Swiss Saxony and Fortresses

Jonathan surprised us yesterday morning by being the first one up. He had gone to bed later than us the night before, so we were still fearing that we might have to peel him out of bed again. Fortunately for us, he was up and at 'em, and never looked back. He woke up before me again this morning, so I feel pretty confident that his jetlag is gone. Hooray!!

Jonathan is going to eat the floorboards and everything in this building. He is constantly hungry (not a complaint, but it's funny how much we have to dance around to accomodate his hunger), but he is a joy to have around. A hungry joy to have around. I feel like a predator, because I'm constantly on the lookout for food for him when we're out, a pre-emptive strike of sorts.

We spent yesterday in a region near Dresden called Swiss Saxony (die Sächsische Schweiz) that is known for its beautiful scenery, fortresses, hiking paths, and quaint little towns. We decided to explore the fortress in Königstein (Festung Königstein). It was a 30 minute walk, but it was worth it, and the view was spectacular. There was so much more to do than we had originally expected, so we were kept busy until we absolutely had to leave (once Jonathan had eaten the last of our food, got hungry again, and we had to get Andreas home to pack for his trip). We took many more pictures than we could include in the blog, so I'm including the link to our album on Picasa. Enjoy!
http://picasaweb.google.com/erica.thurman/FestungKonigsteinWithJonathan?authkey=Gv1sRgCPvI0ISJsqHy1gE&feat=directlink

So says Jonathan: I went on a double decker train yesterday, it was fun. Erica, Andreas, and I went to a fortress. It was so cool, we had to walk thirty minutes uphill both ways in twenty feet of snow.... just kidding. It was a thirty minute hike though. When we were at the fortress we went to the top of the fortress and it had a spectacular view. When I was hungry ( like 5 minutes after I got up the fortress) I had salami sandwiches.

There was a well in the fortress, it was the second deepest well in europe (152 meters). They had two buckets in there, there was a monitor to see the buckets in the well. From the monitor the buckets looked tiny, but when the bucket came up it was huge. The fortress used to have a 60,000 gallon wine keg, there was a picture of it and it looked like 100 people could get put in there with plenty of room.

We walked down to the main level of the fortress and we saw spikes on the side of a moat with a drawbridge, it was intense. When we got down, we got ice cream. On the the double decker train i smelt an amazing (and when I say amazing I mean horrific) smell. I thought someone was about to start biological warfare in the train.

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