The Meyers continued to be amazing hosts yesterday. We had breakfast at our hotel in the pristine, medieval and cobblestone- paved city of Komenz at our hotel on the town square facing the Rathaus (city hall). The girls were not impressed by liver pate as a breakfast offering! We then drove back to Steina, to discover that we didn't have the address for the Meyer home. Stress and panic followed. So intense were the parents that when Cecily shouted, "There it is!" for the fourth time our response was, "Shut up, Cecily." We should have listened. There it was. Cecily enjoyed her moment of vindication, but along with Meredith enjoyed more playing with kittens in the Meyer barn loft. Once sorted, we headed for the F60 out in the country . Built 1989-91 and used only 15 months, this engineering marvel turned tourist attraction was used only 15 months v to remove overburden as part of the process of extracting brown coal. At 1/3 of a mile it is the longest mobile piece of equipment in the world. It is basically a large conveyer belt and excavator combined but boggles the mind for size and complexity. One of the most interesting features was an explanation and demonstration of the contraction and expansion of the metal in response to temperature. This monster will stretch or shrink up to 25 centimeters as the temperature changes and is only stable at the freezing point. Cecily was relieved to be running around and not confined to a "zeum" or church. Little does she know that the world's biggest outdoor play structure is nothing more than a cleverly packaged museum in plain site!
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