Why I'm not training (again): Germany

In my last post, I talked about what an abysmal Rally run I had with Ziggy.  Logic would dictate that this week I would spend time working through focus issues.  Is my life run by logic?  Nope.  Instead of practicing, I left home on Saturday and flew overseas.

Here are some pictures & notes from my trip so far:

Sunday

We arrived in Germany late morning and checked into our hotel just before noon. Our task for the day: try to beat jetlag by staying awake until bedtime. To do this, we took a walk around the city, ate a nice, leisurely lunch, and had a cup of coffee. It was Starbucks coffee if you must know. I know, "that's so American." But hey, "Grande Latte" is the same in German as it is in English.

Here are some pictures from the City Center:

 Monday

I managed to sleep all night (from 7:30pm to 5:30 am) - yeah!  It was back to work early Monday morning.  After a long day of meetings - interspersed with infusions of caffeine - our colleagues took us to a town outside of the city for dinner.

What a lovely place!  The walls were built in the 1300's.

The restaurant we went to was just lovely

(outside)

(inside)

 This restaurant also had an official greeter:

(a sweet old lady of 15 years)

2 other things the restaurant had: 

1. Spargel (white asparagus) - it's the beginning of spargel season so I chose the spargel menu.  Spargel starter, spargel soup, and spargel as a highlight of the main course.  I had rhubarb tiramisu for dessert.  The food was fantastic, and very different from anything I'd have in Iowa...
2. Great reisling.  This region of Germany is known for reisling.  We had sparkling reisling before the meal (wow was that good!) and a wonderful bottle of reisling with dinner.  I'm not normally a white wine person, and I loved this!

Late evening is a nice time to peek in windows, and admire a unique chandelier:

Tuesday

Back to the office today for more meetings.  We were on our own for dinner tonight, so wandered to a local pub for some goat cheese flammkuchen (like a flatbread pizza) and some local pilsner.