Out and about today

I took a couple of photos while we were out and about today and decide to also add an aerial photo of the lay of the land here. Click on it to increase the size (you can do that to all the photos, by the way. I really encourage you to scroll down and enlarge the photo of the Pacifier Tree when you've finished with these.). Eric annotated it. The smiley face is our house.

So today we ran an errand to Weisloch (about 3 miles away). I wanted to show you this lending library on one of the city squares. I think it is such a lovely idea. Want to sit here and read? There you go!
We had lunch at our favorite Weisloch restaurant - Stoll's kaffehaus. Service isn't American fast. We are waiting for our drinks. Emily and I split pan-fried putenschnitzel (I looked up "puten." It said "tom turkey." And some menus translate it as turkey. So I said something to our landlord who said it's not turkey. He said it's between a chicken and a duck. Huh? Maybe his English isn't as good as I think. ) anyway.... we split the putenschnitzel mit pommes (fries) and a salad with a fantastic balsamic vinagrette. Vance had jagerschnitzel ("hunter's" schnitzel - schnitzel covered in an incredible gravy, usually with mushrooms) with pommes and salad all to himself.
And lastly, this guy was selling Christmas trees in the lot next to his old house. We saw him last year hanging out of his kitchen window (that overlooks the tree lot) taking money. I really wanted a photo of that interaction. But I already bought a tree from a tree farm down the road, so I was just making everyone nervous taking a photos (he and his friend were outside, but went in and watched me from the closed window), so I got out of there. Still I thought it was charming. More quick info about the tree we bought at the tree farm. The baumeister (tree master) carried the tree to the car, gave us fresh apples and a small bottle of his home-made liquor (apple-pear. Last year he gave us cherry. It was fire-water! I finally took the bottle out of my purse yesterday for fear it would fall out somewhere while I was searching for a pen and look like I carry a "mommy's little helper.")