for christmas 2004, we arranged to be with anna's family in neidlingen (population 2000), where she grew up. we flew down on the 22nd, and returned on anna's birthday, the 29th.

one of the first things we did after arriving was drive to kirchheim (population 38000), the nearest small city. anna wanted to show me a couple of places, including a café where she used to hang out when she lived there, wunderbar. after that we went looking for a bag for anna's new 15" laptop, since the old bag was really too tight for the new, larger laptop.

we walked a bit around the old city walls, past the city hall and around the church a bit, and then we shopped and left.

this part of germany has an unempolyment level of 4%, which is incredible in general, but more so when compared to, for example, the 17% around berlin. the former east germany still has very high unemployment in many areas, due to the, for the west, unacceptably low quality of the products produced in east german factories. the tolerances and the manufacturing equipment was not only very old, but also older technology with higher tolerances, and much of it was much worse than anticipated, thus leading to many factories simply being shut down, being unable to compete with the high quality standards of western europe. the former west germany generally has much lower levels of employment, but even here it has risen, partly due to some factories moving eastwards, where the labour costs are slightly lower, partly due to the general depression, partly due to germany having less cash on hand (again due to unification, recession, etc.).

on the way back we took the autobahn, which in this reagion of germany often has no speedlimit. we drove around 140 km/h, totally legally, in a vw polo. when anna's father took us to the airport at the end of the trip, we hit 180 km/h at one point, again, totally legally and safely. the roads in this part of germany are so much better than in berlin or the east, but even the worst roads in germany are many times better than the roads in montréal, where i worked previously. there i would occasionally have to swerve on my motorcycle, to avoid huge potholes with the potential to cause me to crash. the largest i recall was probable 0,5m across, and at least 20cm deep. huge.

the last two pictures are out of order, as they came after the bobsledding exhibition in the next section. we went to jana's father's parents, to celebrate jana's birthday again. the first picture is bernhard, anna's father, and sonya. in the second picture, jana gets lifted in her chair, although there was no sheet or ribbons on it this time. in the back, on the right, is omi, jana's great grandmother, a very nice lady.

the mountains here are not so large, perhaps 350m above the valley floor, according to bernhard's guess, but they are quite beautiful. the first panorama is from perhaps one third of the way up to the top, where it was still open with few trees. further towards the top it is actually harder to look around, given the density of the trees higher up. the last picture of this block is of the mountain on the other side of neidlingen.

in the last two pictures you can see, if you look closely, that the wind up here blew quite hard as it froze some rain, and on all the small little twigs, the ice sticks out to the side quite dramatically.