Tuebingen and more Football, 13 Juni 2010

Sunday began way too early, as well, are you noticing a pattern here? But, the Brauses, Frau Reinl and I all went to Tuebingen. It was about an hour away, I think, and the sky was not particularly pleasant. It was raining in St. Georgen, but by the time we arrived in Tuebingen, it had stopped. Thus, I did not wear my rainboots, though I had brought them and we didn't bring any umbrellas from the car.
The first thing we did was find parking, which was on a hill kind of far away from the center of the city. We then walked down a bunch of steps to get there. I've been collecting any bottle caps (usually beer) I find on the ground, and let's just say Tuebingen was a good place to collect them. But the first thing we did was head towards the City Hall. Tuebingen is a very old city and fairly hilly. Wet Cobblestones and Hills are usually not a good combination, but no one fell.
This must be the season for art/craft fairs, because there was one here, too. This one was pretty cool, mainly because it had different booths than the others and there was one that particularly caught my eye. A man was taking old coins and making jewelry out of them by cutting around the main subject, making a medallion type thing. This was particularly awesome, because he had some Aussie coins, which included kangaroos. There was also an owl and a phoenix. I was very tempted to buy one, but I couldn't decide and they were at least 20 euros. But I took a picture of the phoenix.
After wandering around the fair for a while, we made our way back to the Main Square. After deciding on one of the cafes, we ate lunch at one featuring Flammkuechen. Since a main ingredient of this food is onion, I wasn't too keen on one of the normal ones, so I ordered the apple and cinnamon one. Its seriously one of the best things I've ever eaten. There could have been more apples, but it was like the best version of apple pie without being a pie. I also had a hot chocolate because it was pretty chilly and I mainly wanted to warm my hands.
After lunch, we went up to the Schloss. I wasn't really sure what to expect, but it turned out to be pretty cool. The hike up to it was pretty steep, but not really comparable to the hike up to Neuschwanstein. I took a lot of pictures, so don't worry. Even better than just the Schloss itself, though, was the Museum inside.
While waiting around for a bit, I'd peered in the massive windows from inside the schloss (there was a open square of space in the middle) and saw all these giant sculptures. This made me pretty excited and then we did in fact go to the Museum of Archaeology.
It was really really cool. And about half of their collection was stuff from the actual area. Mostly pottery and tools, but they were from the Stone Age. I mean, have you ever looked at something in a museum and thought about how old it is? And that it was created within miles of where you are? And has lasted, and would still function till and at that moment? Its freaky. We don't really have these sorts of objects in the States. Someone correct me if Cahokia is pre-Roman and Greek. I've forgotten. There was also a large display of Egyptian artifacts, including at least five sarcophagi. Then, finally, the sculptures I'd seen through the windows. They weren't originals, but were all plaster casts of them. But still, they were ginormous and amazing. I took my time and kind of made my host families wait a bit for me, but I was in a lot of awe and took pictures.
After the Schloss we walked around the city a bit more. We had to be back home in good time because of the Deutschland WM game. We went into a Gummi Bear shop and walked along the river. The river walk was cool because there were gondola type boats ferrying passengers for tours or just for fun and the walk had about 80 giant giant oak trees forming a lane down the path.
The walk back to the car wasn't bad, going up all those steps. There's also a lot of graffiti in Tuebingen. But Frau Reinl and I got the car and met the Brauses at the bottom of the hill.
We ate some dinner and then were all eyes and ears for the game. It was great, as you all should know by now. Before the game even really started people were honking their horns in the street. Oh course, afterward, i was only worse, but it was awesome. I haven't heard that much sport celebratory noise since the Rams won the Super Bowl the first time. I think it actually went on for about forty five minutes after the game, but I fell asleep soon after.