Hey! It's Sam. Well today was quite an adventure. We felt bad for making our sponsor, Ed, drive us around all the time, so we got a rental car. Plus, we wanted the independance of going out on the weekends anyway. We rented this cool little bubble of a car called the Citroen Picasso. It looked cool enough in the lot, so I said, "Why not"?

I know. I know. The picture kinda makes it look like a mini-van. It's not. It's more like a slightly bigger, slightly funnier looking Prius.

Well, I kinda new it was going to happen, but the thought never really came to mind until I was about to sit in the car for the first time. "It's a stick shift." I can handle my motorcycle very well and shift just fine, but a car is different. Last time I had to drive one was when I was here 9 years ago. The last tim I tried, about three years ago, I stalled 6 times in a row. So I had to ask Ed to remind me how it works. He quickly slipped into his temporary Dad role and reminded me of how to do it. I actually got rolling fairly quickly. I didn't even stall untill about the 10th start from a stoplight. I made myself and the guy behind me miss our left turn light. He gave a nice long horn honk and I could see his hands doing the, "What te F*%#?" gesture. Oh well! I told Carrie that I needed the bright yellow "student driver" sticker to put on the back of the car.

We drove around town for a small bit to try and get our bearings, and finally settled on a nice restaurant that we went to last week with another couple, "The Korkenzieher". It translates into "The Corkscrew".

I parked in a lot that seemed like one of the ones that you only have to pay for during the daytime prime hours. Not wanting a ticket, I attemped to ask a local about whether to pay or not. He walked me over to the machine and pointed at the timespans. The daytime one, about 0900-1800, he pointed at and said "Money". Then he put his two index fingers before and after the time frame and said "no money". What better conversation could you want betwen two men. It was short, to the point, and successful.

We had a great dinner and learned a tiny bit more German from the waitress. She recognized us from before, and we had actually all seen eachother at another restaraunt last night. What luck?It sure is great getting to eat out $45-50 meals just about every night and have the govt. reimburse you. She asked if we were tourists since we were eating out so much and we told here we just moved her to be teachers. She was so amazed by that and thought it was funny we wanted to stay here a long time and do that. After our pork (Schwein=swine=pork all over the menus) dinner, we took another another leisurely drive-read as "got lost"- and made it back to the hotel.

That was our adventure for the day. Thanks for taking the time to share in our excitement.