Another weekend excursion

I decided to stick close to home this weekend as I was rather tired this week. That long weekend wore me out. ha! I drove over to Neustadt (pron. "noy-shtott"), which the guy across the hall had mentioned as a place to shop.

I found the stadtmitte -- city middle -- which is where the shopping area is usually found. I was able to park right on the main street, which was just one-hour parking. That's okay. I did enough damage in the hour to justify leaving after that.

In the stadtmitte I found several clothing stores with which I'm familiar including H&M and C&A. I also found a new one, Woehle, which was quite nice. It's getting very chilly here, so I bought several sweaters.

I had a short chat in German with a friendly store clerk in Woehle. She was very complimentary of my German. I was able to say most of what I wanted and to understand most of what she said. However, my German leaves a LOT to be desired. Still, I'm sure most of the Americans she encounters can say nothing but "thank you" in German, so I'm not the norm. I'm glad I'm taking the German class, although truthfully, I'm not using much of what I'm learning yet. Still, I'm slowly building my vocabulary and brushing up on grammar, so it's worth it.

I'm sure I've mentioned this previously, but I'm STILL living in a temporary place so I don't have any of the things that I shipped over. In my suitcases and the couple of boxes I mailed, I included mostly summer clothes. Shortsighted on my part.

My plan was to leave the Neustadt stadtmitte and go to a Chinese restaurant I'd passed on the way into town. However, it was closed. I decided to check out a couple of other small towns I'd heard about, so I stopped in Parsberg at the autohof (place to get gas and food just off the autobahn, or major highway) for food since I was starving. The food offering there is McDonald's, my first time to eat at one here. I avoid American places off post, but given that it was mid-afternoon in a rural part of Germany, this was the best option (and, believe it or not, quite popular with the Germans, and I also heard Italian and another language spoken there). I will say that this McD's has a very nice coffee bar with coffee that's quite good, and the atmosphere is classier than with those in the US!

After a quick lunch of chicken McNuggets, I got a to-go latte and was on my way. I drove quickly through Kallmuenz and will return there some Saturday morning when I want to walk around. I also drove through Burglangenfeld, a larger town with a nice downtown. I drove up to the huge fortress above the town but didn't get out of the car. I'm going to return when I have my camera so I can document the exploration.

Okay, that's all for now. It's almost evening, and I'm going to go back to my room to read some more of "Outlander" by Diane Gabaldon. If you haven't heard of it, it's about a woman in Scotland who inadvertently touches a special rock and ends up traveling back 200 years. The story is fascinating. Apparently there are 6-7 books in the series. This first one is about 800 pages.

Bis spaeter! (Until later!)