Late yesterday afternoon, we saw one of our foxes running around in the snow. They have a den in a fenced yard, and there is a trailer in the yard with people living in it. We see the people from time to time – although not as often as the foxes. I guess the people are well aware of their fox tenants, because they came out and cleaned up some of the poop yesterday, throwing it from their yard into the snow. The fox came out while the man did his thing, so we got another chance to see him. Both of the foxes look very healthy, with full tails and coats.
Today the weather was above freezing, and things are changing quickly. Everywhere you go, you can hear the dripping of the ice and snow melting and coming down to the ground. The icy patches are starting to melt, leaving puddles of water. You have to watch out, because the snow on the roofs can fall suddenly. It makes it easier to walk for the most part. You can feel that spring is coming, and people are coming out to take walks for pleasure rather than just to go someplace.
We walked over to the western edge of the town center and saw a few interesting things. The Franciscan church has a building that’s architecturally different from the other buildings. One thing I really like about the churches here is that many of them have refrigerators outside where you can put food for the needy. They also have a soup meal for anyone who wants to share.
Nearby you can see some of the oldest parts of town – some of the ramparts/moat that was used as a defense. The moat is visible all over town, but the fortifications are harder to find.
We passed by the house with a memorial to a dog – and now it has a little poem in honor of pets, and there is a sculpture of the dog.
We are also starting to see things that we haven’t seen yet on this trip – amazing things like park benches that you can sit on (no snow!), grass, and of course – all of the treasures that are popping up as the snow melts.
We stopped at the forum to check out the view, you can see a lot of the city skyline from the platform.
We stopped at the grocery store and there were a couple of interesting things to buy. Remember the grave cleaner? This store also sells candles for graves. They also have fake corn-nuts, called Mexicorn. Even the non-spicy flavors are Mexicorn.
We tried to stop and pick up some biryani for lunch on the way home, but the restaurant was closed. They were supposed to be open, the door was open, but when we walked in the lady said “CLOSED” so we left. Oh well. We stopped at Zabka instead to get one of their “famous” pizzas. You can buy a pizza from their freezer – they have many toppings – and they cook it in their special oven in 3 minutes. It was a typical frozen pizza. We don’t have an oven in our apartment, just a stove, so we haven’t been able to bake anything. They even put it in a box with a bunch of pizza trivia questions. It’s not very expensive – $4.50 or so – and it’s just as good as the QT pizza.
We came home and watched the US-Canada hockey game. The great thing about being in Europe is that we didn’t have to get up early for it – it started at 2 PM.