Last weekend was a pretty relaxed one. Saturday night we went out with our friends Jenny & Chris and saw the Hangover 2. It wasn't bad...if you liked the first one, the second is more of the same. Afterwards we found a small pub with live music to enjoy a few beers at. The only other big thing of note for that weekend was our friends Kimber & Josh booked their plane tickets to come visit in late July...we both can't wait to see them again, and show them around. It's going to be a travel packed two weeks with them, with Berlin, Switzerland, and Austria on the agenda.
This past Tuesday was a concert I've been waiting for a month to see. Back home, in Springfield, VA, there was a small club that a lot of big name Metal bands used to play at, that I loved. It was a small venue, so no matter where you were, you had a good view. Ever since I moved here I've been looking for a place like that, and finally found it...Die Roehr. Two bands that I really like were playing, so I got there about 30 minutes early and was able to watch practically right in front of the stage. Below is a picture I snapped to give you an idea of how close I was.
It was a lot of fun, and I will definitely check their calendar out periodically to see who is playing.
The venue was located near the Hauptbahnhof (Main Train Station) and I saw it from the back side, which I'd never seen at night before. I thought it looked kind of neat, so I took a picture of it.
Friday night was the birthday of a friend of ours. Jesse was a guy I met the same night I met Shanna, at the Kickball pre-season meetup. He, myself, and Shanna were friends in DC, but a year after we met him, he moved to Miami for work. Fast forward two years later, and two weeks after we moved here to Stuttgart, he moved to Heidelberg for work. That's a little over an hour away, so we've seen him a few times over the past year, but not too often. Two months ago, though, he found out his contract wasn't being renewed and was able to find a job here in Stuttgart. Now he lives less then a 5 minute walk from our house. Friday was his bday, so he told Shanna & I about a get together he was going to. Some friends from work were going, but the majority of the group consisted of an expat meetup group he'd joined. Every week they meet up at a different restaurant for dinner & drinks. Since I found out from Jesse about it, my assumption was it was a group of American expats. While the majority were Americans, there were people from all over Europe in the group, including England, Ireland, Russia, Bulgaria, Poland, and Sweden. It was a lot of fun talking with everyone and practicing my German with them. I even made a few contacts with people working on base that might be able to help me find a job here. I had fun at one point in the night talking about our favorite computer games from the 80's and 90's with two guys from Ireland.
Saturday was the Ritterspiele, a medieval festival / market in the nearby town of Horb am Neckar. I have to admit, I was disappointed. The website made it look huge and showed all kinds of jousting competitions and other events that they couldn't do this year because the fair grounds were in use by a garden show. So this year was a smaller scale then previous years. It's too bad, because that's what I was excited about seeing. It was still fun wandering the old town area with the medieval vendors set up though. We got to try this spiced honey wine called Met that was pretty good! We even ended up meeting a friend from Shanna's work there. He'd been in a nearby town getting some work done on his car and when he left, he decided to go for a drive. He saw directional signs for the fest, and checked it out. When he parked, he remembered Shanna mentioning something about a festival we were going to this weekend, and gave her a call...turns out he stumbled upon the same fest we were driving to. We found him when we got there and he walked around with us.
Murphy isn't the type of dog that likes to go on trips, but Milo loves getting out. So we left Murphy at home and took Milo. He had fun sniffing everything he could, but the horses scared him. Every time they'd walk by, he'd try and bolt, so we eventually had to carry him whenever horses were nearby.
We stayed for a few hours, then drove home.
That's about it for the past week. We finally nailed down our Thanksgiving plans today also. We'd been talking about a few places, but decided we wanted to go far south when it's cold here, so we'll be staying in the Taormina area in Sicily, Italy. Since it's off season, we got a great deal on flights & hotel from Thursday through Sunday.
That'll be it for awhile...the next anticipated post will be after July 4th weekend. I took a few pictures of the Ritterspiele event, so you can click here or the picture of the medieval town above (not the concert picture) to be taken to the rest of the pictures.
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