Feiertag (Holiday)

The part of Germany that we live in, Baden-Württemburg, apparently has many more state holidays than other parts of Germany. I think we will appreciate this for the opportunities we will have for long weekends of traveling, but we're not quite settled enough now to think of venturing too far. So, the fact that tomorrow is Allerseelen (All Saint's Day), and the University and all stores are closed is just kind of an annoyance. We're still adjusting to the combination of shops closed on Sunday and a small refrigerator (Kühlschrank), which means we need to take extra care to get everything we need on Saturday, but only what will fit in the Kühlschrank. This problem is magnified for us at the moment because we're still learning what everything is in the German grocery stores. Needless to say, we spend a lot of time there.

There is something nice about Allerseelen, though. That is Huibu. They are some kind of ghost-shaped bread covered in frosting, and they started appearing in bakeries last week. My friend Merle says that Huibu is a ghost character in a children's book. Maybe I can find it, because the level of difficulty in German would be about perfect for us right now. Joe and I shared a Huibu for breakfast on Saturday. Here are the before and after shots. All that remained of Huibu before Joe finished him off was his Cheshire cat-like smile.

The weather here has been beautiful. We were glad to hear that our friends Megan and Kevin completed their bike ride from Switzerland to Vienna (with a stopover in Tübingen). They're traveling in Europe all fall - hiking and biking - and have had great luck timing their break days for nasty weather. We hope their luck holds. Meanwhile, we took advantage of the nice weather to go on a 34 km bike ride up the Neckar River valley yesterday. We saw some cute towns, and serendipitously we came along some kind of fall festival in Unterjesingen, the town just west of Tübingen. We stopped in for some local beer and wine, and polished off our Currywurst with some kind of delicious apple-pie-cake-thing. We felt very proud of ourselves for figuring out what real Germans are up to an a beautiful Sunday.