So Awful!
Michea, Yvonne’s brother had to work all day so I went and wandered around Karlsruhe. There are a lot of students in this town, both college and high school age that were wandering around at the same time I was, making the streets very crowded. The two main attractions in town are a street where cars are not allowed that is lined with shops and a giant castle. There are of course large ancient churches, like in all European towns but I have had my fill of them.
I managed to find a few things I needed to resupply on and also bought a new packet of socks, mine have slowly been disappearing one at a time through my travels. When I first started to work after college three years ago, I collected all of my socks up and threw them all away, because through the years and having so many males in my family, I didn’t have but two pairs of socks that actually matched. Then I went and bought three packets of identical white socks, so that mine would always match. Those three packets have slowly been dwindling as I lost socks and they became worn down and holey. Once I get back I will need to purge my socks again and get all new ones, now that these new socks are in the mix.
Michea told me that it would be easier if I ate dinner on my own because he didn’t know for sure when he would be home from work and we were going rock wall climbing that night. Before Michea came home I ate a delicious McDonalds extra value meal, called a “menu”, in Europe. Then when Michea got home he asked me if I wanted a pizza and I ate that too. After eating all of that I felt like I could hardly move, my stomach was so full.
I have never really been rock wall climbing, I have done some small stuff that was heavily assisted, but not like this. I have always wanted to but never taken the time to actively pursue it. Michea has been doing it for a while and so he instructed me on how everything works, why it’s done and what the ramifications are if it’s not followed properly, mainly someone will fall a great distance and get hurt or possibly die.
Each person wears a harness that goes around their legs and their waist and then one end of the rope is attached to each person and then either to a pulley at the top of the wall or attached to hooks as you ascend the wall. There were lots of different paths that could be taken with varying difficulty depending on the spacing and grip of the things attached to the wall. Michea was much better than me, but I was able to stand my own and picked up quickly what to do. I have also added rock wall climbing to my list of activities to pursue when I come back home. The list is starting to get very long, but I think that I can do most if not all of the things regularly once I come back.
After nearly four hours of climbing I was exhausted both physically and mentally and ready for some sleep. My muscles were really sore, but in the way that feels really good.
Friday Michea had to work again and so I went back to the city, walking around and exploring. I found a bird that was grabbing nuts and then flying them high into the air, where the bird would then release the nut so it would smash into the ground and crack open. Then the bird could easily swoop down and enjoy all of the nutty goodness.
Michea was traveling back home for the weekend and gave me a ride back to Stuttgart. While driving we saw a car pulling a trailer on the Autobahn with a sign indicating that it should not be going faster than 80KM/H. We were right behind it and traveling the same speed of 100KM/H. Just after we noticed the trailer an unmarked cop car pulled up behind it and turned its lights on. “Ha Ha, they got him” I announced. It wasn’t him they were pulling over though, it was us. In Germany cops pull in front of cars and have signs that say “follow me” in their back window. We followed the cops to a parking lot where there were a lot of officers and other cars that had been pulled over, they were doing routine traffic stops. The officers asked for our identification and then made us wait in the car while they looked us up in the computer. The officers came back and told us that everything was fine and we were free to go on our way.
When I got back to Stefan’s apartment in Stuttgart I was met with a hilarious sight. Yvonne was making onion cake and was chopping onions wearing swimming goggles. I’m not a fan of onions but I told Yvonne I would try her onion cake. I tried it and it was awful, it was just a bunch of onions on freshly baked bread with cheese. It would have been good if there weren’t any onions, but there were so many it was impossible to pick them off without only being left with plain bread.
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