whatever: Ben's visit, cont'd

First things first. I haven't talked about German pretzels.

And by talk about them, I mean to tell you (as I assume you've already assumed) that they are amazing. Perfect balance of crunchy and soft, perfect amount of salt, and ordering a butter pretzel will be the best decision you ever made. Example A:

The butter pretzel. You can get it without chives if you so desire, but if you don't mind them they really make this pretzel even better, which is hard to do when you started out with a pretzel that was already so damn good. Also, only costs one Euro. WHAT. I should spend all of my stipend on pretzels? Maybe. Just maybe.

Anyway, after failing to make the train to Baden-Baden, Ben and I decided to take the boat down the river to Neckarsteinach.

Just in case we forgot, the flag off the end of the boat reminded us we were in fact in Germany. (phew, amiright?)

We passed by the town where Brahms was born and lived:

Or at least, so you think. The voice-over on the boat said that this was the town where Brahms was from, but Wikipedia never lies and says he was in fact born in Hamburg. So, it's up to you who you believe. (I think this town is called Ziegelhausen, but it's unclear. w/e?)

There were plenty of things to pay attention to on the boat itself though, like this awesome family sitting in front of us. I think the pictures say more than I could in words.

And, as we approached the end of our journey in Neckarsteinach, we begin to see Medieval castles. Hoorah!

Beautiful beautiful beautiful.

Neckarsteinach seems to be a typical, quaint river town with tourism as its main economy. And, well, I would assume they're not poor for this reason. This place is seriously idyllic - you've probably dreamed about it without knowing what it was. That's what kind of place this is.

Anyway, after climbing up stairs to one of the old castles, this was the view:

(I think I'm getting better at making panoramas?)

And the view of the ruins of the castle itself from the top:

Not to mention the spontaneous (and very willingly taken by all, especially Ben *cough cough) nature walk we took down to an offshoot of the river through thick woods of the Black Forest.

I mean, come on, there were WILD RASPBERRIES. At least that's what they looked like. We didn't eat them... but they looked scrumptious. Nature collage:

It was really really beautiful, if I haven't hit that fact home yet.

And now, the obligatory pictures of food from our adventures throughout Heidelberg. Don't worry, I've consolidated the (many) pictures into one main one for you to stare at and admire both my photoshop-manship and the delicious food that you didn't get to eat. Although we ate more German food than is on this collage (which includes 2 delicious pasta dishes, a Kristal Wiesen beer (top left), Vietnamese noodle dish with chicken (top right), another wiesen beer (top right right), a delicious banana split (bottom right) and crepe sundae (bottom left)), all of this food was delicious as well. Maybe we were too excited about eating the various schnitzel we ordered before we could think of taking a picture? Maybe. But in any case, here's the grand food collage: