Hotel Christl Ansbach

... pressing apple cider, and selling wares. For some reason, a bulk of the shops sold Christmas ornaments which lent a festive air. The other specialty is schneeballs. A nearby town must be famous for pies because I'm pretty sure schnieballs are leftover pie crust balled together and dipped in some sort of goodness. They were alright. The hot chocolate was great. And, the owner spoke German, English, and Japanese, pretty cool. All in all, it was a good day.<br><br>

Guten tag from Germany!<br><br>We've been all over Europe, to random places like Bosnia and Slovakia, but we've never managed to make it to Germany. So here we are!<br><br>We flew through Iceland, and landed in Frankfurt yesterday. We picked up our very cute Smart Car convertible, and drove out west to the famous Romantic Road. This is a 220 mile long stretch of road running south that is dotted with castles and medieval towns. We stayed the night in ...

... We walked down the Weissgepbergasse (with the oldest remaining buildings in the city), we passed the former home of painter Albrecht Durer, we drank some Mokarabia, climbed the castle, found a traditional Bavarian coat for Pam, and then, since Germany is full of Turkish immigrants, I finally had some Turkish street food. After shooting off an email to some extended family in Frankfurt with some initial plans ...

... then lay the finished piece on a conveyor belt that runs each piece, one after another, through an oven that cools the pieces down at a very slow rate (over all taking 12 hours if I remember correctly). Then you have the finished piece.<br><br>We also got to see a guy working on stems for already made glasses. The stems ranged in shapes and sizes, the most interesting being the ones that were filled with Swarovski crystals (shiny! Haha). After the demonstration, we wandered around in ...

Today, right after breakfast, we crossed the European Continental Divide. We went into a lock that dropped us down 81 ft. At the bottom it was, as our tour guide said, like being a spider in a bathtub with concrete walls rising up just inches from the sides of the ship.<br>We docked at ...

... the game. First of all, the germans know how to cheer!!! An arena seating maybe 10000 with more cheering then a Habs game! Each player was announced and all the fans chanted their last name! They had intricate drumming and clapping cheers! It was really fun to get into even though we couldn&#8217;t always follow or understand! By the end we were swinging our scarves around and shouting the players names ...

... has to offer. We bought a spatula (scrambled eggs) and some fruits!<br><br>So we have had brautwurst and currywurst and everywurst possible in the past few days! We decided to splurge and went to a snazzy Chinese restaurant for supper! This is only worth mentioning because I ate the biggest most delicious eggroll I have ever had ever!<br><br>We will be coming back to Nuremberg but for now on to Stuttgart!!!!

... Steves tour. We stopped at numerous touristy shops, a wooden sign shop, a fancy cookie and sweets shop, and a mini mart that specialized in model trains and cars. Ritter Sport chocolates were very cheap here, and I bought 8 squares. MMMMMMM!!!! We made several trips back to the hotel to drop off our finds. At one point we finally got hungry and stopped for lunch at a Metzgerei (butcher shop) for bratwurst. Once inside we saw someone get a long ¾ inch wide sausage ...

... some remote, hidden, secret location. It made sense to me then, why the Americans marched the local people through the camp to be witness to the atrocities that occured there. This was the most impactful of my visits in Germany. The barracks are long gone and only the footprints of the foundations remain. The area around the barracks are immaculate with no wooden or structural signs of the quarters that existed. While ...

... and the breakfast) wasn't up to par with Alitalia and/or Singapore Airlines. Ditto for the German wine. After a day and a half of making arrangements, orienting, and picking up train tickets, I was ready to depart for Katterbach. While I was waiting for the train a man from Boston who was standing next to me started up a conversation. He works for Dragon (hey, Jackie we had a lot to talk about) and was in Germany to sell some of their communication systems to ...