4 Day Mini Vacation & A New LinkUp!

Hello and happy Monday! 
How was your weekend? I hope super relaxing and fun? 
Since M had a 3 day training for his new job, I decided to join him going to Little Rock. I've had a wonderful time strolling around. Did you see the pics I posted on Instagram?  If you always wanted to see what the Capitol in Little Rock looks like, or what fun public transportation they have: Consider following me on Instagram. Click HERE to do it. NOW!
After visiting the Clinton Library (you can find a little review HERE), this time I finally made it to the Museum Store as well. It's just down the street from the library, and if you are super lazy or can't walk 0.5 miles, they even offer you a little shuttle thing you can hop on for free.
I love the Museum Store! You can easily spent an hour in there. It's packed with awesome artsy stuff. But since M and I really like Bill Clinton, I got myself a T-Shirt, and a little magnet for M. Best part: I was allowed to pick a FREE campaign button, because I've bought something! Free stuff is awesome.
              

  

NEWS // NEWS // NEWS

Today I am starting a new LinkUp Party, which will go online on Mondays. It's called "Weekend Recap"!

An InLinkz Link-up

Feel free to grab the HTML for the LinkUp HERE to put it on your post as well!

 

Staying Active While Traveling

Today marks my last day in Germany. I've had a wonderful time! And you might have realized, I was trying to stay as active as possible while being over here. Here goes a list of activities you can easily include in your vacation time:

Jillian Michael's 30 Day Shred Squeezing a 30 minute workout into your daily routine is or should be easy. So is packing 2 sets of workout clothes into your suitcase. Grab 2 water bottles if you don't have access to dumb bells, and get going! Put the workout DVD on your iPad or laptop, and bring it with you on your vacation. I was lucky my sister has the DVD. I was doing a good job keeping up the shredding over here, besides all the other activities. Currently I'm on day 14. 

Running

Pack your running shoes and explore the city and surroundings! That's what I usually do, no matter where I go! If there is a 5K run in the area during the vacation time -> do it and grab the medal as a nice souvenir!

Hiking Nothing is easier than putting on some sturdy shoes and leaving for a hike. Since hiking is becoming more and more a trend, there are wonderful hiking trails almost everywhere. Check out the AllTrails app - it's awesome to get started!

Last but not least: Sightseeing! My pedometer on the phone is exploding since I'm on vacation! I'm walking around so much during my sightseeing. Burning calories without even noticing is awesome!

 

Hiking Germany: Teufelsschlucht

I guess you can only cherish the nature around you, if you don't live in that area. This is how I feel about the landscapes in Germany. Since I'm living in AR/USA now, I see my old hometown, the surroundings, and especially the nature with different eyes. It is a beautiful place on this earth, and I am trying to squeeze in as many hikes as possible while I'm on vacation in Trier.
One day after I landed in Germany, 2 of my sisters, my little 9 year old nephew and I went on a hike. The "Teufelsschlucht" (= Devil's Gorge) is located between the villages Irrel and Ernzen in the southern Eifel.  It's a big and wonderful mixed forest with a huge amount of strage rock formations:

"The "Teufelsschlucht" is a gorge like cleft in the rock, which was enigmatic for the lcoals. A normal gorge is formed by the erosion of a river, as a result the floor is continually going downwards, as the water flows downhill. But this gorge is different, as the floor on both ends is higher than in the centre. So the water would have flown in from both sides and vanished mysteriously. So the locals beliefed this gorge was not formed naturally but created by the devil. So it was named devils gorge. The sandstone in this area is called Luxemburger Sandstein and is from the Lower Jurassic or Lias. The calcreous sandstone was deposited some 190Ma ago at the northern coast of the Lias sea. The land mass to the north is called Ardennens Massif, and was the source of the sand. The area where those sandstones are found today is called Luxemburger Schweiz (Luxembourg Switzerland) and is about 330m asl. The sandstones are exceptionally thick in this area, because this once was the stuary of a river which brought huge amounts of sand with it an deposited them. Below the sandstone is a layer of marl from the Upper Triassic, locally called Keuper. This rock is water resistant and rather soft, and becomes a good lubricant (at least in geologic terms) if wet. The sandstone has cracks from the uplift, they are widened by erosion, and the weck basement lets huges chunks of rock slide slowly. This process was intensified at the end of the last ice age, some 10,000 yeras ago, when warm an humid climate and the melting water of the glaciers caused higher erosion. The result was the labyrinth of strange rocks caled Felsenmeer (sea of rocks). The gorge was formed by the separation of two chucks of rock for more than one meter and several subsequent rock falls."

via www.showcaves.com

 

Did you know you can find me on YouTube now as well? I'm just getting started. But I would be happy if you follow me on there as well! I made a little video of the hike. It's not super duper professional, but I hope you will enjoy it anyway. I'm still learning all this YouTube stuff.

It was a wonderful and exhausting hike. Since it was going up- and downhill all the time, it was a nice workout as well:

If you want to hike over here, in the beautiful USA - check out this article about

  Top 50 Long Distance Hiking Trails In The USA!

 

Aaaaaaactive!

Geez, I look funny on this picture!!! 

I am really enjoying my time in Trier! I secretly packed my running gear and went for my first run since the herniated discs happened.  It was FANTASTIC! I am soooo happy to have the "Go!" from my doc. I went down to the Mosel river and started very slow. In the end I ran a little over 5k in 40 minutes. Not a fast pace, but a nice jog. Now I have to keep the good work up. 

But overall I am a pretty active person on my vacation so far!

Now it's Thursday already and I will go back to Bavaria Sunday evening... I'm definitely not ready to get back into the empty apartment yet.

I hope you all had a lovely day?
xoxo

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All my bags are packed... Not yet ready to go!

Howdy!

Blogging live from my chaotic home right now. Laundry is still in the washing machine, dishwasher is running, M is probably starving since I didn't make dinner today....

I'm pissed cause my boss called me after work letting me know one of the clients is pissed... Makes me mad cause there is no reason for him to be mad! Ugh!

Geez! Why all that? I'm off next week, leaving for my old hometown tomorrow morning.

My suitcase is not packed yet. At least I managed to bring it upstairs from the basement.

Sunday me and my youngest sis will sell some stuff at a flea market in trier, like all my trazillions of old Barbies and complete Barbie households and spare time activity equipment. The weather forecast said it will be sunny! So I hope Sunday night I'll be rich.

Gotta go, laundry is done! I'll try to get a real blog post done on the train tomorrow!

Have a great Friday night!!
Smooches!

Home is where...?

Howdy!

Sorry for not blogging for a while. I went for a little vacation to the Hunsrück and Mosel area, more specific Morbach, the little town I was born almost 30 years ago! (Yep, the big 30 is coming up in June...). Believe it or not: I didn´t touch my laptop for almost 10 days! Felt good!

I was staying at my dad´s house, which is actually the house I was born in. Long story - my mom didn´t make it to the next hospital back in the days so I popped out in my partents' bedroom. TMI!? ;oD

I was spending time with my brother, sisters and nephews the first couple of days, and then some more wonderful time with my bestie and a whole bunch of unbiological family from California and Germany. It was wonderful, but saying goodbye knocked me out again.

Back in Bavaria now, I´m still not sure what to do next... But until I know what to do, I´ll just try to be happy :o)

I will definitely post a few more pics of my little vacation, but I still didn´t make it to go through all of them to pick out some nice ones and maybe do some retouching.

Until then, have a good one!

xoxo
Anni

Me and my nephew, Luis

Mosel (Moselle river)