Today was a rest day, and we spent most of the day doing just that. Unfortunately, it's hard to sleep in because of the sun, but we got up around 8:30 and moseyed up to the main office to eat breakfast and charge our phones. All three of us had different chores to do in the morning, so we all went into town and agreed to meetup with Mike at the golden monkey (see pictures from yesterday) at 1pm. Nate went to go do some work for the company he's working for, Matt went to Mike's hostel to use a computer to pass his background check for his job, and Mark went shopping for a watch (turns out the one he brought isn't waterproof, oops) and white gas for the stove.

We all met at one at the Golden monkey, with most of our chores complete (Mark couldn't find white gas, but had at least found an address to go check) and walked up to the Schloss. (Schloss=castle). The castle in Heidelberg is fantastic and is actively being renovated. We bought tickets to go into the castle and spent a good hour or so walking around the castle, looking over the city, and mocking the peasants down below us as we stood aloof in the castle gardens.

After our short trip to fantasy land, we walked back down to the main city and began to walk over the the philosopher's gardens, an open area on top of the ridge across the valley from Heidelberg. Unfortunately, Mark and Matt hadn't eat lunch yet and we're getting hungry and crabby, so they stopped at a local bakery to get sandwiches and cookies/treats. After that, the momentum (what little there was) was totally killed for walking up to the philosophers gardens, and we just sat in a park in the city for awhile and chatted. After all, it was an off day, we couldn't work to hard we have a long few days ahead of us.

It was decided that we'd head to the local grocery store, grab meat to grill and done breakfast, and head back to the campsite to cook. Mike came along with us and we all bought bus tickets (nobody wanted to walk anymore at this point) and headed back to the campsite. Here, Mark broke off from the group to go quest for gas for our stove (it turns out that in Germany, many people have a different attachment for the stove to the canister, we should have just brought an MSR fuel can and put gasoline in it, would of been cheaper and easier.) Mike, Nate, and Matt fired up the grill and had the meat going in no time, while Mark quickly mastered the public transit system in Heidelberg taking no less then 4 buses/street cars to get to where he wanted to go, and finally find some gas.

Dinner was delicious, and the beer was incredibly cheap. (52 cents per liter, it's a steal. We mine as well drink beer instead of water, that's the German way.) We hang around with Mike for awhile, and chatted around camp, and then sent Mike on his way around 9 so that we could get some shuteye. The next 5 days will be nonstop biking.

At 10 we're all in the tent listening to the rain gently splatter on fly. It's finally getting dark, so hopefully will all get some rest and then wake up tomorrow and begin our quest to Luxembourg. And, as Mike learned today, complain about it the entire way. However, tomorrow is still mostly down river, so it shouldn't be bad. And it's supposed to be good weather. T minus 16 days until we return to the U.S.!

Sorry about the lack of pictures, I'm writing this at 10:33 and realizing that I have no pictures to post. The biking today was very similar to biking through the lower peninsula. It was flat, and we'd bike through corn fields, then nice forests, and then back through corn fields. In addition, just like Michigan, it's flat. The only difference, besides the fact that the town names are in German and impossible to pronounce, everything here is closed on Sunday, with the noted exception of Döner Kebab shops and (thankfully) bars in Heidelberg.

Today was one of the first full days in awhile we didn't break 100km. Coming in at 96km, we were close, but arrived in Heidelberg with 4km to spare. The route here was flat and straight, with a general strategy of biking due north until we hit Heidelberg. (Yes, Heidelberg is not just a bar in Ann Arbor, but also a city in Germany, a pretty cool one too.) The campsite was easy to find, and served beer which made us all happy.

After getting settled into the campground, charging our phones, drinking a few (local of course) beers, and chatting at the campground we left to go into the city and meet up with Mike again. We got bus tickets on the bus (luckily the bus driver spoke fantastic English) and made in into town.

We had a little problem meeting up with Mike, but we found him after about 10 minutes and walked to Vetters (claiming the original high gravity beer) for dinner. The four of us all get different local dishes, none of which I will attempt to spell, that we're all very good. We also all got the high gravity beer, that tasted oddly sweet, but was also good.

After the dinner, we started a mini Heidelberg bar crawl. I don't know the names of the bars we went too, but we needed up at the Irish pub in Heidelberg as we were desperate to finally talk in English for a change and not in broken German/English/sign language. Rallying for another hour at the Irish pub, we made until 10:30, when we called it a night, and walked back to the bus for the campsite.

Tomorrow morning will be spent with personal time, with everyone doing errands in the morning. Then we will meetup with Mike at 1 and go to the Schloss and other famous places in the city.

Today we biked from Ettenheim to just outside Baden-Baden (thus the title of this post, also because we're not sure how to say it, but putting on a German accent and then saying it really fast is fun. We're pretty sure the dash is silent).

We mainly biked along to Rhine which makes for easy biking, so we balanced that with a nice long 130 km today.

The highlight of the trip was a learning moment for the twins. After being on the look out for a water fountain for about 30 mins they came upon a fountain. There was a sign that said "Kein Trinkwasser" on the fountain which we definitely read but no one knew what the German word kein meant. Although the 21st century allows for easy translation the twins paid no heed and began to down the water.

At this point a very nice lady came out and explained to us that kein meant "not" or "no" and the water was no good for drinking. She was super nice though and filled up the water bottles in her sink for us! (We'll update this story later if any gastrointestinal problems occur).

Although we stopped at two massive supermarkets (think Meijer) we were not able to find gas for Mark's stove and so once again settled on salad. The supermarket did have a huge selection of German beer and so we gave them all a try. Maybe we just have an untrained palate but they all tasted the same to us.

