German Exchange 2018

Today was our castle day. We took a coach bus to Füssen, where we walked up to Neuschwanstein Castle. After the tour, we hiked up to Marienbrücke - it is a little bit scary to go out on the wooden bridge so high up, but you have an amazing view of the castle! Then we got back on our bus and drove to Oberammergau in Southwest Germany. We toured Linderhof palace - it is an amazingly elaborate structure - it is particularly of interest because King Ludwig II actually lived there for a number of years. When we went back to the youth hostel, we went across the street to an Italian restaurant and ate dinner all together. We finished the dinner with some dessert (mostly Apfelstrudel) and a rendition of Happy Birthday for Blake's birthday. In this picture you can see the bridge form the castle In this picture, you see the castle from the bridge!

There was a tearful goodbye on the platform in Untertürkheim, as we waited for the S-Bahn to take us to the train station. A lot of great friendships have been formed and many of the students are already planning to return to Stuttgart next summer. After checking into our rooms at the youth hostel in Munich we went on a bike tour of downtown Munich. The tour was run by Mike's Bike Tours and was entertaining and informative. Among other things, we biked through the Englischer Garten and saw the part of the river where people surf! We then ended  the day with some time at the Tollwood Festival at the Olympia Park.

We had the whole group all together one last time for the Farewell Dinner. The families made a delicious dinner for us at the winery of the Currle family. We all sat together to eat in the picturesque setting of the vineyards. Aiden summarized the trip and said thank you's on behalf of the group. Then we sang a song for them ('Auf uns'). Later in the evening, the parents showed their appreciation by also singing a wonderful version of 'Ich war noch niemals in New York'. We are sad to be leaving Stuttgart and our host families, but exciting to be heading to see the sights of Munich!

Today was a bittersweet day for sure. The bitter part would be that it was the last day we went to school with our partners:( We all were happy to be done with school, but are realizing that our time is quickly coming to an end. The sweet part of today, would be our afternoon activity, and it's result. This afternoon we played a soccer game, Americans vs. Germans. Even with all the doubt, Americans pulled through with a 3-2 victory. This evening many of us will meet in one of the gardens outside the city for a barbecue. And sadly, tomorrow we will meet again for the farewell dinner.

Yesterday, the Americans and the Germans traveled to Tübingen. When we arrived we had a few minutes to kill, so we played frisbee in the park, of course (well, some of us). Our first adventure was punting on the Neckar river. We were in boats of 12 people with one guide. We went up and down the river, some of us even tried punting (which is like paddling with a stick). If you look carefully at the pictures, you will see some of us 'driving' the boats. After our boating adventure we were let loose on the streets of Tübingen. Many of us grabbed some lunch and then wandered around, gawking at the beautiful old buildings. Tübingen is a very old university town with many nice student houses, etc... A cool fact - every little German town has at least 10,000 places to get ice cream! We met back with each other at the park, and then took the train back to Stuttgart.

Wow, the past few days have gone by so fast!! Sorry for the late update... On Monday, WIGGY had a sport day due to older students testing. The boys headed out to play in a soccer tournament and the girls met in the gym for a volleyball tournament. Lexie played volleyball and her team came in 3rd place. Quite a few of the boys played in the soccer team and the team with mostly BBA students came in 2nd - losing in a PK tie-breaker. After the games were over everyone had free time. Many of us went to an indoor water park, some went shopping, and some spent quality time with their partners. Yesterday we all went to school in the morning and then headed to the Mercedes Benz Museum. I think we all enjoyed looking at all the cars from history... all the way up to our current masterpieces. The museum is really well designed and included historical events from each time period of the cars. Some of us even went on a race car stimulator. We all ended in the gift shop and then headed bac...