A Wealth of Worldly Visitors: Tuebingen, The Romans, Ritter Sport, and Munich (again)

As I mentioned previously, my visit to Sweden kicked off just around two weeks of social time for me. I don't mean the kind of social time that constitutes my life generally--I mean, let's face it, I'm posing as an erasmus student, so there's a lot of casual, lightly beer and/or food-fueled socializing. No, I mean the kind where I may or may not have skipped a class or two to spend time with people I adore and find much more difficult to see these days! This may have put me a little bit behind schedule on my mastery of languages both dead and living, but hey, I don't sweat the small stuff because it was a total blast!

After my return from Sweden I had a few days to try to get ahead caught up on things (I failed miserably. The weather was beautiful. Sue me.), and then another very dear au-pair friend arrived from Toulouse with her husband and daughter to visit little old me in Tuebingen! Andrea was the au-pair for my family in hmm...'95/'96, but has spent a lot more time with us over the years for short stays, visits, etc. She and her husband, Timo, are German (I was even at their wedding during my last summer stint in Trier!), but their professional lives have taken them to Toulouse. This means that not only do they have a lovely house with a pool, fig trees, and the whole shebang (which I may or may not be scouring the internet for airfare deals to go see again...well, I would be seeing THEM at their house, of course), but they also have a stunning polyglot of a 2 1/2 year old daughter whom I just adore. Anyway, they arrived on Thursday afternoon and we began a wonderfully relaxed weekend filled with walking around Tuebingen, shopping, and lots and lots of eating. They treated me to more delicious meals than I can count at this point, and it was such a treat to be so spoiled and plucked from my rather thrifty studenthood. (Thanks again, guys!!) I also get to spend a lot of time chattering with their daughter, who is about the same age as a little boy I babysit here. It was a really interesting experience because she just felt a lot 'older' to me. Andrea and Timo pointed out what I should have considered off the bat; she's a girl, and more often than not girls are ahead of boys in terms of verbal development. I read a very interesting book several months ago that explains why (The Female Brain, read it. Go. Yes, there's one about the male brain as well) that is, among a lot of other things, and how the communication circuits in female and male brains are vastly, vastly different. Interesting stuff. At any rate, she was just putting together a lot more complete phrases and sentences than my babysitting charge does, and it was quite funny to hear her mix French and German in the same breath. Especially alternating words. Something like, "Ich veux auch glace," for example, which is, "I want ice cream, too," except she has successfully switched languages with each word. I have a hard time doing that if I try, even though I speak and understand both languages quite comfortably. Children's brains are amazing things in general, but they are particularly fascinating when they're in their prime language acquisition phase.

The Toulouse contingent continued on with their tour of southern Germany on Monday afternoon (after a final, delicious, enormous outdoor breakfast, I must add), and on Tuesday evening, I was joined in Tuebingen by very dear friend and former Wes rowing teammate (in as much as you an say that), Terrence. T had been teaching in Vietnam for the the past 9 months or so, and is making his way around Europe to do some visiting of friends and attend his sister's graduation from a graduate program in Paris. I was thrilled when he asked if he could come and see me in Tuebingen, and of course said yes right away! He had a rather long trip (understatement of the week), but still managed to make it out for some Kaesespaetzle and beer with Josh and I on his first ever night in Germany. Seeing as we didn't have a toddler to take into account and are the traveling student types, usually characterized by, "go go go let's do things and see things go go go," we spent a lot more time checking out the surrounding area. On Wednesday we walked around Tuebingen and then headed out to see the Roman Open Air Museum in a town called Hechingen-Stein, not too too far from here by train. This place was very cool, but we did notice a sad lack of signs in English or French. Odd, since their welcome sign was multilingual. We still enjoyed looking at everything, and I was sorely tempted to go up and try to have a chat with the archaeologists excavating across the site, but it would have been nicer had we not needed to rely on my translating skills; my overall comprehension was fine, but it's amazing where you run into trickiness when you try to make sense of what you've read out loud in your native language. Regardless, there were lots of things to see on site; the area was originally home to what I understood to be a rural villa of sorts. There was a central building accompanied by a bathhouse, smithy, mill, and storage building, and the whole thing was enclosed by a protective wall of sorts. Parts of these structures have been reconstructed with exhibits about different aspects of the area and roman life dispersed throughout. There were also lots of mannequins in different rooms participating in said daily life...I can never decide if this is cool or creepy. A little bit of both, maybe. We then missed the bus on our way back, so ended up walking from the train station in Hechingen (about 5km each way) to the museum round-trip. It was an absolutely beautiful day, though!

Here are some photos from the museum. Somewhere on T's camera there is a picture of me playing roman dress-up. We'll see how that one came out...

 Part of the original bathhouse. You are seeing the floor there at the back left, and the columns that held it up for under-floor heating littered around the surface to which they've excavated.

 The reconstructed latrine. Complete with graffiti. 

 One possible reconstruction of the whole place. Covered central court? Open court? Who knows. 

 View of the rest of the complex from the porch of the central building

 I'll take one of these in my own villa, please. 

 Also this. Minus the creepy serving mannequin.

