My exchange family

Me and Tabea, AKA My German, in Nurnberg.


Tabea, Gunther, Renata, and myself. My second family that I have known for 12 years! This is my third visit with them. That equals I see them once every four years on average. Pretty neat.

As some of you may know, I was an exchange student in Germany during my junior year of high school. I stayed with a family in Erlangen, just north of Nurnberg.

Dinner in a Castle with the Stammisch Group

The Stammisch group is the German-American group that I am part of. We meet every other Wednesday. This was a special Stammisch event, we had dinner in a castle in the Rheingau. This dinner took place in April.

The man in this picture is Eric the Red. He gives tours of the Rheingau. In fact he had a brush with famous because he gave a tour of the Rheingau to John F. Kennedy in 1963.




Amanda, Eric, my mom, Cami and me.

Cuisine

Homemade Ravioli in Florence.



Spargel - White asparagus,

Sandwich with Hollandaise sauce ham, cheese, and spargel



Spargel - White asparagus
With gnocchi and gorgonzola sauce..... YUM!!!



Gorgonzola with bacon pizza. YUM! Fresh Gorgonzola! This is in Pisa.

Field Work

A picture of me in the field work (although it is posed). Mission: identify with a GPS location of contaminated soil so we can label it and have the contractors find it easily.

Gross but True

I think this is how slugs make babies. If anyone knows, tell me. But this definitely goes under the disgusting category.


As some of you may know, I walk to work every day. Along my walk I always see slugs and snails. Disgustly big slugs. Sadly these creatures cause my walk in the morning to be longer than my walk in the afternoon because I do not want to step on one of these.


Snail


Slug - Look at how fat this dude is. GROSS

Bamberg

My parents with Corky trying to get him to drink the water from the fountain.



Some strange thing in the church, perhaps virgin and child. That they look pretty fancy to me, too fancy to be the virgin and child.


Rose from the rose garden.




Me

This where city hall is, the middle of the river, because there were Catholics on one side of town and Protestans on the other so it was put in the middle of the river so either side had control.

Bamberg is home of the Smoked Beer and is a World Heritage site.

My Fourth of July (actually the 3rd but who cares)

Fireworks from the boat



The parade of boats following our boat.


Sunset from the boat


My parents and I went on a river boat cruise down the Rhein River. The castles went lit with red lights and fireworks were going off. It was pretty beautiful.

Bamberg

Home of Smoked Beer. And World Heritage site.

Wine Fest in Wiesbaden

(this is not that glass but it is Sekt)



So every year Wiesbaden holds a winefest for about a week and a half. There are over 100 wineries present and one water stand. There is also a handful of places to get food. Every winery has their own glass. I bought four that say "Hellishly Good" in German.

U2 Concert

The USO office offered 200 free tickets to see U2. I saw that my friend, Brian, was on facebook and asked if he was going to the concert and told him about the free tickets so he went and they were out of tickets. Mind you, this is the day after he came back from the states. Then the USO called him (he is a volunteer with the USO) and said that someone returned their two tickets because they could not make it to the concert. The ticket to the concert included a free train ride to and from the event. We were in the nose bleed section but come on they were free tickets! The concert was a little on the loud side. Apparently Bono must have had back surgery done in Germany because he said that his butt should say “made in Germany”. They did not play “In the Name of Love” which was a little bit of a bummer but I did get to hear “She Moves in Mysterious Ways”.

Oh and the tickets included free train rides to and from the concert. Yep no drunk driving here.

Britain at War Museum.

Here are the chairs that contributed to the idea that we were in a WWII Bunker.



On Sunday, Amanda and I went to the Britain at War Museum. It was an old WWII bunker. The museum was mainly of mannequins in 40s garb during 40s activities like drinking at the bar and sleeping on bunk beds. :)
While we walked through there was something on the overhead that said air raid and there was some shaking. There were tons of posters about the war (Loose lips sink ships) and of movie stars from that era (i.e. Fred Astire). There was one part of the museum that really tugged on my heartstrings and that was these mannequin children with tags saying who they were, waiting for the train to come and evacuate them. It reminded me of Chronicles of Narnia.

And we got to hear Winston Churchill on the radio.

Bring Them to the Tower

Where Anne Boleyn lost her head.
The girls and I in front of the guard
The ravens - Legend says that the kingdom and the Tower will fall if the ravens ever leave the fortress. So they keep six and a spare and have their wings clipped so they can never leave.



Trying to be like the costumed people.


The E&R Bear and I.

Tower of London – The ladies and I woke up early and headed to the Tower first thing in the morning. We went to Starbucks and indulged in coffee and breakfast and off the Towers we went. It was raining in the morning so there were no beefeater tours so we used audio guides. I got to see the Crown Jewels! And there were no lines! We were there from 900 until about 4 in the afternoon. While we did the Crown jewel tour, one of the guards started hitting on my friend, Amanda. But he told hilarious and interesting stories. For example, he was a guard of the Queen and there was a kid from Germany on a trip with his school. He got out a water gun and shot the guard. So the guard gave the kid a little hit with his gun. He was also a guard during the fires of Westminster. The guard also told us about how there is only one jeweler for the royal family and there are less than a handful of people who know how to get the jewel out of the cages.

Wicked

Outside the Theater


The stage before the production began



Amanda, Kenya and me on the Tube. We are on our way to Oz. We dressed in a blue and black theme. Hehehehe!


Wicked was fanastic! The theater was a tad on the warm side. The costumes looked the same as the costumes in the Minneapolis show. But the speaking accents were different. They were English and I think that the Munchkin was Irish or perhaps (I cannot tell the difference in their accents I just know that it sounds different than people from Britain).