The next morning Shanna had to be up early. She and two of our friends had signed up for a German Christmas Cookie class with the USO on base. Since we were leaving later that day for Weisbaden, I dropped her off and drove back home to pack up. The plan had been to pick her up at 2pm from class, and we'd hit the road. I left about 1:30 (normally it takes 15-20 minutes on the weekend), but it took me an hour & a half to get there. Someone had a trailer bed attached to their vehicle and were towing a car on top of it. I didn't see the accident, only the aftermath, but the trailer & the car being towed had flipped over and were blocking both lanes of traffic on the Autobahn. As a result, everyone had to scoot over to the exit lane and use that to pass it. So we got a later start then expected, but we still made good time to Weisbaden, getting in around 5:15pm. The weather was *supposed* to be nice this past weekend, but if we've learned anything, it's that taking a wild guess at the weather is as accurate as their prediction system here. We got settled in at our friend Regine's place, then we headed in to downtown Weisbaden to Palmyra's, a Lebanese restaurant. I've never had Lebanese food before, but this place was DELICIOUS. I had the garlic chicken and Shanna had the lemon chicken. Shortly after they served dinner, the lights dimmed, and a guy came out playing a bongo drum type thing, followed by a belly dancer.
It was a lot of fun...someone told them that Regine was the birthday girl (pictured above in the white shirt), so the belly dancer had her come up & dance with her. Below is a link to the video of it:
Remember how I said it was supposed to be a clear weather night, but weather prediction was impossible to tell? Well during dinner it started to snow, and snow hard. The original plan after the dinner was to drive to Frankfurt 20 minutes away and hit the clubs there, but the snow was so bad that we decided to head back to Regine's house and take a cab. By the time we got back, the snow was coming down hard, and we figured there was a good chance that if we went to Frankfurt, we wouldn't be able to get back. Since we had brought the dogs with us, that wasn't an option. So we told Regine to have fun, take a cab, and we'd look after her dog as well as ours, so if they got stuck it wasn't a big deal. It's a good thing we did that, because sure enough, the cabs stopped running due to the bad weather and they had to stay with some friends who had a hotel room already lined up.
The next day Regine got home around 9:30am, and cooked a spicy egg casserole that was delicious. We then packed up, dug the car out, and headed home. When we left Weisbaden it was cloudy, but not snowing or raining. Within 20 minutes of driving, the snow started to come down. When we got past Heidelberg, it turned to rain, and by the time we got to where the A5 ends and the A8 begins, about 80KM from home, it was bright & sunny without a cloud in the sky. A typical German day of weather.
On Monday Shanna went in to work in the morning, and I spent the morning doing some last minute cleaning around the house in preparation for our friends from DC, Ryan & Christina, who were visiting. When I got the call from Ryan that they were close, I went looking around the house for the dogs to put them up before I left. There was a blanket thrown on our couch, and the couch has a pillow on each end, so this is where I found Murphy. He didn't move an inch as I took the picture.
Ryan studied German in High School, then lived abroad going to college for 2 years after he graduated High School. His old room mate from then works for the State Department, and is based in Frankfurt. They stayed with them for the week, but on Monday took the train down to Stuttgart. I met them at the train station, then we took the U-Bahn back to our house. I had been worried about them getting in on time because that morning it started to snow pretty hard. We had more snow Monday then any previous single storm so far. So much that they shut the Autobahn down and Shanna had to take side roads to get home. Thankfully she made it home ok, and the train made it to Stuttgart on time. Below is what it looked like from our balcony after the snow had slowed down.
They were excited about trying as many new German beers as they could, so on the way home from work Shanna picked up a case from the base Shopette. We caught up over some beers, then headed in to town for dinner. Remember how I said we loved Zum Paulaner? Well that's where we went for dinner. I knew Ryan & Christina would like it, and sure enough they loved the place. They said it felt like the most "authentic" German place they'd been to on the whole trip because of the "hunting lodge" atmosphere and the great food.
When I took this picture I thought I had Ryan (on the left) and Shanna (on the right) in the picture too, but I guess it was cut off.
After dinner we headed back to the house just to relax.
Their train left Stuttgart at 3:30pm on Tuesday, but Shanna could only take a half day. We got up and made breakfast, then I took them to the Mercedes Benz museum while Shanna went off to work. They were thoroughly impressed with it, and bought a few souvenirs for Ryan's Dad who just recently bought a Mercedes back home. We then headed to the train station for lunch, and said our goodbyes.
It was a packed weekend, and it was great spending time with friends from back home, both Friday and Monday/Tuesday. We are having a lot of fun over here, and doing things we'd never have done if we didn't have this opportunity, but it doesn't mean we don't miss our friends & family back home. So any chance we get to see them we look forward to.
There weren't many pictures taken this weekend, so any pictures clicked above will just take you a larger Hi-Res version.
No comments:
Post a Comment