July 25

We awoke from a chilly night in the park in Geneva quite early. I don’t know why Ben feels the need to wake up at 6:00 am lately, but we were going to have to do with five or six hours of sleep. I remind him how hard he was to get out of bed throughout the beginning of the trip. I think he is just trying to return the favor. Needless to say, we aren’t used to these 70° F temperatures and we both woke up freezing during the night. After we made it through the night, we went to the train station to find that the next train left for Bern ten minutes later. We still didn’t have any Swiss Francs, so we weren’t able to purchase any breakfast. Fortunately, we did have some peaches left from the day before. They held us over until Bern.

When we arrived in Bern about two hours later, we were immediately impressed. The information booth was the most helpful we have experienced thus far. The lady gave us a map and told us where everything was that we were looking for. Our first order of business from there was to find an ATM and the youth hostel that she had pointed out. We found an ATM, but my card didn’t work, so I was forced to open a tab as Ben as my creditor. We found the hostel shortly after. The cheapest beds cost about 35.00 USD, so it looked like we would be searching for yet another park. Luckily, Bern is a beautiful city full of nice parks, public bathrooms, and a river full of fresh mountain water. It looked like the only thing we would have to battle would be the sub-scorching temperatures. However, unlike Ben, I didn’t ship home any of my warm clothes. I should be fine.

Once we figured out where we would be sleeping, we went out to discover the Medieval city of Bern. It really is an awesome town. It is extremely small, but it is still the nations federal capitol. We basically walked the entire thing with our backpacks strapped to us. There was a nice cathedral, a clock which was built in 1530 and still holds the city’s official time, and some nice shops. However, the most spectacular thing that Bern has to offer is the view. With the Alps in the backdrop of the Aare River winding its way through the town, it is one of the few things that the States can’t offer. I felt like I could spend hours just taking pictures of the scenery. They will be uploaded as soon as I find internet that is consistent enough to handle the task.

We spent the remainder of the day informing our mothers of our whereabouts and relaxing in the park. Ben found a mystery/thriller book in English that kept him occupied for a good chunk of the afternoon. I spent the time trying to figure out a good place to spend the next two days in exploration of Switzerland. Later, while Ben was making a fool of himself via my webcam, I found a miniature British flag and an umbrella in the park. I stuck the flag to my bag in an attempt to hint to passersby what language we speak. I also found a spot for the umbrella because the forecast looks like rain (from what I could tell by what little German I know). I learned this lesson the last time I threw an umbrella away in Dublin. The time has come for us to now go stake out our sleeping quarters. Hopefully tonight will be warmer.

July 26

The night was not warmer as we had hoped. In fact, it was quite brutal actually. We both froze throughout the night, all the while thinking the other one was warm and cozy. But let me first describe how we arrived at our sleeping spots. After having previously staked out a couple nice spots to spend the night, we were discouraged to find them both unavailable for various reasons. We then went in search of another spot somewhere more secluded. We eventually arrived at two park benches somewhere in the middle of the woods along a Bern hiking trail. The eeriness of the spot was heightened by the pitch darkness and the knowledge of what Bern was originally famous for. Bern acquired its name when the founding king discovered that a bear had been killed while on a hunt in the area. Ever since, Bern has been known for its bears; not something that would comfort two backpackers seeking shelter in its woods.

As I said, the night did not treat us kindly. When I finally got up at 7:00 am, it had felt as if I hadn’t gotten an ounce of sleep the entire night. It seemed as though you either were freezing or extremely uncomfortable on the wooden bench. No compromise of the two could result in sleep. It must have gotten down to the low fifties during the coldest part of the night. It is not a good feeling when you are wearing every piece of clothes in your bag and are wrapped as tightly as possible in your blanket just to find your battle with the cold fruitless. Needless to say, I was never so happy to see the sun rise as I was that morning. It wasn’t until after we had peeled ourselves off our wooden resting places that we learned that the other had shared the same experiences throughout the night. We decided that we would get up and walk around during the night if it got that cold again. I found the only time that I was warm all night was when I was squirming around for minutes at a time in search for a bearably comfortable sleeping position. The warmth ceased, however, after my left calf decided that it was going to cramp itself up more than the rest of my body already was. It cramped so badly that I could actually feel it with every step I took throughout the day. Luckily, not many steps would ensue.

