Spelling counts. Spelling counts, especially when you are in a foreign land, using a GPS. We found this out this morning. Thankfully, we discovered it early.

After another relaxing breakfast, we packed up our VW Touran and headed out. Destination - Freiburg. For this trip, we have basically been putting in the city center of the next destination and then tweaking it once we dig out the address. This is more because we are so immersed in this trip that we don't think "hey we need the address for where we're going" ...... It's more like "WOW .. look at that" "That's Awesome" "SQUIRREL!" ..... of should I say "EICHHÖRNCHEN!" ... The best part of learning how to say squirrel in German is ... well ... Tim and I walking around saying squirrel in German. I Germans are probably like "why are those two fools walking around saying "EICHHÖRNCHEN!" ..... It's just our thing. We're happy and we know it ... SQUIRREL.

So after inputting "Freiberg" center into our GPS, Else ..... aka Fraulein Wurst ..... we sadly headed out of Hornberg. On the way out we were discussing the lack of German flags in front of people's homes here. You just don't see it much. Not 2 minutes after we talked about that we drive past a house with a big ass American flag flapping in the breeze. Didn't get a photo because we passed too fast. I almost turned around but sometimes .... Things are just for memory. A few km up the road I looked at Elsa and it's telling me the distance to Freiburg is 586km with an arrival time of 15:43. Uuuuh .... That's not right ...... Spelling counts. You say Freiburg and I say Freiberg and you'll get to your next destination while I'm driving all over Northern Germany ....... so after discovering that little gaff ...we got the spelling corrected and were on our way. Which coincidentally enough took us back past the what I can only imagine is the displaced American ... or Germans that REALLY love us.

The drive to Freiburg was a nice gentle roll through the Black Forrest. We arrived in Freiburg around 10:00. After spending the last several days in smaller towns, Freiburg was like driving into metropolis .... We found parking in short order and headed out on foot. We wound our way to Marktplatz where the Freiburg Minster stands. The Freiburg Minster is a 1200s era gothic cathedral. Stunning. You know what else was stunning? Our moronic decision to ascend the turm (tower). So imagine this. Actually I don't even have a good analogy. Hundreds of steps in an extremely narrow spiral tube with little and people coming down as well as going up. Every one of us at one point in that climb got a little bungled up. Middle aged, heavy exertion, poor air quality = not on our top 10 list of awesome. But we made it up there and it was kind of cool. The bells were incredible .... Until they started ringing with us standing right beside them. Remember the cartoon cat hanging on the ceiling by its claws when startled? Yep. That was us.

By the time we started winding back down the turm, I really needed to find a WC. On the decent, Tim got *****ed at by some dude for ... I dunno ... walking down the stairs wrong? I guess we missed that Pinterest pin. You know .... The one about steps protocol. After we hit the street, we found a place with a seat. Not just a place because there was lots of those. Marktplatz on a Friday in Freiburg .. and my guess any Burg in Germany seems like the hip place to be. So as we're trying to sideways and suck our way to the table through the aisle which would have been a tight fit for a large cat, let alone people who have been eating and drinking for a week straight, it becomes Laurie's turn to get yelled at by some angry old lady who pushed her chair back into Laurie as she was walking by. So after nearly killing ourselves in the tower of death, and half our team getting *****ed at by what I personally was seeing as a very harsh, angry people in Freiburg .... We decided that although it was quite historical and lovely (like everything we had seen to that point) ..... Freiburg wasn't our bag baby. Itwasn't horrible and not all the people were harsh. The vendor we bought some Black Forrest wood cutting boards from was VERY nice. Even chased us down to update us on a quesiton we had asked him about the old city gate .... Which we never found anyway. In spite of that we decided to go check out the train up to what looked very castle-esque. I don't have a description because we never made it. We got to the station, and the train had broken down.

A bag of chips later and we were headed out of town.

As Elsa was calmly reading our directions in that sexy British accent .... I mean c'mon. How's a guy supposed to drive?? I did notice the A5 right next to us, but she would NOT direct us onto it. All back roads. ??? To make a 20 minute story involving us thinking up every possible scenario as to why we couldn't be directed on to the A5 .... Including theory involving aliens .... I discovered that on the way to Hornberg .... in order to try and get past that German town that was just ... closed .... we had told her to avoid major highways ..... so yea. Mystery solved. Our first world problems are real ....

Karlsruhe ......Now begins the homecoming. Now as most of you know, Karlsruhe was my home for almost 4 years back in the 90's ... Well 3 1/2 but in German that's halb vier so close enough .... Ja? Ja Ja. As we got closer to town and I started mildly recognizing things, my excitement was building. I was not sure as to what to expect. The first thing we were going to do on the way in was to check out the site of the Neureut Kaserne, and then go check out where I lived in Paul Revere Villiage (PRV) .. the family housing community located between Neureut (a suburb if you will of Karlsruhe) and the city itself. Neureut would be like a Bloomfield or a Shadyside yinz Pittsburghers.

As construction and Elsa would dictate, we ended up at PRV first. I was shocked to see the United States Army - Paul Revere Village sign still standing. My old building was 3076 Kanalweg back in the 90's. It now not only looked a little different, but was even numbered differently. We walked up to check it out as I told stories about life in the Army circa 1992-1995 at that location. We had only been there for a few moments when a twitchy young middle eastern dude didn't seem to appreciate the fact that a bunch of Americans were standing on his turf .. Which it was. "His" turf now. So I got the troops out of there in short order. Oh that United States Army sign right next to his building must be killing him!

We then drove to the Neureut Kaserne site. Now I knew it was gone and that there was a neighborhood there but it still didn't ease the shock all that much. Nothing was left. Nothing. We drove up the main strip and back .... .and nothing. Nada. Nichts. And that's that.

Karlsruhe is a mess. Don't get me wrong, I will forever love the city ... but it's a freaking disaster. They're building a subway and all of downtown is under construction. Really quite sad too because Marktplatz and Karl-Friedrich Straße which runs straight out from the Schloß is almost unrecognizable. After many u-turns and accompanying &^&%$)($ we found the parking garage to the hotel I was especially glad because I was tired of driving. We have already logged over 1,000 km this week and I needed out of the car.

The Novotel Karlsruhe is a very modern, very international hotel. It was probably one of the nicest hotel rooms I've stayed in to date. They have a lighting system where you have to have your room key in the card slot on the wall by the door for the lights to operate. As soon as you remove the card, the lights shut of in about 15 seconds. The journey of discovery to this point was fairly hilarious. including me turning off the lights on Heather a few times while she was in the bathroom .... After we got settled, we got ready and headed down to Marktplatz to meet one of my dearest friends Daniel. Unfortunately, as often happens in life, I have not seen Daniel in 20 years! We met at the Neue Welle Lounge overlooking Martplatz. There we ate, had a few beers, and caught up on life. Daniel, Heather, Tim, and Laurie all hit it off splendidly! After a while, the long day and the trip was taking it's toll so we called it a night and headed back to the Novotel. We agreed to meet in the afternoon tomorrow and Daniel as going to Show us Durlach. Durlach is where Daniel has lived all his life. It is the town where Karl Friedrich is rumored to have fallen asleep and dreamt of the Karlsruhe Schloss. We were about to get our own personal guided tour of the town Karlsruhe was born. But first ...... Schlaffen Gute gute schlaffen.