Au revoir!

Passports, check. Huge map of Paris, check. French dictionary and French phrasebook, check and check. I think we're ready.

We'll see you on Monday after we're back from our weekend in Paris!


Since we'll be out of town...we wanted to give an early Happy Birthday to Eric!



This Broncos super fan's birthday is on January 30th. Hope you have a wonderful day!
Love - B & C

ChooooChoooo!

Today was a big day.

Today I learned how to maneuver the trains. Yay! I had a lunch/shopping date with my new friend, Paula. Paula lives in downtown Stuttgart, so to get to her I had to take the train. Brian and I have both wanted to learn the train system, but we just hadn't gotten around to it. My little lunch/shopping date today provided the perfect excuse to finally figure out the zugs (trains in German).

After a 15 minute walk to our local train stop, Goldberg, I approached the automated ticket machine not knowing what kind of ticket I needed to purchase. I knew the stop I needed to get off the train at, but I did not know how the tickets were sold (by zone, by stop, by color of your socks...?). I was pleasantly surprised to see that the ticket machine had an English option. Whew! That made it much easier. All I had to do was type in where I wanted to go and it told me how much I owed. (Surprisingly, this was much easier than trying to figure out what type of ticket to buy for the San Diego trolley...go figure!) 4.40 Euro later, I was the proud owner of my very first German train ticket:

Last night I had checked the train timetables online so I knew that my train was at 1032. Since I was a few minutes early I basked in the welcome glow of the ever elusive sun.

At 1032 on the dot, my train pulled up and whisked me away to Stuttgart.



Paula and I had a great time shopping, chatting, and lunching. It's nice to have a fun girlfriend here! Once our legs were tired from walking and our wallets worn out from shopping, I hopped on my 1327 train and made it home right around 1400, completely satisfied with my German train adventure.

Our First USO Trip

Last night we signed up for our very first trip through the local USO (Thanks for the great USO recommendation, Noah and Holly). On February 6th, we will be going to Lucerne, Switzerland...

Image courtesy of World Guides

...to tour the city and visit a Fasnachtsmarkt (Mardi Gras festival)! The trip itself if just one day, we will be picked up on base at 0500 (Yikes) and get dropped back off around 2000. We get to just sit back and enjoy the ride...as well as Lucerne.

We're very excited to take advantage of more USO events in the future. They offer a HUGE variety of outings (day and overnight trips) as well as classes. I'm really hoping to take one of their German cooking classes. The one trip we're sad we missed out on: World Championship Bobsledding. It was a trip to learn to bobsled on an Olympic ice canal sled track. How cool would that have been? We've learned that the trips and classes tend to fill up quickly. We lucked out and bought two of the last three seats for the trip to Lucerne.

Here we come, Switzerland!

The Hasenhorn

Our plan was to go sledding in the Black Forest with our friends, The Burgoons (Ian, Paula, and Evan). When we reached our sledding destination (approximately 1.5 hours from Sindelfingen) we found out that there was no sledding today because there wasn't enough snow (even though the ground was covered in snow...). Before we were able to get too bummed out we saw that the sled hill was also home to The Hasenhorn Coaster. The Hasenhorn is a year-round outdoor individual-cart roller coaster. SWEET. We checked out the course:

And decided it was a must.

To get to the top of the coaster, you take a chair lift up. The chair lift ride provided a great view of the town, Todtnau, below:



Once at the top, we hopped in our own little cart and we were off!

The cart speed was regulated only by a set of hand brakes that Brian carefully left untouched. It was a pretty wild ride, but so SO fun. So even though sledding was a bust, we had a blast on The Hasenhorn!

If you'd like to view the rest of our photos from The Hasenhorn, please click on this link:
The Hasenhorn Photos

Friday Night, Date Night!

Before we came to Germany we were sort of homebodies. Back in the states one of our favorite Date Night activities was staying in, eating delicious food, drinking a martini (or three), and watching a movie. Now please don't let our traveling and exploring fool you...deep down, we're still homebodies. Which is why we're so excited for our stay-in Date Night tonight.

After a quick walk over to our local mall, I procured some tasty looking snacks for this evening. Go ahead, take a peek:

That's right. A mall carries these yummy finds. Our mall is about a 7 minute walk from the Marriott and it has a grocery store, small food vendors with specialty items, and bakeries, as well as all of the regular stores you'd imagine a mall would have.

Before we go on, I have to draw your attention to this lovely little lady:

She is THE most delicious brie we've ever had. EVER. Hands down.
Isn't the name great, too?
(Dear Cheese-Fiend-Elli,
I wish I could send you Pure Lust, but I don't think she would survive the trip.
If I can think of a way, I will get her to you!
Love, Your German-Cheesemonger-Clare)

Okay, back to Date Night! We'll snack on our locally acquired treats, sip a few martinis and watch:



Even far from "home" a stay-in Date Night sounds pretty wonderful.
We hope you all have a fabulous Friday night, however you decide to celebrate it.

