Saturday we had arranged to meet our friends Charles & Kate at the train station and take the train out to a town about 45 minutes away called Tübingen. Shanna & I had visited the town over the summer with some other friends, and had wanted to go back, but this was the first chance we'd had. This particular weekend Tübingen was holding their annual Chocolate Fest, where they had vendors from all over the world offering up different types of chocolate. They even had chocolate made with Chili spices that was GREAT. I'd never had spicy chocolate before. They also had a huge tent that was divided into two areas. One area is where you bought the chocolate, and the other area was sealed off so you couldn't enter, but the tent walls were see-through so you could watch them make the chocolate. Shanna & I were standing there watching, and I noticed a zipper that went from the ground to the top on the see-through tent flap. There was also a guy standing inside making chocolates and he had a huge plate of chocolates in front of him. I joked with Shanna that all we had to do was unzip the zipper, and I didn't realize the guy could hear me. Thankfully he had a sense of humor and cracked up laughing as soon as I said that...he even pretended to drop some chocolate down in front of the flap for us to get. The picture above is the town's Rathaus (Town Hall). Every town has one, and in the smaller towns they are usually are intricately decorated, as you can see from the picture above. They had every kind of chocolate food / drink you can think of, EVEN chocolate beer! The beer part surprised me...I've had it before (and liked it) but knowing how the Germans brew their beer, I was not expecting it. It made a little more sense when I saw it had been imported from France. They also had beer brewed with almonds. Shanna & I bought a bottle of each, but haven't tried the Chocolate one yet. I liked the almond one, but Shanna didn't.
We had decided to leave Milo & Murphy at home because they don't do well in crowded areas, and at festivals, where people drop food, they go nuts trying to eat & sniff everything on the ground. Kate & Charles, though, brought their dog, Pixel. Pixel is a Shiba Inu and built for the cold weather. They told us it's not uncommon for German people to stop & ask them if the dog is part fox. One thing Pixel likes to do is sit on Charles's shoulder and watch people as they walk by. If you click the above picture, and look in the lower right, you'll see Pixel partly sitting in Charles's backpack, and partly sitting on his shoulder. We got stopped multiple times by people wanting to pet Pixel...they even got stopped twice because people wanted to take their picture with him & the dog.
One of Shanna's coworkers met us there, and took us to a Whiskey store he likes to visit from time to time. The above picture is of a bottle I picked up of Whiskey distilled in a nearby town. If you click the picture, you can see the label more clearly and you'll notice it says "Schwäbischer" on it. The region we live in (the state of Baden-Württemberg) is nicknamed Schwaben after the Germanic tribe that settled in the area approximately 2,000 years ago. Schwaben food & dialect have distinct differences from the rest of Germany, so it makes living here all the more interesting. They gave out samples, and this particular type tasted great.
We had lunch there, and at that point were ready to head home. It's been cold & snowy for the past two weeks here, and while it wasn't snowing on Saturday, it was definitely cold. We took the train back home, and spent the afternoon/evening cleaning around the house and watching College Football.
Sunday we met Kate at the train station (Charles had to work) and went to Ludwigsburg. I've mentioned the town in previous blog postings because I went there back in June w/ a friend from DC who was visiting, and more recently Shanna & I went to their Pumpkin fest. This time we were going for their Christmas Market.
Christmas markets are generally much prettier at night, but they are also MUCH more crowded. Because of this, we decided to go right when it opened, and even then, it was still sort of crowded. They had plenty of Glühwein stands, as well as stands selling every kind of Christmas trinket you can think of. Smokers, Nutcrackers, lace, you name it, they had it. At this point they are starting to blend together and look sort of the same, but it's still neat to visit all of them. Each Christmas market also has commemorative mugs that they sell the Glühwein in, and I've enjoyed collecting one from each market. We're starting to have quite the little collection, I can't wait to see what it looks like after we've been here a few years. We stayed a few hours, ate lunch there, then headed home.
I didn't take many pictures, so there isn't a separate page like there usually is...every picture I took is in this post. Next weekend is Nürnberg, and the weekend after that will be Wiesbaden & Heidelberg...stay tuned!
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