Day 4 in Germany (Part 1)

On my last full day in Germany, I woke up to the sound of kids outside.  When we opened the window, we saw that there were a bunch of kids dressed up in costumes for a parade.  It was basically the German version of what they call Mardi Gras in Louisiana and Carnival in South America.  In Germany it is called Fasching.  What happens is that in the weeks leading up to Ash Wednesday, there are a lot of parades throughout Germany.  The people dress up in costumes as witches, jesters, and other crazy characters.  They sing and dance and throw candy out to the crowd, and it all ends on Ash Wednesday leading up to Lent. For a long time they didn't really celebrate Halloween in Germany, because Fasching was kind of the German time to dress up and get candy.  Anyway, it was really cool to see it.

After the parade we went shopping to make our going away dinner.  But before we got all of the groceries for dinner, I made snow angels in the snow and saw the big church in the middle of town.  The church is over 500 years old and even though it is under construction it's still very impressive.  Then we went to see the City Hall which is also very old.  You can kind of see the city maypole behind me.  On May 1 they will have May Day Celebrations in Germany and dance around the may pole.

From there we decided to go to the gummi bear shop.  They have a whole shop here just for gummi candies.  They have them in all sorts of flavors and shapes (not just bears).  It was really cool.  We also went to the bakery and bought pretzels.  Pretzels are really popular here.  They even make sandwiches out of them.  They make rolls out of the same stuff that the pretzels are made of so that the sandwiches are easier.  It was so tasty.

Even though it was snowing we walked around a little more and headed down to the river that runs through Tübingen.  The houses right along the river are very colorful and the yellow one in the background is very special because a famous German writer lived there.  On the island in the middle of the river, I saw the biggest bird house I have ever seen!!!

Finally we stopped into the tourist information center before going home for a nap.  I got a map of the city to share with everyone, and a little treat too.