Today, our village had its annual yard sale. As usual, it was well organized and attended, with plenty of locals walking around, buying their neighbors stuff, and then enjoying wine, Brats, and ice cream. At one point, some guy rang our doorbell, wanting to know if he could park at the end of our street. Bill told him it was our landlord’s/neighbor’s decision, since it’s his property. He’s in Munich right now, though.

Bill and I didn’t really buy or sell anything, save for some strawberries that appeared to come from a local strawberry vendor. We did stop by the wine stand and enjoyed wine and ice cream. The ice cream vendor was friendly, and we were telling him about how we were hiding out from our government. He was sympathetic, and said Germans wanted to talk about it, but couldn’t really.

We also ran into the guy who has Stella, the awesome dog we met Friday night. He said hello, and tried out our neighborhood toilet, which I had lamented that I never seem to lock properly!

We saw our city manager, who is always attentive and shows up at every event. He brought a woman with him. I assume it was his wife. He may not appreciate Americans, because we can’t vote for him, but I do think he does a really good job. I’ve noticed an uptick of fun events since he got his job. It’s made Breckenheim an even better place to live.

The sale is set to go on until 4 PM, which is about 40 minutes from now. Below are some photos I took as we walked around…

I was particularly fond of the cat, who was friendly and looked like he or she wanted to hunt. Some German kids came over to ask what we were looking at while we were standing there at the creek. We answered in English, pointing out the cat… One girl was talking about the cat jumping, but that was about as far as I got.

I really love that our little community does these things, people show up, and they are very neighborly and friendly. We even ran into our neighbor, Massimo, who has always been so nice to us.

I know there will come a day when our time in Breckenheim will be in the past, but I am pretty sure it will always be a bright spot in my memories. We really lucked into a wonderful community. On another note, I saw some art I liked. I need more for our house. But maybe it’s better to find it on our trips.