putting this town "Mengen" on a map

Knowing that our future location is not nearly as famous as Myrtle Beach I will try to show where exactly we will be going. The easiest way of pinpointing it in words is "we will be smack in the center of Europe!"

Take a look (Mengen is the little red pin): Germany is surrounded by France, Belgium, Luxembourg and Netherlands to the west, Switzerland and Austria to the South, Czech Republic (former Czechoslowacia) and Poland to the East and Denmark to the North. Hope I didn't forget any countries :)

Distances are a lot smaller than in the US, I think the whole area of Germany is about the size of North and South Carolina together!!! 

Now lets zoom in a little closer:

Mengen is still that little orange bubble pin.

To get to the mediterranean sea that you can see on the bottom of the map takes about 8 hours I believe.

I just keep going closer and closer and closer, alright?

This satellite image shows the immediate surrounding area of Mengen. On the top of the image you can see a winding river, that's the River Danube, running from left (west) to right (east) and it will eventually flow to Vienna, Budapest and ultimately the Black Sea.

The landscape shows a very rural patchwork pattern, result of a history of splitting properties among male heirs in farm families. The dark green areas are forests, mostly diciforous (spelling?) trees, I mean the ones with leaves :)

Topographically this part of Southern Germany has rolling hills, nothing spectacular but the Alpes, YES the real Alpes, kind of like the European Rocky Mountains, are just about an hour to the South. On a clear day you can spot the snow covered peaks on the horizon.

Sounds cool but how often do you actually take the ride???

Now lets look at the town setup:

On the left you can see houses with mostly red roofs. They are part of the historic center of town, once surrounded by the brick wall, like most German towns in the middle ages.

Only small remnants of that wall are still there.

My parents house is in the bottom right corner of that historic part of town.

In the upper right area you can spot a bigger building with sort of a park around it. That is the hospital where I was born, now converted into a home for the elderly.

If you look even closer: 

then you can see the hospital very good on the bottom left and our new house will be the little house in the upper right corner. You might be able to spot the little yard to the left of the house and the grey rectangle on the South side of the building. That would be the roof top terrace facing South.

But now enough with Geography and maps and all, even though I could go on and on and on. There is something about maps that has always intrigued me, but I can imagine that it might be rather boring for others.

Big promise: In my next post NO more maps and things, just ugly pictures with nasty wallpaper. Yippie!!