Sunday, Sunday

Sunday was a very nice day. Sunny and windy. My favorite type of spring day.

We went to a church probably somewhere around 2 miles away from our hotel called the International Baptist Church. This did involve our first adventure on a bus, which was quite nice. It seemed that nearly everyone on the bus was going to church, so it wasn't hard to figure out when to get off or where to go.

We weren't incredibly impressed, although it might have been the jetlag and hunger. I guess we are just used to our last church. Our old pastor was a great speaker, and the people all very friendly and helpful. We spent the whole time at the new church without anyone saying hi or asking if we were new to the area. It wasn't quite what I was expecting. On the bright side, it was all in English. Which has a lovely ring to my ears after not being able to understand anything for a few days.

We missed the bus going back to the motel so we spent some time looking at a big bulletin board. This board had all sorts of things... job opportunities, items for sale, people peddling their services. In particular, it listed a lot of ads looking for English teachers with a business background. This really piqued my interest. I'm going to spend some of today (Monday) looking for ways that I can get a teaching english as a second language (TESOL) degree online. After getting that degree I certainly would be qualified for that type of job. If not with experience, with degrees!!!

After looking at the bulletin board, we walked home as we didn't want to wait an hour for the bus. We stopped in at Nate's favorite doner kabob restaurant. It's basically one of those places where for two euros you get a pita stuffed full of lamb that they shave off a big rotisserie right in front of you. Then you put all sorts of things like onion, tomatoe, and lettuce on top with the "special" sauce. Nate could eat this meal two times a day as it's cheap and delicious!!

Back to the hotel for a bit of relaxation. We haven't done too much of that yet.

Then onward to the S-bahn for our first trip to the big park downtown. There is this lovely park that stretches on for a really long thin strip through the city until it reaches the Nekkar (sp?) river. Nate compared it to Heyde Park in London. Its name is escaping me, but it was quite pretty. So many Germans were out walking, laying around, drinking in the biergartens, licking ice cream cones, and playing chess or cards. We sat on a bench near the end of a little lake and read for a while. Highly relaxing and very quiet. For a second you could almost forget you were in a foreign country... you were just two people reading a book on a bench.

We then walked to a restaurant that Nate found in our Lonely Planet guidebook that was supposed to specialize in Schwabian food. The restaurant is in a section of an old orphanage that has this huge courtyard in the center. We sat outside in the courtyard in the warm breeze. I had a traditional German "ravioli" and Nate had what I thought was going to be a brat and potato mixture... it ended up being more like cut up bologna with cheese. He wasn't so happy, but how can you be unhappy when you're outside in the sun with a full belly and glass of grapefruit juice? He ate a lot of bread.

As we were walking home, I remarked to Nate that I wasn't feeling quite as timid as I was before. I've been pretty intimidated by the language gap. So, things are looking up. I'm sure they'll go down before staying up, but at least they are looking up for now : ) Tschuss.