Friday, April 17th

On Friday, I decided not to ride in the car with Brenton and his father and instead decided to sleep in. The original plan was that I would take a train to Zweibrucken and meet Brenton there when we got off of work. The train was a bit expensive and I did not really want to do it. When I woke up, I caught his mom just before she was about to go out and run some errands. She invited me to come along and said that after we finished them, she would take me to Zweibrucken to meet Brenton! Score! We went to the bank and did a couple of things around town. Then she visited her friend AnneMarie, who is a German woman that was born during the Holocaust. She didn’t remember anything about Nazi Germany, but it was still interesting nonetheless.
After errands, we both decided that we were hungry and she took me to an authentic German restaurant. Of course I had to get another type of weinerschnitzel. I also ended up getting a different beer. I don’t remember the name of it. Following lunch, we made our way towards Zweibrucken. Along the way, Brenton’s mom (Cindy) asked me if I wanted to see a real German castle. Of COURSE the answer was yes. What else do you do in Germany? See castles and drink beer. I can’t think of much else! So I toured around this medieval castle and it was really cool (see pictures). After going to the castle, we had smoothies before continuing our journey to Zweibrucken.
Once in Zweibrucken, we picked up Brenton and walked around the town. Aside from a few statues, there was not all that much to see. The old church in the center of town was closed unfortunately. We walked around for about 30 or 40 minutes and then found Brenton’s mom again. The three of us then went to the caves of Homburg (different from the city of Hamburg in the north of Germany). The caves were really neat. They were made of sandstone and hallowed out thousands of years ago. During WWII part of it was used as a bomb shelter. Interestingly, this part of Germany had changed hands between France and Germany many times and had a referendum in the 1950s. At that time they decided to be German and they remained a part of Germany. Also in the same complex as the caves, there was another castle, which was built above the caves (the entire cave and castle area was a large hill towering over the surrounding area).

After the cave, we got in the car, drove back to Brenton’s house, had dinner, and fell asleep.