Day 13

We love Anne so much she is so adorable and has been a very fantastic hostess.

She lives in the apartments near the University of Stuttgart and she and her boyfriend Ruben and roomate Gerhard are just so much fun.

We are staying in another roomate's room while he is away so we have a room to wreck without feeling like we're making a mess around the entire house (it's amazing we can fit so much stuff in our backpacks). Fortunately for her roomate, he'll have the pleasure of knowing three American girls slept in his room.

We spent the morning and afternoon going to the market with Ruben and Gerhard and then SHOPPING our little hearts out. Thank you to Ruben who babysat us while we went into every girl store we could find. Bought a few interesting things, a pretty necklace, a few tank tops, and of course shopped at H&M (I think this will be our 4th H&M in 2 weeks) and went to a department store to find some cheap Birkenstocks (30 euros in comparison to 110 USD is pretty much the reason to buy em here). Talking with Gerhard and Ruben is interesting simply because the first day they acted like their English is not good enough to have conversations but in the end we realized they probably speak better English than we do.

Met up with some of Anne's school program friends who were all fun and adorable. We went and sat at the park in front of the old palace near Konigstrasse and walked to the the biergarten on the other side of the palace. Letting the tourist in me loose I took my obnoxiously touristy camera and took pictures of everything. And I mean everything. Every colroful rose (they are HUGE here and bloom perfectly). and the palace. and the ducks. and the fountains. and the roses again. By the time I was done I'm sure the girls didn't want to be seen with that weird girl taking pictures of everything, but they accepted me nonetheless. We met Natalie, Nadine, Bianca and her boyfriend Martin and later Miriam at the biergarten. All adorable girls and I enjoyed chatty Bianca because it's nice to hear cute Germans speak English with a British/German accent. After a few minor English mishaps ('worm' vs. 'warm'), a couple cola-weissens and some very bad jokes about American beer (inappropriate for online travel journals) we parted ways with some really great people who, if they're within a 3 hour radius of Houston, HAVE to stay at my place ( I WILL come pick you up.)

That night Anne cooked us a Stuttgart specialty (whose name translates to Cheating Jesus but I can't for the life of me remember the German word) which was like huge raviolis stuffed with spinach and a meat mix. Delicious. I ate about 5. So Good. The story comes from hiding meat during Lent, and obviously God can't see the meat if it's covered in pasta! (I know I would be fooled.)

Had a lovely conversation with Eric and Anne and I figured a few ways to get to Munich and then Venice (hey how's it going 7 hour train ride) and then went to bed full and happy.