Kaiser Wetter

Greetings once again from Saarbrucken, where we were blessed with Kaiserwetter.  That translates into English as "King's Weather", and it's apparently a colloquial term for, and I'm quoting Google Translate here, "perfect, sunny weather with a deep blue, cloudless sky".  I mean, technically it wasn't totally cloudless-

I mean, there were a few clouds in the sky, but the temperatures were approaching 80, so I'm not going to (American colloquial alert) pick nits here.

Let's just call it Kaiserwetter and leave it at that.

Since the weather was so amazing today, we spent as much time as we could outdoors (our sunburned faces and arms attest to that).  We started off the day by heading out to see Loraine's soccer team in their latest practice session (on this pitch, in fact)--

And then took care of my little photo transfer problem from yesterday.  As you may recall, my Chromebook wouldn't transfer pictures from my big Nikon DSLR, though it has in the past.  I kinds sorta wondered if maybe there was just a little too much on the SD card, causing the Chromebook to become confused, so I bought a new SD card, popped it in, took a few shots, and you know what?  

They transferred like a charm--

Those flowers were actually in one of their Saturday markets, this one in the Johanner Markt, right around the corner from our hotel.  As it turns out, they have several different kinds of markets in various places on Saturday.  However, most of them were ending by the time we walked past them, so...

Our loss.

The weekly market is just one of many similarities I've found between Saarbrucken and Marquette.  I mean, Saarbrucken's a lot bigger--182,000 people compared to 25 or 30,000--but they're both university towns that sit on water (the Saar River here, and if you're curious (and you know you are) "Saarbrucken" translates to "Bridge on the Saar").  Both are packed with visitors on a warm weekend--

Both have a lot of people enjoying dining at all kinds of restaurants--

Both have some GLORIOUS sandstone architecture--

Both want you to clean up after your pets--

Both have waterfowl with attitudes.  We have geese. Saarbruchen has ducks--

And everywhere you go, you can smell "Chicago".

This one takes a little explaining.  When we first got here, we noticed the usual amount of Germans smoking cigarettes.  Thankfully, we're able to avoid them, and like in the US the amount of people using tobacco has dropped in huge numbers recently.  Not so for another substance, though.  A couple of years ago when we were in Chicago Loraine and I smelled nothing but pot smoke everywhere we went.  So whenever we catch a whiff of someone partaking in Marquette, we joke "Chicago".  Our first day here (yesterday, a Friday) Loraine actually commented that "It doesn't smell like Chicago here".

That was yesterday.  Today, a Saturday, we really didn't smell cigarette smoke, but we sure did smell Chicago.  Plus we came across the first we saw that sells it--

I think maybe the biggest similarity, though, lies in the history of the cities.  Both were born of iron ore--in Saarbrucken, they mined it; in Marquette, we shipped it out.  And both places still have big reminders of what used to be.  In Marquette, we have the ore dock, while in Saarbrucken they've taken an old mining area and turned it into a park, with the old railroad roundhouse now a giant fountain--

And other parts of the old mining complex part of a water park--

Heck.  If you wander around the park, you may even stumble into a German folk singer doing his best Johnny Cash--

All in all, I think the two places have a lot more in common than one would think, and that's what's making Saarbrucken such an interesting place to explore.

Just a few more random things to leave you with today, including another of the 11,000 shots I took of sandstone architecture--

One of the many forms of "entertainment" available around here--

A pretty smart way to park a Smart car--

And today's wall of chocolate--

I get to lord the Kaiserwetter over you for one more day, as tomorrow promises at least half a nice day before a system moves through that brings rain and temperatures 15 to 20 degrees cooler than today.  So we'll take advantage of it by hitting the road.

Those details, plus why the word "Spargel" is so important this time of the year in Germany, tomorrow!

(jimkoskimqt@gmail.com)