August 3

(23:00) We were in no hurry to get the day started this morning. Of course, I was the first one up, but it was nice not having to nag anyone to get going since we were going to take the day off from traveling. As the other two were still sleeping, I went down to the Penny Mart to buy some breakfast. The other two woke up shortly after I came back with my food. After we got around to moving about for the day, Tiff wanted to go into downtown Reutlingen to check out some of the souvenir shops. There weren’t too many since the city isn’t really a tourist town, but she did manage to buy a few things. Meanwhile, Ben and I managed to buy a few things ourselves; nearly all food. I ended up eating two pretzels, two warm buns, a bag of cookies, and an ice cream cone. All in all, it was a pretty good lunch. Ben had the same thing except instead of a bag of cookies, he had another Yufka Doner. I think this was his fifth or sixth within the last four days.

Once we made our way back to the apartment, we were all relaxing and using the computers. Tiff started talking to her mom (Aunt Kay) on Skype, a conversation we all took part in. We all ended up talking to Zach and Jacob as well. When we found out it was Shark Week on the Discovery Channel, I suggested that they turn the laptop to face the television so we could watch it with them. We ended up watching about an hour’s worth of the programming before saying goodbye. We plan on watching the Simpsons in the same manner at midnight our time or 6:00 pm their time. It should be interesting staying up that late when we need to get up relatively early tomorrow to go see the castle that Ben wants to see so bad. The interesting part is that I already told him that I don’t care too much about seeing it, so if he wants to go, he’s going to be responsible for getting everybody up. We’ll see how well that works out.

While we were laying around, I added a majority of Tiff’s music to my computer, so now I have some fresh stuff to listen to for the rest of the trip. I also talked to my sister for a while on Skype while passing the time. It sounds like they had a pretty good time at Bud Bash this weekend. Now the wait is on for the Simpsons at midnight.

(24:00) We just got done watching the Simpsons on Aunt Kay’s television via Skype. She left the computer facing the television while she went to pick up a pizza. It was a great to see American television again. The only bad thing was watching a commercial for Taco Bell without the option of making a Taco Bell run to pick up a couple Cheesy Double Beef burritos. I hope the menu hasn’t changed since we’ve been over here.

We also had the opportunity to talk to Uncle Matt on Skype. I was informed that he once tried to turn on a computer by typing “O-N” on the keyboard, so I wasn’t surprised that we spent most of the conversation looking at his waist while he figured out where the camera was. Then, in the middle of one of Tiff’s sentences, he said “Alright…Bye!” And that was all we heard from him.

Another revelation came to Ben and I when we were informed during a conversation about all the news we were probably missing at home, that Billy Mayes had died over a month ago. I remember my mother telling me that four celebrities died during the first week we were gone, but she could only rattle off three. I guess I now know what the fourth one was. At least Grandma Bremer won’t have to mute the television during his commercials anymore.

Tiff just lit some incense to try to get rid of the stench of old socks and male bowel movements and we are going to try to get some sleep after staying up past our bed times again. We have another early morning starting in approximately six hours.