business day... i had forgotten what they were like!

this morning we went to the hoffbrau plant! all of the boys were way more interested in this than they had been at any other tour! first we saw where the beer was brewed. there were HUGE metal containers brewing the beer, it was insane. one of the rooms we walked into reeeeeked of beer, so gross. our tour guide (the brew master) only spoke german so we had another guy translate, so that was a little rough and i had no clue what was going on, oh well. we got to see where the beer was bottle and packaged. it looked very similar to coca-cola with the bottles spinning really fast, being capped, then labeled, etc. we saw big kegs being filled and rinsed off. we also got to walk through the storage place where they were just thousands of kegs and boxes of beer, just insane. the tour guide explained to us how long the beer can be held without going bad and how than influences their international expansion, it was pretty interesting. at the end we each got a free 6 pack, so everyone seemed pretty excited about that.

after hoffbrau, we took the bus back to the hotel. dr. fields didn't think it'd be very appropriate to each be carrying a 6 pack of beer into siemen's (our next visit) so we dropped off our beer and then took the bus over to siemen's. we had 2 hours of free time to grab lunch. after wanderign for a while, natalie, janine, aubrey, turner, dan and i found a little place in the main square and got pizza as usual. they served us tap water though so that was a big plus! after that, i broke down and hit up the starbucks. it had been over a month so i felt like i deserved it. i had a white mocha and it was AMAZING. aubrey, natalie, janine and i relaxed there and then left to walk back to siemen's. as we were leaving, we saw all of these rows of people sitting outside a coffee shop. it was weird though- all of the chairs were facign the same way and in the front 2 chairs were really nice and plush looking. we thought something must be going on so aubrey asked a cop who laughed and told us it was just a coffee shop. pretty embarassing i must say.

we made it back to siemen's and had a verrrrrrrrrrrry long lecture. the guy who spoke to us was actually retired from siemen's but just wants to impress upon everyone the importance of international business. it was interesting i guess, but i was having a hard time staying awake after my big lunch (and coffee? i don't know how that worked out). the lecture was 2+ hours and then it turned out we had a tour of this museum type thing! everyone was pretty mad and wanted to get out of there asap. our dinner reservation was moved up to tonight instead of tomorrow, so we had to get ready fast. the fields' paid for cabs so we all rushed back to the hotel to get ready.

tonight we had dinner at hoffbrau! it was a buffet- which was awesome. i had really good pork and potato salad and potatoes and all sorts of things, sooo good. there were dancers and singers and aubrey participated in this bell ringing thing a la miss congeniality. it was such a fun night. we each ordered a beer and they were HUGE- a whole liter! just insane. my favorite part were the pretzels. we ate all of ours at our table, so i got janine to go get one from another table, to which i told her she was my favorite person on the trip. aubrey was not too happy. but yeah, definitely one of the best dinners yet!