Ticket to Ride

I had to find something to occupy myself, of course, and I was told that downtown Stuttgart is very nice. I didn't want to drive our beast of a rental car, so I wasn't sure what to do. Someone told me that I should take the train to Stuttgart, and it would be easy and only cost about 3 euros, and I should just do it. Well, if you know me, you know what a giant sissy I am. I get very nervous and anxious doing some things, and especially when I'm by myself, and especially me being in a foreign country, where I couldn't understand everything, so I was nervous. Finally, I psyched myself up for it, walked to the train station (only getting lost once!) and bought my ticket. A train came up about 5 minutes after I got there, and I didn't think it was my train, so I didn't get on it. Right as the doors closed, I figured out it was my train, shoot. The next train was coming in thirty minutes, so I just had to sit there and wait. IT WAS FREEZING so I tried to spend it getting warm, with hardly any luck. The train finally came, and off I went. I made it downtown with no problems, so that was awesome. I walked around, and walked past what seemed to be a department store, with a window display of Legos.

I also walked around a German bookstore for a while, laughing at most of the books, and the translations of the English books. I found Hunger Games, which looks cool

Doesn't Katniss look way cooler on this cover? I like it a lot. I went through a lot of stores, and didn't buy much, mostly because it's like, what would I do with a bunch of it? I found this cool building that I thought was like, the Stuttgart city hall, and took a bunch of pictures of it. Later, when I got back to the hotel, I discovered it was actually a castle that I could have gone into, and I kicked myself for not going up to investigate it further.

Dang me for not just walking up there to find out. After I finished taking these, and walking through their Christmas market, I made my way back to the hotel. I made it there with no problems, and then took a pic of the euros I managed to accumulate during the day

 The euro is weird, in that they have a lot of coins. $1, $2, $0.50, $0.20, etc, are all coin, so you collect a lot of coins with any purchases made. I felt good about the accomplishments made, and that I made it successfully there and back with no problems, and no tears.