The first part of our day consisted of find a church to attend for a Sunday service. We knew one church started at 9:30 am and the main cathedral started mass at 10:00 am. We had visited both the day before (along with a couple other churches) so their whereabouts were relatively sketchy. Since we did wake up so early, we had plenty of time once we decided that we would attend the 10:00 am mass at the cathedral. As we walked in, I noticed a sign that said the 10:00 am service was supposed to be protestant. It very well may have been, but since we didn’t understand a single word of the German service, I really couldn’t tell you for sure. I did enjoy trying to sing the hymns in German though; pronouncing the words as German as I knew while searching for a familiar tune.

Once the service had completed, we headed back to the train station to find out when and where we could head out for a day excursion. We ended up deciding on going to Interlaken, an area south of Bern in between two lakes. Even before we had arrived, I knew that Switzerland had already outdone itself. The view of the lakes with snow-topped mountains set as the backdrop was indescribable. The lakes were a milky blue color surrounded by green mountains capped in white. There was a canal that connected the two lakes. We found the first dock for the lake steamers and asked where we could go with our Eurail passes. They told us that we could board the steamers for free and could go to any stop along the way. We soon found out that the lake steamers acted just like trains of the water. They had stops all along the lake and made return trips based on a set timetable. It probably would have served us well to inspect the timetable a little closer.

We didn’t know where we wanted to go, but as long as it was free, we were going to go for a ride at the very least. We decided part way through the boat ride to get off at the next stop. They all seemed to be similar, and our deck seats in the sun were beginning to get uncomfortable. After disembarking the steamer, we walked a little ways through a small town consisting of a couple tourist hotels, a hostel, and a small grocery store (unfortunately closed on Sundays). We asked a local if there was anywhere with a beach nearby. She laughed and replied with a German accent, “You won’t find any beaches in Switzerland.” She did show us a place where we could jump into the lake and directed us to the hostel in town. We checked out the hostel, and it was much too expensive as we had guessed. Our next task was to find the place to go for a swim. It didn’t take long before we had a spot picked out with a nice grassy ledge to keep our stuff. Ben sat down in the shade to delve deeper into his book and I went to check how cold the water was. I figured it would be cold since it was fed from the mountain streams, but I didn’t expect it to be as cold as it turned out to be. I have swum in Lake Superior recently enough to guarantee that this lake was colder. Normally, I wouldn’t have gotten in, but since I was already thigh deep, I convinced myself that this was probably the only chance I would ever get to swim in a lake in the middle of the Alps. I dove in and it felt like a million needles were piercing my skin. It was oddly refreshing, but it took almost an hour in the sun to feel warm again after I got out. I managed to stay in the water for close to ten minutes though. I talked Ben into diving in, but he only lasted a few seconds before he had enough.

We spent the remainder of the day reading the novel while the other went to explore the town. A weird series of events demonstrated Ben’s ability to fall head over heals into good fortune. Since he had eaten all his food and the grocery store wasn’t open, he was in need of something to stop his grumbling stomach. Fortunately, he turned around to find the hillside littered with blackberry bushes. Although they weren’t as plentiful as you might find in the forests of northern Michigan, it was definitely something. Then, he went on an exploration of the town and came back with a bottle of ketchup and some mustard packages. Apparently, a restaurant didn’t want them anymore and he became the beneficiary. Finally, after yet another trip around town, he came back bestowed with a handful of plums he had found growing near and old barn. He said the tree obviously wasn’t being harvested based on the number of plums on the ground and there were more than we could possibly eat. We decided we would go back later.

