Germany as it once was

Hello All,
This week was a busy one in the office trying to get all the administrative work done before we leave for Hungary this Friday. We find even when we don't travel there is much to do. So we try to accomplish as much as we can before we go any where. In September we will be gone over half of the month, which means this week in crammed full of things that have to be done. Sometimes we can postpone some task for a couple of days ,but this week with us leaving nothing can be postponed. Tomorrow we will go into the offic a little early and try to get a lot done before others start to arrive at 7:30.
Let me tell you a little about this village, this is an open air museum about 20-25 minutes from Frankfurt. We drove there on Sat. to see if it would be worthwhile to take the other missionaries there in middle Sept. The little house above was built about 1600 and was used by a black smith as his home, and then used later as his shop. All the homes you will see are from the 15-18 hundreds. They were all carefully dismantled and then reassembled here in the museum so they are the real thing not a reproduction. These houses were made of big supporting timbers, with a lath work of small branches stuck in between these timbers, and then mud mixed with straw and manure was pushed into the lattice work formed by the branches. These house were built in the 1800s
were inhabited by wealthy people. They were successful merchants and professional people. The walls were made of a low grade type of stucco and painted white. The roofs were slate instead of thatch and had numerous rooms as you can see. These homes were still occupied until they were moved her in the late 1990s. The arch is typical of an arch leading into a courtyard. These homes would have been built most probably on the town or village square. I have also taken a picture of houses on the other side of the town square. The town square was also the town market place or square. The farmers would then on Sat. morning bring in their produce and sale it to the villagers.
The other 2 sides of the square were lined with shops and the merchants lived above their shop, made for a short walk to work, just down the stairs.













This house got out of sequence some how, and I don't know how to get it back without messing every thing else up. What I wanted to show was the lattice made by the branches. If you zoom in on the holes you can easily see the lattice work. The roof is a thin thatched roof. Great for rat and mice nest,but the did keep the rain out. However when it was dry they easily caught on fire. When people learned how to use slate and tile roofs the incident of fires caused by a spark from the chimney went down significantly. I don't know the history of this house.
Next week if we have WiFi in the hotel we will write from either Vienna or Budapest.
We love you all, be good and remember who you are,
Oma und Opa