Frohe Ostern!

Happy Easter everyone!

Travis, Will, Courtney and I attended church service today at the Lutheran church that is attached to the castle where our school is located. It was a very nice service. They had a small group of trumpets and trombones playing along with the giant pipe organ. We didn't know the German hymns very well, but we could usually chime in with a "hallelujah" here and there. We ended up sitting next to our landlord Frau Hahn. She was really excited to see us there, and little did we know, but as we left the house this morning she sneaked into our kitchen and left us each an Easter basket full of chocolate and hard-boiled eggs for us to find when we got home.

I've been very busy the last two weeks with school and traveling with the gang. Last weekend we went to Munich and stayed in a hostel Friday and Saturday night. It was a lot of fun, and I really like Munich, but a couple days wasn't enough time for me to see everything I wanted to. So, Travis and I decided that we are going to go back sometime before the trip is over. There are some great deals for group train tickets. Five of us can pretty much go where ever we want in southern Germany for about 4 euros apiece. We have also managed to visit Heidelberg and Würzburg.

Glockenspiel

Pork-Knuckle and Potato-Noodle rolls

On Tuesday we took a class trip to one of Audi's production plants that is not far from Bad Mergentheim. As everyone already knows, I really like cars, so as far as I was concerned this was the best field trip ever. The plant is in Neckarsulm and produces most of Audi's luxury sedans and most importantly the Audi R8. The R8 is Audi's famous sports car. The base model retails for around $100,000 so needless to say I won't be able to ship one home to my Pops, but I wish I could! They were little sticklers about taking pictures in the plant, I guess they don't want their secrets getting out or something, so we were only able to take photos in the entry foyer.

After our morning tour at the plant, we jumped aboard our bus and headed to a little town called Bad Wimpfen for the rest of the day. Bad Wimpfen was unbelievably beautiful. It is a small medieval town that looks very similar to world famous Rothenburg, but hasn't been overrun by tourism. In fact, I'm pretty sure we were the only foreigners there. We had lunch at a small cafe and then wandered around town for the rest of the day. 

We're taking another school trip this week. We leave for Berlin on Tuesday and we are going to stay there for four days. The school sent us a schedule of events for when we are there, and it's going to be crazy. It's going to be go go go! I'll write about it when I get back.

Rothenburg ob der Tauber

After week filled with long lectures on Human Resource Management and Macro-Economics, we were ready to get out of town for a little while. School was exhausting this week thanks to overly lengthy lectures and classroom windows that revealed blue skies and borderline 70 degree weather.

We were able to enjoy the weather Friday evening at a barbecue at one of the German student's apartment. I was a little jealous of the location of the apartment. It sat up on one of the small valley walls that surround Bad Mergentheim. Needless to say, this meant the backyard had a really nice view of Bad Mergentheim and a little bit of the surrounding area.

I found some bratwurst wrapped in bacon at the grocery store, and yes, it tasted just as good as it sounds.

The usual suspects met Saturday morning at the train station and we took off for Rothenburg ob der Tauber. I was fortunate enough to visit Rothenburg my first time in Germany with the exchange group, and I was very excited to go back. It is an incredibly well preserved medieval town surrounded by a wall. It's well known for a Christmas museum, a criminal torture museum, and a very intricate wood carving of the last supper in St. James church.

We hit all three and then took a short walk along the city wall. After that, we proceeded to stroll down less traveled streets in an attempt to get lost and maybe see some of the local culture. We ended up at a beer garden. That counts, right?

                                                                   I missed the memo..

                                                               A view from the city wall.

Back to School

I already broke my rule of writing every Sunday night. Sorry about that, please forgive me.

Last Monday we started school. We started off with a week-long crash course in German. Since I already speak a little, I was put into a class of four other Americans (who also had some experience) and we went a little beyond counting and naming fruit.

It was amazing how much German I learned in one week, and it also made me realize how much German I had forgotten. I finished my German Minor two years ago, and haven't been in a German class since. We spent the week describing pictures, playing games, and watching a German film. I wish all my German classes had been like that. Our teacher, Herr Spangenberger, showed a lot of patience with us as we stumbled through our sentences all week. On Friday, after we took our end of the week German test, we hopped abroad a train to Stuttgart.

There were about fifteen of us in the group and we spent Friday night on the town. Checking out the local 'scene' if you will. Saturday we did some sight seeing. It was unbelievably gorgeous, about 70 degrees and sunny.  

                                                                         Travis and I on top of the TV-Tower

Looking down on Stuttgart

Today we started our Business courses. I start with Macro-Economics. How our classes are scheduled is that we take one at a time, and it runs all day for about a week and half, culminating in a substantially large test on the last day. Although this is going to be a little intense, the bright side is that almost all my tests are on Friday mornings, which leaves me with a school-free weekends.

Tonight we went and played basketball with some of the students from our school. Three guys from the US Army base in Mosbach also played. All three were about half my height, but still showed me a thing or two about how to shoot hoops.  And it might come as a shock to you, but all three were also baffled that I had not played organized basketball since the fourth grade.