"I think something just broke"

This one was a pretty good week. It's hard to justify any one week being "the best", but I'd say this one was on par with the others. The Food and Drug Ministry was interesting, as far as seeing how Germany controls and runs the different regulations and policies. I'm not going to lie though, I was excited when lunch came around since we had found a place that had 1.50 döners last time we were in Bonn. It was great. The Rhine tour was also great, I was a little disappointed with the boat though. It seems that up to this point we hadn't really done touristy things in the traditional sense, and while it was a very nice boat and I had a great time, the number of tourists on the boat bothered me just a little. And yes, Ashley was being "emo" by standing out in the rain on the boat. The Castle was also great, Europe seems to be all about ornate-ness as far as buildings and especially churches go, and this places was no exception. It wouldve been amazing to live there back in the day. The wine tasting, of course, was a delight, even though I prefer white wine. Thursday was a day to remember, I had never seen a surgery before, let alone an open heart surgery. I was amazed at how rough it seems the surgeons were with the patient's body, maybe its just from their experience but I would've been a little more delicate with a 78 year old woman's body that had already gone though a valve replacement.

This weekend was great as well, Pete, Sharon, Ashley and I just took the weekend off and picked a tiny town along the Mosel river to just chill all weekend. We had nothing planned except for the B&B we stayed at, which was a nice old couple's house on the edge of the main drag with a great view off the terrace of the surrounding hills with vineyards and the river. Friday night we had a great dinner, a bunch of wine, and walked 4 kilometers to the next town to a wine festival where we saw a german oompah band and some fireworks above the vineyards. Ashley and Sharon were scared walking back to our town in the dark along the river, but by this time I had had enough wine to feel for the most part invincible, so me and Pete werent worried at all.

Saturday we schlepped around until we found a random spot along the river where there was no one around, and just layed around all afternoon. I am amazed at how many good skipping rocks Germany has, one rock I swear got at least 20 skips. That night we found a really good Italian place, picked up Pete's phone that he left at the restaurant the night before, a couple wine bars (literally a bar in the town square where they only serve wine from the major winery in town, Schwarze Katz), and headed back to terrace at the B&B to chill. Thus far we had been the only people to stay here, so we made ourselves at home with our bottles of wine and a game of scrabble we found. It was getting pretty windy, and all of a sudden we heard a door slam and the crash of glass. We were about to go back to our game when the landlady (Frau Gertrude) came up and told us to come down. Since we figured it was something we probably did, we sent Sharon and Ashley since (and this is a known fact) girls get better treatment in foreign countries. It turns out we were getting sort of blamed for the breakfast room door slamming because of the open windows and breaking the glass within it. They said it was the most terrifying experience of their lives being yelled at in German by an old German lady. It might've also been the fact that it was almost midnight and four American exchange students were on their terrace drinking wine and being a little loud. Either way it all turned out and we didn't have to pay for it, but it was still an experience nonetheless. The ride home was uneventful, and I am really looking forward to Berlin. This is also a huge post, sorry.