Family Time!

June 5^th-7^th

     Hello peeps! When we left off, I was leaving Marius in Brussels, Belgium. Flash forward to me sleeping on the train and the ticket lady waking me up. Oops. My alarm didn’t wake me and it was going off very loudly for the whole car to hear. So… I guess I’m THAT person. My bad. I got all that stuff taken care of and soon I was in Stuttgart where I then had to track down my family in the airport. Not hard. I found them waiting like lost puppies in the terminal and herded them to where we needed to be. Well… I tried. I couldn’t understand the directions, so our CouchSurfer host, Chip, drove up on his motorcycle (mohawked helmet and all) and walked us to his place.

Giant pretzel in Germany.

     It was super nice and so was he. Turns out, he was a US Army Captain and he had to go to work. He left us his keys and the names of a few places we should visit and took off, just like that. Well, I wasn’t surprised because I had done this many times before, but Mom and Dad were a bit shocked that he just left us with his keys. I mean to be fair, we weren’t much of a match for him if things went down (3 women and a hobbit man), but the trust he put in us was still pretty neat. We didn’t have much time to be shocked though before the jet-lag hit the fam hard while I myself struggled to keep my eyes open after I opted for a night of Youtube and movies over sleep.

Mom in front of a building. Classic.

     So I had a mission now: Keep us awake until at least 8 PM. Sounds easy enough, but at this point it was only about 1 PM and we were fading fast. First plan: Eat! That’s usually a good idea, so I took them to the main street across from the train station to search for food. After walking a while, I found a German food restaurant. Score!! Schnitzel all around! Except for Mom who, of course, couldn’t have it due to her Celiac disease. She had a salad. Dad, Loni, and my schnitzels were really good, but Dad and I picked some nasty German soda drink. Ew. No. But Stuttgart made up for their crappy drinks with magnificent gelato. Just get in my belly. Just do it. Right meow. It was so good, Mom had seconds. Haha. The cashier was probably thinking something like: Typical American.

In the music museum listening to some tunes.

     So we stayed awake so far, but it had only been about three hours after we ate and walked around the sights. I ran out of ideas, so we headed back to Chip’s place and Dad and I got online while Mom and Loni both fell asleep on the couch. Luckily, just in time, Chip returned and invited Mom and Loni to go for a run with him since he knew she had workouts to do and they were roused and went out for a run. No I didn’t go. PAHAHA. Really? Me? Nope. So Dad and I fell asleep instead. Right as I drifted off, Mom was back and in panic-mode because Loni and Chip were missing. She was crying and screaming and so I left and found them and brought them back. It wasn’t that easy, but it wasn’t hard either. They had just stopped to do pushups at the top of busy stairs and Mom kept running and lost them. No problem. I saved the day again.

     Once again, we were on the brink of passing out when Chip dressed us all up in costumes and paraded us through Stuttgart on our way to an Irish karaoke pub. Though he assured us everyone dresses up at the pub, we soon looked quite out of place in my captain hat, Loni’s and Mom’s dog ears and Dad’s leopard print shirt. Like seriously. No one was dressed up except us. Like good guests, over the next few hours, we stayed and watched his karaoke performance of Backstreet Boys and made a few friends before eventually leaving the pub, eating a couple Yufalas (delicious fast food thingy), and sleeping like a bunch of rocks.

Don't ask.

     The next day, we slept and slept and slept until noon. Chip left for work around eight, so he didn’t witness our shameful waste of Germany thank goodness. When we finally got up, we did some laundry and then went for lunch at a tasty pasta place because one can only handle so much schnitzel. Hey. I like that. I think I will use that as a catchphrase. “One can only handle so much schnitzel.” Catchy. So after that, we went to a musical instrument museum and then sat in the courtyard/park/public square area on a fountain where we watched a duck land by doing rolls. Haha. Clumsy duck.

    When we tired of the duck, we stopped at Starbucks for free WiFi and a cold coffee before heading to the pharmacy for my recurring throat infection and buying some ridiculously delicious tea and groceries. We cooked dinner at the apartment and then just kinda chilled out until the sleepy time she came.  

     Just like now. I am sleepy so good night and until next time! x
Rusty