Budingen the town of frogs.
Glauburg
Thursday and Friday were both days filled with sadness and happiness. Sadness, because we we'll be leaving the warehouse with our many friends that we have grown to love, and happy because we have a wonderful new assignment. The members in the warehouse gave us and Jessica, who will be leaving on her mission soon, a farewell party. Bishop Klebingat said a few words in praise of Elder Walters. He mentioned how Elder Walters never went home until all the work was done and many times saved his boss Florian from having to spend long nights at work. I was so proud of my companion. Loranna, who is from Chile, played the guitar and sang "You Are My Sunshine" and Elder Walters sang along with her. We love her. Then we had some banana splits and cake to cap off the day. After cleaning out our desk and locker Elder Walters and I drove 300 yards to our new assignment. Remember when we received our call to the Frankfurt Family History support mission but two weeks before we were changed to the Mission office? Well we are now in that original position. The Lord works in mysterious ways. We really don't know the scope of our assignment yet, as our Supervisor and his right hand man are both still in Salt Lake City for Conference and Meetings all this week. We did speak with him briefly about what we would be doing, and our first assignment will be to transport all of the computers and equipment to a seminar in Budapest, Hungary. It will be a 12 hour drive with a quick pass through of Vienna on the way. We are so excited. All week we have been getting familiar with the computers and the programs that we must know. I love Genealogy work and so will Gene when this assignment is over. We discussed the problems we have been having in trying to find Gene's ancestors who came to America from Germany. Right away Bro. Svejdot told us that we would find them but he wanted us to look into a port that most German's came through before going on to Liverpool, England, and that was Hull, England. Elder Walters felt The Holy Ghost bore a strong witness to him. We have been thinking about it and it will be the perfect assignment for us. Elder Walters loves to drive and Sister Walter's loves to sleep and knit. It will also be a great time to listen to our German tapes, thanks to the Tonne's.
We were told to go home and rest up for the weekend and so we took advantage of the free time and drove to Budingen, a city close to Frankfurt. The castle itself has been turned into a Hotel and the gardens around it run along a stream. I took a lot of pictures. I noticed many of the places of business had large frogs placed on the walls. We stopped by a souvenir shop that had brochure's on the town. Here I found out the fascination with frogs. The story goes that in 1522 Count Antone of Budingen married Elisabeth of Wied. A huge reception and a day packed with celebrations were given in honor of the couple. When it was over for the night the Count promptly fell asleep and Elizabeth tried to sleep but was kept awake all night by the croaking of the Frogs which inhabited the mote around the castle. At day break, Elisabeth jabbed the Count in the ribs and announced that she wanted an annulment unless he got rid of the frogs immediately. He called a council and it was determined that all the frogs should be gathered up and drowned. Every member of the community became involved hunting and bagging the creatures. The frogs were first taken to the town square where they determined to burn them first, but they were so wet that it did not work. Besides that, no one wanted to eat frog legs, so they took the bags and threw them down stream never to hear from them again. But no one really knows if that was true as the Countess may have just gotten use to the croaking. To this day the citizens of Budingen are referred to as Fraaasch.
On our way home we stopped by another magical place called Glauburg. Here is the Keltenwelt or Celtic World. In the 1990's a plane was flying over this area and noticed within the Forest a huge mound, nothing like the surrounding area. Out from it, lines had been dug all around. Upon further investigation on the land, they found that the mound was indeed a burial ground for three Prince's with lots of artifacts. They also found the remains of some sort of religious temple that resembled Stone Hinge only made from large wooden timbers instead of rock. They think it had to do with measuring the stars and the seasons. We walked around and Elder Walters ran up to the top of the mound and took some fabulous pictures of the surrounding area. The guided tours do not start until the middle of May so we shall return after that date to find out more.
I thoroughly enjoyed the day as it was a drive through, with very little walking involved. Got to bed early as we are planning another fun filled day tomorrow.
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