Leaves, Visas, Bakeries and Old Churches

These pictures were taken on various days in various weeks!

I love these trees changing colors. In real life, they look even better, but I have so many pictures trying unsuccessfully to capture that. Oh yes, and it's been fairly rainy. 

On one rainy afternoon, we decided to duck into a cafe, where Carson had a very pretty latte, and I had a pretzel. I think his roll was something cinnamon.

We haven't explored enough of the insides of buildings here, so we popped into St Lambert's Church; the one with the cages on the outside - have I talked about that one? During the Reformation, the Anabaptists had a stronghold here but were eventually overthrown. When they were, they were killed in a very medieval way and their bodies were put in the cages on the tower of the church for all to see. The cages are still there (the bodies are not!). It's the big pointy steepled church you've seen in several of our Altstadt pictures.

Here we were planning our trip to London. Huzzah!

We decided to walk to a little pub downtown one evening (despite the darkness it wasn't even 8pm) for a date night and it was great. It was cozy and great for talking, but the night was chillier than expected, so for the walk home I sported Carson's coat and my hat. I really go all out for date night!

One Sunday after church, we decided to eat RIGHT AWAY and since McDonalds is the only restaurant we pass on our way back from there, it seemed like a good choice. Only it turned out that they weren't serving lunch until 11:30. It was 11:26 when we walked in, but they made us sit there and wait four minutes and then they served us. Their breakfast doesn't look bad, but we wanted the super cheap 2 for 2 euro deal and they didn't have that for breakfast. I had McNuggets and Carson had a burger. I don't get burgers at places like this because they ALWAYS put ketchup on even if you tell them not to, although maybe in Germany they actually listen and don't put ketchup since it's always an extra charge. Anyway, we finished up that healthy meal with an apple pie thing. This McDonalds is fancy, with touch screen ordering and an actual cafe for McCafe stuff.

We "read the paper" while we ate and talked.

Last, this is from the airport, but I just found it very funny that you could buy little bottles of wine, or mixed drinks in cans at the airport. The legal age here is 16, and though I don't see people abusing that too much, alcohol is very cheap (the airport prices seemed super high comparatively) and just about every place sells it (McDonalds, for example).

We extended our travel visas! We're still having an issue getting our marriage license apostille from the SC Secretary of State's office, but we went to the immigration office here and after a delightful 3.5 hours of waiting in line, are good to stay for three more months. It's nice to not worry about deportation.

My visa picture. This was at about 7:45 in the morning, and I wasn't allowed to smile or have any hair in front of my ears, so I look like I just got punched in the face. I have no idea if I look like this in real life, but I will definitely keep smiling in pictures because YIKES!

All the leaves. Seeing Carson's baggy jeans also reminds me that his jeans have gotten waaaay too big, but he's being stubborn about shopping for new ones (you can find them relatively cheap). I bit the bullet and found smaller jeans at H&M for less than 10Euro, much to my delight.

Our church here does Operation Christmas Child! I didn't know that other countries did it!

Working hard, or hardly working.