This past week was definitely a good week for the Freizeit Program to go mini golfing. It was a good game and amazingly I was very good making a decent score under par. Even though the outdoor cement course was completely uneven and pitted like crazy. A difference I have noticed in Germany, is as I usually say in my blogs, Is Germans can actually drink virtually anywhere. From public parks to mini golf to church steps. Although the City of Cologne did just pass a law that states; you cannot drink on the U Bahn (subway) and if memory serves the buss system as well. The only restrictions I have seen is that (in Radolfzell) you can't drink on the shore with a glass bottle. We had planned to drink there but had found we were not allowed to bring our own beer in. Oh well it just gave the group of us the excuse to sit in a park overlooking the lake and share a good drink.
Sadly not much else happened. A group of us took off on thursday to another part of the bodensee, across the lake from a town called Uberlingen. After a nice hike down to the water, and a good cold swim. we wandered down the first sand beach I have seen here. We found a nice spot to stop at and I built us a good little fire to sit around. And I had sadly also forgotten my camera and was unable to take pictures.
The weekend hit and it was the first weekend I had no travel plans. I had decided that it would be a nice weekend to stay here and experience the town along with recuperate from all the xploring I had done since I had arrived in Germany. It ended up that there was a festival here altstadtfest. It's purpose was to celebrate the end of summer and the last weekend before schools started back. There were many craftsman selling their work, many food carts set up and lots of live bands. I was surprised to be unable to locate the college crowd, but eventually came upon a friend who introduced us to a group of germans. This began an entire weekend of german speaking with my traveling partner. throughout the night we only spoke german as we sat at the lake and listened to music from a 1990's ghetto blaster.
On Sunday we decided to go to a set of ruins near Engan. These ruins were part of a series of six small fortresses that were supposed to protect Hohnesville. We climbed the short distance to the first ruin. and luckily made it all the way up before the rain hit us.
Burg Magdelburg
As we left the rain had subsided, but it was looking to have another round so we left our ponchos on. As we marched to the next ruin we met a wonderful elderly couple on the road. They jokingly asked if we were army, then realized that we were americans and (jokingly) asked if we were NSA. We ended up having a very nice conversation with them for about a half hour, most of which was in german (on our part anyway). This was also the first time I had had to speak with natives about the "American Opinion" we discussed of course the NSA, Obama, and the hot topic of Syria. Which leads me to give you this magazine cover to look at.
We again climbed the now wet volcanic stone, thank god for the cable railing that went up the path. As we finally reached the top the rain had picked up. And as we began to descend the rain had created a white out.
I climbed a wall to get here and take some pictures in the underground barracks
Me in white out.
kyle in white out, believe it or not there is a town behind the fog and rain.
Found this grave along the road.
Once we left we had a hefty walk back to the train station. And I must say that I was impressed my poncho did wonderful for almost 5 hour in direct rain. I was mostly dry all but my feet.
This was my adventures of the last week sorry that it was lazy on the photo end of things.
Auf Wiedersehen,
Cody A. Glick
No comments:
Post a Comment