 Roman dress-up! We think it was intended for kids but some of those costumes were pretty big, so I tossed one on. Thankfully Terrence has the photo, not I!

 More excavated areas

 And some more...

 I blew this one up so you can see the archaeologists behind the bench there. No clue what they were working on, but I so desperately wanted to ask. 

After we returned to Tuebingen, we met up with Anya, her visiting friend, Ivor, and Sinead at Neckarmueller to sit in the Biergarten and enjoy the sun; we were fortunate enough to find a table right along the river, though to be fair, the whole restaurant and Biergarten are right along the river, more or less. Terrence arrived thinking he didn't like "Helles", ie. white/light/wheat/whatever you want to call it beer, and the typical type that is served down here. Fortunately he changed his mind.

 Mmm... a nice helles on a sunny day

Nixing the idea of taking out a row boat (it's light but it's really about 7/7:30 in the photos below), we stopped at the grocery store for some more beer and settled on the Neckar Insel (the island that divides the river Neckar right where the bridge crosses it). After some people jumped out of their boat for a swim, Ivor decided to join them. They claimed it was freezing, but those of us who are used to real cold water knew better. 

 Ivor goes for a swim, seems to feel victorious

We finally found ourselves at Kaufland where we procured dinner ingredients and made pizza back at Anya's apartment, just across the hall from mine. This was, of course, accompanied by more beer. I realize this makes it sound like everyone was likely drunk at this point, but when you're lazing about in the sun, you tend to take a while to do anything, especially consume a beer. Rest assured, we were entirely sober and on our best behavior. 

 Though you might not know it from this photo...

The following day, we spent the morning at the archaeological/history museum in Tuebingen's castle. We definitely did not budget enough time, because this place was way more awesome than we expected it to be, and we found ourselves seriously rushing to peek at everything by the end of our time there. They had an outstanding exhibit on European prehistory with unbelievable neolithic carvings made mostly out of mammoth ivory. The archaeologists from Tuebingen are the ones who have found a number of those Venus figurines and the oldest known instrument, a small bone flute, from (I believe) the same site. This should give you an indication of the quality of some of the artifacts we were seeing--crazy! We had to rush through the Greek, Roman, and Egyptian areas, and ran off to grab some of the world's best falafel (yes, right here in Tuebingen) before we met up with Anya and her visiting friend, Amanda. The museum has great English translations for all of it's Tuebingen history and prehistory exhibit text, and is free for students. If you're here in Tuebs, go check it out! I'm definitely going to be going back. 

We then all headed out to the Ritter Sport Factory, which is an easy 20-minute bus ride from Tuebingen. I had never been, but had seen it several times on the way to and from the airport in Stuttgart, so I was quite excited for the excursion. The factory is in a small town called Waldenbuch, and they have both an entirely unrelated modern art museum and a chocolate exhibit/gift shop complex right nextdoor. Unless you schedule a special tour, this is the place to go, so we followed Anya--our experienced tour guide--to the exhibit. They have all sorts of information about how chocolate is made, where their ingredients come from, the history of the company, advertising, etc. It was quite informative and well-done, I thought. One of the best parts is the following contraption that dispenses free samples. It was working sporadically, but we finally wound up with some chocolate! 

There is of course also an enormous chocolate shop there, where you can buy all things Ritter, including leftovers of the out-of-season flavors and discounted chocolate that is packaged in bulk. This is how I wound up with my winter favorite, Vanillekipferl, and a rather large amount of marzipan-filled Ritter. For those unaware, Vanillekipferl are those delcious, almondy, crumbly, powdered sugar-covered crescent cookies that I make for the holidays. Delicious inside chocolate!

 Here is the Ritter Sport expansion pack for Settlers of Catan, a German game that has been around for ages but has suddenly gained a huge cult following among college students. My family has had this for years--I always knew we were cool! Anyway, you can buy this 'Chocolate Market' set to go with it...

 Waiting for the bus--note more beautiful weather. 

On Friday, Terrence's last day in Tuebingen, we spent some more time seeing the city and then after my regular tutoring session, hopped a very comfortable, easy, inexpensive bus to Munich. The only downside of the whole trip was when the entire Autobahn was merged down to two lanes, then one, and funneled through a rest stop parking lot full of police and vehicles that had been pulled over. Our driver, who grumbled to himself for most of the trip, was beyond peeved, and we could only figure they were looking for something or someone. A little creepy. We arrived in Munich on schedule, though (I learned on the way back that they build about a 20-minute delay into the schedule--smart!), and made our way to the apartment of my friend Marie, whom we agreed I hadn't seen in about 6 years. Marie is German, but spent most of her time from age 10 through the end of high school in the US, if I remember correctly due to her mother's work as a professor. They lived in Palo Alto, Hanover, and New Haven (that's Stanford, Dartmouth, and Yale, for those who don't know) during their time in the States, and Marie and I attended middle school together for a little while, and played clarinet together in the band. She's wonderful, and we always got along very well, so it was sad when she had to move to New Haven. I'd seen her a couple of times since then, however, but not during the course of our college careers as she was at Cambridge and I was at Wesleyan. She was gracious enough, however, to offer to put us both up during our two-night stay in Munich, and it was absolutely lovely to see her! 

