ROTTENDORF to WARZBURG to ROTTENDORF to USA to ROTTENDORF

Today, I was woken up by Mike's dog licking my face. He is an old dog who was an award-winning hunting dog. Now is partially deaf and just hobbles around on his old legs. He is a very friendly dog and Meg's new friend.

We had a pretty slow morning, but it felt good. It is spring break and we are supposed to be relaxing, right? Well, we made it out of the house by noon (I think). We met Mike and his friend Rudy for lunch in downtown Warzburg near the cathedral. We ate at an old mill on the Rhine that looks out across the river onto the dominating castle. The restaurant is known for the ambiance and typical German foods. I ordered the Blau Zipfel, I think. Mike recommended it as a good German meal. It was very tasty sausage. I enjoyed it. We then walked around and Mike took us into the City Council building and took us to a couple behind the scenes rooms (Having been in the military for so long he has a lot of connections and influence when he talks to some people). Mike and his friend then had to get back to work so they left.

Tom, Meg, and I then headed up to the castle. It was a pretty good walk up the side of the mountain to the castle. We weren't exactly sure if we were going the right way or not so we just kept going up towards the castle. It started raining a little and lasted the rest of the afternoon. It put a bit of a damper on everything but we managed. We walked through the parts of the castle that we could. The ticket office was closed so we don't know what the deal was there. There were tour groups walking around but we had no idea where to pay so we just walked through the castle. We didn't go into the museum part of the castle because it cost a little bit and it closed soon, so we walked through the gardens instead. We took a different direction down the mountain and had a bit of an adventure. We saw these random little cottages in a cluster on the side of the mountain that must have been asscoiated with the castle somehow. We saw some very beatuiful landscape, such as rock gardens and a Japanese garden. The cottage neighborhood was a lot of fun to walk through and provided many nice pictures. We made it back to the Rhine River eventually and crossed the bridge back to our side of the river. We stopped at a cafe and had a little something to tide us over until dinner. On the way home we stopped at the grocery store and picked up some food to make dinner.

I worked on uploading my pictures onto Tom's computer. I used Mike's computer in his basement to check my email and what not.

Meg made a very good dinner tonight. I don't remember the name of it but it was delicious. She said she can't explain what it was but it involved potatoes, beef, lettuce, onions, eggs, and flour. She told us that she will make it for Aldana some night. I hope she does.

After dinner, Mike drove us to the military base where he works. We had to take our passports because we technically left Germany and were walking around on American soil. It was pretty strange. It seemed like a little America. There was a KFC, a Burger King, a Wal-Mart type place, and a basbeall diamond. It wasn't too busy though because the troops are all over in Iraq so it was a quiet night on base. He showed us where his two sons Matthew and Andrew go to school on the base and where the officers all live on the base. It was exciting driving around the area, especially when we stopped in the supermarket. It was all American goods and they used US dollars instead of euros (I bought a Butterfinger because I just couldn't resist).