Stuttgart, Germany

On the train to Munich from Stuttgart to catch my flight at 11:50am to Alicante. Finding the train and buying the ticket this morning was quite an adventure, but I managed to find the train and get my ticket at least to the main train station in Munich.

Stuttgart was definitely so awesome. It was great to see Daniel and it was very much a student experience. I got to meet his roommates and some of his friends…and had a lot of fun even if I didn’t get much sleep.

Daniel picked me up from the airport in Stuttgart and we went back to his apartment, then to the bakery across the street to get bread and croissants, went back to the apartment where he put out plates and breakfast stuff for all 3 of his roommates and us. They filtered into the kitchen and we ate breakfast (my second, since I also ate at Gabi’s in the morning). It was quite lovely, and his roommates are all nice, goofy…nothing surprising.

We took the metro into the main center of town and walked around, went to a biergarten, where we got beer with sprite, called radler. We walked around the area around the biergarten, which was a beautiful garden and just green grassy-ness.

We got back on the metro and went to a “castle” and clarified that, while in German there is just one word for castle that is also used for what I’d call a mansion, in English it’s probably not exactly correct to say we saw a castle. But a huge house that was beautiful with lots of flowers and beauty.

We got hungry, so we found a cute little restaurant nearby and ended up sitting and eating, talking, drinking coffee, etc for about 2-3 hours. Very pleasant. We headed back to his apartment where we drank some wine and one of his friends came over; we sat around for a while, talking (mostly about America-Europe), then headed over to a club to meet some more of Daniel’s friends. We had tons of fun, and of course a very long day (since I woke up at 5am to get on the plane…).

Sunday we woke up (with some difficulty…) and drove to Tübingen, which is an adorable little town on a river that Daniel calls the Chapel Hill of Germany. It was really adorable and nice, we got some ice cream and it rained a bit, but we kept pretty much dry…The weather the rest of the time completely made up for it.

We got back in the car and headed to a REAL castle, making a stop by Daniel’s mom’s house on the way so I got to meet his mother (sweet & adorable) and brother. Then we drove to the castle, or at least to a parking lot at the base of the mountain the castle was on. So we hiked up to the castle and decided it was worth the extra 2 euros to actually take a tour of the interior of the castle, which was wwwwaaay one of the best decisions about ticket-buying I’ve made on the trip. Even though it was in German, it was soooo cool to get to see the inside of a castle. And this was a REAL castle—with towers and a ballroom and treasure room. Very awesome.

We ate a snack at the castle and then went back to Daniel’s hometown to get schnitzel and another radler—both good—then drove back to Stuttgart and crashed, since we had to wake up this morning at 4:15am (for me to get on the train, Daniel to go to work). So…now I’m on the train. Still a little worried about getting to the airport, but I have plenty of time and I think Munich will be even more English-friendly. I am super-excited about finally being in a country where I speak the language. I think it will be a total relief to see signs and hear conversations that I understand, at least more or less. And hopefully I’ll get to go to Granada. Hasta pronto!