Ok, so here's my slideshow from my trip to Germany.  I left wichita at like 10 am, we got to chicago, barely made our connecting flight and 9 hours later we were in Frankfurt at like 6 am.  So while we were waiting for Dustin to join us we decided to go to the Christmas market downtown.  It made for a long day we were up for over 20 hours.

 

Here's a picture of some random restaurent, I thought it was weird to see buildings so old next to the newer ones.  
Here's the town christmas tree, we came back at the end of the trip at night so you can see it all lit up
Here's a courtyard with all the christmas fixings.   Those crazy germans love their christmas festivals, every town we went to had one.
I couldn't help taking of picture of this.  It's a sugar jar.  Sugar in german is "Zucker", but for some reason they made the "Z" look like an "F"
Here's more of the festival, I was really impressed by all the old buildings.
Here's our hotel room.  Almost every one of them had twin beds, I thought that was odd.  Dustin and Season had to either ask for one big one (which they didn't usually have) or just push the two together
This is a big white castle, I can't remember the name, but it was in a town (who's name I forgot too) way down south next to the Austrian border.  So I'm just calling it the white castle.  (Mmmmm....white castle burgers)
This is the yellow castle in the same town.  The parents lived in this one and the kid built the white one across the way.  Guess he didn't want to move too far from home.
Here's my brother and his wife, Dustin and Season.  We had to hike up to both castles.  The yellow one was about 15 minutes and the white one was about 30.  I guess the Europeans walk a lot more than us.  In America they'd probably have an escalator or ski lift.
This is the front gate at the yellow castle
This is standing in the courtyard waiting for the tour to start
Here's the view of the white castle from the courtyard of the yellow one.  
This is the white castle, it was used as the basis for the Cinderella castle at Disneyland
It's 6 stories and for some reason they didn't have an elevator.  The yellow one did.  
This is a picture of the front gate.  I thought it was weird to be building with red brick.  It didn't really match the rest of the place
This is a view from the courtyard
We weren't allowed to take pictures of the inside so I took a picture of this instead
Here's a vending machine at our hotel.  Notice the last button says "Beir"  That's german for beer.  I learned that pretty quickly.  Notice it's the same price for pop.  2 euros for a half a liter. 
Here's me enjoying a refreshing malt beverage after an exhausting day of walking up and down trial looking at castles.
Here's me enjoying my 3rd refreshing malt beverage courtesy of the vending machine.
Here's a picture of my mom next to the biggest lampshade we'd ever seen.  It looked bigger in person......really.
For some reason the cars in europe were a lot smaller than what we we're used to.  
Here's the German's version of a pickup.  It's called a MOG, and it will probably climb over anything our 4x4's could.  The only pickups on the road were work trucks like these.  
Here's a picture of the alps.   Everyone together now:  Ohhhhh......Ahhhhhh!
So we left the town that I couldn't remember the name of and we went back north.  Now we are in Stuttgart the home of Porsche and Mercedes.  We drove by the factories and this is the construction site for the new Mercedes museum.  I had to take a picture of the confederate flag.  It made me feel conflicted.  
Here's a picture of an old car at the Mercedes museum.  
Here's an engine from a Messer Schmidt I think.  Never forget.
This is a car with an engine from the picture above.  I think they were going to use it for some land speed record, but then they got caught up in some war.  Those crazy Germans.   
I had to take a picture of this tailpipe cause I thought it was cool.  
Here's another old car.  The audio tour thing said it was really valuable and there wasn't a lot of them.  So I took a picture of it. 
Looks like the prelude to the bug
This the the back end of the same car.  It's engine is in the rear too.   
This is one the the main reason's I wanted to go to this museum.  It's a mercedes 300SL gullwing and it's worth more than my life.  I touched it even though they had a sticker on it that specifically said not to :)
Go speedracer Go!!!

Looks like the mach 5 so I had to take a picture
 

This is actually a real car.  It was in the parking lot of the museum.  It's called a Smart car and it's partially build by Mercedes.  For some reason there was a lot of Mercedes and Porsches  in this town.  

 

 
On the road again.  This is some random town on the way to Heidelberg.  Seems like every town had to have either a castle or monastery to be considered cool.  
This is a bench.  It's on a path up to the top of a hill that the Heidelgberg castle is on.  I just wanted to take a picute of it so you can appreciate the steepness of the road.  
This is Season walking through a tunnel in the castle.  
Here's a view of the town of Heidelberg from the castle.  
This is the front of one of the building in the courtyard of the castle.
This is the small wine barrel.  You can see my mom sneaking behind it.  
This is the big wine barrel.  You can't really get an idea of the size of it from this picture, but on top of it there is a dance floor.  It holds 220,000 liters of the good stuff.  At least according to the book I bought about the castle.  I still have it if anyone wants to look through it.  Lots of pictures, I know you all like pictures.  
Here's a view from the castle garden.  I guess it used to be pretty decked out in it's day now it's just a bunch of grass and buildings
Now that we toured the last castle it's time to do some shopping.  This is downtown Heidelberg, and this street goes on for way too long.  We shopped for 2 days in this place.  You thought the Christmas shopping rush was bad in America?  
"Do you know what they call a quarter pounder at McDonalds?"

"They don't call it a quarter pounder"

"Naw, they got the metric system, they don't know what the f*** a quarter pounder is, they call it a royal with cheese"

"Royal with cheese, I like that"

--Pulp Fiction

(Sorry I couldn't help myself)
This is a statue in one of the big fancy old churches. The skeleton creeps me out so I took a picture of it. 
I was conflicted on what I considered the gayest vehicle on the road and I think this one was the winner.
They had tons of food booths at the Christmas markets.  I had lots of brauts and other mediocre foods.  

I had to take a picture of all this sausage cause I knew Rob would be jealous (He loves sausage, at least that's what I've heard)
Those crazy German's love American's so much that they named a street after us.  See that translates to "Schwind Street"  Learning German is easy.
Here we are back in Frankfurt and I had to take a picture of these buildings.  I couldn't help noticing that the building were either really old or built in the late forties/early fifties.  Never forget.
Here's the picture I promised you at the beginning.  It's the same Christmas tree at night in Frankfurt.

 

 

Well that's it, sorry it took my so long to post these.