Germany so far..

On Tuesday morning Todd left us in Dublin at three in the morning to catch his 6:30 flight to Frankfurt. The story of his day there may be best left up to him. Daniel and I had a luxurious morning, slept in until about 9:30 and as I was feeling a bit under the weather made a slow departure for the city center. After getting everything organized we realized that the plan we had made with Todd to meet in Frankfurt was far to vague especially considering the first email we got from him was entitled help and said only HELP!. We have now come to a pack that we will make much more solid plans and avoid beer drinking before we make any big moves. Still in Dublin we did our best to reassure Todd via email and then left the situation to a prayer. After the lengthy bud ride back to the city center we found a Chinese buffet place to eat our 2:00 PM breakfast/lunch/dinner and whiled away the couple of hours before our airlink bus to the airport by stuffing ourselves. Our flight with Lufthansa from Dublin over to Frankfurt was really nice. I spent most of the time sleeping, woke up just in time to have a beer and prepare for the landing. This is where the chaos began. Our original plan was to take the train from Frankfurt to Stuttgart where we would meet Annika and drive to her home in Seedorf about an hour away. When I went to by train tickets from the Deutsche Bahn website however we discovered that the train tickets we 56 Euro per person. When I spoke with Anni on the phone she told us that she would pick us up in Frankfurt instead because it would be much cheaper. So we tried to email Todd with the changes in our plan but got no reply and had no way of checking once we got into Frankfurt. Dan and I spent an anxious hour and half in the airport waiting area devising options for what we would do if Todd did not appear before Anni. We decided that perhaps Todd had not gotten any of our messages and would be waiting for us still at the train station. So when Anni arrived with her 80 year old Opa in tow and found us Toddless we convinced her to let us try and find Todd at the Haupbahnhof. So it turns out that the main train station in Frankfurt has a section for each direction. To end your suspense here we found Todd within ten minutes of searching completely by chance as he was actually on his way to meet us at the airport but had gotten completely lost and was adopted by a helpful character who helped him get there in junction to the airport After that excitement we drove the three hours from Frankfurt to Seedorf accompanied sometimes by Todd’s snores and sometimes by folk songs from Anni’s Opa. The three of us are staying in Anni’s bedroom in the attic of her families country home which has a big queen size bed and two twin mattresses for us to fight over. We woke up around 11:30 on Wednesday to a fabulous breakfast on the balcony downstairs looking out over glowing green fields and farm houses. Anni really went all out with a big basket of local breads, homemade jam, meats, cheeses, and scrambled eggs. She has really been the kindest friend and best host ever. After a relaxed breakfast we all headed off to on a tour of the Schwartzwald which took us first to the Schwartzwaelder Freilicht Museum, a historic house and lifestyle museum which taught us all about how people used to live over the last 400 years. After the museum we drove to the highest waterfall in Germany which is in a small town called Friberg. On our way back from Friburg we stopped at the family home of Anni’s father where here Aunt, Uncle, Cousins, and Opa still live. It is a huge farm with two large houses, . They raise pigs and dairy cows and while we were visiting with her Opa we all got to try Schwartzwurst, blood sausage, made from a pig that he had raised. When we got home Anni threw a BBQ for us with a bunch of her friends and cousins. It was a really nice time and we got try even more of the local specialties. Later in the night we had a bonfire in their backyard and did not get to bed until later again. We spent Thursday relaxing, doing laundry and also went on a shopping journey to find Topo maps for Todd’s GPS which ended up being to expensive and to find a new charger for Dan’s laptop which we could not find. The trip was successful though as both Dan and Todd found some nice shoes. For dinner we made our own pizzas from scratch. It took us a lot longer to make the pizzas and we did not finish until 11:30. On Friday we climbed the highest mountain in the Black Forest- Feldberg- with Anni and her sister Louise. It was a really beautiful day but we all got a bit sunburned. After the hike we swam in the Titisee and made an exhausted trip back home. After hot showers we felt much better and we all along with Anni’s sisters Michaela and Louisa, went out to the best local German restaurant in town. Dan got to try his first schnitzel (read: not in anyway a sausage) and I got to have Jaeger schnitzel which had a nice mushroom sauce. Dinner was so filling that we had to come home and have schnapps afterwards with a few of Anni’s girlfriends who had come over while we were out. Around 11:45 we headed out to a party thrown by the local youth club which is about a five minute walk from Anni’s house. The party was held in the smallish clubhouse which was filled with loud music and all the youth from the surrounding villages. We were somewhat of celebrities because of our foreignness and specifically because we are from California. All night people wanted to buy us cocktails and the whole club was very drunk. Around 1:00 is started to rain and the three of us went out to enjoy the first rain we had felt in months. It was really fun getting to practice my German with so many locals. The whole visit here has been really beneficial for my language skills. Saturday we woke up very late and after a small breakfast headed out to visit Burg Hollenzollern, the ancestral castle of one of Germany’s royal families. From the parking lot it was a fifteen minute walk up to the castle and about five minutes into our journey a drenching rain starting to pour which made the visit very cold and a bit unpleasant but we enjoyed it none the less. We had made plans to go shopping in Tubingen but as we were soaking wet we decided to come home and make soup instead. While Todd was making the soup, I learned how to make Dampfknoedeln which is a yeast dough dumpling dessert served with vanilla sauce from Anni’s mom. Today we spent the morning watching movies and then packed our things and headed bz train to Esslingen where Anni goes to school. We are staying here until Thursday then flying to London. I will write more when I have more energy.