Auf Wiedersehen, Stuttgart

Everyone on the Summer University program in Stuttgart left on Thursday or Friday this week, so there plenty of sad and sometimes awkward goodbyes. Awkward in that many of the 47 or so of us many never see most of the people we've met in these six weeks again. So really, there were the 'Take care' and 'Have a nice life' kind of goodbyes. Though Jon will see the Zipperlen's again around July 10 when he passes thruogh on his way to Berlin, I will not. So we had a true movie goodbye on Friday as the mother and father waved to us from their doorway at about 12:15 in the morning as we left to the Hauptbahnhof. That is, until we returned 20 minutes later because we missed the last S-bahn by 30 seconds and asked them to drive us the the station.

Getting to know Stuttgart and learning some German was amazing, and though I'll start out with some scenic shots, it's the people that you'll really miss. The following are a couple of pictures that Matthias compiled from the students and asked me to post. Sorry if the pictures kill your browser. For those of you fellow pseudo-Stuttgarters, drop me a line if you're ever in the New York City area.


Good old Böblingerstr., where we had German class everyday at 8:45 in the morning.


Kim and Allison having a good time at the American hot spot, the Irish Pub.


Here's me, Brett, and Jon. We pretty much have no idea what's going on.


Erika, Kathleen, Claire, Kim, and Paige posing in the Schlossplatz. It's symmetrical too, so that's even mathematically beautiful. Awww yeah.


Leonid, Venzislav, and Brad having a deep conversation over some beers at the Biergarten.


This happened so often. Everyone has a digital camera and you've got to take pictures for everyone else.


Well, postcards too. Everyone's got pictures and postcards. Maybe it's just me. And Erica. Let me know how your postcard collage turns out!


Okay, we need corkscrews a lot too. Jon is also a pretty sweet chef in the kitchen.


For the wine of course! I think Steph is representing the United States and Dieter the Canadians in this wine chugging contest.

I was in Amsterdam this past weekend (July 2 morning until July 4 afternoon) with Allison and Jon and we ran into Nick and Christine at Centraal Station when we were leaving. It was pretty cool there, but slightly expensive and not so clean. I'll upload pictures in the next post, but now we've been in Paris (July 4 night to July 7 morning). It's really sweet here, saw the Louvre, Eiffel Tower, Latin Quarter, etc. Got to go, but I will try to find time to put up pictures. Countries have different keyboards, which sucks. From now on, I'm going to try to have some pictures from Stuttgart in each post because there are so many. Bon chance.