heidelberg

today anne showed me around heidelberg (where her school is). We went to the philosophie weg, where guys like goethe went to walk way back when. biked along the Neckar (river), went to the castle, and walked down the fußganger zone, which is shopping. heidelberg i guess has one of the longest in germany.

flowers in febuary, along the philosophieweg.
a view of heidelberg from the castle

a view of part of the castle with the city behind

now this is what a keg should be. it was so huge i could hardly believe it. It had its own room in the castle. The king wanted a keg that would never run out, so here it is. It can hold 221,726 liters (nalgens). that is my head in the picture. Think of the parties this guy had! haha

pictures from carneval

chris and i before carneval, he is an indian and i am jack the ripper... (sorry its sideways, cant make it work the right way)
the suits i was talking about that everyone uses at carneval. this is part of the parade.

vogelgrippe

i keep forgeting to tell everyone the news that the bird flu was just found at the bodensee. right near konstanz! haha. dont worry im not there for a month, and when i do get there, i wont pick up any dead birds...

carneval

Last night I went with Christoph to the program in Frittlingen. There were a lot of people from the village there. There were skits and dancing and a comedian. I was not able to understand a whole lot but thats ok. Oh I nearly forgot, there was lots of beer, and wine as well. everyone was drinking something! After the program that last 2.5 hours there was just a big party where everyone gets drunk. ha! We went home early because I was tired and chris needed energy for today, in other words needed to rest because today he would drink all day long. The most interesting thing about carnival is that everyone dresses up as something. the bühlers keep comparing it to halloween, it is kinda like it, except it lasts a few days and there are parades and parties hosted by the cities. i dressed up as jack the ripper. ha! a orange jump suit..
Today was the carnival parade. a whole bunch of people dress up in all kinds of custumes and walk around the village. the most famous costume is the red, blue, green, yellow stripes with the mask. ill put up a picture when i can get my computer to work on the internet. some throw out candy too. Chris and his friends were in it as american football players. it was pretty interesting.

a bar and a bike ride

When I got to the Bühlers we ate and then I was told I was going to Rottweil to a party. It is carnival time which means lots of parties. Apparently carnival used to be a time when the people would drive out the demons that were around during winter, now it is just another excuse to party. So we (anne, her friends, and I) went to a bar in Rottweil that was just packed with drunken people dancing. it was interesting. We got back to the house at an early hour of 1. 45. and i went right to bed and then woke up the next morning at 1. 12 solid hours of sleep. I Then put my bike together and went for a bike ride. There is a nice hill i rode up and down last year that i went to. it is probably 200 meters higher than the surrounding area, and it is around 5 km of rd to get to the top. I did it twice. At the bottom there was not much snow at all, and the roads were dry. at the top the roads were all wet and there was a good 6 inches (at least) of snow. I did not know that little bit of elevation change made such a differance.
by the way there is not a whole lot of snow. patches here and there but nowhere near a solid covering. and the temp is around 2 c or 35-6 f.

A few more travel details...
Today on the way out of either Frankfurt or Stuttgart, not quite sure which, but there was a traffic jam cause by "getöten Schweine" yes, that means dead pigs. Apparently the wild pig though it could make it across the autobahn...

It Begins...
So I've started my trip. It did not actually hit me that I was going to be gone for 5 months until we took off from Chicago. It should be fun though.
The flight from Chicago was long, and the fact the sometime between wednesday night and thursday at 6 my ipod screen cracked rendering it unusable did not help at all. I think i might put up a picture of it later just because it looks strange...Other than that the flight was alright, my plan of getting very little sleep the few nights before paid off and I was able to sleep most of the flight, except the carts kepting hitting me and the lady next to me woke me up once to tell me to buckle up. that was annoying, and her hand falling on my leg for a few hours. Oh well she had more problems than i did, for when the guy in front of her was leaning back at all she could not put the tray down...
Ill try to figure out how to use this blog better as time goes on, right now it is all in german so i am stuggling to find anything...