Youth hostels of the world. This is Tübingen's youth hostel! It's right on the Neckar river and you can hire Stockerkahn boats like this one and spend the afternoon cruising. We were actually on one of these Gondola-like boats when I took the photo. Then it started to rain, so we pulled up under a bridge to cook our BBQ! 

A storm just rolled through Tübingen and left behind two rainbows outside my window! I also lost my TV channels... 

Tourist Alert. This is a bunch of international students from Tübingen, and we all set our cameras on Self-Timer-Mode, pressed the shutter button, and had 10 seconds to run into place in front of Burg Hohenzollern (the 11th century castle) for the perfect group shot. 

Last week we went to the Ritter Sport chocolate factory and stocked up on factory seconds. As we were taking this photo, a German man was staring at us, so Kate called out in German "We're from Australia, and we don't have this much chocolate at home!". So now some mis-lead German bloke thinks that we are starving and deprived in Australia. 

Here is the 11th century castle that we visited today! It was super-schön. As usual the weather clouded over and rained out most of the castle experience, but it was still amazing. By the way, no one's owned up to the question in my last post ...  

Alright, please own up! Who is responsible for the AWESOME anonymous parcel I got my letterbox yesterday? I was grinning like a mad woman but I have absolutely no idea who sent it. What was it? An issue of Australian Cosmopolitan!!!! 

Bodensee Excursion

This weekend the uni paid for a whole bunch of scholarship holders (us!) to take a trip to Ulm, Ravensburg and Konstanz, all in southern Germany. This is a picture of the cathedral in Ulm - it's the highest church steeple in the world!

There are about 730 steps to the top of the spire and it took a good 20 or 25 minutes to climb all the way to the top. 

This is the youth hostel we stayed in in Konstanz. We were on the 6th floor... No elevator though! 

The weather was pretty bad the whole weekend but luckily Susan and I have matching pink umbrellas to keep us somewhat dry. 

This is the train station in Konstanz, and right behind the LAGO shopping centre is the Swiss border! We crossed over into Switzerland for about 15 minutes... But we couldn't find any Swiss chocolate so we came back to Germany bitterly disappointed! 

This is a panorama of my bedroom! It gives you a pretty good idea of what my place is like, but I think in reality my room is smaller than this picture makes it seem. And next to my bed is actually a floor lamp rather than a smudge - I blame the panorama technology! 

Kylie & Steph playing tourist and soaking up the sun in Freiburg. 

Today, southern Germany seemed particularly like Hawaii... tropical temperatures and lots and lots of sun! 

Hello Summer

Just wanted to tell the whole world that it's 28 degrees in Freiburg today, where I am with Catherine visiting my old buddy from primary school, Kylie! It's meant to get up to 30 degrees tomorrow.

This week we're receiving lots of visitors, including Catherine's mum, and our lecturer from Australia. We're worried they're just plain not going to believe us that the weather here is not normally so delicious!