Ritter Sport Museum & Thanksgiving

So on Friday, to celebrate Black Friday, we thought that it would be appropriate to go to the Ritter Sport Museum where they have a shop which has discounted chocolate! We found our bus, headed off and soon found ourselves in Waldbuch.

When we got off the bus in Waldbuch, we realized that it smelled like rotten eggs. It was gross. We started walking in the direction of the museum, and as we got closer, we started to smell wonderful smells of chocolate. It was like being in Hershey, PA. It was wonderful! We followed our noses, and the signs, to the museum entrance. 

We stopped like crazy people outside to take a picture with the sign!

The cocoa tree!

Who knew that this trip was going to turn into a vocabulary lesson.

This was the coolest machine ever! Free Chocolate was involved. Here is Hannah to tell you all about it:

 Thank you Hannah for that very informative explanation of how the free chocolate giving machine works!

And also, during the mini museum trip, we learned (from Hannah) how Ritter Sport makes their chocolate into the shape that they are!

We saw this and had to take a picture, because it has Zack's name on it!

The chocolate bar of 1932.

Hmm.. after the museum should we go?... SCHOKO SHOP of course!

This glorious chocolate shop had everything! Even a Ritter Sport version of Settlers of Catan.

Here we all are with our purchases! (They all bought bags, but I went for the box option).

So, we spent the rest of the day doing things around Tuebingen.

Saturday came around, and that meant Thanksgiving for Tuebingen. We decided that since we were away from home, it didn't mean we had to miss our favorite holidays, foods, or traditions. We had been planning a Thanksgiving dinner for a while, and Saturday was the day it all went down. We all woke up early, met at the train station a little after nine, and made our way to Kaufland to buy everything we needed for our makeshift Thanksgiving. We had already gotten turkeys (x2) and had been thawing them for a couple of days, but we needed to get everything else to make our dinner Thanksgiving worthy. We spent at least an hour at Kaufland before we got everything we needed. By the time we made it to the bus stop outside, we were ready to kill each other. We had to wait a while for the bus to come, and in that time, we came to understand why so many families hate each other during Thanksgiving time. It was semi-humorous and a little sad and frustrating. We headed back to Hannah's, where we were having our Thanksgiving, but she did not have enough oven room, so we had to eventually spread out throughout Tuebingen and utilize my oven and two of Rachel's. But before we split up to cook, we had a bigger problem. Hannah's roommates were *untidy*, to put it nicely. Her counters were covered with dirty dishes, the table had food and condiments from the night before, there was food on the floor, the oven had a nice layer of something brown covering the top of it, and we had to clean it all up. It would have been fine if it were just us, but we had invited people from our German course that we met the first few weeks. We had a guest list of about twenty people, so cleaning was sort of necessary.

Hannah's kitchen state when we got there.

Jake started off the cooking with his Jello salad.. but it didn't go quite right, as the gelatin was so strange here and did not settle on top like it was supposed to. Instead it just seeped through to the bottom. Nice try.

After running around, cleaning, and cooking, our deadline of 1:00 came around and we had to put the turkeys in the ovens. The big one went in Hannah's, and the little one was brought to Froschgasse. After dropping the turkey off at my house, we all met up at Hannah's one last time before everyone went their ways for a little bit to finish making food. Jake, Rachel, and Zach went to Rachel's so that Zach could use Rachel's ovens to make his green bean casserole and the stuffing, and I went back to my place to watch the turkey. Hannah finished up preparing her place and setting up. 5:30 came, and Jake came over to help me get the turkey ready for transport before he headed to Rachel's to help Zach carry all of his food to Hannah's. It was a tough walk to Hannah's. I was carrying this turkey in a pan that was too big for the little turkey, so the turkey was sliding around inside the pan and under the aluminum foil. It was difficult to carry it, but it smelled really good! By the time I made it to Hannah's my arms were shaking, and my wrists were killing me. Everyone showed up not long after that, and we soon set the buffet table for everyone to eat!

Here is all the food we made! Jake was the turkey carving master.

Rachel, Jake, Hannah, and me showing off our accomplishment!

The Tuebinger Fuenf!

Hannah ran to let someone in, but here we are!

After a while, people began to get food! Hannah was the only one looking!

We even had dessert! Go us!

Hannah and one of her roommates, Til.

From left to right: One of Hannah's roommates, Natsumi (from our Deutsche Kompakt Kurs), and Helena.

Neils, Zach, and Zach's friend Nathan.

We went through both turkeys in no time! But luckily it was just enough!

The rest of the food slowly disappeared too!

A shot of everyone gathered eating their Thanksgiving dinner.

The after photo.

After we all ate, we went around and said what we were thankful for (in German might I add), and then we made little turkeys from a Target craft that Hannah's mom sent us! Thanks Mrs. Scupham!

The group and our turkeys!

Hannah was exhausted, so here I am checking for a pulse. It didn't look good.

I don't know where this picture came from. I'm guessing that Zach took it.

Here we all are, stuffed!

It was a good night, and we were able to share our Thanksgiving experiences with everyone! It was Natsumi and a few other peoples' first time eating a turkey, so it made me feel even better that we did this. I was really worried about how this night would turn out, but I have to say that it turned out well! After everyone had had enough, and after Hannah's roommates and their friends had taken over the music and the kitchen, we cleaned up (we even left the kitchen in a better state than we had found it!). Her roommates seemed to be set on having a long night, but we had had a long day, so after we cleaned up and left the leftovers for her roommates to eat (because Hannah tried to get rid of something, and got reprimanded by every German in the room), we said goodnight and I set off for home.

Today I spent the day at home, not doing much. I've been working on this blog post for a while now, and have also been working on a Flat Stanley Journal entry, as I have decided that he is going to journal while in Germany.

I don't really have much planned for this week, but I will find something good to blog about I am sure! Until next time, I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving, and are still enjoying your leftovers! (Christina, don't leave any turkey out!) =]