Katie Ackerman (Right) and I at the Reutlingen SSV match on Saturday
Week One in Reutlingen
Five Valpo students arrived at the Stuttgart airport Thursday noon, hauling our lives around in suitcases, energy sapped, but enthusiasm mostly intact. Four of us: Brittany, Alan, P.J., and I, were bound for Reutlingen and the Valpo Study Center there. The fifth, Katie Ackerman was tagging along until she could move into her apartment in Tübingen. Of the five, I think I’m the only one to have never visited Europe before. I apparently was not as nervous about this as I could have been.
The Reutlingen students and I are all living in Wurmhaus, a mostly international student dormitory with a longer name which I currently cannot recall. Theophil-Wurmhaus perhaps? It’s on the edge of campus, and a short walk from the city soccer stadium, where we went to watch the Reutlingen SSV get Portugaled yesterday. (For those who don’t recall, this is where a scoreless game is finally broken by your team, only to be crushed by the other team a few moments before the game ends. See also: USA v. Portual, 2014 FIFA World Cup.)
Wurmhaus, Home Sweet Home
It’s a longer walk to downtown- about 25 minutes- but the bus runs pretty frequently. Like many cities that are hundreds and hundreds of years old, Reutlingen’s center is filled with historic and beautiful buildings. The Tübinger Tur and Garden Tur are gates from the original castle walls that are still standing imposingly around the city center, or Stadtmitte.
We’ve been exploring our new home the past few days, learning mostly the practical things like where the grocery and train and buses are, but also getting into the beat of the rhythm of life here. We wandered through the Reutlingen Wine Festival Friday. The vendors’ tents were circled all around the Marienkirche, Reutlingen’s cathedral, completed in the 15th century. By nighttime the tables and the paths were full. We stood and chatted over glasses of local Riesling, along with about everybody else in the city. Today we walked through the massive park next to the soccer stadium. The morning rain had pushed slugs and snails onto the asphalt path, which grossed me out. (Brittany found them quite adorable, and asked that I tell you so.)
But perhaps the most important place we have been introduced to is the bakery down the hill from Wurmhaus. It’s open every day. It serves delicious coffee and baked goods. It’s less than a minute walk from our dorm. The best part, however, would have to be the Nutella filled croissants they make EVERY DAY. This is possibly the greatest thing mankind has ever invented. I now have breakfast plans for the entire semester. Done.
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