We finally decided to head back to the port at about 7:30 pm after Ben read in the brochure that I had picked up that there was a tent hostel in Interlaken for only 10.00 Swiss Francs a night (about 10.00 USD as well). We started to head back to the dock, but not before we made a pit stop at the plum tree. However, to our dismay, a family of swans had beaten us to the spot. These swans were mean and with little ones, so they persuaded us that we weren’t that hungry. Once we got to the dock, we checked the boat schedule to figure out when the next one would come and pick us up. You can imagine we weren’t happy to find that the next boat didn’t come until 9:45 am the next morning. It looked like we were going to end up sleeping in that little town after all. We found a nice spot (or at least we hope; that’s what we though the previous night as well) underneath the roof of the information booth right next to the dock. I read a good chunk of the book while Ben fell asleep listening to his I-pod. Currently, I am wearing every item I could find in my backpack and praying for warmer temperatures tonight. I hope these benches are a little more comfortable than last night, although since the lack of a good night’s rest has escaped me for a couple nights in a row now, I’m sure anything will do as long as its warm.

July 27

Well we have officially learned that benches are not the way to go. I made it halfway through the night before I moved to the concrete. I slept so much better there. Surprisingly, it didn’t get that cold inside the information booth. The room had nearly all glass walls and except one side didn’t even have a wall which is why it was surprising that the inside temperature was about ten degrees warmer than the outside. It certainly was nice not to freeze though. Ben tried waking me up at 6:15 am again, but I refused to talk claiming that I had at least forty-five minutes before I was required to respond. Once 7:00 am rolled around, we got up and headed toward the small grocery store we had spotted earlier. I couldn’t even afford a loaf of bread so I ended up eating cookies from my backpack for breakfast. Ben bought a loaf since he had over eighteen Swiss Francs in change he needed to blow before we left the country. I told him he could just exchange it back, but he thought he could have more fun this way. We had to wait until 11:00 am now until our steamer came that would take us to another train station. We had originally thought it would be 10:00 am, but we hadn’t really figured out how to read Swiss steamer schedules yet.

We got on the steamer as scheduled (to the minute actually--the Swiss do everything better) and enjoyed a beautiful trip across Lake Brienz. We witnessed at least five different waterfalls, one of which was right by the boat shortly after one of the stops. We saw everyone starting to get their cameras out, so we knew something was coming. If you looked up in the mountains, you could see multiple, small waterfalls high above the lake running off the mountain’s many ledges. It was quite a site. When we got to the train station on the other side of the lake, we found what time we would head to Luzern. We expected that city to be just as gorgeous, since it was right on Lake Luzern. However, once we arrived, we were not really impressed with what we saw. The train ride there was well worth the price of admission though. Our train climbed through the Alps winding through multiple Alpine villages and towering over a couple lakes at the bottom of the gorge. The pictures from the train didn’t turn out as well as I had hoped, but they wouldn’t have done the scene justice anyway. After arrival in Luzern, we checked into going up in a cable car the local mountain, but of course, it was too expensive. We ended up just getting back on a train to head toward Basel.

We wanted to go to Basel because it was supposed to be right on the Rhine River and our Eurail passes were supposed to be good for a free trip on the Rhineline Boat Tour. Once we arrived however, the information lady claimed nothing existed of that sort. We weren’t really sure if the Rhineline was actually in Basel or not, but we figured we would give it a shot since we still had two days until we were supposed to meet Mark at his apartment. However, since we ran out of things to do and had no more Swiss Francs, we decided to head into Germany toward Mark’s apartment. We ended up getting a train itinerary that would get us to Reutlingen in about three and a half hours. We were already impressed with the German train system. Once we got to Reutlingen, we had to figure out a way to find Mark’s apartment. Mark told us to take the bus to a certain stop from the train station, but we are cheap and had two days of leeway to find it ourselves. With our acquired knowledge of mass transit systems, we figured we could just follow the bus line to our stop. Mark told us what bus to take, so we would just follow the bus on foot if possible. On our way, we semi-inadvertently took a shortcut that proved helpful. We knew Mark’s road name, his bus stop, and the line name of the bus. We just kept looking for signs for any of those things to get us closer. We only had to walk for about two or three miles before we were successful in finding his place without even asking for directions. Now it was just a matter of waiting time of approximately thirty-six hours before Mark was set to arrive. This meant we would need a place to sleep for two nights. Immediately, we began searching out our most desirable resting spots. Unfortunately, it started raining even before nightfall, so all our best spots were wet. We ended up setting up camp under a cement staircase that was part of Mark’s apartment complex. Ben found a broken chair and stripped the pad off to use for his bed. I took the nylon seat apart and made a sack to use as a pillow. I used the rest of the wood frame to anchor down my newspapers I had found laying around. Together with my new pillow and newspaper bed, I had quite the upgrade from the previous two nights. I was quite excited for sleep.

