Another beautiful day of sunshine! That makes 7 in a row! How long can this last? The forecast says rain tomorrow. We shall see.
At 6 am my eyes popped open and I began the day. I woke up in my host family's guest room in Oberndorf, at the Pfiefer's, where I'm staying for three nights total. Mr.and Mrs. names are Manfred and Sabine and they have three children, Francesca, Jasmine, and Max. All speak English quite well including Max who has only studied it for two years. Jasmine speaks English the best and she traveled to Illinois last year spending 6 weeks in Moline. Today is Jasimine's 19th birthday! This birthday is not quite as important to celebrate as her 18th because that is when German teens get their driver's license! Tonight I gave the Pfiefer's thier gifts I brought them from Orion, Illinois. The kids received Rock the Park Tshirts and I showed them a picture of the band shell on the internet so they could understand it better.
This morning I was able to do two loads of laundry and I hung it outside to dry. This is the first time in about 25 years my underpants have hung outside, but there they were, flapping in the breeze in Germany!After breakfast Sabine drove me into town to meet up with the rest of the travelers to tour Rottenburg on the Neckar River.
The city tour was led my the town historian and again, this town is filled with beautiful architecture, colorful windowboxes, statues, and cute little shops. One surprise was a Roman ruins. The Romans once ruled here and their influence is everywhere. Over the centuries, houses and buildings have been built upon the ruins and usually a building has to come down before they find these ruins buried in the ground. They have protective ordinances about preserving the architecture and they work very hard to preserve and restore it.
Right here in the middle of Rottenburg is a Roman ruins discovered only about 20 years ago. We viewed the display complete with original stones. One interesting thing is the toilet trench area. It seems that using the toilet was an activity not necessarily done in private. They would go to the toilet area which was set up above the trench. They had a bench to sit upon with holes in it like in an outhouse. There were several holes a people would go there and while doing their business, they would have a nice little chat with their neighbors! Certainly not what we do today, thank goodness!
They also discussed there being a vomitorium...I am certain that you can figure this one out! I guess folks have been eating and purging for many centuries! Yuck!
Around the town were many cute shops and I found a couple of flower shops I couldn't resist visiting. I wanted to get something special for Jasmine's birthday and I settled on a peach colored kalanchoe in a black ceramic pot. Very cute! We at lunch at an outside cafe' and met the others to head to the nearby town of Tübingen.
In Tübingen we rode in canoe-like boats on the Neckar River. They were poles along like I have seen done in photos of Venice, Italy. It was a very peaceful and relaxing ride. On the banks of the river were Lutheran University buildings and housing. Our guide who was poleing was a seminary student.
We toured the town where a big festival/market was taking place. There were many vendors selling wine, cheese, breads, sweets, clothing, wooden carved items, and much more. The vendors had beautiful colorful displays and the meat vendors cases were filled with dried and luncheon type meats. We keep seeing sausages covered with white mold and I asked Sabine about them. She said that they are dried meats and you can eat the mold or peel it as you choose. It was kinda ugly and not something we are used to seeing!
The hot food vendors were selling every variety of food you could want except for corn dogs and funnel cakes! These vendors were from France, Italy and Germany and each of the three countries will do a festival in each of the three countries once each year, simply traveling around.
Soon it was time to meet on the bridge over the Neckar. This town, expecially near the bridge area, is covered with HUGE hanging baskets of white, fragrant alyssum, red angel-wíng begonias, vinca, yellow marigolds, English Ivy, and much more. Very very beautiful! All alnog the bridge which has a wide walking area, were more flowers! The bridge was lined with pots hanging on the railing over-flowing with color! On the bridge was on old toothless lady in colorful dress with an umbrella shading her, singing for coins. We dropped a few in her battered cup.
This city has bike paths everywhere! On the right of streets is a bike path and they have the right of way and you better get out of their way because they zoom along like crazy! Many have kid carriers and I even saw one with a dog carrier. This great big dog was just riding along being pulled by his master. It's tongue was lolling out and he looked very happy! There are lots of dogs in this city too, but I have yet to see a pitbull. When I stp and chat with people and admire and pet their dogs they often ask if I have one and I say yes, a pitbull and they act surprised and act afraid of them. It seems they have a bad rap here in Germany too!
We met Kelly Parrish who is originally from the Orion area. She currently lives in Tübingen and she took us to the University and we strolled through the student park area where people were biking, lounging, sun-bathing and just generally enjoying the beautiful day!
We walked to the train station for supper. It was a large station and had a nice restaurant. It also had a Burger King and a flower shop. We ate at the nice restaurant and I had thick cheese slices, breaded with crumbs, and baked to a gooey goodness, served with salad, pears, and cranberries. Yum yum!
After supper we went home to spend the evening with our host families. After conversation till 10:30 it was time to call it a day and head to bed. Another adventure awaits tomorrow!
Please forgive mis-spellings because I am working on a German computer and their spell check, spell checks it in German and thinks EVERYTHING is wrong! LOL
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