Hotel Restaurant Schwarzer Bock Crailsheim

... 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.

Guten tag from Germany!

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!

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 ...

... strange, because it seemed so fragile and beautiful, but really made it special.

A couple blocks away we visited the cloister garden and then followed a stone wall to the Burgtor (castle gate) and entered the castle gardens. There once was a castle here, but it was destroyed in an earthquake in 1356, now only the gardens remain. They are surrounded on three sides by low walls, keeping you from falling down the 80 yard tall cliffs below. It had splendid views ...

... or could imagine. We sit on a bench in a round circle, there is a woman on the far side behind the people and a man behind us. They let the birds fly across to each other, thus swooping over our heads. They show falcons, eagles, hawks, and vultures. Quite impressive to see how big some are up sooooo close. Of course we all ducked as they flew by. Afterwards we walked around and looked at the birds in their pens. The hit of the show was the ...

... br>
We go to look at the castle and decide to go through it. We are given a guide book in English to follow and are taken to meet up with a group that has just left 5 minutes before us. Now, this is a really nice castle. Everything is as it was, nothing was removed during the war and it remained empty for over 200 years.

The castle was the traditional ...

So, today is the big day, only 2 hours left and my family is going to drive me to Frankfurt and then my flight to Bangkok via Dubai is leaving at 10p.m. (Aaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!)
But as I'm still not packed and really excited I'm not goint to write that much, only that I'm really looking forward to the trip and hope to tell you guys many nice and interesting stories :)
So, here you soon from Bangkok!!
Adios :)

Marta

On Sunday we worked on our case study in the morning, and basically did the whole thing. it was hard to make the powerpoint coz they didn't have powerpoint but had openoffice instead, and the whole thing was in german. it went ok tho.

we presented the case to Johan Fitz, it went well.

after we had a wine tasting, and all got a bit loose. but in a civilised way. the best wine was the Eis Wein. This one can only ...

... of the wall and walked along the wall before descending into the town to browse the many shops. There were some interesting and neat things to see, but there were a lot of tourists also. I heard almost as much English spoken as I did German.

However, the trip was worth it. This was on town I was interested in seeing, and I am planning on a return trip sometime to take the Watchman night tour of the town for an English guided tour.

... decided to stay with him and the rest of us rode on. Finally we left Munich and rode into the countryside which actually started out looking much like northern Minnesota. Mid day we rode into Dinkelsbuhl which was a fascinating town that dates back to the 7th century. This town also had a wall around it, cobblestone streets and beautiful timber frame houses from the 15th century. You can only enter or leave this town through one of its four narrow gates ...

... is a typical German town which has its own castle. Actually, its own CastleS, there are 2. One for the people and one for the Military ( the Citadel ). Both are stunning ( See photos ). We took a tour through the residential castle but it was in German. I tried to act as if I understood what the guide was saying, laughing when the others laughed but it was no use, the english guide book we had purchased was to be our guide. It was during the tour, listening to the tour ...