It didn’t take long either for me to fall asleep. Unfortunately, we were awaken by thunder--some extremely close. It started pouring almost immediately. However, we finally had outsmarted mother nature as we were already camped out under a concrete staircase.

July 28

(10:00) Mother nature found a way to win again. She found a small crevice in the staircase to send her raindrops down. Although the staircase is four stories high, there was still room enough for the rain to find its way down the wall and into my bed. I noticed Ben get up to change locations during the rainstorm. I immediately checked to see if I had been taking on water at all. I was tucked pretty far underneath the staircase, so I doubted in greatly. I felt my blanket down to my waist and felt no water. I even checked the wall to make sure none was dripping down. After feeling no water whatsoever, I rolled over and tried going back to sleep. Almost immediately, I felt a few large drops hit my blanket down by my legs. I sat up and leaned down to find the outside of the bottom half of my blanket was already soaked. I couldn’t feel it because I had jeans on and it was only partially soaked through the blanket at that point. I jumped up and grabbed my blanket to analyze the damage, then moved to a similar location of Ben. I threw my bag far enough under the staircase where I knew it would be safe from the rain, and then ran to find a new spot. I had just hoped that the water wouldn’t completely soak through my blanket to get me wet as well. There would be nothing more miserable than spending a night outside with all of your warm clothes soaked. Thinking quickly, I took my nylon sack of a pillow and stuck my legs into it. I had hoped that this one more layer of protection would help keep the water off me. It work excellently as the outside of the nylon was wet by morning, but the inside (and myself) was not. I ended up sleeping pretty well despite the two storms that rolled through that night.

When Ben woke me up, we got up and headed into town to see what we could find. We were a bit early for the grocery stores to be open yet, but we sat around and ate breakfast while we waited. We didn’t really need any groceries, but we had nothing better to do and we were excited to see the type of food we would be buying (and hopefully cooking) for ourselves during our stay at Mark’s. We didn’t end up buying anything, but we have some good prospects for a later time. Now we just plan on spending the day lounging outside of Mark’s apartment for another twenty-four hours or so until he should arrive.

(24:00) I’m not sure how these things keep happening, but somehow we turned another boring day of sitting around into the weirdest, craziest, and best day of our trip. And it all started with a smile…

