Hafer und Bananenblues, Kommunisten, und lauten Amerikaner

So, since the last time since I wrote you lovely people, I have done administrative things, been to Stuttgart, and done a fair amount of park sitting. 

Starting with Stuttgart, we left from the Tübingen Hauptbahnhof on Saturday mid-morning. The ride to Stuttgart takes roughly 45 minutes on the fast train, and it's quite beautiful. It's largely small cities and towns starting at the base of a steep hill full of fields, which look like that about to collapse onto the buildings below because they are so steep.

Entrance of the Museum

After getting to Stuttgart, we climbed up the Stuttgart Hauptbahnhof tower for views of the city. So. Many. Stairs. My God, but the views were pretty awesome. Afterwards, we walked to the Baden-Württemberg Museum and got to see a bunch of stuff about the history of the state. The museum was very well done and pretty much entirely in German, so my understanding of what was going on was a little shaky. One of the funniest things was actually just outside the museum. They had a bunch of glass cases about waist height with randoms things in them. One of them contained a 60's style TV that was playing this:  

I thought it needed to be shared. Anyways, by the time that we got out it was 3PM, and Ute took us to grab lunch at a wine festival biergarten-type thing. I ate more schwäbisches  Essen, this time it was Maultauschen, which is kind of like ravioli, und Kartoffelsalat. So German. During this time, we learned one man's life story, which he was loudly telling this guy sitting adjacent to us--in true loud American fashion. His name was Perry (a fact which we learned after the rest of the story), he used to work for the Air Force but now works in IT in Mannheim, he is having a kid, converted his basement into a bedroom, his house has a keg and a bunch of other crap (he very vividly explained the layout), etc. The entire exchange made all of us cringe. For the rest of our time there, we wandered and did some park sitting. Right across from the park, the Communists had assembled, were handing out newsletters wanting to keep German troops out of Syria, and speechifying. 

We left Stuttgart around 5:30 and got back to Tübingen just as all the stores were closing. We did, however, manage to find a Netto grocery store that was still open and proceeded to buy food and an eyebrow-raising amount of alcohol--but hey, grocery stores aren't open on Sunday. 

Sunday, we celebrated Julius' birthday, which was loads of fun and quite the adventure... And today, I dragged myself to Ute's office across town at the godforsaken hour of 10:30AM to do more administrative things, like apply for a residency permit and talked about class and university in general. Oh, and we found a good Nudelbox place by St. Johannes Kirche. 

So, updates: I got a SIM Card today. Yay for living in the 21st century, even if my phone is very 90s. Um, other random facts: German windows open 2 ways, a vent kind of thing on the top or you can just pull it in. The German word for 'hangover' is Kater, which also means a male cat. And finally ice tea comes in juice boxes here, and it's awesome.

Yeah, that's about it on my end. First official day of Deutsch Kompakt tomorrow, and we start with a placement test and we must be sehr punktlich. So I think I am going to go to bed early for the first time since being here. Wooooo. :)