Heidelberger Herbst!

Caitlyn and I slept in this morning until about 11. We definitely need it! I made us crepes for breakfast and she loved them. Since she doesn't like chocolate (gasp!) she didn't try the Nutella with powdered sugar, but instead used cinnamon and sugar. I should be able to pefect this recipe by the time I come home!

Pretty much every town in Germany has a fall festival. Heidelberg's was today and was called Heidelberger Herbst. We were told that there would be about 3 million people here for the entire day! Somehow, Keith had no clue that this was going on. We invited him to walk around with us and see what was going on. There were bands and food stands set up everwhere. The Hauptstrasse was PACKED with people and walking was sometimes a challenge. Some of Keith's friends called him and he decided to go meet up with them after a little while. No problem for Caitlyn and I! We could go where we wanted and do what we wanted without worrying about boring him. She wanted to buy a beer stein for her boyfriend so we checked some out at one of the shops. We wandered around for a long time and went into a few stores here and there. We bought these adorable pink shoes for only 5 Euros! They have a cute little bow and everything! After walking to the bank and buying huge Coke Zeros at PennyMarkt, we made our way back to the Hauptstrasse to find some lunch. We decided Caitlyn needed to eat something German so we both got Brats on rolls. The wursts were so long we had to snap them in half! Quite funny! Some people were dancing on a stage so we sat near there and watched a little. I asked a little boy to take a picture of us and he understood what I was saying! I absolutely love the picture!!

We went to H&M and bought a few cute things. Caitlyn really liked the fact that there are little bakeries everywhere. So we stopped at one after walking some more and got the most delicious thing! It was crumbly and sweet and just delicious! She couldn't get over how cheap it was and said that she would be in trouble if she lived here. That was really the first time I had gotten something sweet at a bakery, so I'd saying my self-control is pretty good!

It took us a long time to walk back to the other end of the Hauptstrasse. People didn't seem to get the whole walking on the right side of the street. We stopped in Kaufhof (department store) and I bought some Clinique Happy Heart perfume. I didn't bring it with me and absolutely LOVE that stuff. Nice little treat. Instead of walking on the Haupstrasse we went out the exit that is on my street. It was a LOT easier to walk there! Caitlyn said something about how she couldn't believe people were just walking in the middle of the street when cars were coming. Right after she said that someone behind us on their bike got hit by a car. It was so scary! Earlier we saw a guy being taken away on a stretcher. The man on the bike was ok, but he was understandably pretty mad!

We walked back to the place with the beer steins and picked out a really nice one. I thought they would be more expensive, but the big one she bought was only 29 Euros. We weren't able to take pictures of the bridge and stuff last night so we went there next. PERFECT timing because it was just before the sunset!!! We took the most beautiful pictures! We also met some other Americans who took our picture. They are also studying in Heidelberg through their school in California. I hope I see them again sometime because they were really nice! When we were walking off the bridge we saw a kid playing his saxophone. He was so good! I really like seeing things like that!

Since we had been gone for about 7 hours we went back to my apartment. We chilled for awhile and then headed out to find dinner/take a picture of this bar that Caitlyn's boyfriend loves. We were going to try Döner, but we were a little skeptical of the meat. We got ice cream instead and walked down a little side street so we didn't have to fight the traffic on the Hauptstrasse. I was also holding my camera and some ice cream spilled on it. When I went to wipe it off, I lost control and ended up throwing my ice cream against a building! OOPS! So sad! I guess it's better that I threw that instead of my camera! We continued walking and suddenly this guy yelled HEY to us. I FREAKED out, but it was just Patrick O'dell (he's the one from Elon). There were other guys from my program with him and they thought it was pretty funny. Definitely scared me! Heidi and Maressa came running up next and they asked if we wanted to go to this dance party with them. I don't really like dancing and I didn't want to make Caitlyn hang out with them since I knew they'd be speaking German and she'd have no clue what was going on. So we kept walking and eventually found this place called Big Pommes. They have french fries so we ended up buying some. Bad idea to have them put ketchup on them because it was curry ketchup! GROSS!!! We tried to throw out the ones with the ketchup on them, but it was pretty much all over. So that was a bummer!

We figured we might as well make our way to that bar so we could get a picture. On the way I bought some Glüwein (warm wine), which is a Christmas specialty. I have heard a lot about it and wanted to try it, even though it clearly isn't Christmas!! At first I didn't like it, but the more I drank the better it tasted. I think I'll wait until Christmas before I get it again! It took us FOREVER to get to that bar. It was so annoying. Everyone was pushing and it was really chaotic. We took the picture and figured that since we had gone through all of that effort to get there, we might as well go in and get a drink. But when we got in, we had NO clue what we wanted! And then we decided it was dumb to get something to drink just beacuse. Waste of money and calories! So back home we went. We had been around way too many people and just needed some peace and quiet! We chilled in my room for awhile and didn't stay up too late since we needed to get up early tomorrow!