She was walking by our little camp around the staircase as she was half laughing and half smiling at us. I smiled back and she walked on by, assuming that would be the last I saw of her. I couldn’t have been more wrong. When she was on her way back to her apartment, she smiled again, this time saying something to us in German. Of course, we had to act like morons again asking her if she could speak English. She asked us how our sleep was the night before while laughing. We told her exactly how our night went and how they had been going previously. She must have felt bad for us because she offered us her shower and bathroom. We declined, but thanked her anyway. We talked for a little while, but then she retreated back to her apartment. A little while longer, she came down with two bowls and a large bowl of fruit salad. She asked us if we wanted to finish the rest because they made too much. We told her that it looked delicious, but we didn’t need any handouts because we actually had lots of food with us at the time. I think she must have either misunderstood us or just realized that we really did want a taste of the fruit salad because she left it all on the ground for us and then walked away. After we had devoured the entire bowl within moments, we walked up to her apartment to return her dishes. We thanked her and talked to her and her roommate for a little while. We actually learned that the girl didn’t even live there, but just makes herself at home in her friend’s apartment. The apartment is designed for six people, but all but the one girl are on “holiday.” We then went back to our staircase for a little while before she came down and tried to pass by us on an ice cream run. She ended up sitting down and talking for nearly an hour before she went and got her ice cream. She told us of her favorite ice cream and we did the same to her. Neither of us had heard of the other’s favorite. She insisted that we try hers, so we agreed that we would sometime. She went on to get her ice cream and came back a few minutes later carrying three ice cream push ups. I knew what she had done. She went and bought us all ice cream as if she hadn’t done enough for us already. We ate it and it was delicious. She yelled from her apartment’s balcony asking if we enjoyed it and we thanked her again. Later, she came down and asked us if we wanted to go to Stuttgart to a barbeque with her friends. She said that she was going to spend the night there at her parent’s house and we could sleep there. We were hesitant at first, but we knew we would be going no matter what; this was too good to pass up. I quickly scribbled out a note to let Mark know where we were in case he beat us there and then we grabbed our bags and headed to her car. I believe it was at that point when we all introduced ourselves and we found out her name was Sarah. At least this time we weren’t already in the car with the person before we learned her name. However, as the tradition goes, I took more video footage of yet another car ride with a relative stranger.

The car ride was supposed to take about a half hour, but it turned into nearly a two hour ride with the help of a standstill traffic jam on the expressway. Once we got to her town, which is actually a suburb of Stuttgart, we went into the local grocery store to buy supplies for the barbeque. We told her that we needed to buy something for to bring because we didn’t want to be moochers. We thought we should bring some sort of meat. She went off to get supplies for her pasta salad while we went in search of the perfect meat to bring. We found a package of about ten pork steaks that we thought should be efficient. When Sarah found us to see what we had bought, she started laughing out loud. Apparently your not supposed to bring that much food to a barbeque with only ten people. She then found another smaller package for us to buy. Then we decided that we should bring some potato chips as well. When we went to find them, all we could find were smaller sized bags about the equivalent to one quarter of the standard American size bags. We grabbed three bags and she began laughing at us again. She said “There is going to be ten people there!” So we picked up a couple more bags thinking that she meant that we needed more. She laughed again telling us that we probably only needed one bag. We didn’t believe her so we bought three bags anyway. We finally checked out and then went to her house. She prepared her pasta salad while we went out on their balcony and had a beer with her parents. They laughed at our hesitancy to their hospitality. We normally would decline anything because we didn’t want to feel like we were mooching again, but we began to sense that it would be more rude to decline. They continued to try to pamper us the entire time we were there. On top of that, we had a great conversation with them despite our ignorance of any German and them trying to sort out the words among the four languages they can speak. They enjoyed us talking about all the German heritage that we are familiar with in the thumb, and they even were able to explain to us what Frankenmuth, Frankentrost, and Frankenhilf meant in German. They are all old German words meaning “carriage,” “caring,” and “the help” respectively. We told them how it felt more like home there than anywhere we have been. It felt like we were only a fifteen minute drive from Frankenmuth to Reese away from home.

Once Sarah got done making her salad, we were on our way to the barbeque. When we showed up everybody was happy to meet and greet us. Since nearly everybody under forty knows English in Germany, we were able to communicate pretty well the entire night. They did get a kick out of us trying to pronounce some of the German words though. For the meal, we had authentic bratwursts, German potato salad (the best ever by the way), some garden salad, Sarah’s pasta salad, and later, our schnitzel (steak) we had purchased. This was all accompanied by the pride of Germany--Beck’s Beer. For desert we had an awesome raspberry custard dish followed by Swiss chocolate. The whole thing was amazing. After the dinner, we just sat around talking about cultural differences and arguing about whether Richville or Germany could drink more beer. Finally it was time to go back to Sarah’s house to go to bed. When we got there, she led us to a room with a slide out bunk bed in it. We insisted that we sleep on the floor so we would dirty any sheets. She told me to “stop being stupid and get in the bed.” Sensing that I again was offensive for turning down hospitality, we got into our beds and slept like somebody had knocked us out with a two-by-four.

