Various Happenings

Hello all, I'm back again, much to your amazement I'm sure. Let's see, I never update this thing enough so I guess that another way too long of a blog is on its way. I'm also trying to upload pictures on my fabulous photobucket, which I've decided is not the world's best program. Let's see, where did I leave off.....

Island and the A few weeks ago Tübingen had it's big annual boat races. You can actually watch some video at www.youtube.com if you don't believe me about how crazy they are. So with the boat races, the population of the town grows to about 5 times its normal size with people crowded on the NeckarNeckar wall. Val and I had a plan to secure the best spots on the Island, but being that we'd had our crazy Tübingen rain the day before, we decided to sit on the wall. This was a great idea in theory, that is until the Tübingen weather did the other thing it does so well, extreme heat, that and with my natural clumsiness, sitting on a high wall was not a good idea. Rachel apparently equals Humpty-Dumpfty. Anyway, so we get to the wall about two hours before the race is supposed to start and wait around for a few friends who wanted to get food for a picnic, in impossible task on a holiday in Germany. It gets super hot so I go home and change into my sundress, without thinking about the burning qualities of the sun and head back into town. Basically this sundress results in a pretty nasty sunburn on my shoulders. (I know mom, surprise!) The races where pretty neat to watch. Basically a bunch of boats float down the river at once and end up getting in one huge pile at the turn around point. Some people end of falling out of their boats and others just give up their German restraint for a day and jump into the river. I also managed to drop pretty much every thing that I brought to the wall with me. Including but not limited to both my shoe and my new water bottle. It was a bit embarrassing, however there was a kind, but creepy German man who returned them to me. Here are some pictures.


Thursday was an eventful day. After the boat races, Val and I tried to go to the Biergarten, but it was way too full so we ate at our favorite place in town. We them met up with my second mentor Barbara. We had an ice coffee together. (Ice coffee is pretty much what it means in Germany. Coffee with a hunk of ice cream in it. I muss say, I do miss Starbucks.) We also went to a movie, my second for the whole summer. It was called "Full Metal Village." It's about this super small town in Germany, full of a whole bunch of gamma Schlechtys that has an annual heavy metal festival. It was really funny. So that's Thursday in a nut shell.

Friday I headed over to Munich to pick up Ben, who came to visit for about a week. We actually stayed in the "international" part of Munich, if you know what I mean. We went to the big beer hall, where they hold Oktoberfest every year and got a big old liter of German beer. Ben got a dark Radler, which I decided was better than the regular Radler and we walked around for a while. We went back into the Frauenkirche and saw the whole thing this time. It's a lot better to see it after church is over for the day. We didn't spend a whole time of time in Munich, because it wasn't really our goal, just a stopping point along the way. We just walked around a little bit in the morning and then it was time to get on the train for Bad Gastein Austria.

Bad Gastein is a little ski/spa town in the middle of the Austrian Alps. Our hostel was really nice and at the top of town right next to the train station. There is a huge waterfall in the town which is basically one giant hill with a casino. We walked down to the town center and saw the giant waterfall. We even stopped for dinner and eat near the waterfall. Being that it was such a small town, everything was closed in the afternoon when we got there and of course everything was closed on Sunday. The next day we wanted to go Para sailing but the weather wasn't very cooperative, so we went up the tram to the top of the mountain and wandered around there for a little bit. The mountains are so cool, you would never believe how beautiful they are until you're actually there, and no photo can ever really capture them. There were also cows about half way up the mountain, which I thought was really cute. So yeah, other than that we just did a lot of looking at mountains and walking around the town. A very nice relaxing time.

Being that this blog is so long and I'm bored of writing it, I think I will continue another time. Until then.....