Around Town, Hohenzollern Castle, Fancy Dinner, and Margaret Drives on the Autobahn

Shortly after waking up this morning, I had my first German lesson of the day, by playing kitchen and stuffed animals and then feeding strawberries to a stuffed animal with Erla.

(^^ that is my teacher)

I learned that the best way to find out what you don't know is when you are scrambling for words. Which for me, is offen. ;)

I think I'm adjusting alright to the time difference, as I woke up naturally when I was supposed to this morning. Later on in the morning we took a little exploring walk around the village. 

We are in a suburb of Stuttgart called Schönaich. It is a village with a few stores, plenty of houses, and a little church that tolls on the hour. To describe the sound, remember the bells from the abbey on The Sound of Music? It sounds just like those. It is very clean (you'd be hard pressed to find any litter or trash on the street or sidewalk) and is remarkably quiet. Everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) is closed on Sunday, so you have to stock up Saturdays. The streets here are narrow and one lane, with cars parked on either side and you just wait 

for any cars coming to go around you. 

Walk the rest of our street and you will find a little bakery (Bäckerei.) We walked there today so we can know where it is so we can go whenever we want. They sell bread, tarts, pastries, meringues, and some bakery items I've never seen before. There is also a little fridge that has pâté, cured meat, milk (milch) German butter. And they even have little single serve Nutella packets with the cream as sugar for your coffee. 

I successfully acquired my own earl grey tea and we all sat down at a booth. Ellert played soccer with one of his friends out in the field across the street. (Did I mention that soccer is king here?) ;)

Our next stop was Knittels supermarket with Aunt Rachel and we did a little food shopping. It's like any other store in the U.S. but of course, everything is in German. And you have to bring your own bag In the produce section, you have to tell an attendant what produce you want, how many and then they weigh it and bag it for you. I ended up buying two apples and a sea salt chocolate bar.

We began our trip up to Hohenzollern Castle. We drove through the village of Böblingen on the way to the castle, which was only a 45 minute drive from their house. It was thrilling to see the castle appear, its spires showing jagged on the horizon. It sat atop a steep mountain and we parked at the bottom and the ones that wished to walked to the top of the hill did so.

It was a full-on castle experience and we enjoyed exploring the grounds, the statues and the paintings and walking the cobblestone walkways. Think Sleeping Beauty Castle, but REAL. It was just amazing, and the breathtaking panorama view itself from the top was worth the while trip. 

(can you see us? Ellert, Me and Erla)

We drove through Tübingen on the way home which was kind of neat, because I remember reading about Dietrich Bonhoeffer's time in that town from reading his biography by Eric Metaxas.

We arrived home and then got dressed for our fancy dinner in downtown Stuttgart. The students from a Kochschule (cooking school) cook a SIX COURSE meal for you. It was an early birthday present for Aunt Rachel from George, and the four of us arrived to a beautifully set table.

To start, they gave me some German sparkling apple juice to drink since I don't like wine. It was the most complexly flavored Apple juice I've ever had. Then she asked if I would like to try a German coke. I never drink coke in the U.S. because it's like nasty sweet and sweetened with nasty stuff, but here it's just perfect. SO GOOD.

We were served bread with 2 kinds of olive oil and 4 kinds of sea salt.

And because I'm weird like that, I wrote down everything we ate:

1. Meat Pastries and grissini, pork Wonton, cucumbers 

2. Glass noodles w/mango and tropical seasoning, sushi and spicy marinated horseradish 

3. Salmon and shrimp with a cream herb sauce over wilted spinach and baby greens 

(Pictured below)

4. Quail soup with a rich broth 

5. Ox with potato purée with truffles, mushrooms, shaved beets, parsnip  and potato purée 

6. Rhubarb strudel and vanilla parfait 

And coffee and liqueur as desired (they even had some absconded liqueur from the Kremlin!)

It was spaced out in such a way (over 4 hours) to where you weren't stuffed at the end, only just comfortably full. It was all extremely flavorful and good, though admittedly, the Ox was a little funky, and the rest of the party agreed. Arnheidur said it kind of tasted like what a "Grandpa Ox" might, since it was kinda gamey.  

Most of us had wine, but I did not, so at the end of the evening I was voted in as chauffeur. I must admit my apprehension: driving on the back country roads AND the Autobahn at night with no prior training? Bring it on. (I lived to tell the tale) ;)

Some people ask how I have time to write all this down while traveling. I take notes all day on my phone and then edit at the end of the day. The biggest challenge is to have wifi here, but thankfully, here at the house we have it unlimited.

This Wednesday we start our Grand Tour, so I don't know how much access to wifi I will have then, but I'm gonna make it a priority to seek it out so I can keep the posts flowing. I will still write every day, but may have to post it to my blog when I find the wifi. We shall see.

Need to get some sleep, it's really late here and we *might* go to France for a day trip tomorrow. We shall see. :)