July 29

(12:00) Today is the day we meet Mark! The only problem was that we were still a half hour away sleeping in a strange bed. It didn’t matter though. We knew we were going back sometime and Mark said he would be there all day.

When we got up, we were the first ones up in the house. Apparently we have grown accustomed to waking up when the sun comes up and it didn’t help that the neighbors had a rooster that didn’t think one crow was enough. We sat around downstairs for only a few minutes before Sarah’s mother came in to offer us breakfast. We insisted that we didn’t want much, but she gave us some version of cold cereal, some toast, fruit, and some cold cut meat. Even though this wasn’t our first experience with lunch meat for breakfast, I asked Sarah what we were supposed to do with the meat. She laughed and explained that you can just eat it or put it on toast…or really just do whatever you want with it. Her mother laughed even harder when she came in and Sarah told her in German about our exchange. When she was done laughing she calmly said, “ha, funny.”

Then we had to decide what we wanted to do for the day. We had the option of staying at the house while Sarah went to a retirement ceremony at her old school for the morning, or we could join Sarah at the ceremony/party. Since we have grown fond of awkward circumstances, we decided we wanted to at least check out Sarah’s old school. On the way, we learned about the general idea of this event. Unlike an American retirement party, they actually have a little ceremony with performers and speakers. This particular ceremony was for the school director who was stepping down. Sarah was chosen as the representative of her graduating class to attend. When we got there, their auditorium area was already packed. We decided to sit on the stairs for a little while before we got bored of listening to the German speakers. Ben and I ended up leaving to explore the school for a little while. It is amazing first of all that their schools are in session year round and secondly, that they allow random people from the street to wander the halls. You can tell the people are more carefree here. We then managed to make our way outside to relax under a shade tree while the rest of the ceremony concludes. Sarah said it was only supposed to last about an hour, but it has been well over two now and we are still sitting outside. We can see that there looks like there is going to be a meal afterwards, so we are hoping to partake in that aspect of the celebration shortly.

(24:00) Well we didn’t get to eat any of the food afterward because we didn’t even stay until the end. Sarah was required to wait until the ceremonial handshake, which was nearly the last order of business of the ceremony, before she could leave. As soon as this took place, she bolted out the door to get out of that place. She apologized about seventy-two times for the length of the ceremony as if we had somewhere better to be. Once we made it back to her house, we packed up our things and headed back to Reutlingen to see if Mark had made it back yet. When we got there, we saw that Mark had arrived but wasn’t in his room at the moment. He left the door open for us, but we felt a little uncomfortable waiting for him in his room, so we went to Sarah’s friend Lena’s (as we now know her name finally) room to wait. Eventually we went back to find Mark in his room finishing up his packing. He came up to visit with us and the girls for a while before the three of us guys went to the International Office of the university to clarify what would be happening in Room 93. Mark’s professor was the guy in charge of the apartment and he said it would be alright for us to stay (after we convinced him that we were decent people). We set up the guidelines and ground rules for our stay and everything was set. Next came the task of figuring out how we were going to celebrate Mark’s last night in Europe and Lena’s success on her last exam. Since both girls were going separate ways and Mark had to meet a friend for dinner, we eventually would all meet up in Stuttgart. We ended up going out to eat with Mark and his friend Chin. The meal was delicious and pretty cheap. I guess the doner kabob is the German version of fast food. It is like a pound burrito filled with beef, vegetables, and a type of sauce similar to our dill vegetable dip. Needless to say, we will be going back there quite often since it is on the way to the train station. After dinner, Mark took the bus back to the apartment to get all his stuff and Ben and I were to meet him at the train station. We ended up walking around the city with Chin for a while. He is the type of character that you can never forget. We had a great time chatting about girls and Germany with him and he must of enjoyed our company because he invited us to go out with him Saturday night to this big shindig in Reutlingen. He has actually been living in Reutlingen for about twenty years, so you can imagine how much of a hard time we gave him when he had to call Mark to ask for directions about how to get to the water fountain in the middle of town. He ended up walking with us to the train station and hanging around until it was time to board our train. We kept trying to talk him into going with us, but he was afraid he wouldn’t find a way home the following morning since we were staying at Sarah’s house again. We met Lena there at the train station as well and the four of us road to Stuttgart together. At one point during the ride, someone mentioned how we should have gotten a six pack to drink on the train (since it is legal to drink almost everywhere in Germany). Everybody was then disappointed that we didn’t think of that earlier until Lena pulled a beer out of her purse as if it was nothing. The three of us guys were quite impressed.

