Not sick!

Well, I actually went somewhere today! I felt tired this morning, but at around 2:00 p.m. local time, I felt better, all I can figure is that is the time I get up at home (8:00 a.m. EST), but at any rate I got to go places today.

We went to Stuttgart originally (and I am sure that Michelle and Anne have already enumerated on this) to go see a castle/museum but it was closed for renovation. It was REALLY pretty on the outside, and we got a ton of pictures which I am sure that we will post eventually. We went ice skating as there was ice rink sort of at the one side of the Castles main area, or courtyard if you will, and that was pretty nice. It warmed us up.

We then did a lot of walking around down-town Stuttgart, which was pretty, except that the Germans apparently really like to buy underwear, so you had to look to the other side of the street every other block. It wasn’t that hard, and Michelle and Anna kept warning me.

We went into a shop that advertised lots of legos and they did. I had heard that they had legos cheaper in Europe, and I wanted to see if this was true. It wasn’t. For those who know the prices, the Snow Speeder set from Star Wars (the small one) was 40 Euro, or $45! They did have a lot of sets there though.

We saw a really old church, which had a door – it looked like somewhere a priest would make an announcement from.

Someone tried (yes, tried) to pick my pocket today. We were in a crowd, because the side walk narrowed from about 20 feet across to 5; for construction, and someone bumped into me. I had already thought that this would be a good place to get robbed, and I had heard about being “accidentally” bumped into and having ones pocket picked. So I looked down, and saw a hand coming out of my pocket. I glanced behind me, and I could not tell whose hand it was, which was weird, because you would think that I would be able to tell. I think that it came as a surprise to me, even though I was thinking about it! Fortunately, I did not have anything in that pocket; it was all in the pouch under my shirt. But I checked through that when I got to the hotel just to make sure everything was there. I have been since assured that this was very unusual by several people who are here often, but I am not sure if this is just loyalty, naivety or truth.

Tomorrow, we are going to venture back on the ICE trains and go to Cologne (or Köln), and see a Cathedral, and a Roman/German museum.

We were going to call home tonight, but by the time Dad got his computer on, (3:41 p.m. EST) we didn’t think that you would be home. I might try calling home in a bit, but my guess is that Dad will want us to wait till tomorrow.

Hope – I checked my email account last night, and I would appreciate if you would keep checking it for me. When you get the headset, leave a chat message at Dad or Anne’s skype account. Even if we are offline, it will give it to us whenever we get online. Also, send Clark and his family Anne’s skype name for me. Btw, Clark, hope you don’t mind me using that name. It was the only one I could think of that would get the point across which it was, without saying your real name, which as you can see, we have been trying not to do.

Good night!