this weekend we went to our first german festival. it was in downtown bamberg, which is the old part of bamberg. we were surrounded by incredible arcitecture, beautiful sights, and a million people. a german festival is a little different than american festivals in that parades push right through the crowd, shows and acts set up in rather inconvenient places, and there's no way to tell who speaks your language and who doesnt lol... but the ambience and charm of the event is unrivaled. we ate our first german bratwurst and drank our first german beer! both of which were amazing. johnsonville is good, but a german bratwurst blows it out of the water, which is to be expected :) just a few minutes' walk past downtown is the bamberg cathedral, which is the cathedral in my pictures. jake found out today in his classes that this cathedral houses the tomb of the only pope not buried at the vatican. it also houses a holy nail from the Crucifixion of Christ. this cant be viewed though because the church cant handle that kind of traffic. next to the cathedral is a rose garden that overlooks the town, and also looks up at the church of st. michael on the hill. we havent gotten to that one yet but it's on the list. this is all part of bamberg's seven-hills district. there are seven hills and atop of each one is a church. you can see the sillouhette of st. michaels in my rose garden pictures, it's bigger than the one we went to. i'm sure it will be breathtaking. i cant wait to visit these places outside of tourist season. i have this little pet peeve about having random people in all my pictures lol, which is why you may notice a lot of my pictures pointing up- i'm trying to put the bottom of the frame above everyone's heads lol. anyways, it was a very fun weekend. next weekend we're discussing taking the train somewhere, so stay tuned :)