Robert Piontek Photography

Hamburg

We visited Franziska’s cousin Charlotte in Hamburg this weekend. Charlotte will perform our wedding ceremony, and we needed to talk about a few things in preparation. We also got out and saw some of the city. Hamburg is very nice. There is plenty of water! We took a nice cruise on a boat. We also saw a really cool ‘bike’ which 7 people can ride. The trick think is that they sit in a circle. It had four wheels, real car disk brakes, and rack and pinion steering!

There are more pictures in the gallery.

Koeckert Reunion

The Koeckert side of the Koeckert family got together for the annual reunion/hiking trip. The first part is the campfire the night before the hike, and the second part is the hike. The weather was chilly but sunny, and I think we all had a nice time.

There are more pictures in the gallery.

Boofen

Boofen means something like “to sleep in a cave” in German, and that’s what Franziska and I set out to do. First we did a via ferrate in the Sachische Schwiez that we had been meaning to do for a while. It was fun. Then we looked for a cave. It turns out that most of the ‘caves’ are not really caves, but overhanging parts of rock walls. You aren’t allowed to sleep in a tent, but you are allowed to sleep in these caves. We found a few nice caves, but ended up just sleeping out in the open on top of the rock formation where we had a nicer view than down below. It got a little chilly and went down below freezing, but we managed to survive!

There are more pictures in the gallery.

Hiking in Saxony

We went hiking for Franziska’s mom’s birthday! In the usual place, the Sachische Schweiz (Saxon Switzerland). The weather was perfect! This hike even included a boat ride, with a wonderful tour guide. It also had some really really cool stairs up through a gap between some rocks that you could barely fit through. See the pics…

There are more pictures in the gallery.