The Past Couple Weeks in Kempten

A few interesting things have happened the past couple weeks in Kempten that are worth documenting. I keep hearing stories about some of the people Laura works with, but now I can finally put some faces to a couple of the names. Last week we met up with Andrea, Sven, and Joi for dinner. We had them meet us in the Biergarten just downstairs from us in the Rathausplatz, where we celebrated Andrea's birthday with a drink before heading to the Crepe place for dinner. The food was good, but I don't think we'll be back there because of the rude and horrible service....damn Frogs! Joi was especially upset when they made fun of her attempt at speaking German. Andrea and Sven were very nice people, just how Laura had described them, and we also met Andrea again the next week for dinner at the Greek restaurant to say goodbye to Joi before she headed back to New Jersey. This week Laura's boss, Ken, is in town and I'll have a chance to meet him as well as the German owner's, Ute and Kurt, when we all go out for dinner.

The really interesting stuff to write about all came last Thursday. I left to go for a run, and within an hour I had all kinds of news to tell Laura. First, I walked outside the apartment and there was a big concert stage being setup in the Rathausplatz.










Then I went for my run, and on the way back, I passed by the church on our block, and saw some people doing some excavating out front. Laura and I noticed the week before that something was going on, as the courtyard by the church had been dug up, but couldn't read what the signs said in German. It seemed to have been turned into an archeological site, but that's about all we could make out. The good news is that they did not dig up the flat surface where the old men like to play Bocce Ball all day. So, as I was running by on Thursday, I stopped to see what was going on. There were archeologists digging out human skeletons. I thought it was very interesting, so I went back to the room to get my camera. I took a couple pictures of them digging, but also of the sign out front so I could have Laura show it to Andrea to get a translation. Apparently the sign says something like this: "An apartment building was to be constructed here, but as they started to dig for it, they discovered a graveyard dating back to the 1500s. So they are excavating it to learn about the people that lived and died here 500 years ago, and then they will build the apartments." From what Andrea says, things like this are not all that uncommon to find around here, but I still found it rather interesting.










When I got back, the maid was in the room doing the daily cleaning. She started speaking to me in German, as I gave her a blank stare that basically translated to, "I'm a stupid American and I don't speak your language." So she said, "English," and I nodded yes. Then she said, "Spanish," and I said, "si." I had only seen this maid once before (there are a few different ones that come here during the week and clean while I'm in the room working), but hopefully she'll be the one that comes more often now, because I've found a way to communicate with her and ask for things we need. So we started talking a bit in Spanish, and she wondered how I had learned Spanish. When I told her I had spent a lot of time in Central and South America, she wanted to know where. As it turns out, she's from Santiago, Chile, a place I've been to a couple of times and spent about 2 months in. She got married and moved to Germany several years ago. During our conversation, she told me a story about the woman who lives in the apartment next door. Laura and I have only seen our neighbor once, when we came home from an evening walk and she was on the floor in front of her door, drunk and searching for her keys. So the maid told me the woman is a crazy alcoholic (as if we didn't figure that out ourselves). The night before, she apparently had a confrontation with a man that resulted in the cops showing up. Laura and I were definitely around, but we didn't hear any of it. The next day, some other people came to ask us about it. I'm not sure I fully understand what all went on, but nonetheless we have confirmed the fact that this woman is whacko and we should try to keep our distance.

Thursday night, after dinner and some packing for the weekend, we poured a couple beers and went down to check out the concert that started at 8:30pm. We figured we might as well, since we would hear it from our room anyway. Regardless of what it was, it was nice to have something going on in Kempten, since it's normally so dead around here. It would be nice to have some entertainment like this more often, which I think we might now that the Euro2008 soccer tournament has begun. The band was a touring military band called Die BigBand der Bundeswher. If you're into that type of music, I think they were very good. They played until about 11:00pm, although we didn't stay the whole time - we heard the last bit from our room. I have a short video clip here from the concert, so you can decide for yourself, but in my opinion they could have used a more Cowbell! (if don't get that, you need to click on this link and check out the Saturday Night Live skit with Will Ferrell: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvqB0uwLj0k - if this link doesn't work, go to youtube.com and type a search for "Cowbell Original")












One last thing. I realized this week that I never posted any pictures of the outside of the building we live in. Since I had the camera out to take pictures of the archaeological dig, I took a couple of our building as well. Our room is on the second floor, so the bottom left three windows in the corner of the yellow building. A post office and grocery store are just below.