21st Birthday in Germany

Arriving home the night before my birthday I promptly fell asleep on the bed with my toothbrush still in hand. I thought nothing of Laura and Jiri whispering in the kitchen and Laura turning off the light. I thought maybe she was being considerate of my sleep.  

Then they came in with a tray full of chocolate and a candle; it was midnight of my birthday (European time). Laura’s gifts to me included an Erfurt University t-shirt and a homemade magnet with an incredibly creepy (even to me) photo of my face. Jiri brought chocolates from Czech.
 
 

 

The next morning we made pancakes (which are more like crepes in Europe) with fruit and nutella. (Sadly I have to wait until I’m home to have any maple syrup). Laura had to go to the train station to pick up Duke, another friend from Tilburg, who was visiting Erfurt from another region in Germany. When they returned we headed to the grocery store to shop for a picnic.

At 15:00 we headed to the park around the corner from Laura’s house to have a picnic. After a couple hours, and a short rainstorm, some other friends began to join. Anne came from Weimar, Romina, Michael, Jakob, and Hanna joined from Erfurt. 

Romina and Hannah brought me chocolate from the shop in Erfurt, Michaeal, also brought chocolate, Jakob gave me stroop waffels to remind me of Tilburg, and Anne gave me a notebook and a maple sucker that she had from her cousins in Canada. One of her cousins has a shop in Kitchener!
 

 We spent the whole afternoon and evening in the park and played Kubb, a Swedish game that was well loved in Tilburg. We were out until 23:00.