January 5, 2014-An Afternoon in the Harz Mountains

Our landlords, Fritz and Anja invited us to go with them to the Harz Mountains.  We drove about an hour and a half to first visit a monastery that was occupied from the 1100's - 1500's.  But first Fritz walked over to talk with the chickens near the monastery.  I thought it was funny.

This is the outside of the monastery.  The building in the middle of the picture with the tallest roof is what we toured.  To the right you can see part of a remaining gate to the monastery.

In this picture we are with Fritz (red coat) and his wife Anja, their son, their daughter (in the front with the solid scarf) and Kate, a foreign exchange student from Australia.  She spoke great German and English so it was especially helpful that she was with us.  The Jähn family knows English as well but Fritz brought along his German/English dictionary to help out if he didn't know a word.  Their oldest daughter is actually a college student in Missouri.

There is no heat so it was pretty cold.  I was kind of wishing for a monk's robe to throw on over my coat.

A pretty window in the chapel.

Then they had made reservations at a restaurant in the mountains.  I don't think anything else was around here. They wanted us to have this experience because while you are eating they dim the lights and you can look out the windows and LOTS of wild animals come to eat.  They feed them and they come.  I think it was mostly boar and deer.  We saw a few deer with some big antlers.  Our food was good and it was a fun experience.  You can only get to the monastery and restaurant by car.  It was very, very thoughtful and kind of them to invite us.

Finding a place to live in Göttingen at times seemed impossible and overwhelming, but meeting Fritz and Anja and having them as our landlords has been one of the many ways we have seen God is with us.