Monday: Tourist Training in a Hatchback

 After the students got checked in, we met up with them in Tübingen and set off to do some area sight seeing that we didn't think they'd get otherwise. Unfortunately, we couldn't get a car big enough to hold them all. We took the ladies and sent the men on the train, which worked great getting from Tübingen to the Bad Urach waterfall.

 We stopped in the town of Bad Urach and looked around. We saw the church, the water wheel, the town square where we had come in 2011 with the boys. Having come here before is what helped us know what to the options were with the students. We had tried out the hike with little boys, we knew what we could fit in a day, and we had other options (Sigmaringen or Ludwigsburg or Waldenbuch) for them to choose from.
This is the huge advantage of having a scouting trip like Switzerland, where you can get the lay of the land without 30 students at your back waiting for you to figure it out. 

The ladies bought some lunch and were heartened that they were able to order and be understood (that's always a good moment when you speak and someone gives you something to eat. Yay! I won't starve!).

We picked up the guys and did our little hike.

 It was as beautiful and green as I had remembered. We could have gone on a longer hike, but the students were in the throes of jet lag and we decided to take it easy.

We came back down and tried out the Kneippanlage. This is an idea by one Sebastian Kneippe and it is his tuberculosis cure. You have to walk around this pool repeatedly, being certain to lift your feet all the way out of the cold water.

Then you submerge your forearms in more cold water.

But you don't towel off! You walk around on this tretwiese (a walking meadow) to dry off. My theory is that it was probably good for them to get out of all of their uptight clothes of the period. Certainly it felt great after the hike and my feet were much happier to be back in my shoes.

At this point, we set the guys back on the train to meet us for the next leg of our adventure. But then we found out it was going to take them 90 minutes or so to catch up with us, so we tried to find them at the neighboring town of Reutlingen. Reutlingen is to Tubingen as Orem is to Provo and they have a rivalry about which town is better and whose wine is worse. I told the guys we were waiting for them here at this "cute tower" and they mocked me until they saw it. Then they conceded that it is a cute tower.

We had a heinous time finding our way to Schloss Lichtenstein, made worse by construction, a detour and having all five students in the back seat of our peugeot. They were uncomplaining even though it was NOT a short or simple ride.

The castle was even better than I had remembered it (since last time I was wrangling a Joss). It's really an amazing setting and some of those rooms are magnificent. We got everybody back to Tübingen, and then Rob and I were ready to crash!