Dorint Hotel & Sportresort Winterberg

... in the bank about 26 years ago. Dietmar was an intern there at the time and on a slow day, they decided to play poker in the bank... with all the money. They were later discovered by another employee but he kept their secret.

Dietmar offered us tickets to a local handball tournament. He is also a member of a local shooting club and invited me to come shoot with him on Saturday. I am not so interested in handball but I think I might like to go to the shooting range.

... an hour-and-a-half. We visited every stage, from boiling to bottling. The process was well organized and hardware was impressive. The fermentation tanks alone were 21 meters (69 feet) tall and held approximately three million glasses of beer.

Beer in Germany is brewed in accordance with Reinheitsgebot (purity order) dating from 1516. Even today, the only allowed ingredients of beer are water, hops, barley ...

... making chocolate bars while you watched. Of course, there was also a place where you could taste the chocolate. Repeatedly. The museum is one of the top ten German museums with 600,000 visitors a year.

The Kölner Dom is a twin-spired cathedral which was astonishing to see. They began building it in 1248 and it stands 157 meters (515 feet) at it's peak. This was ...

... is the biggest meal of the day and dinner is usually lighter.

I also noticed that bakeries (Bäckereien) are much more commonplace here. Our German family buys their bread fresh and they slice it as they use it each meal. I like this. I wonder, how much does a bread slicer cost in the U.S.?

Today we took a hike into the nearby woods. It was a very nice trail that wasn't too challenging but it had been a while since I had been hiking so it was enough to make me work a bit. It was about a one hour hike, 2027 feet to the top of the mountain. At the summit, there was a nice ...

After catching up on our sleep, it was time to get started on proper vacation stuff. We woke up Saturday morning, packed our bag and started driving to see our German family in Kreuztal. In 2007-2008, we hosted a German exchange student named Julia. Although she was only with us for one school year, in that time she became a permanent member of our family and we have been looking forward to the time we could see her again ...

... setting up the tent over the weekend, but didn't get the time. So now we just have to hope we can figure it out when we get to Calais.

... sheep. We ate lunch there, enjoyed Tante Emmi's teasing, checked out the outdoors with Onkel Siefried and then motored on to Siegen, where Tante Rita lives. There we enjoyed coffee and cake and then went shopping. Definitely my kind of evening!
Rita had purchased a ton of stuff already, but there were still a few things on my list, so off we went to Aldi (for chocolates and coffee ...

... listed in the entry requirements.
We have to get all the right maps, so D will be off doing that this week too.
I already have 2 sponsors in the US, and hopefully, there will be a few in the UK. E-mails to my non-work contacts are in order, I think.

... based solely on the discretionary designation by the President of a U.S. citizen as an "enemy combatant", all in subversion of law; and WHEREAS, In all of this George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney have acted in a manner contrary to their trust as President and Vice President, subversive of constitutional government to the great prejudice of the cause of law and justice, and to the manifest injury of the people of the City of Detroit and of ...