So, it's been a while....

I guess that it's been a long time since I've written anything here and I should apologize for that. Sorry! Let's see, I've done many things since my last post, but I will try to make this not super long and boring. (that and English is becoming rather hard). After my weekend in Freiburg Janelle came and visited me in Tübingen. We visited the Tübingen castle, which is where the nucleus of the atom was discovered. Woo Tübingen! We also went to Bebenhausen, which is the smallest village that belongs to the land are that is called Tübingen. This was the same day as the Tübingen regional market. We bought a tasty apple cake and some crepes. They were very good, as things from the market usually are. We took these with us to Bebenhausen and had a picnic with Val and her roommate from Russia Daria. The Kloester at Bebenhausen is so pretty. Pictures should be up on my photobucket, so that everyone can see them. I would really like to spend some time looking around this little town, because it is very cute. During Janelle visit we also visited the local beer garden and grilled up so tasty sausages for diner one night.

After Janelle left, we actually met up with her the next in Munich. Munich is such a large city, it was amazing compared to Tübingen. There were so many people and so many things to do. We stayed with Janelle's aunt, who lives in a suburb of Munich. It was really cool to get to stay with a German family and see how they actually live. They were so nice to us it was amazing! We were there over the May Day Holiday, which is the german version of Labor day. We watched a May pole raising in a small village. All of the people were out to see the big event. There was a little Bavarian band and everyone had a Derndl or Lederhosen. After observing the festivities for a while, we headed to Dachau. Dachau was very interesting and depressing. I found it very strange that it was built right next to a residential street with people living it. There were also these beautiful trees that looked completely out of place. It was sad but I didn't cry. I didn't know that Dachau was the first concentration camp. After Dachau we went to Schloss Nymphenburg. This was the castle of one of the baden württemberg king's castles, before he built Neuschwanstein. This castle is so beautiful. It has a huge garden in front of it with many sculptures and water fountains. We also ate at this cute little cafe that's located behind some bushes on the castle grounds. We visited a Beer garden and the Fruehlingsfest, but I don't really have much to say about them.

Here's a brief summary of what's been happening in Tübingen since we returned from Munich. We went to the Fruehlingsfest in Stuttgart, which I really enjoyed. It reminded me of the fair (mostly because that's what it is, only with beer). We also went to a soccer game for the Stuttgart team. They have one more game to win and they will be the champions for the year. Everyone at the game was super excited to be there and I think had had a little bit to drink, but it was still a very nice atmosphere. In the middle of the week we went with Val's friend to the Ritter Sport factory and museum. It was interesting. All the art in the museum used squares as a theme, because that is the shape of the Ritter Sport bars. We bought so much chocolate! I got about 6/7 pounds of chocolate for about 10 Euro, but I intend to bring some of it home, even though it is very tasty. We went to the Opera on Saturday night. We saw "la Traviata" in Italian. The German subtitles were not as good as they could/should have been, so the story was a bit hard to follow. The music was amazing. The orchestra pit was really small so they had some weird converted trombone thing instead of a tuba; it was interesting to look at. Well, that brings everything up to date. There are a lot of pictures on my photo bucket but I will try to put up more soon.

Rachel