a long and crowded train ride later, we find ourselves in western germany at long last. this is outside freiburg, in the black forest, and that's eric and dan, another of our gracious hosts.
i lied when i titled this germany, part three. this is france. kinda looks a lot like germany, except everyone speaks french. it was a nice (swelteringly hot) day though, and we wandered around in strasbourg (an easy train ride from germany across the rhine). it was cool under the bridge on the canal.
this swan was huge. it swooped down out of the sky and looked like it was going to attack us. crazy french swans.
cool view of the canal.
the strasbourg cathedral. probably the coolest outside of a cathedral we saw. the inside was nice too, but they started having mass while we were in there. no signs, no warning, no nothing...just started having mass. needless to say, we felt somewhat out of place with our sweaty, backpack-wielding non-catholic non-french-speaking selves, so we took off. kind of neat though, i guess.
after a meal of cheese, bread, and wine on the banks of the canal, and a rainy bug-covered night camping in a field, we made our way back to germany. not before a bird decided to relive itself on my head, though...yes, it was a great travel day. anyhow somehow or other we made it to stuttgart, and this is one of the palaces by night.
more stuttgart at night. there was a really good thai/sushi place there, also it was just a cool city to wander around in.
now we're in heidelberg, the most noteworthy attraction of which is this.
eric in some kind of guard tower thing. we had to scale a wall to get up there, and a random group of korean tourists was really excited that we'd climbed said wall when they walked by.
yep, more from the top of the wall.
the castle with the city and the river in the background. we had a really nice campsite right next to the river. or, at least, it was really nice as long as no gigantic barges were going by.