Day 3

After breakfast this morning we packed up our luggage, loaded the bus and began our journey to Tettnang, Germany. It was a four hour drive so we stopped for lunch on the way in Ulm. Ulm is famous for its HUGE cathedral in the center of town. The cathedral’s tower is actually the tallest in the world and you can see the tower from pretty much anywhere in town. We took a quick self-guided tour of the sanctuary and then had fish and chips for lunch at a street vendor. It was really yummy! I had calamari with remoulade sauce and Brad had regular fish and chips. After lunch, we window-shopped for a little while and I bought a hat and scarf at the New Yorker store. I thought it was kind-of ironic that I came all the way to Germany and shopped at a store called New Yorker… Our director stopped at DVD store on the way back to the bus and bought the movie Hancock for us to watch for the rest of the road trip.
We arrived in Tettnang (pronounced tet-naw-ng) around 3:20pm and we left on our one-hour walking tour at 4:00pm. The tour guide was really sweet and gave us a lot of information. Apparently Tettnang is known for growing hops, whereas all the other cities we have visited were known for their vineyards. It has been ruled by many countries/people and we got to visit the ruler’s palace on our tour. The palace is built in the Baroque style, meaning everything is very extravagant but with great attention to symmetry and detail. One of the rooms had walls painted in solid gold. The ceilings were covered with intricate plaster designs and sculptures. One of the rooms had flowers painted on the walls and then green glass over it so it looked like stained glass.
After our quick tour of the town, a small group of us found a rustic little restaurant for dinner. The waitress was really nice and even taught us a few words in German. I had Hungarian goulash because my Grandma used to make it, or at least talked about it and Brad had roast beef and French fries. I think it’s interesting how popular French fries are here. I thought I would see more sauerkraut on the menus.
Apparently there was a carnival here just recently so there are still flags hanging throughout town and people wearing all kinds of silly costumes. We were kind-of sad we missed it because it looked like fun! We also found out, after coming back to the hotel, that Ulm is also famous for being Albert Einstein’s birthplace.
Tomorrow we are going to Appenzell, Switzerland for the day! We have to get up really early to get there before all the shops close. We might also go sledding at some point!
I will hopefully be able to post more updates these next couple of days because our new hotel has wireless internet in the restaurant downstairs. The pictures take a while to upload and I can’t figure out the captions very well but I’m working on it!

Guten Nacht!