Germany!!!

Soooo..... after our lovely holiday in sweden, lots of stuff happened. A few noteworthy things: I went to the peak district, jenny's parents came to visit and we went to edinburgh, the summer weather in england was pants, but all in all we have had a fun time and things were generally just ticking over quite smoothely.

Then came my birthday. 24! Yes so that was pretty exciting. We went to the dog tracks on the thursday before my birthday to celebrate with my friends. It was really good fun actually. The tracks are located in Black Bird Leyes, known for its high unemployment, violent crime rate, and hoodie wearing. They are pretty run down and trashy, but the food and drink is cheap and the entertainment fantastic. I have been before and won 10 pounds. This time I lost ten pounds... easy come, easy go. All in all a great night.

Then on the morning of the Thursday I was awoken as always by the alarm clock on my phone, however I couldn't find it. After stumbling around in the apartment for sometime before I found it on the floor under card with instructions written on it to get dressed and wait for a taxi coming to pick me up. The car took me to the bus station where Jenny was waiting with two bags, and then the next thing I knew we were picking up our rental car in Basel airport. Exciting stuff, huh?!

I had no idea at all and it was a very cool birthday surprise. We stayed in Kandern and on the first night went to the "talibab" kebab restaurant and then the eis cafe. The spaghetti eis is still our favourite.

The next day we decided to go to Colmar. Its been a while since we been back (4 years), so we had to get a map. We also stopped off at my old house, which felt a little surreal. Not much has changed and the view is still pretty spectacular.

We were really lucky with the weather, although it was pretty chilly at first and we didn't really have appropriate clothing.

Colmar was lovely (of course), and we spent most of the day just trundling around taking in the sights.

That evening we went to the Gasthaus Ochsen and some wiener schnitzel with pommes. It was fun seeing how nothing has changed much in the years we've been gone.

We also had to visit Hieber's several times. German bread and pastries are superb and all the fresh produce is incredible. I could actually spend most of a day in Hieber's just looking at the hams and cheeses.

We met up with old acquaintances on Sunday and Andrew and Alyssa who graduated with us are now back in RAing and teaching.

Mike's (Bannon) sister is now at BFA so we also met up with her and took her out for dinner in Schlingen.

Although we were there from Friday till Tuesday, it wasn't really enough time to do everything we wanted to. We did manage to get up Hochblauen, and walk around in the woods some. Its definitely a gorgeous part of the world where we have many fond memories, and we are looking forward to our next visit.