After arriving in Stuttgart, our next task was to walk to the hotel that Mark and his mother were staying at for the night so he could drop off all his luggage. Then, Sarah and her friend Alex drove to the hotel to pick us all up. It was quite a squeeze with all six of us in a tiny foreign compact car, but we managed for the short trip to the bar. Upon arrival to the bar, we were shocked to learn exactly how this bar operated. You could bring your own beer or buy it at the bar which was outside. Everybody just sits around in a circle on the concrete surrounding the bar and drinks beer. We thought it was crazy, and then we found out that it’s not frowned upon to take the beer glass with you if you want a souvenir or need to finish your beer on the way to the next bar. Also, many times throughout the night, somebody would drop their glass (accidentally or otherwise) and it would shatter all over the concrete. It happened so often that people never even turned their heads to bother to see what happened. After a couple hours at that bar, where I spent a majority of the time making fun of Ben and his many “interesting” stories with Lena as well as talking to her about her travels. When I asked her what she thought about Ben’s stories, she said that she laughs harder about how he tells them rather than what he says. I agreed. She also told me how she would be leaving for Costa Rica in two days to spend six weeks with her friend. I also found out that she has been to Argentina, the Philippines, and many other European countries. I was quite impressed with her again.

Next we moved on to another bar. Here we sat outside as well, except this time it was at a picnic table. It had an umbrella to which Ben got yelled at for trying to erect over the table. It wasn’t that we needed the umbrella for shade since it was already well passed midnight, but it was in our way of conversation across the table. I guess the reasoning for the umbrella to be down was something to do with the police coming to the bar if they saw the umbrella erected. It didn’t make sense to me or our German friends, but we complied. We ended up spending another couple hours there as well. We were joined by another friend named York to which I had an interesting conversation regarding education. He was angry because education costs had risen to 500.00 Euros (about 700.00 USD) per semester in Germany. He was appalled by the fact many of our students graduate from college with debts tens of thousands of dollars. Everyone was shocked by the fact that we weren’t required to take any foreign language classes throughout or education. In fact, most of our German friends could speak at least four languages. This is a concept that we can’t even come close to wrapping our minds around.

Anyway, after some of us had grown a little tired, we all split up to head home. Mark went back to his hotel, Lena and York left in York’s car, and Alex dropped Sarah, Ben, and myself off at Sarah’s house before heading home. Before we went to bed (and I wasn’t about to refuse a bed again), Sarah made up a list of the things that we would need to pick up from the store in order to make her famous Dampfnudels, which were like pancake dough balls. She was a little surprised about how early we woke up the morning before and she insisted that we stay in bed until at least ten o’clock. We said we would shoot for 8:00 am, even though it was already 4:00 am before we got to bed. The grocery list was for something for us to do while we waited for her to wake up around 11:00 am. We knew it would be interesting because Sarah wrote the list in German to make sure it would occupy us a little longer.

