September 21

We headed out from the dorm at about 7:00 AM. Dr. Rust let us use a few stamps' worth of his bus pass for the ride to the station, because he's a good guy like that. We took kind of a wandering path to our destination - from Maastricht to Heerlen to Aachen to Köln to Ulm and then finally to Blaubeuren, where Dr. Rust's friends picked us up. The trains were pretty crowded, so we were glad to have the reservations we did. Dr. Rust kept threatening to abandon us and go to first class, but he never really did. At on point during the trip, a train conductor complimented Dr. Rust on his surprisingly good German. Dr. Rust had to gently explain that he is German. I guess the Texas address on the train ticket confused the poor guy a bit. :) We had really good weather, so the train rides were beautiful.

As I said, we met Dr. Rust's friends, August and Inge Banholtzer. Dr. Rust and August served together in the West German navy during the Cold War and have been friends ever since. August and Inge teach biology and chemistry at a boarding school in Schelkingen, a tiny town in Swabia. They took us to the school, Urspring, and showed us around the area.

It's a really beautiful school with many buildings dating from the 15th century. The complex was a convent before the Reformation and became a school about 100 years ago. The whole thing is built around a beautiful blue pond formed by water gushing up from the ground - hence "Urspring" or "source fountain." Unfortunately, we left our camera in the car, so we had to steal some pictures from the school's website.

A badly cropped photo of Inge.

And one of August (or Barney, as Dr. Rust secretly calls him.)

Urspring School

After Urspring, we drove down to Blaubeuren proper and visited the Blautopf, a larger spring that is part of the same system as Urspring. It's a really beautiful place with dark, dark blue, clear water.

The Blautopf (blue pot). Once again, we forgot our camera and have borrowed this photo from the web.

As we were walking away from the Blautopf, Erik walked right into the gutter of the oldest blacksmithing shop in Swabia. I saw it about to happen out of the corner of my eye, but the closest I could come to stopping him was to punch him right in the gut while uttering a primal cry. Despite my best efforts, he walloped himself right on the crown of his head and landed in a heap. He sprang right back up, though. This was to be the first of many smooth moves on Erik's part.

After the Blautopf and a stop for some tea and coffee, Erik and I checked in at our hotel, if a guesthouse 6 kilometers from a town that no one has ever heard of can be so called. We had some time to rest and then went over to August and Inge's house for dinner. We got to meet Inge's mom, a really sweet lady, and their new cat, Scotty.

Now for a bit of backstory. While walking the streets of Maastricht, we stumbled upon this humorous bit of graffiti. Maastricht has next to no graffiti, but this sample was in French, which explains a lot since Eastern Belgium is covered in the stuff.

I am Turtle!!!

But when we came to August and Inge's house and met their most laid-back family member, we discovered the truth. Meet Schildy:

Ich bin Schildkröte!!!

Schildy (his name corresponds almost precisely to "Turtle-y"), is a fine lad of about 10 years. He has no intention of dying for another 45 or so. He spends about half of the year buried in a muddy box in the cellar. But he's a pretty cool pet the rest of the time and eats gourmet salads for breakfast. Schildy also enjoys rearranging his terrarium and playing outside in his turtle pen.

We had a great dinner that started with champagne, ended with single-malt Scotch, and included a home-grown salad, red wine, and a selection of the finest meats, cheeses, and breads in the land. We had a lot of fun, even though a lot of the conversation was in German.