Tomorrow we bike to Heidelberg where we will once again meet up with Mike!

This morning we departed camp after breakfast on Lake Zurich with Mike. Breakfast was a simple meal of bread cheese and salami, but we're buying bread by the kilo now, so we get plenty of food. (We've been using Nate trademarked "immigrant mode" method for saving money in Switzerland. Pasta with red sauce for dinner, bread with cheese and salami for breakfast. It's highly effective and we've been doing pretty well.)

The bike to the Bahnhof in downtown Zurich was again exciting as we got to bike through streets and avoid pedestrians, cars, and street cars. We made it there with no problem and walked to the ticket office to get the right tickets to Freiburg.

Unfortunately, the ICE (really fast train) did not allow bikes, so we had to take two transfers and a local train to get to Freiburg. Quick transfers with bicycles and full panniers are difficult, to say the least. We had 7 minutes to get out bikes off one train, down the stairs, find the right platform, get up the stairs and everyone to the next train. We were the last people on the train, and barely got on before the doors shut and the train started to move. We then had 6 minutes on that train, after which we got off and had an 8 minute window to transfer to our last train. We all made it no problem (along with a ton of other bikers on that train) and sat down for the hour long ride on the local train to Freiburg.

We finally got off the trains and Freiburg, and started our ride north. We made a quick stop at a farmers market right outside Freiburg, and all got strawberrys. They hit the spot, and we in good spirits we bikes to Ettenhiem.

Well, somewhat good spirits. We were promised a easy 30km day, but when the bike computer read 40km for the day, we were still 10km from our destination. All is well that ends well, however, and we arrived at the campsite just outside of town by 4:00.

And from that point on everything was great, mostly because everything was so much cheaper in Germany than Switzerland. Our entire costs for the day (excluding the train tickets, gag) were 25%-50% less than Switzerland. That includes at stop at a local bakery and the farmers market, what a life of luxury we live.

Dinner consisted of a salad and we biked to the grocery store to get ingredients. At this store, Mark was fascinated by the automatic bread slicer. You could buy a loaf of bread, and then put it in a machine and have the machine slice it for you. I'm sure the exists in the states as well, but it was really cool to watch it work. We almost bought two loafs just so we could slice bread again. Some engineers canbe be entertained by the simplest things.

Dinner and drinks where eaten at the campsite, where we relaxed for the evening preparing (mentally mostly) for two long days ahead of us to Heidelberg. 100+km days both days should be fun.

As we're falling asleep, the noise from a local amateur soccer team with an apparent large following can be heard up the road. (That's right, soccer, not football, America just won the World Cup so we can call it soccer for awhile.) Tonight is looking to be a nice cold night, so hopefully we will all sleep well and be rested for the long day tomorrow.

Sorry for not posting yesterday, we are finding it hard to keep our phones charged.

The heat finally broke yesterday!! Which made for a much more pleasant biking experience. We biked about 125km from Solothurn to Zurich (with a brief stop in Baden for Doner Kebab). Upon arriving in Zurich, we learned that the campsite which Google Maps told us existed actually did not exist and forced us to call an audible.

We found another campsite and biked through Zurich fully loaded during rush hour, doing our best to avoid other bikers, people, trams, cars, and dogs. Thankfully the next campsite actually existed and so we set up camp in a tiny camping area surrounded by RVs and went to the local Denner to grab some food. Dinner was once again pasta as we continue our quest to save money.

The next morning we awoke and made a quick breakfast. Nate went into town to do some work and Mark and Matt waited for there friend Mike to arrive my train. He wandered in around 10:30 and after a half hour of listening to his tales (he's had some wild experiences) we set out to go to ETH Zurich, one of the most prominent technical universities in all of Europe and somewhere the Schulte's are thinking of going to grad school.

Side note: I don't have any pictures of the actual city but Zurich is really cool and a beautiful city. The older part of the city has some beautiful architecture and everything is really clean. Also, the public transport is phenomenal.

We made it the ETH Zurich and Mark was able to pinpoint the building which housed the embedded systems professor. We walked around looking at posters and even walked by the professor's office whose research we were interested in. We wanted to talk to him but didn't know what to say and so instead grabbed some lunch from a street cart.

Afterwords Mike decided it would be ridiculous if we didn't talk to at least someone and so we talked to the receptionist who directed us to the admissions office and we ended up talking with some student advisor about the Master and PhD program at ETH Zurich. The cost of the program, 520 CHF per semester, though the recommend setting aside 20,000 CHF per year for living expenses (did we mention its expensive here).

The guy was really helpful and answered a lot of our questions about the program, though he was a little to proud of ETH, but we'll let that go.

All the students are currently on break as they prepare for exams. It's a little different then in the states. They get about a month to study for exams. The advisor said the students study during this time but I doubt they spend all that time studying... Just a thought though.

After ETH we went swimming back at campsite and met up with Nate for dinner. Mike introduced us to a website called WikiTravels in which anyone can write about places to visit anywhere. That's how we found our restaurant. We all order what we've been told is a traditional Swiss dish. I wish I remembered the name for it, but it was basically veal in some mushroom soup. It was delicious.

Now we're back at the camp prepping for our train day tomorrow. Mike is heading to Heidelberg where I think we will meet up with him again before he continues his travels to Amsterdam and then Denmark.

We aren't taking the train all the way to Heidelberg but instead will be making it there in a couple of days. Our wallets are excited to make it out of Switzerland though!