June 26 - Train from Bad Mergentheim to Elsa's

Thursday
We've finally learned how to read the information supplied at the platforms of the train stations.



The train station in Bad Mergentheim printed two schedules for us for going to Lanquart, Switzerland. They both left at 9:25. One schedule went through Zurich and required two reservations. The other had several more train changes but no reservations, and got to Lanquart one hour earlier. We chose the latter schedule, because the reservations cost money, and we enjoy the more local trains. The train changes were each 5-15 minutes. We wondered if we'd make each connection but figured we could take the next train if we missed a connection. Everything went perfectly, and we really enjoyed the scenery, especially as we entered the Alps again. Verle was able to find a Newsweek in English, so caught up on the news whenever there was a spare moment.



We had interesting conversations with two different men as we traveled. The first was a German Christian from Wertheim who is the director of a college that trains elementary teachers in Malawi, Africa. Teachers there are free to share their faith, so it's a great outreach. He and his wife have four children. We had a great discussion about his work and Christianity in Europe. His guess is that Europe is about 5% evangelical Christian. Southern Germany may be closer to 20%. He says that those who leave the state church are usually more devout, because they've made a conscious choice to change.
The second conversation was with a man from Massachusetts, who visits an old friend in Germany every year. His wife didn't come with him this time, because she raises bees and needed to stay home with them. He has worked for several companies including IBM, and can speak some in many languages. He is especially interested in outer space study and has apparently traveled quite widely. I'm sure he knows a lot more about a lot of things than we do, but it was fun to visit with him.
When we got to Lanquart, we bought a Swiss phone card and went to the bus station and got bus tickets to Elsa's. We were worried that it wouldn't work for Elsa for us to come since we hadn't been able to make her phone number work to call her, and we had only E-mailed our plans to her. I was able to reach her and we caught the bus, too. We showed the bus driver her name and address and asked him to tell us when to get off. He recognized her name and showed us her place as we drove by to the next stop. Elsa was waiting for us there and said that he is her daughter-in-law's brother! She also said that she'd only been home for 5 minutes when I called. Things keep going so well for us!
We had tea, surprised Betty (Elsa's half sister) when she stopped by, visited with Heinz and Sonya, and had a great supper. Heinz stopped by and took us to his workplace. He works at Jeninser Wine Company.



They can bottle up to 7000 liters of wine a day.



They process the grapes from all the vineyards in the area -- Mainz, Jenins, Mainsfield, and more. They make wine from both red and white grapes. Elsa's grapes are the red ones. She says they are edible as grapes, but not as good as the eating grapes in the store, which come from Spain.
After doing the dishes, we watched Spain beat Russia 3-0 in their half of the semi-finals in Vienna. Spain will play Germany Sunday evening. We'll be at our time share in Austria and can watch the finals there.