Let me start by saying that I was super bummed when I found out that I wasn't going to be able to meet Tyler at the airport when he arrived for his one week visit. Not only that, but I wasn't going to be able to get back to my dorm until after 6pm.
It was just my luck that there would happen to be a mandatory field trip (verpflichtend Exkursion) for my ancient Olympia course from 8am to 6pm that day, and that Tyler's flight landed at 8am!
Luckily I have made friends here with extremely nice people, and the Australians Jenny and Anthony (my Austria travel buddies- see my blog posts about Austria) thankfully said they would not mind meeting Tyler at the airport for me.
And when I got back from the field trip in the evening, Tyler was waiting for me at my dorm. It was such a relief to actually get to see him in person, and at the same time, it made me realize how wonderful Skype is. It really felt like it hadn't been very long since we had seen eachother, due to the fact that we usually skype twice a day.
(By the way, this is me skipping over all the cute details of how I borrowed a friends vaccum to vaccum the rug in my room and the floor, and how I cleaned the sink in my room, and how I spent only 40 Euro to majorly update the kitchen to look pleasant for once!)
Anyhow, I wanted Tyler to meet my awesome international friends, and so we went out to dinner with 3 of them that night in the little town of vaihingen, which is nearest to the Uni campus. I knew the restaraunts in Vaihingen tend to be cheaper and also very cutsy looking German places, so I think it was perfect for the first night of Tyler's visit. We were a group comprised of a Turkish girl, a Frenchman, a Spaniard and 2 Americans. Interstingly enough, the bar tender was from Chile, so it was a lovely multicultural experience, where we all ate German food: schnitzel and flammkuchen, and Tyler ordered his first beer in Germany in German (auf Deutsch!).
After the 20 minute walk back to campus after dinner (so that Tyler didn't have to pay the bus fee and because the next bus was 27 minutes away) we went on an adventure to find one of the Beer Machines in the campus dorms. We found one in a very shady little janitor closet like building that we discovered only AFTER Tyler put a 1euro coin in, was broken, and he lost the coin because it slipped from the coin return slot down INTO the machine (there was some weird gap between the coin slot and machine front panel). So 10 minutes later we crossed the springy bridge to the dorms closer to where I live, and were able to each buy a bottle from the "Beer Automat" there. (Thank you to Duygu who lives in that set of dorms and was able to let us into the laundry room that houses the beer machines!)
And therefore, I would say it was a successful end to Tyler's first night in Germany.
Sunday
I had originally planned for us to get up early and go to the zoo in the morning, and the Mercedes museum in the afternoon. However, it turned out that the Stuttgart zoo is really awesome and a lot bigger than I was expecting. So we were there for most of the day.
I finally made a pancake, bacon and eggs breakfast (usually I'm cramped for time and am content with just wheatflakes cereal and a banana) And we packed leftover pancakes with jam, some chips, an apple and an orange, 2 beers and water for lunch in my backpack and headed to the zoo on the train. We had to walk about a kilometer after exiting the station to get to the zoo entrance, and unfortunately it was rather hot outside, but we walked across a bridge over the Neckar River, and had a neat view of the city that I don't normally get to see from where I live.
As I previously mentioned, the zoo was really big. Probably about the size of Brookfield Zoo even! Oh and they had their own elephants! (Brookfield elephants were apparently only on loan from San Diego or one of those other also big zoos)
Ok, so what's a zoo like in Germany? Well the biggest difference is definitely how close you can get to the animals! Take a look at the pictures with these pelicans (yes there were pelicans!) and maybe you'll understand:
It's a wonder no children have been injured yet.
It was about the same at the penguin exhibit. I'm pretty sure if you wanted to, you could reach out and steal a penguin!
Animals we saw at the zoo include: penguins, all kinds of birds (the bird exhibit was insane. So many birds! including wild herons that weren't even part of the zoo but that made nests in some of the zoo buildings and were antagonizing the flamingos and the black birds in the pelican enclosure), all sorts of amphibians and reptiles (srsly tho, the alligator exhibit was scary. A child could have easily climbed on someone's shoulders and either jumped or fall into the water, fish!, cheetah, panther, elephants, rhinos, hippos, monkeys, cute little things that are tan and related to raccoons, sea lions, lots of bears, beavers, prarie dogs, Girafrffes, some wild bunny rabbit related creatures, and llamas. Also probably some that I am forgetting, and I should mention that there were some more enclosures for wild cats, like Tigers and Leopards, but they were hiding somewhere, probably because of the heat.
Another German sign that is hard to understand by picture!
Thank goodness I know what "Fuettern verboten" means. Otherwise, I would not be giving an rocks to baby dinosaurs.
For my FRFlings
Part of the zoo is also botanical gardens, which meant there were some really cool green houses and very pretty landscaped areas. Hence we got lots of great views:
We left the zoo a little after 4:30, at which time we were both feeling a little grumpy from the heat (and Tyler was already exhausted from walking) so instead of going to the Mercedes Museum, we went to the Schlossgarten in Stuttgart Stadtmitte. We ate our lunch there, and took about an hour long nap in a shady area of the grass, before taking a stroll through the Stuttgart Stadtmitte.
It's hard to tell, but Tyler is standing on the balcony.
This is a shop I've passed many times and been dying for Tyler to see. They have fancy pipes (like Sherlock holmes style) as well as very fancy and classy looking scotch and whiskey.
Fountain near charlottenplatz
statue on markt platz. No idea who it's of. Probably a friedrich or Wilhelm
Tower!
Alt schloss
Me at schillerplatz 
Schillerplatz
The koenigsbau building
The Neue Schloss
In the evening, we met up with some of my friends ( Finnish people this time as well) at the schloss platz and sat in the grass listening to a high school jazz and blues band that was playing. After about an hour, Tyler and I headed to Marienstrasse and bought Kebaps for dinner (my favorite "german" fast food).
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