Week 105: Euro Championships & the Moselle River Valley

Spring has finally decided to show up in Stuttgart. It has still been pretty chilly, but at least has been really sunny. The days are getting so long. One day, we went to bed with our window shades open. We woke up the next morning to see the room filled with sunlight. I screamed that we had overslept and we both jumped out of bed and started running around. I grabbed my phone to check the time and realized it was only 5:45am, yet still full daylight. It is so crazy! We are definitely loving all of the extra Vitamin D.

The week went by so quickly. The European Championships (Euros) for softball was this weekend so Brooklyn and her team got on the bus straight after school on Wednesday to head to Ramstein. They played two seeding games on Thursday; one was late in the evening so we were able to drive up after work to watch her play. Although they lost both games in the qualifying, they still scored more runs then two of the other teams in the tournament so seeded in the middle of the tournament.

Friday, Matt and I were off work so we headed back to Ramstein to watch Brooklyn play. It was a a close game but unfortunately, Stuttgart lost so they were eliminated from the tournament after the first game. We are still so proud; the entire team has improved so much over the season and we are looking forward to next year so much!

After the game was over, we had lunch with some friends at Chili’s on Ramstein Air Base. We were so excited to eat at an American restaurant (even though they were out of chips!). Real funny- Matt forgot that we could get free refills so caught himself pacing himself on his soda, but then quickly finished off four or five just because he could haha.

Saturday, I met with some friends for an overnight trip. We had originally planned a little longer excursion but due to some last minute changes, decided to do just an overnight to the Moselle River Valley.

We started out by driving three hours north to Cochem. We did some walking around the town, and then hiked up through the vineyards to the castle. We had lunch on the castle terrace and then toured the castle.

Afterwards, we hiked back down and did some more walking around the town, stopping into wine shops and wine caves to do tasting and buy some of the Moselle River Valley’s famous wines.

When we had seen most of Cochem, we got back in the car and drove about 45 minutes to Traben- Trarbach, where we would be staying the night. The drive took us both along the river and through the vineyards; the weather was sunny and the views were beautiful. We parked the car at the hotel and then set out on a walk around the town. We stopped and had drinks on a riverside terrace and then had dinner at an Italian restaurant. After we left, we had planned to go out for more wine but found that Traben-Trarbach was a ghost town after nine pm. We walked for quite awhile without seeing anything open, except for one bier garten that had no room for more. We headed back to the hotel and decided to drink some of the wine we had purchased earlier in the day.

Sunday morning, we had breakfast at a cafe in Traben-Trarbach, and then drove on to Bernkastel-Kues, which was only about 20 minutes away. The weather was finally warm enough for us to fully take off our jackets- gasp!

Bernkastel-Kues was the favorite of the three towns for everyone in the group. This town was mostly half-timbered, unlike the others we had visited, and had the cutest downtown area. We walked for a little while and saw a restaurant where Moselle-Spritzes were offered. When we ordered, the waitress told us that we had sat at the wrong restaurant; you could only get those at the table next to where we were sitting- haha. We ordered some regular spritzes- Aperol, Hugo, and Lillets anyways. Everything was served with a tassle in it, which we thought was funny. Later, as we were walking through the town, we would see every restaurant was serving drinks with tassles in them- maybe a Bernkastel thing?

We kept walking and found a cute restaurant on the edge of town, next to a vineyard and had lunch. This restaurant did serve Moselle-spritzes, which we tried. They are just white Moselle wine and soda water- very basic, but good.

We walked a little more through town and then headed back to the car and made the three hour drive back home. It is the end of a holiday week here in Germany and traffic was awful, but we eventually made it.

I got home in time to relax with Matt and the kids before bed. Next week, Brooklyn is off on a Girl Scout camping trip and we are taking Ryan to visit some World War II battle sites in Belgium that he has requested to visit.