Germany: the journey there

9 1/2 hours, 4,900 miles, 3 movies, 2 meals, 3/4 knitted hat, 1 lay over, three gnome photo shoots, 1 nap  and a few glasses of wine later, we arrived in Frankfurt, Germany at 3 in the afternoon.  For our first really long flight, it was pretty fun.  Our lay over in Amsterdam was brief but it was very busy with world travelers and we were both impressed with how many signs and announcements were in English.

 Mannheim found a few friends at the airport

 Just taking a walk to the gate

 He's in no rush

Germany is a lot like the Willamette Valley as far as weather goes.  It even smells like livestock in some places.  After we landed in Germany we wandered around the airport looking for our friends.  We finally found them after 15-20 mins of searching and by this time we were both starting to fell jet lag set in.  We were greeted with tons of plans that took into effect immediately so any chance of napping went out the window.   Germany does not have an open bottle policy when it comes to driving so Lauren and Doug had our first German beers waiting for us in the car for our trip down the Autobahnen highway.  They were a mix between a grapefruit drink and regular beer.  I thought they were decent.  

Next we drove to their hometown of Hembach.   We went to the market across the street.  Lauren showed us that wine is much less expensive than water here.  They also keep there milk in unrefidgerated cardboard containers.  We toured their home and put our stuff in the attic bedroom (it reminds me of the Weasley's upstiars from Harry Potter).  Mostly everything is similar to the U.S. except for a few items like differt plugs and the toilets look slightly different.

 Lidl the small grocery store across from Lauren and Doug's house

 The milk comes in these containers like soy milk and is not refridgerated

 This is their home.  It's a three story townhouse.  Our room is in the attic.

Lauren then took us 20 minutes away to the University town of Heidelberg.  There is a large castle we will be exploring in the middle of the week.  The roads are all cobblestone and brick.  It is a very posh downtown with trendy shops at the street level and apartments build upstairs surrounded by 1000 year old churches and buildings.  There are tons of gothic churches and baroque buildings mixed in with modern shops and restaurants.  I spotted a few Christmas stores and yarn places already.  We will head back to Heidelberg later and take more photos.  It was dark when we were there so the photos were not the best.  And then for our first German meal we went to a Cuban salsa club called Havana.  We ate cuban food and had a few more glasses of wine and beer.  I could barely finish mine, the beer here is very filling.

We found a restaurant named Schmidt's in Heidelberg

Today we are off to a spa town called Baden Baden and then we are staying over night in Strasberg a French city.  Right now Lauren is giving us an exercise workout routine before we head out.  I'm not sure if I will blog again tonight, but tomorrow night for sure.  Got to go.  Tschuss everybody!