On Thursday, our last full day in Germany, I had my usual breakfast of a buttered sesame seed roll and a cup of coffee. During breakfast, Uncle Winfred called and told Oma that he was going to take Nick and me to Bad Nauheim at 1:30pm. Since I assumed this would take up the majority of the day, I decided to run some errands in Oberursel-Mitte and pack before he arrived.
The trek to Bad Nauheim via the autobahn was only about a half an hour. As we got closer to town, my uncle started pointing at these brown signs that had a picture of an alligator and the word "farm" on them. Apparently on the outskirts of Bad Nauheim there is an alligator farm; go figure. My uncle parked on the street and as soon as we got out of the car, he pointed to the Cardiology Center that we were next to and said he had stayed there for three weeks at somepoint in the last year. This didn't really surprise me considering he has 5 stents already and he is pretty much a walking heart attack who smokes like a chimney. We then wandered over to what appeared to be a giant wall of roots with a water wheel, which is apparently one of many places where saltwater is mined and pumped to the surface in Bad Nauheim. We continued to wander through the park and into the main part of the town to the information center where there were banners advertising the upcoming Elvis festival. Apparently Elvis Presley was stationed in Bad Nauheim for 2 years while he served in the US army, and the town has lived off his legacy ever since.
Up the street from where we were was the Hotel Grunewald, which is on the corner of Elvis Presley-Platz. There is a monument erected in his memory across the street, which happened to have some flowers and candles placed on the ground in front of it, since people who can't make it to Graceland in Nashville tend to use this as a memorial to the King of Rock 'N Roll. After gazing at everything Elvis, we decided to have lunch at Wiener Kaffeehouse. I opted for a slice of chocolate cream cake with a cappucino, which was a marvelously delicious decision.
On our way home from Bad Nauheim, Uncle Winfred drove us up over the Feldberg and into Bad Homburg so that we could see some sights in the park there, including a statue of Kaiser Wilhelm, a Thai temple made of gold, and a fountain. Soon we were back at Oma's for our dinner of schnitzel and potatoes. Oma spent some time meowing at me and laughing because my cat back home is named Schnitzel and she has always been confused that I might actually eat my cat. The joys of a language barrier yet again. I guess the big surprise for everyone, though, was the fact that Uncle Winfred was actually drinking water out on the back patio. From my interpretation, I guess he typically will not eat or drink at Oma's because of the dog. The rest of the evening was spent chatting with Oma, Aunt Edith, Uncle Winfred, and Monika before heading off to bed for some sleep since we had to get up at 5am for breakfast before Herta and Ralf drove us to the airport.
As you can assume, we landed safely at JFK. Chrissy was kind enough to pick us up from the airport to drive us back to East Stroudsburg. I spent the rest of the afternoon catching up with her about life from the past two weeks since we both have had a lot going on. I made sure to stay awake until 11:30pm in an attempt to get me back on a normal sleep schedule. This has only partly worked because I have been wide awake since 5:15am. Oh well, I have plenty of time to catch up on sleep and recuperate before I dive into the real world and try to find myself a job.
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