Day 21 in Deutschland – Fröhliche Weihnachten (Sindersdorf, GE)

Fröhliche Weihnachten (Merry Christmas)! It’s our 21st day in Germany – Thursday the 24th. Most Germans (at least the one’s I know) celebrate Christmas on the 24th and open presents after evening mass.

I started out the day by helping Stilla’s brother Wolfgang again. He heard about a broken pew at the town church and asked me to help him fix it.

Sindersdorf Kirche (church). Pic from a couple weeks ago, beginning of Dec ’15.

Wolfgang had a church key to get us in, which looked (surprisingly enough) just like you’d expect a historical church key to look like 🙂 This church was built in the early 1700’s.

Names of WWI and WWII fallen and lost from the town of Sindersdorf.

Wolfgang evaluated the broken church pew (bench seat) and took measurements to see what tools and/or materials we might need to make the repair(s).

Sindersdorf Church (view towards altar).

We went back to Wolfgang’s woodshop to cut some wood braces to fix the pew.

Then we returned to the church to make repairs.

There… all fixed now!

Here’s a picture of the altar…

and the Christmas tree.

This little baby Jesus (below) was just put up on display for the service tonight, which is why the ladder is in front of the altar.

While we were there, some other folks were putting out decorations and new candles and remarked that one of the candle holders on the altar was loose and crooked. So, Wolfgang tightened up some screws and put in a washer to shore up the figurine candle-holder:

And there! All better now 🙂

Back at the workshop, Wolfgang showed off the Kesseltopf that we fixed a few days earlier. I wrote about this in a previous post HERE. He had just hooked up the stovepipe and tested it the day before. A Kesseltopf is basically a huge wood-fired stove with a tilt function; the giant pot swivels so the contents can be poured out. It’s all ready to fire up and cook some Kesselfleisch now. Another reason to have a party 🙂