doors into the frames....and whether they are safe to live in! [shakes her head in wonderment] But as Norbert pointed out, if they are still standing after more than 500 years then they probably are not going to suddenly fall down. :-) But just to be safe, I stood clear of the ones which seemed to be leaning out at a precarious angle. [laugh]

Anyway, we had a thoroughly enjoyable tea in a little restaurant called the 'Kartoffelsack' (potato sack) and then decided to head home. And you would think that would be the end of a nice little story.....but NO!!!!!!!

It was going to be a simple, 58k trip on the Autobahn....but nobody told us about the trucks!!!! (Question for our German friends....is this normal???) We were travelling along nicely and then turned a corner...and Norbert had to break quite quickly as ahead were loooooong lines of what seemed like thousands of big trucks, in a complete traffic jam (ein Stau)! Many were queued up, trying to get into truckstops, but on the Autobahn the lines of big trucks snaked waaaay into the distance! There were roadworks which made everything much worse, and the cars were jammed into a side 'lane' which wasn't really a lane at all. Basically, there would have been very little room for 2 cars to be next to each other, but there we were, trying to move along this narrow space with the massive big wheels of big trucks a hair's-breadth away from the right-hand mirror of the car. And can I just add that this is the side of the car that I am sitting on!!!! [terrified look]

I've borrowed the photo of traffic on the Autobahn from here , just to give you the idea (I was too terrified to keep my eyes open, let alone take photos!), but take into account that it was night...and with the roadworks, that gap you see between the line of cars and the line of trucks was virtually non-existent as there were road-work barriers on the left-hand side, several metres in from where you see the edge of this road. Norbert did an absolutely amazing job of driving under those conditions...trying to keep the car centred between these barriers and the moving wheels of the trucks just centimetres away from us.

I know he did an amazing job because we got home safely. [big sigh of relief] I had my eyes closed most of the time with sheer terror!!!! My fingernails were digging into the palms of my hands. I was positive that at any moment we would go under the wheels of a truck, or hit a barrier....or somebody would crush us in the small gap. It was sooooo scary!! [shudders with the memory] I think we should stay off the Autobahns at night if this is normal traffic....maybe the trucks do all their transportation at night or something?

Anyway, I had to have THREE glasses of Schnapps when I got home, just to stop shaking. [grin]

So....what is the most exciting thing that has happened to you this week?

Love to all,
Marlene

PS: Thanks Allison and Amber for your previous comments.

Allison, you asked to see the drawings I have in Adelaide? Unfortunately I don't have much. Drawing is a 'free-time' thing for me and I don't usually get much of that...which is why I promised myself I would try to make time while I was away from work.
Amber, congratulations on being offered some free-lancing work for a magazine! Well done! :-)