August 12 – 13, 2016

We woke up near noon, still a little jet-lagged from the Japan flight. J wanted to take me to a nearby town called Tübingen which she said also has a medieval town section that she thought I would find charming. Grant decided to stay behind so for this trip, it was just me and J.

After about a 45 minute drive, we arrived in Tübingen. It’s definitely larger than Calw but still felt like a nice-sized bustling town. It’s one of 5 classic university towns in the country due to hosting one of Germany’s oldest and most famous universities, the Universität Tübingen, which is a public research university. It is famous in the fields of medicine, humanities, and natural sciences and has been associated with Nobel laureates. 1 in 3 people who live in Tübingen is a student. This town is surrounded by the Schoenbuch forest and is close to the Swabian Alps and the Black Forest. What’s neat about this university is that many of the classes and research facilities are located in a castle.

J parked her car near the newer campus of the university and we walked the few blocks across a bridge to the old city center. As this is on the side of a hill, under the watchful eye of an old castle, my leg muscles were getting a good workout just making my way up the cobblestone alleyways.

On this day, still a little chilly for being August in Germany, there was a farmer’s market in the town square. The stall selling delicious-looking cheeses was especially pungent.

I definitely made sure to purchase some delicious German chocolate and locally-made hazelnut liquor before we left. Being a chocoholic, I was excited to find a special edition Ritter Sport chocolate flavor… coffee ice cream float truffle. It actually tasted like a coffee ice cream float. J teased me by saying we could visit the Ritter Sport chocolate factory after our visit to Tübingen but we didn’t have the time.

The following day, Grant was ready to join us, along with J’s boyfriend T, on a drive deeper in to the Black Forest. I was really excited by this as I’ve always been drawn to mountains and pine forests.

J took us to a miniature golf course called Adventure Golfpark and we were pumped up for the challenge of golfing. I enjoyed this golf course because it used more natural elements for the obstacles rather than the typical windmills and pirate-themed fixtures. For example, one of the holes had wood tiles instead of grass, that had been warped due to the weather, whether intentionally or not, but proved to be an especially frustrating challenge as the ball kept rolling back to the starting position if you didn’t “happen” to get a hole-in-one. Another hole was located at the top of a wooden-stave “volcano”. Yet another hole used the natural slope of the landscape that you had to guide your ball up in order to beat.

I started off doing embarrassingly awful and was behind the whole time. Grant did very well being tied with T for the most part. I was secretly rooting for T as it was frustrating to see Grant so good at something I was clearly awful at but, in the end, he won by less than 5 points and I was happy for him. I finished last, although somewhere in the middle, I got a hole-in-one.

After turning in our balls and clubs (and scoring pencils), J took us to Riesen Rutschbahn. This was a special surprise for me as I had never experienced a toboggan run before. If these had ever been built in America, they’ve probably been shut down for liability reasons. Riesen Rutschbahn is the longest and fastest toboggan run made of stainless steel in the world with 1500 meters of track. This was awesome!

I was so scared that I kept the break going the whole way down and apparently there was a line forming behind me that I didn’t realize, until I got to the bottom and I saw some disgruntled-looking teenagers giving me the evil-eye.

The 2nd attempt, I was able to relax a bit on the break. This was much more fun (for me and the people just behind me).

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