On January 16, we flew from Dalian to Frankfurt. Our destination was the little town of Lauterbach where Steve was an AFS student in 1967-68. The town itself dates from before the 8th century and received its town charter in 1266. Today, the population is around 14,000 -- it was about half that when Steve lived here 40+ years ago. It is a beautiful rural town of narrow lanes and half-timbered houses about 20 miles north of Fulda, near what was once the border with the former DDR.
In 1996 while living in the Netherlands, we took a trip through Germany and detoured through Lauterbach. That's when we reestablished contact with our good friends Wolfgang Kniepert, a former classmate, and his wife Beate. We have renewed our longstanding friendship and visited one another several times in Germany and in the USA during the intervening years. The Knieperts were kind enough to host us for five days at their home in Lauterbach, giving us lots of time to stroll through their lovely hometown, walk in the snowy woods, attend a mini-reunion of former classmates in a medieval watchtower, and drive to the nearby town of Alsfeld where dramas were performed on the marketplace in the late Middle Ages.
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