A Cameroonian Visitor

Allison Mackay is my Cameroonian friend. She teaches high school math and 8th grade Bible at the Rainforest Academy in Cameroon, Africa. She was very excited to see the rolling green hills of Germany. Here she is with the village of Kandern in the background. This is on the road that my dorm, Palmgarten, is on. It is called Feuerbacherstrasse because it is the street (strasse) that leads to the village of Feuerbach.

This is the quaint village of Feurerbach. It is just 2 kilometers from Palmgarten, but it is up over a steep hill. Allison was surprised at the workout of a simple walk in Germany.

I am enjoying the wonderful "warm" weather as I stand in front of Feuerbach. Allison assures me that "warm" is a relative term...she would classify it as cold weather...but then again she is living in Africa! I found the 60s and 70s to be a rather nice surprise.

I also took Allison to Basel, Switzerland. And for those of you who know how horrible my directional skills, I would like you to know that I found the correct parking garage in the city and then I found the Muster (biggest cathedral in the city) that is on the Rhein River. See we made it to the heart of the old city of Basel.

Allison was quite impressed with the Rhein and the Old City of Basel. It is one of my favorite places in Basel...well besides Starbucks.

On Allison's last full day in Germany, we decided to hike to the Sausenburg Castle Ruins. After 3 hours of hiking around the mountainside...we realized that we were indeed lost. Note my directional skills from above...not so good!

Well at least we had a nice hike and we found SNOW!!! Allison hasn't seen snow in over 2 years!

The scenery was beautiful...but where in the heck is the castle ruins?

We made it to Vogelbach...what that is on the mountain where the Sonne and Blauen dorms are located. I have never actually been to Vogelbach. Something is not quite right!

But it is always a good time to throw a snowball at the resident African!
We did find a sign for the castle ruins...at this point we are only 0.8 kilometers from the ruins!

This is what the original castle looked like when it was completed. Notice that it started being built in 1120...just a few years before America became a country! This is crazy old!

Allison enjoys the castle window and the snow that is falling! Yep it snowed on us!

This is the remains of the castle court yard with all of the snow!

We then climbed the windy staircase of the castle tower. It has quite a view of the local villages.

I am so proud that even though we got lost we did indeed find Sausenburg!!!!