wow. 5 days is a lot to summarize at once, but here goes. (pictures will come later after I have downloaded them to my flash drive.)

Overall impression: this group's favorite food is ice cream. Everyday and sometimes 4x a day for some, they HAD to have ice cream!

The overnight train was long (10+3-4 hours)and cold (for the students--takes quite a lot to make me cold these days). But everything worked wonderfully well and the kids followed directions well and no on squabbled. The Youth Hostel had lunch pakets for us, which the kids devoured instantly.

Then we went on a city scavenger hunt in teams of 5. It was all in German and in order to find the answers to some of the questions, they had to talk with the locals. It was immediate apparent to all that we were in a small town in the South. The locals were friendly and wanted to talk with them. One lady even came down from her upstairs balcony and walked around with one group helping them find answers. Another gentlemen heard my group speaking English and came up and offered to tell us the story of the chapel we were standing in front of. The winning team got 4" plush mountain goats (mascot of the youth hostel) and the 2nd place team got 2" mtn goat key chains.

that evening we went on a hike up the small mountain behind the youth hostel to the fortress ruins. The man at the desk said it was a 30 minute hike up, then he looked at me (and I could 'hear' him thinking "Americans") and then he said, maybe 45. So off we went on this "well-Marked trail" that turned out to be neither well-marked nor even clear where it began. but we made it anyway. had lots of fun climbing around the ruins and finding our way back down. Most had showers and went to bed, but some watched the soccer game in the special viewing room with a huge wall screen.

It was NOT cold and on the contrary was warm enough that we were all sweating during the hike. Some of us pooled our money and washed the jeans when we got back so they would make another day.

ok. that was Day 1. more later.