Storndorf, Hessen with Isaac and Johannes (July 24-26, 2007)

Complete Set of Photos - Me
Complete Set of Photos - Isaac and Johannes

I just got back from one of the most coolest trips of the year - Isaac and I visited Johannes, our guide for the year, at his family home in Storndorf, Hessen, between Gießen and Fulda. It was very nice of Johannes and his parents to invite us there and I had a great time, seeing how a real German family lives and how a small German town is (as opposed to students in a big city).

We made it to Storndorf by using the Mitfahrgelegenheit from Stuttgart to Fulda, then a train, and then Johannes's mom picked us up at the train station near Storndorf. Because it was already 8 or 9 or so, we had a snack, met his dad as well, and then played some German Scrabble! This was cool - to make it easy for everyone, we allowed English and German words. They do have the tiles for the letters Ä, Ö, Ü, but not ß (it's the same as "ss" anyway).

Johannes's mom works in the kindergarten in the town, so the next morning we went to visit her and to see a real German kindergarten! It was very cool - nicer than mine was, and this one even had a ball pit! Isaac and I sang the ABC song in English and the German kids sang something for us too. Johannes then showed us his elementary school and some other areas of the town. It's a very small villiage (he said maybe 1000 people or so) with a lot of farms and windmills (the power-generating kind) around.

Our next stop was the town of Alsfeld, just 15 minutes or so away by car. This town is well over 1000 years old and has a lot of the medieval style "Fachwerkhäuser" half-timbered houses. The town hall is a famous building there, and on a building next to that, they had the "Pranger," which was a metal collar attached to the wall where the villagers would be chained for a while to be publicly humiliated back in the Middle Ages. This was a cool town though - you could really see where the old walls were, how close together the houses are, how narrow the streets are, and so on.

We also stopped by Johannes's high school, which is also in Alsfeld. He designed the "Abi 2002" logo (Class of 2002) that's painted above the door.

Next, we stopped in the town of Lauterbach, also not too far away. There were also many of the houses like in Alsfeld, a medieval tower, as well as the river through the middle with the stepping stones from the Middle Ages! We also picked up some Lauterbacher beer, the oldest beer in Hessen, founded in 1527!

After a ride on a metal bobsled type thing, from the top of which we could see the skyline of Frankfurt, we went to go see a castle complex nearby too. It still amazes me how many castles there are here, and how many are still in use and in good condition! Look closely at the horizon in this picture... you can see Frankfurt.

After dinner, Johannes and his dad, a history teacher at a high school in Alsfeld, took me to a field just outside of town where they had the old border stones from about 500 years ago that marked the border between Storndorf and another city in Hessen. Because the stone is so old, it's hard to see what the design is, but on the one side it's a lion in a boxing pose (Hessen's symbol even today) with a star underneath, and on the other it's a blank coat-of-arms shape (Storndorf).

We grilled out in the garden of the house that night, visited a lot with his parents, and then played Rummikub while drinking some of that Lauterbacher beer, as well as apple wine from the area (I didn't like that much!).

The next day, we went off to Fulda, the closest bigger city. This is more of a Baroque type city, but they still had a bunch of the half-timbered buildings and a church that was more than a thousand years old. The park in the center was really nice too - we took a break from trying to catch a duck and went tree climbing!

After that, it was back to his house in Storndorf to say goodbye to his parents. We all took a picture together and then headed back to Stuttgart in his parent's car.


Also, for anyone who's interested, I took a few pictures of a German house (they look a bit different from what we're used to). They're in my pictures.