So, FYI: I made two posts today, so there is a new one below this too!

This mainly has pictures of my trip to Stuttgart last weekend and our hike that we took this weekend!

Well, here's the reason that I went to Stuttgart, actually to Gärtringen, a little town about 30 minutes south of Stuttgart. Nice place. This beautiful couple is Angela and Alex. It was so wonderful to be able to go to their engagement party and celebrate for them. I was also able to help with translations for Angela's parents (who are wonderful people and who I enjoyed spending time with!) and for Alex's parents (who are also so nice and generous!). I had a really good time.

Here I am with Alex's parents: Rainer and Piea. They are so loving and generous. They treated me like one of the family and were so kind to me. Beautiful people...

And this is just a picture of something that makes me chuckle. There is a new law in Germany, similar to Washington, that stops indoor smoking and smoking in public areas like train stations. So people can only smoke in designated areas. Here is one of those areas on a train platform. It's just funny because all it is is like a painted square on the platform...the air can go where it pleases, but as long as you're in that square, you're ok.

I thought this was so cool. You can't really grasp the enormity of how many people were waiting for that train. It just seemed to go on and on!

And then the train came...
And almost all of the people were gone...

This is all that I had with me on my train trip to Stuttgart...and boy am I glad that I bought them. The ride is usually supposed to be about 4 hours, and I was to arrive at 7:05. But alas! there was a problem just outside of Worms (yes, same city as the cousel of Worms, I believe) and we were stopped for almost a hour. Apparently there was a person on the platform of the upcoming station that the police were looking for or something. And they hadn't cleared the area. I definitely missed my connection to Gärtringen and had to wait until the 8:30 train came. I had no way of getting a hold of Alex and Angela because I had no more money on my phone, but because they are very schlau (clever) people, they just checked the next train that came, and picked me up on that one. It all worked out, but I was kind of hungry after that. I'm so glad i had those gummy bears!

This looks like a beautiful innocent patch of woods...but what is crazy is that like 10 minutes before this it had been snowing wildly... We went on this hike up to the Löwenborg ruins. It was a beautiful hike...

Here's another part of it...

The ruins...

A view of the Rhine River...

We had been up there about 7 minutes, and do you see those clouds coming?

This came about 4 minutes after that. Crazy blowing snow!

This didn't last too terribly long and then it was nice again, cold, but nice...

Happy Resurrection Sunday everyone!