Germany Day 1: Zurueck! (Back!) - Adentures with Sleepy Sheep

May 13, 2019

2 min read

Despite a rough spring, I made it to the Schema ST4 conference in Nürnberg! Of course just getting there is an adventure by itself. I had a wonderful travelling companion, none other than Mssr. Andres Lepage, Canada's Vice-président, Services linguistiques! Boy there's a career aspiration!! I wish I could be as fluent in German, Welsh and Czech (wait, what?? 🙃) as he is in French, Italian and English. Talked for a good hour about, well, everything, and it was heartening to hear him say Canadians believe fully that we Americans will sort our country out and regain international respect and esteem. And he paid me the biggest compliment: "You could pass for Canadian." 🤩

But the powers of chaos made up for it: The flight was lousy with a fussy child, the whole way, even after the plane was darkened for sleep. Also Charles de Gaulle airport was disappointing. I expected it to be on par with the Zürich airport but it was more like a municipal airport. This really sucks because I have a 4 hour layover on the way home. But that's off topic.

France is beautiful. I can't wait to spend some real time there!

Yes I had soup for breakfast - and rose flavored chocolate.

Nürnberg is gorgeous! It has the feel of a lovely village tucked into a forest. In fact, my hotel is patterned after a medieval monastery, and it is tucked into the woods. It's also right next to a medieval church circa 1246, Rundkapelle - the Round Chapel (see tomorrow's post). One of my favorite traits of Germany in general is there are dogs everywhere, often off-leash. The national expectation is that they're friendly and well-behaved, and of course, they are. So people aren't shy about taking them into cafes. Why are Americans so damn uptight?? Remind me why I'm going home later??

H+ Hotel Nürnberg (formerly Ramada Nürnberg Landhotel. Google still has it listed like this.) I highly recommend staying here.

Some hotels leave a mint on your pillow. We get Sleepy Sheep gummi candy!

Dinner at Sara und Luigi's Pizza was lovely! One thing I'd forgotten is a lot of places take only cash. Ooops. Since it was Sunday and no banks were open, I still had only American currency. Sara was upset (but nice about it) until I showed her that with the exchange rate, my $20 was €1.75 more than my bill. I didn't ask for change.