Over the river and through the woods to Bayreuth we go

Bayreuth Monday Jan 10, 2011

We wake up, pack, and get everything ready to go as we are leaving soon for the long awaited Bayreuth. Breakfast is the same as always and at this point it doesn’t matter we have assimilated into the German breakfast culture. We got on the bus which was soo much bigger than the one we took the Berlin city tour on. Pretty much all of us got our own seat if we wanted it and the trip was fairly comfortable. We stopped at a rest stop close to Leipzig, and again it proved that German transportation systems were amazing. It was basically a high class restaurant and it had everything else you needed too. We bought some stuff including what we thought was a children’s book and we couldn’t understand any of it because it was all slang. We continued on to Bayreuth and passed about a million wind turbines, more props for Germany, pun intended. We finally reached our destination and then we waited because we were earlier than expected. Pete and I decided we should bet Jim we would be the last ones to leave with our family, we didn’t buuuut we should have. We were the last ones, it wasn’t our family’s fault they took another group home first and it wasn’t bad because we got to meet all the other parents first. We met Herbert and Olga and they whisked us away to their house. Their house is located on the upper east side of Bayreuth, in an area called St. Johannis. The area is out of the city and REAALLLY nice. The house looks really nice on the outside and even nicer on the inside. Olga is from Honduras and they have all of this furniture and things from there that they shipped here from Honduras in container. The house is really beautiful and everyone at home would be jealous. The area is really nice but everyone is so far away so it’s kind of a pain.

                We got sort of settled in it was kind of awkward, it wouldn’t be a meeting if it wasn’t awkward, and then we had to keep on rolling. We headed to the Begrüssungsabend, or Greetings Dinner, at a traditional Bayreuth restaurant. I got the Schnitzel with fries and it was super good. We all got Bayreuth beer and it also was very good. All of the host families came to the dinner so it was fun to meet everyone else’s parents. We went home and ended up drinking more with Herbert. I hope this doesn’t become a pattern because I’ll be an alcoholic by the time we come back.  After more beer sleep came easy, the bed was comfy and I was beat.