Idar-Oberstein #4

We got a chance to walk out to the Edelstein mine.  That was so fun.  I felt like singing Heigh-ho!  the whole time, and the walk through the woods was like a little fairy tale.  The farmers in the area had been digging in this mine for years to supplement their income, then during WWI the economy crashed and a lot of the people in the area migrated to Brazil.  They found that the ranches in Brazil were paving their roads with geodes and didn't know it.  They shipped them back in boats claiming them to be ballast for the ship.  They recovered their economy and started shipping out all over. 

 

Just outside of the forest was where the army barracks were that my Dad taught in.  The were completely abandoned and I think it threw my dad for a loop.

Idar-Oberstein #3

This is a town full of jewelers (schmucks). Earrings, bracelets, necklaces, bookends, etc...

This was really neat.  In the middle of a rose garden they had a monument to all their Jewish friends and neighbors that had been deported or killed.

This was a building from the 1500s.  There were buildings from the 1300s too.

This was the most amazing restaurant of our entire trip.  Apparently one of the cultural things that was brought from Brazil (more in next post) was their way of cooking meat and potatoes on a spinning plate over the fire.  Yum!

This one was the second castle, up farther in the mountain.  It's closed for the public, but you can rent out the hall for private parties and dinners.  There was a little Oma that had a small souvenir shop right next door though.  She was the cutest little lady.  You could tell that she loved people.  She wanted to know why were there and kept throwing extras into our bag.  She gave my Mom an extra necklace and she gave Jer and I some postcards. 

In front of the museum of Jewels and minerals.

Idar-Oberstein #2

Idar-Oberstein is ALL hills.  I can walk for miles at a time, but hills do me in.  I did do it though.  Janelle and I have been wanting to see the church built into the side of the hill since we were little.  My dad had a plate with a picture on it on the wall all growing up. 

 

On the way up to the church there were signs pointing the way and next to those signs there were pictures of nuns.  I'm wondering if it might be a pilgrimage site.

This is a geode that naturally formed into a cross.  Kind of cool.

So their are two castles... one is directly above this church.  The legend is that there were two brothers that loved the same woman.  One brother killed the other and to do penance, he was told to build a church on the site where he had murdered his brother.

The main focus of the church was a medieval altar.

Nellie and the Penitent Man.

They use the mountain side as three of the four walls.  And the church had amazing windows until there was a rockslide that took out part of the roof and most of the windows.

Right behind the church there's a stairway to an overlook point.

This was a memorial to World War I.  I think that's pretty neat.

 

Albert Jurardus Van Prooyen  1875