Europa-Park and other activities

On Tuesday Annina had made an appointment at a friend of hers who is a hairdresser. I had promised not to cut my hair before I went to Germany and it was now looking long and unorganized. Annina's brother Niklas also came along to get a haircut. Normally when I cut my hair I cut it short, but Annina doesn't like that so I agreed to leave it longer this time. I ended up with a "surfer style" look which I am pretty satisfied with. It's just hard to make it look good so I have to use gel to style it the way I want. Very interesting I know, but there isn't much else to write about this day except for the evening.

In the evening Annina's family invited me for dinner at a restaurant called Zähringerburg which is located on the outskirts of Freiburg and a bit up in the hillside. The road up was narrow with curves back and forth and in the dark it was almost a bit spooky. Sadly because it was dark we couldn't see the view from the restaurant. It was still a nice place with really good food. I ate freshly caught deer from the woods with potato/bread patties and vegetables. For desert me and Annina shared cake with cream. Annina's dad had a mustache for the evening and apparently this was something the others didn't like at all and kept asking about during dinner. He thought it was very funny and it turned out later it was all a joke from his side. Annina's family is really nice and easy to like!

Europa-Park

Wednesday morning after Annina was done in the kindergarten we borrowed Annina's moms car and drove to Europa-Park. Europa-Park is the biggest amusement park in Germany and is only 30 minutes from Freiburg on the autobahn. The park is divided into "countries" with country specific themed rides, shops and decorations. Europa-Park is the biggest amusement park I have ever visited. It took us the whole day to do the rides we wanted to go on and in the end we only had time to take two rides twice. This was without waiting in long queues (max 20 minutes). The biggest rollercoasters were located in "Iceland", "Russia" and "France". Both mine and Annina's favorite ride was called Silver Star. It is a gigantic rollercoaster that goes over the parking spaces on the outside of the park. I also enjoyed two rollercoasters called EuroSat and EuroMir, a bobsled ride and a rollercoaster called Blue Fire. To get the maximum out of Europa-Park I think you have to go two days in a row, but I was still happy that I got the chance to go there at all and we both had a great time.

One really cool thing that they have in Europa-Park is the real 1:1 training model of the Russian space station MIR. It was donated to the park in the 90's and is part of "Russia". It is now kind of a museum where you can walk through it and see how the astronauts lived while onboard MIR. Several of the Russian astronauts who actually was on MIR has visited the training model in Europa-Park to remember their time in space.

The day after we went to Europa-Park Annina showed me her favorite ice cream place. I had a caramel ice cream and she had something called spaghetti ice. Basically its vanilla ice put through a machine to make it look like spaghetti, then strawberry sauce as tomato sauce and white chocolate sprinkled on top as the Parmesan cheese. I really liked the idea and it also tasted very good. After eating our ice creams we went to pick up my glasses which were now finished. After some adjustments and paying I could leave with my new eye wear. Although it will take time to get used to wearing glasses and how I look in them, at least I can see a big difference when wearing them especially when reading things in the distance.

On Friday Annina had invited some of her friends over for a few drinks and then we were going bowling. It was nice to meet her friends and I could practiced my German while they practiced their English. The bowling alley was very similar to the ones in Norway. We were 7 players and I ended on second place both rounds. The drinks there were really cheap. I had a half liter glass of beer for 25kr. I realized that bowling is actually quite fun and that I should do it more often. Earlier the same evening before Annina's friends came over, me, Annina and Niklas played a game called "Hotel". It's similar to monopoly, but still different. The goal however is the same, to own all the hotels and knock out the other players. I failed miserably and lost, but it didn't matter that much. That is the end of this post. I will write another one that covers my last days in Freiburg and this I will post in a few days. Enjoy for now!