July 30

We slept until 8:00 am, but that was all we could muster. We both laid awake in bed for another hour and a half or so before we decided to head to the super market. When we got there, we only needed to get three things, but we still didn’t really know what those three things were even though they were written down in front of us. We walked around the entire store looking for “vanilla sauce” before we gave in and asked a lady working there to help us out. She ended up taking us on a tour of the store to pick up each item we need. It turned out all we needed was this vanilla sauce (which was nothing you could find in the States), various fruits for fruit salad, yeast, and butter. I also purchased another pretzel as I had the day of the barbeque. This was my delicious breakfast.

After we got back, we had to wait a little while to get into the house as we let Sarah sleep a little longer. Once we were in the house, it took Sarah a while to completely wake up. It was going to be a couple hours before everybody came over to eat dampfnudels, so we headed up to Sarah’s room to get out of the way of the maid who was cleaning. Her room was neat because it had a section for bed and another for a living room area where her desk and couch were situated. The highlight of the room, however, was the acoustic guitar I spotted hiding in a corner. I was so excited to play for the first time in over a month that I didn’t even have to ask and Sarah was already inquiring if I wanted to play it. At first it felt like I was just learning to play all over again. Eventually it came back a little bit, but no where near what I was used too. My fingers hurt after only playing for a short time since all my calluses had been long gone. She even had a couple song books with a majority of the music being in English. We had a pretty good time trying to hammer out a couple songs we knew. Then people began to arrive and we went downstairs to start making the fruit salad. At one point, I was chopping up kiwis and putting them into the bowl when Sarah walked by and was flabbergasted to see that I was leaving the skins on the kiwis. After I told her that this was what I was used to, she agreed to let me keep my one chopped kiwi in the bowl. I think she may have been more shocked when she saw me eating the peelings from the other kiwis.

After dinner was finally served, we enjoyed the delicious German dish to which I again ate way more than I should have. After we had finished eating, we sat and talked for a couple hours with the four others at the table, Sarah, Lena, York, and Alex. Later, our friends we met at the barbeque, Kirsten, Marie, and Maurice, also showed up. Now we were only missing Hannah, Axle, and Chin to complete the circle of all our new German companions. We didn’t stay long after that, however. The previous night Lena had forgotten her bag in a locker at the train station, so she needed to go back to pick it up. Since we need to get to the train station to make it home, we were happy to get another ride from Sarah. Before we went to the station, however, we went to a sporting goods store so Lena could buy a backpack for her trip to Costa Rica. Ben and I spent the entire time playing with the little boy Sarah was watching for the day. This little guy was really cool because he never cried or got upset and he already had an awesome afro. I don’t think he had reached the age of two yet. He also grew fond of my ball cap I was wearing and it actually fit him quite well due to the big puff of awesomeness on the top of his head. It was funny when he tried talking to you because you didn’t know if he was speaking German or just baby gibberish. One word I did notice was “auto.” He took quite a liking to anything on wheels.

Anyway, eventually we made it to the train station and we had to say goodbye to Lena until next summer when they come and visit us (or so they adamantly say, but I will be excited to believe it when I see it). We then made plans to meet Sarah the following night again in Stuttgart. We hugged goodbye to both (German hugs are much more sincere than American I have noticed thus far), and got on our train. After about a mile walk from the train station in Reutlingen to Mark’s apartment (now our apartment more or less), we were happy to be in a somewhat permanent residence. Ben took a shower “because he can” and I boiled one of the sausages I have been carrying around from Switzerland. We ended up talking to Tiff and found out that she is actually in Stuttgart at the moment. We made plans to meet up with her tomorrow as well and it looks as though she will be partaking in all our excursions for a while. We will be happy to once again have somebody else to talk to on our day trips. I also talked to my mom for about an hour on Skype about all the craziness that has been happening to us over the last few days. She also informed me that my basement living quarters had flooded slightly and is now in shambles. I am glad I don’t have to deal with that situation right now. It has been a long (yet way too short at the same time) couple of days and I am exhausted. Maybe tomorrow I will be able to sleep in (or “sleep out” as the Germans say).