BAYERN

So I have lots of catching up to do for my virtual followers!

Last Thursday, as in April 8 (I know, I know...it's been so long...sorry!) was another Opa day. I spent my morning with Benji and then the afternoon cleaning, doing mine and Benji's laundry, baking brownies for Robert since he didn't get any cupcakes, getting back into running, biking to the post office, mailing stuff, and purchasing necessities for the upcoming trip to Bayern. I was cooking dinner when Klaus went to pick up Benji from Opa's house, and Sib came home with Andrea (the pregnant rower that I ran for in the half marathon). Apparently, they went to FRANCE for the day! Yeah, sometimes you can just do that in Europe. Awesome. They bought lots and lots of groceries. I had made black eyed peas and rice for them, but they added in a Flammkuchen and made a salad. We had a really later but fun dinner!

Friday was another good day. The weather was still beautiful! Heather arrived in Germany. Her and Alex headed over just as I was putting Benji to nap, but we both ran out and greeted her. She's pretty great, and it was awesome to finally meet in person instead of just talking on the internet. They left pretty soon because she was extremely jet-lagged, but I that happens when you jump 9 hours into the future! Sib also came home around this time and got to see her, as well. Everyone had Friday off for Karfreitag, which is the same as our Good Friday, so she took over Benji for the afternoon while her and Klaus did yard/garden work. I spent the rest of that day baking lots of loaves of bread for experiments and for Mira's get together she was having that night, including banana, chocolate, and cinnamon. Yum! After dinner, Alex, Heather, and Robert all came back over. Robert had to try the banana bread because he thinks that's a REALLY weird thing to make, even though it's probably one of the most common where I'm from AND really, really delicious. He secretly loved it. We spent the evening hanging out with Sib and Klaus and spying on Mira's small party. They were making bread by the fire outside and sleeping there, as well. I still say it's too cold for sleeping outside, though!

Saturday morning, the Fischers came and picked me up to head to Bayern (Bavaria), which is the southeast region of Germany (and the place I've ALWAYS wanted to go to). We left around 10am, stopped for lunch on the way, and probably arrived around 2pm, so it wasn't too bad of a drive. When we got there, I then realized what it must be like when British English speakers try to speak with extremely country American English speakers...because this dialect was REALLY hard to understand! Even Sib and Klaus said they don't get it. So, Robert and I wanted to bake, and we asked the little farmer's wife if we could have a pan...only I couldn't understand her, so Robert was being our translator. The farmer came over and was like, "Doesn't she speak?" and I replied, "Yes...just Hochdeutsch and Pfaelzisch" He laughed, and from then on, he spoke very slowly to me, ha. The cake ended up turning out lovely, and we also made a loaf of bread out of some too-watery-pretzel dough, but it was still good. We went on a bike adventure, played a little bit of soccer, and also explored the farm, which consisted of a fish farm, two horses, two giant bunnies, three cats, and lots of pigs. We had dinner outside by the fire in a little log cabin they had, which was awesome. There's a little girl, the farmer's granddaughter, who's Benji's age and SO cute/smart/hilarious/entertaining. I played with her whenever I got the chance! She called me American, told me lots of stories, explained the playing cards' designs, and even did a little bit of yodeling--great!

Sunday was Easter, so we walked up to the local cloister for the service. It was really interesting to be there, watching all the rituals and listening to everything in German. We were there for about an hour and a half, and I'd say it was a good experience...not many people get to do that (where I come from). Robert and I went back to the house, broke open our Kinder Easter eggs, played with the toys inside, and then made some successful Americanized pretzels (I know--such a daring thing to do in Bavaria, the land of pretzels and beer). We also played our new battleship game, but it was really hard, so we cut the board in the half! Saves paper...gives us more games...and makes us less stressed, haha. After lunch, we went to go golfing, which I haven't done in ages, so that was fun. After golfing, we went to a small village and had some Italian ice cream--my first since I've been here! It was actually pretty good, even though I don't so much like ice cream at all. When we got back, Robert and I went on another bike adventure to a river with a rock-like bridge across it, where we hung out for a while. When we got back to the house, we went out with the parents to another small village for some really Bavarian dinner. We walked around a little bit after and then headed home. We hung out at the house but, again, headed to bed early after a jam-packed and fun-filled day of activities!

Monday morning, we got up and headed to the train station with Herr Fischer to leave for Munich. We had a bit of a delay with the train as they were working on the tracks, but we still made it to Munich around noon or so. We locked our bags up at the hostel and headed to the inner city to get some lunch at Vapiano! This is the same place we went in Stuttgart with mom, Aunt Debbie, Lucas, and Benji when they were all here. We then walked around the city (all the stores and everything were closed because it was Easter Monday) and explored all over the place. We ended up in the Englischer Garten, where we happened upon a group of guys surfing in the river that flows through it. There were actually some decent waves in there, so I think it was a pretty great idea. Apparently, they do this like every day. Why not?! We then headed to the art museum to see an exhibit Robert had heard about. It was a guy portraying America through the 60s, 70s, and 80s, so that was interesting to check out. He did a pretty good job putting those eras straightforwardly, actually. We went back to the hostel and checked into our room and rested for a couple of minutes before we then headed to find the Olympic stadium and the park that's all around it. We hung out there for a while, taking in the sights and all. We went back to the inner city and attempted to find movie theaters to look for showing of The Fast & the Furious 4, but we couldn't find any, so we went to dinner. It's asparagus season now, so we had some delicious asparagus for dinner! We were then advised a movie theater to go to, and there it was! It was beginning right when we got there--how perfect. Let's just say watching my favorite movie in German in Munich was probably the best part of this trip, haha! No, but it was really good. I wanted to see it so badly, and this made it all the more better! Afterward, we walked home and headed to bed--exhausted once again!

