Almost everyone has left for vacation, and I was one of two or three people today in the study center. It's weird to be here alone, but also kind of nice. I skyped with so many people today, it was great. It's so important for me to catch up with all my friends while I'm abroad, and I love hearing what everyone is doing, even if it seems boring to them. Speaking of F&M, Drew came to visit this weekend.
He, Emily, and Lindsay, two girls from his Freiborg program, came to Heidelberg on Friday at 1. I met them at the train station and from there I took them to see the study center and use the bathroom and then to their hostel, which was right on Hauptstrasse, the center of the Old City. When we got to the hostel, they weren't ready for us, so they gave us free beer and we sat at a table and talked. After they checked in and put their stuff down, we decided to walk towards the castle and see if we could find a playground that some friends showed me a few days earlier. We did find it and played on it a little, because the slide is built into the side of the mountain and has a really nice view of the city. We eventually found the castle by just continuing to walk up the mountain and look for signs. We walked around the outside of the castle and took pictures with the city of Heidelberg as the background, some of which came out really good. We even went into the castle to see the giant keg.
After walking back down the mountain, we decided to be more touristy and visit all the little vendors by the church, oh which we went in before we climbed to the castle. I hadn't looked at most of the touristy stuff yet, so that was kind of cool and I tried to get ideas. Then we went to a gummi bear shop, and the woman was really nice and let us try the beer flavored gummi bear, which were surprisingly really good and interesting. Then we walked down to the Old Bridge and took pictures along the Neckar with Heidelberg in the background. At that point it was chilly and time to eat dinner, so we went back to the hostel to get good and cheap german food. I ended up not actually getting german food, and having chicken with a really good sweet and sour sauce. I loved it.
We didn't know what to do at night, so we ended up just hanging out with a few kids in my program in their apartment. It was only for a little while, because we wanted to get up early to get to Stuttgart. What we forgot, was that Saturday was a holiday in Germany, Reunification Day. That means that the trains ran less frequently and we had a little bit of trouble getting to the Hauptbahn Hof, but we all made it and we all got to sit together on the train. There was a bachelor party already drinking on the train and singing drinking songs.
Once we got to Stuttgart, the train station was packed. Because it was Reunification Day, tons of people thought it was a great day to go to the Volksfest. It was hard to even move. There were tons of rides and food stands. We tried to wait in line to get into a tent, so we could sit down and dance, but after almost 2 hours of waiting we gave up. We decided to just walk around and order beers. It was a lot harder to find beer at this festival than we expected. Don't worry, we eventually found beer, bratwursts, and crepes. We walked around and enjoyed the people watching and beer. I wish I hadn't left my camera in my jacket locked in a locker at the train station. I was worried to bring it somewhere with so many people and tourists. We had a good time, and then we got back on the train to go to Heidelberg. It was so good to see Drew and be able to talk about F&M and our friends. I can't wait to visit Minnie in a few days!
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