visiting Alpha Outpost, Kreuzberg Monestary for beer

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beautiful morning here in Fulda and we gather our things together to go out and visit some villages in Bavaria. Claudia has a full day of work but Martin is taking the day off to show us around; Sophia is going to school. we take the Kroedel's new VW bus which is red, deisel and stick shift (not anything like the VW bus Toni and I drove around back in the late 70's). we head out to visit the sight of the last U.S. Army patrol along the border of the former East and West Germany near the city of Fulda called Point Alpha. Martin and his family grew up in East Germany and came to the west in 1975 and the following year came to the US as a foreign exchange student and lived with Toni's sister Sharon in Pacific Beach.

This was a very moving experience and place for Toni and I, who didn't have a direct contact or experience of the border we learned much of what freedom or lack of it meant to Germans who lost contact with their countrymen when the USSR took control of East Germany.

We then drove to a monastery where beer has been made for 500 hundred years and enjoyed some with pretzels and white sausage. There are ski areas around as we are at about 2400 feet in elevation but also at latitude 53 so it gets snowy here in the winter but today we had a spring day with flowers everywhere on a hike to the top of the mountain.

back to Fulda and we were taken out to dinner in town by Claudia and Martin and a nice walk around the town before coming home to bed

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Photos

Point Alpha Memorial
location of the border between E and W Germany

view of E Germany
not anymore but back in the day this was no man's land

Martin telling Toni
about what it was like experiencing life under USSR

posing where the fence was
Martin thought they should have preserved this for a bike path . . . it runs from Bavaria to Belgium

path to the monastery
for B E E R

Russian Orthodox Church
in Bischoffshim Germany (home of the bishop)

inside a Notary Office building
in Bischoffshim

new landscaping at the Kroedels
just finished while we were out today