Our rental cabin in Garmisch, Germany

Saturday, 2:30 pm: This spring has certainly been fickle. At the beginning of this week we had a light dusting of snow. Yesterday, the high temperature was 88.6° (F.) here. In the space of just a few days I’ve gone from a jacket and gloves to t-shirts and shorts. I’m curious what tomorrow will bring.

A German Alpine Valley

Meanwhile back to our recent European trip - part 4. When I left off last time we had departed Berlin driving to Frankfurt on the Autobahn. We spent the night in Wiesbaden and visited my wife’s sister for a few hours in the evening in Frankfurt. The next day we drove towards Kasierslautern and on to Baumholder to visit a friend, after which we drove to Heidelberg/Wiesloch where my wife’s niece and her family lives. I met Otto Futterer [related some way to my wife] who at 80 has great stories to tell. As a teenager he was captured by the Americans sometime after D-Day and spent the rest of the war in a POW camp. His fondest memories of the war was the time he spent as a POW in Virginia. He liked the Americans who treated him with some dignity. He also enjoyed helping local Virginia farmers with their harvest. Otto said he got better food then he got in the German Army and no one was shooting at him, and they showed him movies too. What a deal! His only complaints were, another older POW who snored so loud they called him “The Saw” and he spent his 18th birthday as a POW.

Deutscher Wetterdienst - Manfred Kristen, Meteorologist

Moving right along, we were in Munich overnight then on to the German Alps for eight days. In a rustic cabin at the [US] Armed Forces Recreation Center in Garmisch. The Alps are great! This is the part of Germany where idealized folk images on postcards are shot. We were in a bakery when a man came in [probably two sheets to the wind] and started yodeling. All the customers were amused, but not the woman behind the counter who took life much too serious. Before I forget completely, I listened to German radio stations and when they played American music they are certainly taken with Nancy Sinatra as she came up frequently on their play lists. Some of her songs I haven’t heard for 30 or 40 years were on Radio Oberland. She’s really popular on the radio there. Go figure!

Manfred Kristen and Charles Ames at the Garmisch Weather Station

I went to the local state-of-the-art weather [Deutscher Wetterdienst] station in Garmisch. I met the on-duty meteorologist Manfred Kristen who was very friendly and showed me their operation. A weather station has been operating in Garmisch for over 100 years. There is also an affiliated weather station atop the Zugspitze, the highest mountain in Germany on the border with Austria.

Current values from our wireless Davis Vantage-Pro weather station:

Temperature: 69.1° (F.)

Barometer: 29.784 & steady

Humidity: 26%

Wind: NNE 10 mph & gusty

Visibility: > 3 miles

Skies: Clear

Precipitation: None

Since midnight:

Low temperature: 60.2° (F.) at 7:56 am

High wind: 21 mph at 1:01 pm