I Have Found That Ducks Opinions of Me Very Much Depends On Whether or Not I Have Bread...

I’m currently sitting in a dorm in London that overlooks Regent’s Park. Holly has several classes today, so that gives me time for a long overdue blog entry!

Last Wednesday I went on a solo adventure with my Eurorail Pass! I hopped on a train to Nürnberg and then to Würzburg. I had no set train times or even specific places to visit in the two cities. I basically wandered around for a few hours in each place. I didn’t have a map, but I didn’t get lost once! (Dad says that means I didn’t have a true adventure. psh, What does he know!? haha) It was a very long day, but I got to add two new stars to the places-I’ve-visited map!

Friday morning was also a fairly early morning. I had to go to Stuttgart to pick Holly up from the airport! I was a bit nervous about getting there and finding Holly ok, but everything went smoothly! The bus ride to the airport was quite scenic and everything went well on Holly’s end as well.

First, Holly and I headed to the center of Stuttgart for lunch and Starbucks in the main square. We decided to grab lunch at a Doner stand because Holly needed to try one and most places were closed for Good Friday. (The Germans make a bigger deal out of Easter than most Americans.) Lunch was great, and we even sat next to an American couple living in Germany for the wife’s job… speech pathology!! What are the ODDS?

After lunch we headed to Starbucks for “dessert” coffee. They were out of toffee nut syrup for our mocha frappuccinos so we tried almond syrup. It was just as phenomenal as the toffee nut! We then went to the main square with all the flowers and fountains to enjoy our tasty purchases. The weather was absolutely PERFEKT, so we played in the fountain with some little kids and a couple ducks! (By play in the fountain I mean put our feet in… not sure you are allowed to run through the fountains… lol)

Holly choose to go to the Stuttgart zoo/ botanical garden from the choices I provided. I had never been to Wilhelma Zoo, but we found it without any problems. It was by far the coolest zoo I’ve ever been to. Okay, to be fair, I think I’ve only been to one other zoo… but it WAS cool. It was beautiful, entertaining, and just pure awesomeness. (As most places are when visited with Holly I’ve come to find).

The next day we made our way to Hohenzollern (a castle about a half an hour south of Tübingen. As with many castles, it was perched high up on a Mountain. It slightly resembled Hogwarts. The hike up to the castle from the shuttle stop was a lot of work, so we rewarded ourselves with the picnic lunch I had prepared. As always, the view from the castle was fantastic, and I got lots of pictures of everything. There were a couple of moats and draw bridges around the castle, and Holly and I concluded that they should have water and plastic inflated alligators in them! (You KNOW that would be fun) We also decided on the way down to shuttle stop that the castle should have a giant slide down the mountain. But no, just long scenic walk down a mountain in perfect weather. When we got to the shuttle stop, I tried to figure out when the next shuttle would come to take us back to town. As it turned out, we had over 2 hours to wait! Neither Holly nor I are patient enough for something like that, so we bought some ice cream and proceeded to hike down the mountain. By the time we made it back to the Hechingen train station, we had walked down a mountain, across a field, over the autobahn, and through town. Needless to say we were tired and hungry. We grabbed a snack at the little train station cafe before the train back to Tübingen. I tried Currywurst for the first time and I don’t feel the need to ever order it again. It wasn’t horrible; it just wasn’t anything special.

Upon arrival in Tübingen we ate at the Neckarmuller and stopped at the grocery store so Holly could buy German chocolate. We ended up with handfuls of various chocolate bars and a carton of black forest cake flavored ice cream. Of course we dumped our purchases on the kitchen table as soon as we got back to my apartment and proceeded to dish up the ice cream. To make room in the freezer, I had to take out an old ice cream carton that was nearly empty. I poured water in the carton to let it soak while we enjoyed our easter/German candy. As luck would have it, my roommate, Martin walked into the kitchen during our chocolate sampling. He looked over and said hi as usual and it dawned on me how bad it looked that we were sitting at the table with ice cream and a mountain of chocolate. I looked down at the table and then at Holly. Mistake. She did the exact same thing and we exchanged a look and started cracking up without a word. I think this confused Martin a bit. “Is everything alright?…” The giggle fits continued for at least a half an hour. Fun times… lol.

We got up fairly early on Easter morning so we could go to an Easter service and see more of Tübingen. Since Holly doesn’t know German and we had a lot to do, we only stayed for about a half hour. I was excited because I was able to understand a good portion of the sermon!

The trip to London on Sunday included a train, bus and plane. Things didn’t go 100% according to plan, but everything worked out well in the end. The high speed train to Frankfurt had individual compartments like in Harry Potter. We were surprised that we were allowed to sit in them. Although…it was probably better that way for the other passengers because Holly and I were having a good time and were a bit noisier than the other passengers. So yeah, having our own compartment was awesome.

Holly and I arrived in London at approx. 11:30pm Sunday and it took quite a while to find transportation from Stansted Airport to her dorm in Regents Park. Then the bus to her dorm took about an hour. So… it was super late when we finally got to her room and went to sleep. We decided to push the London bus tour back to Wednesday so we could sleep in a bit Monday morning.

Yesterday (Monday) was my first full day in London! We started out with a full English breakfast and then shopped a bit. Holly took me to a clothing store called Primark. I WISH we had Primark in the States. Everything is REALLY inexpensive. Zum Beispiel, I got a nice pair of jeans for only 6 pounds!! INSANE! After that, we went to Starbucks and headed back to Holly’s dorm. Along the way we bought a loaf of bread to feed the ducks in Regents Park. It was great! Feeding ducks is so therapeutic… Later we went to a pub for dinner (where holly made fun of me for not ordering any alcohol… “It’s a PUB, Courtney” True… but my water is kostenlos) After dinner we ventured over to Kings Cross. One guess as to why this was on our itinerary... Yep, platform 9 ¾. The old Harry Potter obsession never completely dies. And hey, we saw several other groups and people doing the same thing that looked around our age… so yeah. Before heading back to Holly’s place, we stopped at Big Ben to see it all lit up at night. It was a great day…pictures won’t be posted for a while though. I didn’t bring my laptop to London with me, and I may be pretty busy when I get back to Tübingen.