Germany: Lion King

I received this card from Anja, from Gelsenkirchen in Germany:

As a big Disney fan, I absolutely loved this Lion King card! Of course, I love every card I receive, but Disney is one of my favorite themes.

The Lion King was released in 1994 and is the 32nd movie in the Disney Classics series. It tells the story of the young lion cub Simba, born to Mufasa, who is the King of their pride lands. His father shows him their territory and explains that after he dies, Simba will become king and tells him about the responsibilities. Mufasa's brother, Scar, would've become king after him had it not been for Simba, and out of anger, he sets up a scheme to kill both Mufasa and Simba. He personally made sure that Mufasa died, but Simba survived, so Scar makes him believe that his father's death was his fault and that the pride will blame him for what happened. Simba flees, and meets Timone, a meerkat, and Pumbaa, a warthog. He befriends them, and stays with them in the jungle until he's an adult.
Under Scar's rule, things have gone downhill in the Pride Lands, and the herds started hunting elsewhere. Simba's childhood friend, Nala, stumbles upon him in the jungle, and begs him to come back home to the Pride Lands and take his rightful place as King to put a stop to Scar's rule that is causing all the animals to starve. Simba eventually agrees and fights Scar over the kingdom. He learns his father's death was Scar's fault, which gives him the extra push to win the fight and become the rightful King. In time, Simba and Nala have their own son, continuing the Circle of Life.

I was quite surprised at all the big names that are in the cast line-up of the movie: Jonathan Taylor Thomas and Matthew Broderick (young and adult Simba respectively), James Earl Jones (Mufasa), Jeremy Irons (Scar), Rowan Atkinson (Zazu), and Whoopi Goldberg (Shenzi).

One thing I've always liked about Disney movies, is that as a kid, they were fun stories to watch, but as I grew older I started noticing the stories they were based on, and the life lessons hidden in them. What I take away from this movie is that Simba was trying to run away from his responsibilities, living it up with his two friends Hakuna Matata, no worries!) while the herds he was supposed to take care of were starving. In the end, he went back and did what he had to do, and the herds flourished again.

Now all that's left to do is to start singing (you know just reading the words got the song stuck in your head!):

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Germany: Wehr

Moni from Stuttgart, Germany sent me this card from her hometown Wehr in the Black Forest region here in Germany:

WEHR- suedlicher Schwarzwald 290 - 900 m. Erholungsort zwischen Hotzenwald und Dinkelberg am Augsgang, des nach Sueden offenen, romantischen Wehratales - mit Stausee. Sportflugplatz Huetten im Bild rechts oben.

According to Moni, this town is on the southern edge of the Black Forest, very close to France and Switzerland.  The picture looks like it was taken from a plane, but if I imagine being closer to the ground, it reminds me a bit of where I am living here in Bavaria. There's still a lot of open fields and trees around here as well. That's one thing I love about living here: the balance between towns and nature. Towns are clearly defined, and around them there's fields and trees and wildlife still. Not like so many places where everything's been built full to where you can't tell where one town ends and the next begins if it weren't for the city limit signs.

Wehr and Stuttgart are in the German state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, with Stuttgart being the capital of the state. Some other bigger and well-known cities are Heidelberg, Karlsruhe, Mannheim and Freiburg.

There is one lake in this state, Lake Constance or in German it's actually called the Bodensee. It was formed during the Ice Age by the Rhine Glacier. This lake is the connecting point between Germany, Austria and Switzerland. It was first mentioned by a Roman geographer around 43 AD. He saw that the Rhine flows through two lake and named them Lacus Venetus (Obersee, or upper lake) and Lacus Acronius (Untersee or lower lake). Later it was named Lacus Brigantinus for the Roman city of Brigantium, which is now known as Bregenz.

When I was about 18 (give or take a year or two, I don't remember exactly), my parents took me and my brother to this lake on one of our summer trips. I still think back on that trip with very fond memories (but to be honest I treasure all of my memories of our trips). We were staying on the German side, in a city named Lindau. It's actually a peninsula jutting out into the lake.

One of my favorites memories from that trip, is one night that me and my dad were walking along the lake, and I know he treasures that moment just as much as I do. It was just him and me that night, my mom and brother decided to stay behind as it was getting late and we were actually walking back to our hotel. My dad and I decided to go up the path along the lake just a short while and then turn back. At one point we looked out over the lake and were amazed by the way it looked. Neither one of us knows the exact circumstances that triggered it, be it the way the moonlight shone down on the water or something else, but the whole water surface looked like a shimmering rainbow, extremely pretty. We told my mom about it when we got back to where she was waiting and actually went back up that path a few nights while we were there, but we never saw those colors on the water again.

My second favorite memory of that trip was going to the town of Salem (no, not the witch hunt one, that one's in the U.S.). There's this park there (for lack of a better word) called Affenberg. It's a wooded area of about 20 acres, with only an outer fence spanning the perimeter. Nothing unusual, until you learn that there's about 200 monkeys (Barbary apes) who have free range of the terrain. No fences, no ditches and no cages. You can walk on a path through this woods and actually touch the animals. Or sit on a bench watching a small group of monkeys a little ways out, only to realize that one of their fellow monkeys decided to come sit next to you. At the entrance as you start your tour, you get a big handful of specially prepared popcorn that you can feed to the monkeys. It was definitely a highlight of out trip!!





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Dog and kitty from Germany

After a week and a half of waiting my second "official" got here :)

This time I got a really cute card from Anja who lives in Bad Duerkheim, Germany:

The text on the card says "Ich bin stets interessiert, wenn jemand gut kuessen kann.". Anja was nice enough to provide the translation and a nice message on the back of the card:

"I'm always interested if somebody is a good kisser." Hello, This card will travel really far to make it all the way back to Germany. At least it will have seen some of the world. Happy Postcrossing, Anja.

 It does make it funny sometimes, when cards sent to me from Germany have to go all the way to the US, then back here to Germany. The joys of military life...

I really do love the card too. Cute animal cards like these are among my favorites, especially when they feature animals of the canine persuasion. We have two dachshunds, so cards with dogs and puppies go a very long way in putting a smile on my face!
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