Teutonic splendor and the GoldGeldBlitzen...

We occupied our Saturday morning with a visit to Esslingen, which is a short drive from Stetten. It's an original walled village with old fashioned German buildings in very good condition. Of course, it also has some very modern shops, so there was something for everyone.

Nina'a friends Amil and Michaela generously offerred to come along, which solved the problem of having one too many people to fit into Nina's car. After some retail therapy we had lunch at an Asian restaurant - ever tried to order Asian food when the descriptions are in German? Very amusing.

We wrapped up the afternoon with an ice cream (ordered very inexpertly by Moi - a source of great amusement) and a stop at the playground. No lederhosen, but you could alomost hearthe oompah band in you head.

Of course we were still getting over the jetlag so a nanna nap was a necessary exercise in the afternoon.






We had big plans to attend the 'GoldGeld' festival in the evening. In essence, GoldGeld (literally translates to Yellow Gold) is a big party in a field on a Sunflower farm, to celebrate the end of the harvest. These festivals are held all over the countryside at this time of year. There was much excitement about the propect of seeing a band perform Queen covers.

Unfortunately, there was less excitement about the rain and thunderstorm that arrived about 20 minutes after we did. At first we tried to tough it out under umbrellas, but the rain just got harder, and standing in a flield under a lightening rod in a storm is less than appealing. So we took our remaining beer and trudged back to the cars, getting more and more soaked. By the time we got back to the cars, we were all so wet that some of us had to strip down to underwear before we could get in the car.
But we made a night of it back the Triolo residence on Kanstrasse,over a bottle of wine and some old CD's.