Cool historic day

So today, with Robin in the USA and the kids in school, I thought I would enjoy the beautiful day and go for a prayer hike. I had found a Celtic grave site and a Roman Villa on a local map recently and decided to go check them out.

It turns out that the grave was a burial mound of the Celtic Allemani tribe from the 7th or 8th century. It wasn’t a very big mound (at least not anymore, since its excavation), but the grave was lined with large stones on both sides and had been covered over with large stones as well. Apparently the person interred here was a person of standing in the tribe. Interestingly, it was very narrow and shallow grave.

On the way back to the car I found the Roman Villa. Actually it was a farm house from the 2nd or 3rd century. Only the foundation remains today . It had a nice courtyard with a couple of stables on one end, with an adjoining living area. The living area was small, and consisted of a few very small rooms.

But what was amazing to me was the fact that this foundation survived almost 2000 years. It’s crazy to think that this building was built in New Testament times. The last picture shows what it would have looked like in its heyday.

And these are only a couple of hundreds of such sites in our area. I love the Black Forest!

Awesome day in Zurich!

Zurich Main Train Station

Last weekend I taught a Saturday Youth Leader Workshop and then spoke in a youth service on Sunday morning in Zurich, Switzerland. I had a blast! It was great getting to know the leaders and the students.

Robin and the kids met me on Sunday for church. Afterwards we went to go grab a bite to eat before driving home (a little over an hour). It took a 30 min search because of construction (even using the GPS!), but we finally found Dominos Pizza. This may not be a big deal for our friends in the USA, but Dominos are very few and far between here, so this was a real treat.

Since we were so close to Lake Zurich, we decided to eat our pizza at the lake shore. This turned out to be an awesome idea!!!! The sun was shining, the water was calm, you could see the Alps faintly in the background (see the boat picture below), and we even got to hand-feed the swans. What a great day this was!!!

I'm attaching a bunch of pictures we took so you can get a better idea of what it was like.

PS. We decided it was time to go when one swan started hissing at us when we wouldn't give it anymore pizza crust :)