True Life: Our Town

Yesterday was the FIRST day of complete sunshine we've had since we've been here, so I decided I would take the opportunity to walk into our cute little town and take some photos. The heart of Sindelfingen (our town) is about a 20 minute walk from the Marriott. Most towns in Germany are planned around the Rathausplatz (town hall square) or Marktplatz (market square). Sindelfingen is no different. Here's a view of the Marktplatz:

I got to town at about 1400, right after the local market was being packed up. (Oh, hello there sunshine, we've missed you!) I found out that the local market is up and running on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. I am definitely going back for some fresh produce and flowers!

Next I turned down this quaint, narrow street:

This street has a bunch of cute little shops, a few restaurants, and lots of benches. Can't wait to go into town in the spring and people watch!

That street empties into this adorable biergarten area:

You'd better believe we'll be logging some hours here once the weather warms up.

Kitty corner from this small area is this cool looking Italian restaurant:



The menu looks tasty: pizzas, pastas, and so on!

Around the corner from Come Sempre is this teeny tiny bar that we stopped in on New Year's Eve:



Although a little quiet, our town has quite a few charms that we're looking forward to experiencing in the coming months.

Heidelberg

Since Brian had a long weekend, we decided to go visit Heidelberg for a night. Armed with some awesome recommendations from our friend Andrew (we LOVED The Vetter, Andrew!!), we hit the road on Sunday morning after breakfast. The drive only took about 1 hour and 15 minutes. Once we got to town we drove straight to the Schloss Heidelberg (Heidelberg Castle). It was raining when we arrived so we didn't get too many photos of the exterior of the castle, but we did find an awesome look-out point. Here's a shot of B and a view of Heidelberg from the Castle:

The Castle dates back to the 13th century. It was really tough to wrap our minds around the immense amount of history that it holds. After wandering around in the rain for a while we saw that a guided tour was starting so we jumped on board. We were SO glad we did. Without the guided tour you can't really go inside of the castle. Our tour guide was this funny, old German man who kept the tour going at a nice pace and peppered the tour with quality information and funny anecdotes. I've come to realize that I am OBSESSED with stained glass. Below is a shot of some of the Castle's stained glass and a view of the ornate exterior:



During the tour, our guide kept talking about this "enormous wine keg" that was used by the reigning King and his court. It supplied the wine for the entire Castle. (Sidenote: we learned that they did not drink water during these times because the water was so dirty. All they drank was WINE and sometimes beer. Even the kids. Granted the kids received a "thin" version, but wine nonetheless. Can you imagine how dehydrated they must have been their whole lives? Crazy!) After the tour ended we stumbled upon this wine keg. Enormous is an understatement. This thing was MONSTROUS! It can hold 55,000 gallons of wine. For an idea of the scale, note the bottom half of the person standing at the top of the keg:

Pretty amazing to think that that thing was FULL of wine at some point.

After we visited the Castle we decided to go get checked-in and get ready for dinner. Our friend, Andrew, recommended this gem of a restaurant:

The Vetter was wonderful! (I forgot my camera that night so I don't have any shots of the interior or amazing food.) The ambiance was SO cozy. Slightly dim lighting with candles on each table, fun music playing, delicious beer flowing, and ridiculous food. The Vetter also boasts of having the strongest beer in the world. We, of course, had to try it! It was okay...very sweet tasting for a beer, so we didn't get seconds of it, but we're glad we tried it. Since we hadn't eaten schnitzel yet, we decided to have it there. OH LORD. It was SO good! Ours was served with a creamy brown gravy and fried potatoes. Luckily, we split the meal along with some soup and salad, otherwise we wouldn't have been able to squeeze into one taxi to get home.

The next day we wanted to check out Haupstrasse which is Heidelberg's pedestrian-only street packed with restaurants, bars, and fun shops. After walking around for a bit, we both picked different food vendors for lunch:

Both were equally delicious! Brian bought a Cohiba and we walked down to the cool bridge we saw the day earlier from the Castle.

The weather was still a little gray and cloudy, but the beauty of Heidelberg shone through. From the bridge we were had a great view of the Castle:

We so enjoyed our quick trip to Heidelberg and are looking forward to visiting in the springtime. Thanks again for all of the superb recommendations, Andrew!

If you'd like to view the rest of our photos from Heidelberg, please click on this link:

Heidelberg Photos

Photo Essay: Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial

This was an extremely powerful, educational, and unforgettable experience.

If you'd like to view the rest of our photos from Dachau, please click on this link:
Dachau Photos

It's beginning to look a lot like...

Valentine's Day around here! It was time to take our sweet little Christmas tree down, but we love how homey it made our room feel so we decided that instead of a Christmas tree, it will be our Holiday tree...festively decorated for each upcoming holiday. Which means that today there was a whirl of construction paper and scissors...have a peek!

Pink, red, and purple...check, check and check. After a few more snips of construction paper our new Holiday tree was sweetly outfitted for Valentine's Day:

It is, after all, only 1 short month from today!