Day 3: Marburg!

Day 3 was one of my favorite days because it was the day that we went to pick Brig up from school :) I woke up pretty early, very excited and anxious. Candice and Tyler were awesome again. They rented a van so that all 9 of us could ride together. Thanks so much again for that you two! We packed up the kids and lunches and were off!

Marburg is about 2 hours away from where Candice lives. The drive felt a lot longer to me than it really was. The anticipation was killing me! We arrived a little later than we'd planned on, and had a little bit of a hard time finding where we were supposed to meet Brig. Also, trying to navigate a huge van through all those tiny streets and traffic is not the easiest thing in the world to do. Tyler did it like a champ ;) He's pretty much a pro after 7 years! We pulled into a parking lot to turn around and then I spotted Brig from a distance! I could tell it was him by the way he walked, haha. It's funny how you get to know such little things about people so well.
I was so excited to see him! Yay!

"Reunited, and it feeels so gooood" ;)

Brig and the kids. They were all so excited to see him too :) Porter told me before we left that he was going to get "uncle Pig" to play just dance with him if it was the last thing he did! They just thought that would be the funniest thing. They were probably right in assuming that ;) Sadly, it never did happen.

We spent most of the day there just walking around and seeing the city. This is the building where Brig had all of his classes.

This is a church across the parking lot. I was totally blown away by it! Such a beautiful site. I am pretty bummed because there are SO many things that you can take tours of, but if you do it all, you will certainly not want to look at your bank statements at the end of the month. We didn't take a tour of this, but we enjoyed what we saw.
Side note: Everything in Europe is so expensive! I do not know how people can afford to live there. Case in point: Gas on the economy is around $7/gallon. SEVEN DOLLARS! Nuts. My brother in law works on the base, so they do their grocery shopping and get gas there, which is much cheaper.

This is a place across the street from the church where Brig would go to eat occasionally. It is a Turkish place where you can get these things called doner kababs. Pure heaven! Can't believe I didn't know about these before. We didn't get one at this place, but there will be more on those later.

This is where Brig lived. That top corner room was his. It was pretty interesting, because apparently this area is pretty shady. What is so interesting about that is that it was actually a really pretty place. Just kind of backwards from a lot of what we're used to. Here, further away from the city and more green is usually much safer and more desirable, but at least in Marburg, it seemed to be the other way around.

This is the building that Brig had to go to to use the internet to talk to me :)

This is part of the campus. The campus is actually scattered around the city, but this is like the cafeteria area. Really pretty.

We decided that it would be pretty fun to go out on the river in these paddle boats. It was really hot, so we had to go slow, but it was nice and peaceful. Our poor boat was not very fast, and my nephew was not happy that my sister and her boat "beat" us ;)

Cute kids ;)

The "winners"

All of those building that you can see on the ridge are the old town. There is actually an elevator now to get up there. Apparently the Brothers Grim lived in one of these houses for 3 years, writing some of their stories. It is just totally picturesque, I can see why they stayed so long.

Stopping to get a brat. The brats are really long and they serve them on these tiny round buns. So the brat actually sticks way out on both ends. You have to fold it to get it to fit right.

Love these two boys :)

The old town

Candy shop. Brig's favorite :)

This is another old church that's been converted into part of the school.

Me and Candice :)
(Funny note: Candice and I both have the same "good side" so if you'll notice, in all of our pictures together, we're posing awkwardly, just to avoid having to show our bad side, haha. Candice doesn't know what she's talking about though, BOTH of her sides are good. Don't even try and fight me on this one Can!)

Marburg was such an awesome place. Brig said its about the same size as Logan, but with at least 3 times as many people. It really was amazing to see how busy it was, plus all of the tourists that were there. Another interesting fact about Marburg is that it is the #1 city in Germany that was affected the least by WWII. Back then the city was under high Nazi influence, so it wasn't really ever in danger. Pretty interesting to think about.

After we left Marbug, we stopped at this little gem of a place to try some of that Turkish food that I mentioned earlier.This is Candice and Tyler's favorite place to get Doners. What they do for a doner is take a big slab of lamb meat, and they rotate it around on a spit that cooks it. Then they take a knife kind of thing and shave off parts of the meat so that they're like, well, shavings...? I'm really not good at explaining things, haha. Anyway, then they load it into this bread, kind of like a pita type thing, and stuff it with veggies. Then they have lots of different sauces and things that they put in it. While it was very tasty, what I got was even better! Turkish pizza, YUM! It is pretty much the same thing, only they put the meat and veggies on more of a tortilla type thing, and then they use a different sauce and roll it all up kind of like a burrito. OH MY HECK! So tasty! And so HUGE! I have been craving one since we left and I am so sad that I can't find a place in Utah to get one. If anyone knows of a place, PLEASE tell me :)

My boy eating his doner back at the house.

Getting to pick Brig up really was a highlight of the trip. A month is really not that long, but when you think about it, it kind of is a long time! It was so nice to be able to walk around with him, and see where he'd been living, and all the things that he'd experienced. I wish I could have spent that month there with him, but I do think that being home alone really was a good thing for me. It teaches you a lot of things. I'm just grateful that I had the dogs, family, and work to keep me busy :) And so grateful again for a family that helped me to be able to get to Germany so that I could see it all!
It was one wonderful day :)


Next Stop: Switzerland!