Tuesday, we woke up around 8, got showered, and headed down to breakfast. The first adventure we went on was to find the Schloss Nymphenburg, the big castle in Munich. It was SO big and had an even bigger garden going all around it, which we walked through after checking out the ridiculous building. We went back to the inner city because we wanted to do a bit of shopping now that everything was open. I found and purchased a Dirndl dress! Yes--my life is now complete. We had another very Bavarian lunch to regain some energy and then went shopping more. I got lots of souvenirs and presents for the family. There was the Bayern Muenchen vs. Barcelona soccer match that night, so there were fans all over the place drinking, singing, and going crazy. Bayern Muenchen is apparently a really good team, but I don't know much about soccer, so I won't say anything other than I know that they lost, haha. We climbed to the top of a church tower and took in another view of the city, which was amazing. I said that I feel like all I ever do in Germany is go up, up, up! We shopped some more, got some Italian ice cream again, and then headed back to the hostel to put all our purchases away. We headed to the Olimpiapark once again to hang out and so that Robert could take pictures since he didn't have his camera the day before. We then headed to meet up with Jan Fred, one of the really nice guys from the half marathon, who lives in Munich. We met him and his wife and headed to a Biergarten. I mean, I guess you can't go to Munich without going to a Biergarten! It was lots of fun and totally how I imagined it would be. AND the pretzels were like half as big as me, which was awesome since I love pretzels. His wife's also really nice and studies/works in the same field as I do. It was cool because our common language was English, but it was four people from four different countries hanging out together. Jan Fred is from Holland; his wife is from Finland; Robert is from Germany, and I'm from America. It's great how stuff like that falls into place! His wife went home early, but we stayed and watched the first half of the soccer game. When Bayern Muenchen's loss was inevitable, we decided to call it a night and headed our separate ways.

Wednesday, we woke up and had breakfast, checked out of our room, locked up our bags there again, and then headed to the O2 (a cell phone company) tower, where Jan Fred works. It's the tallest building in Munich, we got to have another view...again! On the way, we took the tram to somewhere not even close with poor directions from the hostel worker. We ended up walking for 45 minutes after that when we could have just walked from the hostel in less time in the first place! Oh, well. There was a man on his bike who stopped us when we were almost to the tower. He told us that this part of the city wasn't anything special nor was it beautiful and that we should turn around and go back into the inner city! We told him we were just visiting a friend in the O2 tower, and then he biked away. So weird. The view was pretty cool...every view has been different. It seems like it'd get old, but it doesn't! We then went back to the inner city again to grab some truffles and chocolates I had spotted the day before as well as search for the infamous Hofbrauhaus, which we successfully found. It was so incredibly Bavarian, and we ended up having lunch there. There were some local old guys there having lunch. We discovered that have lockers for their Biersteins...so awesome/a good idea. I watched one friend get there later, head to the locker, pull out his Bierstein, and sit down and have some beer with his buds at a Stammtisch, which is like a reserved table for regulars. Love it! Not to mention they were all wearing Lederhosen and Bavarian-style hats. I decided Dirndls and Lederhosen are definitely my favorite attire...ever. Not that I didn't think this before, though! We went back to the hostel to grab our bags and head to the train station. We were so sad to leave this city! It was definitely my favorite trip thus far in my life. We got into Mannheim around 5:30. I caught a street car around 6 and got into BD around 7, where I walked home and then prepared dinner. Normally, Wednesday is Klaus's night, and Tuesday is mine, but we switched this week. Thanks, mom, for the easy yellow rice dinner since I couldn't think by this point about what to make!

Thursday, I had Benji for the whole day because Opa came on Wednesday instead since I was gone. There were some old bananas on the counter, so we immediately made banana bread! Benji and I went on a bike ride to the supermarket and picked up a few necessities. The weather turned bad that afternoon, so we just stayed inside and played after he woke up from nap. I put up five albums worth of pictures from the trip on facebook, so you guys should all check them out. Then, I made dinner, which included some delicious homemade parmesan wheat bread bruschetta. So good with a leek & potato soup recipe that I got from Emeril!

Friday, we woke up to clouds and rain. This was okay since we'd been having such beautiful weather for weeks--I guess it was time for a little water and an inside day! Benji and I baked some delicious chocolate brownies, did some vacuuming and cleaning of my room while the cleaning lady did the rest of the house, and watched some German cartoons. We had lunch with Arved and Lukas (Klaus's workers) inside since it was bad weather outside. They were really entertained by Benji the whole time! This was the last time I saw/will see Arved, which is weird. I was caught off-guard by already having to say goodbye to someone! Not okay. I can't believe how quickly this has gone by at all. Nonetheless, it's been the best experience/opportunity that I've ever had and taken, and I'm so thankful for every day I've had here. I miss all you guys, gals, and animals back home, though, and wish I could just ship you all here!