Tales From Germany Part 6: Tuebingen (again)

We were feeling rather tried after all of our daytrips from the previous few days, so we decided to skip our previously scheduled outing to the Black Forest town of Freiburg and just chill back in Tuebingen for the day. Apparently I was feeling so tired that I didn't have the strength to take any photos from the day, as you can tell by the noticeable lack of visual elements in this particular post. You'll have to deal with it :)

We started our day by sleeping in for an ungodly long time (like 11:00 AM, a good four hours later than the previous few days). We had been staying in the room of someone named Gis (sic, pronounced "Geese") who had just up and disappeared from the dorm the previous week. The rumor was that he had stolen a car and was now conducting his own personal Odyssey through France, which was just fine with us since we got to use his bed instead of sleeping on the floor. Gis' room was interesting to say the least: Bob Marley and PACE flags hung from the ceiling, while an eclectic mix of music books and Buddhist texts occupied his bookshelves. And how I can I forget the marijuana paraphernalia. The only item we cared about, his bed, was small but comfy, so it served our purposes just fine.

After waking up and taking a shower, we decided today would be a food day. We went to an awesome Asian grocery store filled with exotic and interesting items. We were there to gather ingredients for chicken Pad Thai, a specialty of Shewara and I's that we simply cannot make without crushed peanuts, bean sprouts, and a bit of cilantro. The peanuts and bean sprouts were relatively easy t come by, but the cilantro was strangely absent when we asked for it. Luckily Shewara, knower of all things, said the word "coriander," the rest of the world's name for the popular herb (often used in Italian dishes, hence the name "cilantro"). The nice store owner quickly produced the desired plant, and we were on our way to the larger grocery store to fetch some chicken.

And cereal. I consider myself something of a cereal connoisseur, and when I saw a box of Kellogg's Toppas Choco, I new I had to buy it. Toppas Choco are essentially chocolate mini-wheats filled with chocolate filling, making it one of the greatest cereals in the world. Only sold in Germany, but Kellogg's can be expecting a letter from me telling them to sell it in the United States. That and Strawberry Mini-Wheats, the now discontinued greatest cereal of all time. Also purchased in the grocery store were Kinder Eggs (Kinder is a popular chocolate company, like Hershey's here), awesome things that contain little toys you can put together. Shewara bought some Kinder Buenos, solely based on the name, but they actually turned out to be very good, not unlike Twix. And we got our chicken, so we went back to the dorm to drop off our food, then continued our journey through the city.

After the grocery store we visited the Tee Hus (Tea House), which had a variety of teas from around the world. Shewara and I bought a sampler box of popular German teas which contained awesome varieties like "Hildegard's Monastic Power" and "Good Fortune Herbal Morning." I drank both of these, and didn't feel very fortunate or monastically powerful, but they still tasted good. After our short trip to the Tee Huss, we visited a nearby gelato shop. Italian food, especially gelato, is very popular in southern Germany, so I was exceedingly delighted when I found I could purchase a scoop of chocolate mint. It really made my day to be able to purchase some of my favorite ice cream so far away from home.

Our last stop before dinner back at the dorm was a fantastically amazing antique and bookstore called "Heck," just across the street from the dorm. It was filled with literally thousands of books, statues, paintings, and knick-knacks in a seemingly endless labyrinthine series of rooms and hallways that extended underneath the building. I decided on a small group of century-old European coins, mostly German and Russian, but one from Bavaria in the 1750s as well. Shewara was eyeing an intricately carved miniature stein, which the store owner offered her for only five euros. When the store closed, we went back to the dorm's entrance across the street, and I noticed that Shewara didn't have her stein. She said she didn't know if she really wanted it, but she had that look in her eyes that she gets when I know she really wants something and will probably regret not getting it later. I knew she didn't yet have a real souvenir from the trip, so I grabbed her hand and we ran across the street back to the store entrance, now covered by a gate. I yelled inside to get the attention of the owner, and I told him we had forgot to purchase the stein. He quickly grabbed it from the front table, I handed him a five-euro bill, and Shewara had her stein. It is ridiculously cute, and I am glad she got it.

Our food day and antique complete, we went back to the dorm and made our pad thai while having an eclectic intellectual discussion about university life, family relations, international politics, and Kanye West's music. Our plane back to the United States was leaving the next morning from Frankfurt at 9:40 AM, so we had to catch a 4:45 AM train from Tuebingen. After a good, full evening, we headed to bed around 11:00PM, set our alarm, and fell asleep.

It was there that the real fun began.