Chilling out at Longwood Gardens

New weekend - new excursion: today we visited the highly acclaimed Longwood Gardens. According to Wikipedia:

Longwood Gardens consists of over 1,077 acres (4.2 km²) of gardens, woodlands, and meadows in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, United States in the Brandywine Creek Valley.^[1] It is one of the premier botanical gardens in the United States and is open to visitors year-round to enjoy exotic plants and horticulture (both indoor and outdoor), events and performances, seasonal and themed attractions, as well as take part in educational lectures, courses, and workshops.

It is huge, it has a lot of plants and it is pretty amazing. We spend about 5hrs to walk around the huge outdoor park and the indoor areas. The weather was gorgeous and so was the temperature. I'd say it was a perfect day.

I won't go into describing the views... see for yourself! Btw... you may post comments... ;-)

Hiking the Appalachians

This weekend I was out on another tour with my lab mates - plus a Japanese girl how is a friend of Jiang. The weather was forecasted to be awesome - so we planned some nature thing. We decided to go for a moderate hiking tour in the Pennsylvanian Appalachians in Berks County. The loop passing by the scenic outlooks "Pulpit Rock" and "Pinnacle" is supposed to be one of the best in PA.

All the hiking recommendation websites warned that it is a rocky trail and that you'd need sturdy hiking boots. Well, none of us had proper hiking equipment here - but we tried in any case. Americans tend to exaggerate... It turned out to be not that bad. Some trails were quite rocky, but I've seen much worse... After all it was just a hill with a maximum elevation of about 500 m...

Nevertheless we enjoyed the tour. The view from up there was really excellent. You had a perfect birds-eye perspective of the agricultural land of Berks and Lancaster County. It looked very cute and peaceful from above. We also encountered some wild life: In total we saw four snakes and countless vultures. One of the snakes was really long - maybe 1.5 to 2 meters. Quite astonishing for me - I hardly remember when I last saw a snake in Germany. I'm not 100% sure, but I suppose it was a Coluber constrictor aka. Black Racer. The birds were probably Turkey Vultures judging from their way of soaring in the upwinds.

We finished the 8 or 9 mile loop at a leisurely pace but we were still kind of tired after it. I guess we are slowly getting lab rats... Find some of my pictures below. Unfortunately I screwed up the exposure setting... so most of them are quite overexposured... But you can still get an impression of the scenic views.

Lancaster County - Home of the Amish

This weekend I did another trip with my lab mates. This time to Lancaster County, which is a convenient one hour drive West from here. It is most known for its many farms and of course the large population of Amish people.

In case you have never heard from them. Here is an excerpt from the Wikipedia article:

The Amish (pron.: /ˈɑːmɪʃ/ AH-mish; Pennsylvania Dutch: Amisch, German: Amische), sometimes referred to as Amish Mennonites, are a group of traditionalist Christian church fellowships that form a subgroup of the Mennonite churches. The Amish are known for simple living, plain dress, and reluctance to adopt many conveniences of modern technology. The history of the Amish church began with a schism in Switzerland within a group of Swiss and Alsatian Anabaptists in 1693 led by Jakob Ammann.^[2] Those who followed Ammann became known as Amish.^[3]
In the early 18th century, many Amish and Mennonites emigrated to Pennsylvania for a variety of reasons. Today, the most traditional descendants of the Amish continue to speak Pennsylvania German, also known as Pennsylvania Dutch. However, a dialect of Swiss German predominates in some Old Order Amish communities, especially in the American state of Indiana.^[4] As of 2000, over 165,000 Old Order Amish live in the United States and approximately 1500 live in Canada.^[5] A 2008 study suggested their numbers have increased to 227,000,^[6] and in 2010 a study suggested their population had grown by 10% in the past two years to 249,000, with increasing movement to the West.^[1]

 At first we went to a former Amish farm or village that has been turned into a museum. So we could learn something about their history and life style. Pretty impressive to see, and almost impossible to imagine to life like them. As an extra goody I could talk to a lady there who could speak Pennsylvania German. It sounds like a softened version of Suisse German mix with a bit of English. When she was speaking slowly, I could actually understand most of it! Quite astonishing.
A unique sight in the area are the horse buggies. As most (all?) Amish refuse to use cars, the still go around in horse buggies. So seeing them on the street among the regular traffic is perfectly normal - but quite surprising to a tourist...

After that we toured the beautiful countryside. We saw a lot of farms, neat houses and covered bridges. The latter are wooden bridges that are covered by a wooden roof structure. Thus, they are protected from the weather an can last 100 years. Many of them are still in use for the everyday car traffic.

We also went for an extended walk trough a nice little state park. There we looked for some geocaches and enjoyed the nature. We definitely had a great day (a perfectly sunny one!) and we loved the beautiful rural views. Sometimes the landscape strongly reminded me of rural parts of  Germany. But see for yourself in the pics.

Spring in Ardmore

Spring finally arrived here. After having been unusually cold in the beginning of April, temperatures rose sharply. Within a couple of days all flowers and trees started blossoming.

I want to share a few impressions of spring (Now I can do so safely, after spring also started back in Germany... ;-). I took those pictures on the street right outside the house I'm living.