Day Two, Stuttgart and Mercedes

Ok so I said I was going to update this daily and so far I have failed. but I'm not sure anyone is following this so that's ok it will be for my benefit to do this anyway.
So where how do I begin? Um well the last day I blogged was the day that I had arrived in Stuttgart and we had toured around Eislinger, which is a county of Stuttgart. I have pictures and the last time I bloggeed I said that I would post them but the Internet here is slow and I was not in the best mood so i definitely y did not post them. SO here they are! Oh and the first one is of the Dellus Airport in Washington D.C. where we are the only people in the normally overly crowded airport.

Dellus Airport, the people you see are related to me.

This is Einlinger looking at it from Jan's area. There are hills everywhere and clearings everywhere as well where you can just gaze at the beauty of it. Germany is probably one of the most beautiful places I have ever been.

More of Einlinger

Jan's house.

The next day which was Friday I woke up unusually early and had the most amazing breakfast. Now I'm usually not a morning person nor a breakfast person but Oh my gosh the breakfast her was Amazing. We had like 7 different types of bread to choose from, all baked fresh at the local bakery, which i ha yet to see. Rose hips, raspberry and gooseberry Jams, all made from scratch by Jan's mother and smoked ham from The Black Forrest which is probably my favorite thing. After that we rush down the block and took the subway to Stuttgart, the downtown area, and toured around there. OH! but before that we went to the Fehrsehturm TV. tower.

the tower

outlook from the tower

Tower outlook again

More outlook

More outlook

This tower is the first of it's kind and from the top it's super easy to see the overall beauty of Stuttgart. Anyway after that we headed down to Stuttgart. There  We saw the Old Castle and the New Castle, which aren't really castles at all, they're more like palaces. One thing does this look like a water fountain to you? Like to drink from? no of course not but yet in Germany this is a normal thing and it is quite amazing and awsome! Louisville needs one or 100. Here are some photos of what's happened so far.

A drinking fountain

The Old Castle Area

New Castle from the front. As you can see many people like to hang out here.

Inside Old Castle

NOM NOM NOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!

After touring the New Castles Haylee wanted to go see the Cathedral here, which was actually a really cool place because it was very old, but renovated because it was bombed during World War II and so it is also very modern for a Cathedral on the inside. A quick note, poverty is present everywhere. After exiting the Cathedral I saw, wand I'm sure everyone else did, an obviously sick and homeless woman, with an eye infection sitting there with a sign in German and a almost empty cup (almost empty because she had only a few cents)  And stood outside and waited for the others a little bit and thought and thought about her, occasionally glancing over at her to see what she was doing.What I saw was this woman wiping away the tears from her eye, not because of self pity, but because of her infection. When I first exited the Cathedral I thought to myself "No, I wont giver her anything there are other's here, I'm on vacation, and I can't even read her sign! Why giver her anything?" Then the rest of my group came out and I saw her look at each person each time hoping and waiting to receive something from one of them and each time disappointed. There was something so wrong about this picture, not that my group members were in the wrong, but just something wrong. And then I realized what it was. This woman came to the church, to ashamed to walk inside of it and ask for money, but hopeful that the people bold enough to go inside it and beseech God for blessing would in turn, come out of there renewed and bless her too. And each time someone came out of there she was disappointed, time after time after time until almost all hope is gone. My group began to move away and I started to follow, but I couldn't before turning back to drop a few Euros into her cup. As i came closer and closer to her and her cup she looked me in the eye, still wiping away the tears and very meekly said "Danke". And there I almost lost it I mean, what on Earth could I do other than look at her and smile. After dropping in the money I quickly walked away to return to my group, but there I realized that the body of Christ's job is exactly this, whether on "vacation" or at work our job is to shine the light to the hopeless and to let them know that there hope for them. And that is my spiritual insight from the trip so far.

Inside

Schwaben food so i guess we get the real German experience. After we had finished touring the around the market and castles we st oped for a picnic lunch, which is very popular in this area of Germany I believe because almost everyone does it. We toured the statue gardens the are in front of the Opera house, which Stuttgart is famous for having one of the finest. Sadly we have no culture and did not see them perform.

Our Pic-nic spot!

New castle gardens

new castle garden

Opera House

Mother and New Castle from the back/side

After Stuttgart we toured the Mercedes Benz museum which is actually really cool! We toured there for a which but I think we rushed through it towards the end because we were so tired from walking and I really could care less about German NASCAR. We returned to our abode and basically ate til we passed out from exhaustion.

Mercedes Benx Museum