August, 2006 marked my dear parents' 50th wedding anniversary. As 2005 was drawing to a close I found myself at their home for dinner, as is usual for Thursday night, and realizing that such a momentous occasion was approaching I asked them how they wanted to celebrate it. "You can go anywhere you like," I said. "Where will it be?" I imagined it would an Alaska cruise, or maybe a week in Florida, or some other thing that old folks usually like to do when they go on vacation.

They said, "Eurofurence."

If you've never visited my site before, then I should note that Eurofurence, held annually in Europe, is the oldest currently-running furry convention in the world. My parents are furries themselves, or at least proto-furries, and they have listened to me gushing on about what a remarkable experience it is. That, then, is where they decided they wanted to spend their 50th anniversary, and who am I to argue?

As it was in 2005, the convention was held in Germany, specifically in Nürnberg (Nuremberg, to us Americans), and even more specifically in the thousand-year-old Nürnberg Castle. Not only was it an utterly gorgeous location for an anniversary celebration, but when the staff of Eurofurence learned that my parents wanted to celebrate their anniversary at their convention, they cooked up the most astonishing event for them. I won't tell you -- you'll just have to look at the pictures to see what those lovable Deutschers came up with.

A note about the pictures: All are in JPG format, and all are 600x800. They are meant to be viewed on a monitor that is set at 1024x768 resolution or better. If you do not know how to do that, right-click on your desktop, click [properties], then [settings], and look at "Screen area." It might also be helpful to close some of the menus at the top of the browser screen (Netscape and I.E.) so that the full picture is shown, without the need to scroll to see all of it. I've put a handy "jump list" at the bottom if things start to get too boring.

With a nine hour airplane flight home, I had plenty of time to caption all of the pictures and to try to adjust the brightness and contrast to make up for my incredibly inept photography skills. For those pictures that do not please the viewer, I shall apologize in advance.

The trip begins with the happy couple relaxing in the First Class Lounge at Philadelphia Airport in preparation for their trip...