Alas, it rained for most of our first day, but Marie was an excellent tour guide and took us out for traditional Bavarian breakfast (weisswurst--veal sausage--with sweet mustard, pretzels, and beer), walking us all over part of the city in the process, before spending some time studying; she's a medical student, so the work never stops. Oddly, I realized I had actually been to the restaurant before with my mom, where I had what I still remember as unbelievably tasty pasta with Pfifferlinge...I think these are chanterelle mushrooms). We then headed out to the Nymphenburger Schloss to do some sightseeing from under an umbrella. The castle entrance fee wasn't small, and we are ueber-thrifty, so we peeked around the inside where we could and then went for a chilly walk around the gardens.

 Beautiful, even in the rain

 One of the smaller buildings on the grounds

 A view of just part of the gorgeous gardens. They were re-done at one point to resemble more of an English style, so a lot of them are forested areas with walking paths that are easily mistakable for a natural wood.

 Urrggghh chilly

Then we met Marie for Kaffee and Kuchen (coffee and cake, a German tradition of which I'm a big fan), and got a chance to see her favorite cafe near the university. I tried Rhabarberschorle for the first time (rhubarb juice with sparkling water) and it pretty much made my day. We stopped off in the Marienplatz beforehand, though, so Terrence could experience the famous Glockenspiel, which plays music and showcases some moving wooden figurines (dancers, musicians, and jousting knights) every day at 11, and two more times per day in the summer. 

 You can't see them due to my unbelievable photography skills, but there's a huge crowd here!

On the way, we stopped to see part of the university, and went into the main hall to see a) how beautiful it is, and b) the memorial to the Scholl siblings and the other members of The White Rose, a small resistance movement at the university in Munich at the start of the second World War. 

 A view of the main foyer/hall, which is absolutely beautiful

To end our day of traveling, Terrence and I had a very Bavarian dinner at a great restaurant recommended by Marie. Unfortunately, I was feeling particularly exhausted and not very hungry, but I had my trusty meal-finisher on hand!

 A little shocked that in BAVARIA of all places, someone tried to add an extra 'e' into my name

 My dinner, some incredibly delicious pork with an onion-y sauce and a traditional potato dumpling. I love these dumplings, and will have to figure out how to make them myself at home. Man are they filling. 

 Terrence had sausages, mashed potatoes, and sauerkraut. And of course, we had local beer!

The original plan for that evening was for both of us to accompany Marie to a friend's birthday party. I was, as previously mentioned, beyond exhausted, however, so I stayed in by myself. I felt like a total loser, especially because at some point during the day I developed some very weird, very severe foot pain, and was also limping around like a gimp with an ice pack on my foot. Dr. Marie offered a quick exam and some excellent pain killers, but a week later, back in Tuebingen, I still don't really have any answers. My guess is tendonitis, but we'll find out next Thursday when I go to see an orthopedist. Because, you know...my regular doctor couldn't give me any answers. I miss the athletic injury care staff at Wesleyan. 

The following morning we had another delicious breakfast at Marie's and headed out to see some museums. Munich has a group of them called the Pinakotheken that possess all sorts of art, artifacts, and installations. On Sundays, they are 1 Euro each to gain admission, so we picked a couple and were on our way! Fortunately, they are all located around a central green, and we nabbed some cheap day passes for the public transportation system (buses, subways, trams, whee!), so I didn't have to do too much walking. Still, I managed to continue to feel like a loser limping all over the museums. I was, however, determined to enjoy the city while we were there. Our first stop was the Neue Pinakothek, which seemed to have lots of paintings and sculpture from the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. We had a great time seeing some beautiful landscapes and a healthy dose of impressionism. Then we headed over to the Pinakothek der Moderne for, you guessed it, contemporary art! Some of it I really liked, and some of it I didn't, but I guess that's sort of the point, isn't it? Cool stuff.

 Here was a cool installation of antique cars and motorcycles

Before heading back to Marie's to grab our bags and say our farewells, we stopped at her favorite gelato shop. The line was long, but moved quickly, and once we tasted the stuff, we could see why. I had  chocolate-ginger and Terrence had hazelnut, plus since we each only ordered one scoop they also offered us a tasty couple of bites of a second flavor on the side; we chose lemon-basil and pineapple-pear respectively. Needless to say it was absolutely divine. We then took a quick gander at the Englischer Garten, a big public park in the city that affords all sorts of recreation and culinary opportunities. We stopped to check out the standing wave, where you can actually SURF on the river, and had a bit of a stroll around before heading back into the city for a peek at the all-important Hofbraeuhaus. We spent about two minutes in the main hall looking around, since we decided Terrence had to see it while in Munich (don't we all? I think so), and then made our way back to Marie's apartment. I dropped Terrence off at the train station and made my way to the bus station, and just like that his visit was over. We will be having a serious, though not necessarily originally planned wescrew reunion in Seattle this summer, though, so I'm not too concerned. 

 The line for the gelato shop, which you can see under the awning there.

 Surfers at the standing wave. This was really neat to see!

Peeking down the street to the Hofbraeuhaus