germany is a nice place, parts 6-9

We arrived in Saarbrücken to little fanfare, and jetted straight into a German wedding barbeque!

The guy in red is the groom.  The girl in blue is the wife.  Um, my wife.  Not the bride.  I...you get it.

We had to walk up a bit of a mountain to get there, but it was so worth it.

This is a Schwenker, a name which refers to the style of cooking, the contraption, and the food itself.

These are a paltry selection of the true magnificence of German condiments.

This is the meat itself!  SCHWENKER!!!!!!

After eating, we went on a quiet walk down a forest path...and came across thousands of tiny frogs, apparently migrating.

The bad news:  I'm sure I stepped on a few by mistake.  There's no good news.  A bunch of little froglings died.

After the super tasty barbeque, we smashed a couple plates.  POLTERABEND.  I really mean a couple.  There were so few fragments, they didn't appear on camera.  Then we missed the last bus and had to walk back into the city.

Saarbrücken...how to describe it?  It's like if Pittsburgh was full of casinos, basically.  To the extent that, if a foreigner tells you they're coming to visit the U.S., and you ask where they're going, and they say Pittsburgh...well, imagine your reaction.  It was a cute city in its own way, but it wasn't really aimed at tourists.  Luckily, the bride and groom had a ton of awesome events planned for us!

But let's talk about what really important.  Breakfast:

Apparently, Philadelphia cream cheese is considered pretty swanky in Germany.

Important Note:  Cookie Cat was not part of the breakfast buffet.

The bride and groom provided breakfast for all the guests who wanted it every morning at their apartment, and it was super delicious!  We also had homemade crepes, tons of different jams and juices, dozens of kinds of tasty bread, and all the cream and sugar we could stuff in our pockets (not really.  that was a simpsons reference).

We spent a day doing our laundry, which was very important at this point:

It didn't really take a whole day.  The wife just fell asleep in a park while some guy practiced classical guitar nearby.

The wedding happened sometime after that...I didn't really get any good pictures.  You'll have to take my word for it.

The next day, we went to an IRONWORKS!!!

This was the only picture I was allowed to take.

There was an art display at the iron works, and some of the pieces really moved me.  I found the works of El Bocho especially striking.  We spent some time being art critics with our new friends Jan-Oliver and Andrea, and had an amazing time, until the rest of the group got bored and decided we must have fallen into a smelter.

We also saw a waitress laughing as she was abducted by a burly man!  Good for them.

Oh, and the actual iron works themselves were pretty cool.  Giant machines that made me feel good to be a human being.

The next day, we went on a super bus tour!  We went to a castle first.

I don't know who those people are, or what that town is.  Look, castle wall!

Cannons, only ever fired in defense.  (Think about that)

What a view!  You could easily hit any of those houses with a cannonball.

A real life wino...I mean, wine press.

Favorite German game fowl:  Pheasant, mallard, peacock, quail, roadrunner.

The wife was thrilled to find a door that was sized for her.

Then we climbed a mountain...lured by the sweet song of the Lorelei.

Could you steer around this without crashing?

The wife, wistful for her long lost love, gone away to the Crusades.

Just another few inches....then to the CONVENT WITH YOU!

Then we went to a town that had a TORTURE MUSEUM.  But we didn't go in it.  Instead, we went on a cable car.  Remember?

Only vineyards (and their products) can make her so happy.

And at the top, we found the monument to German Unification, built in 1873.

Du Rhein bleibst deutsch wie meine Brust!

There was an awesome poem written across it:  Die Wacht am Rhein (The Watch on the Rhine).  Read the wikipedia page, there's a translation!

It's super-duper patriotic, which makes sense for the time period, but it really weirded out our German friends.  Believe it or not, in the latter half of the twentieth century, patriotism because something that just wasn't done in Germany.  Even now, Germans are much quicker to celebrate individual states than to say anything good about Germany overall.  Hmm..Germany over all...sounds familiar...

So when they read the nationalistic sentiments on the monument, it disturbed them a great deal.  They translated the whole poem for us, and then we said "hmm, that sounds like every American monument ever."  The moral of the story is that Americans are pretty darn patriotic.

This one's for the wife.

After that, we headed back to Saarbrücken, ate dinner, and said our farewells.  We made some super amazing friends, and had great times with the people we already knew.  It was wonderful.  But something was still waiting for us...something ancient...something Roman...something irrepressible...Trier.