More excursions

I already mentioned that as part of my Deutsch-Kompakt course we've had a lot of "excursions." We spent the week in Blaubeuren, went to Ulm, went to the palace in Ludwigsburg and the wine tasting in Esslingen, and also went to Stuttgart to visit the Mercedes-Benz museum and go to the ballet. All were really fun, especially because they were already paid for as part of the program price, so the money wasn't coming out of my pocket (thanks parents!)

This will be my last post for the next 3 weeks, because tomorrow I'm beginning my "Tour d'Italia" with Pascal, come back to Tuebingen for 12 hours and then head off to Denmark to visit a friend I met in the course and my second cousin (who I've never met, but became facebook friends with because her mom saw my blog when my dad posted it on the family website, and since my cousin is currently studying abroad in Copenhagen, thought we should meet up). Anyways, try to hold out 3 weeks until the next post, and then get ready for tons of pictures! Love and miss you all.


The Baroque palace in Ludwigsburg. Very impressive but also rather cold on the inside.



More of the inside of the palace


The boys "Hungarian" dancing and the girls being normal



Esslingen. Don't worry, that's not a real person in the pic on the right, it's a sculpture




The cool underground cellar where the wine tasting was. It was actually really informative about why different wines taste the way they do. And we got free wine :)


Zum Wohl! (in German, you say Prost when toasting with beer and zum Wohl when drinking wine)



Sipping the wines and enjoying dinner.



And now just getting a little silly...


Ultra-modern Mercedes museum



It's all about the Benz



Todd salivating over the cars



Stuttgart plus 3 cute street performers (about 80% of their crowd was female). And the other guy was not as cute, but he did have a live parrot on top of his head.


Hanging out in Stuttgart (dressed up for the ballet later)



I'll take that car too :)




Enjoying the nice weather in the park before the ballet


View from the opera house balcony


Girls' night = ice cream, wine and movies. Oh, and that was the cake Zsofia made for Ian's birthday. It's ironic, because adding "chen" to a word makes it diminutive, and at over 6'8" Ian is pretty much the opposite of diminutive



Guys' night (plus me) = karaoke in German at the bar



The last group project: a tour of Tuebingen with the historical highlights