There is a castle that one can see from the train station in Giessen. It looks close but is really 8 km away. Since seeing it the first time we arrived in Giessen, we have wanted to walk to it but never got around to doing it. We had a nice day forecast, made some lunch, grabbed our water and went out the door! I had done some searching using Google to figure out the general path and it was crazy. The path wound across big roads and whittled down to dirt paths through farm land. Oddly enough, it didn't seem as far on the way back. We figured that's because we definitely knew how far we had to go still. The picture from the top of the tower is facing towards Giessen. 
In other news, a large group of my friends, an equal number of Americans, Germans and French, decided to attack the restaurant known colloquially as the XXL restaurant. It was actually Der Waldgeist and it has some of the largest plates of food you'll ever see. The burgers were at least 6 full size restaurant burgers put together. Knowing my limits, I settled for 600 grams of currywurst, which was amazing. My friend Jeff on the other hand was going for the burger and very nearly made it through it. People from other tables were watching him as he tried to finish it. Finally, he got smart and stopped before he killed himself. He did have 2 liters of beer to finish as well. Another friend, Gökhan, was not so lucky with his burger. I'm sure he is posing in this picture, but the feeling was there in all of us. Needless to say I'm thinking I won't need to visit again anytime soon. Whew!
And finally, on Sunday Rachel and I went to the Botanical Garden to hear a live band from Kassel play. I believe it was a fundraiser event for the garden. The band was called "Beat That Chicken" and don't ask me to explain the name. A soul/blues band with a full line up of instrumentalist: horn, bone, alto/tenor sax, bari sax, guitar, bass, keys, drums and two vocalists. And they were pretty good. I bought their CD and love it. It was really interesting listening to the in-between song talking, in German, and the song lines, in English. The female vocalist has a really good voice and the male seemed to be using a unidirectional microphone since I couldn't hear him half the time. He was a little rambunctious and whenever he moved his mouth away from right in front of the mic you couldn't hear him anymore. There is a free swing band concert on the 4th of July that we're going to hit up and a jazz innovations trio on the 20th of June. Should be a fun summer concert series.
That's the latest from Giessen. More after the break. Prost!
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