Nesselröden - a blur

We can start with a very cute picture of sam sitting happily on a bench.

We spent the rest of our time in Berlin spending time with Anna, eating good food, and exploring a bit. Honestly there isn't much to write about as that part of the journey was really more about seeing an old friend than it was about exploring. Berlin is a great city, definitely has a lot of history with WWII, the Berlin Wall, and much more but we didn't want to be doing a ton of sight seeing, plus I was still having a bit of trouble sleeping from the jet lag. We walked to Viktoria Park and actually did pass a portion of the wall and the trenches on our way to look for a tie for Sam but didn't really do much notable sightseeing. We were both impressed by the infrastructure of the city, both the sheer number of people living there but also the underground train system which we luckily didn't have to take too much as we were walking so much. We had a great time catching up with Anna and left Berlin by train to go to Nesselröden for the wedding.

We took a train to Hanover and then accidentally took 73 on platform 3 instead of 93 on platform 4 and went about an hour the wrong direction before Sam realized it (I was just sitting happily on the train). We had a great time viewing the German countryside though, it is beautiful and fun to see. Many gentle rolling hills and deciduous trees and cute little towns nestled along the route with churches set into the middle. We did finally make it to our correct train and then took a very crowded bus for about an hour into town. We managed to time our arrival perfectly with every school letting out in all of Göttingen which was lovely because we were stuffed quite literally knee to knee with a bunch of children mostly middle schoolers it seemed, maybe grade schoolers. It was like riding a school bus but they were also standing in the isles. Sam and I received many curious looks from the children but thankfully they did all end up getting off the bus and we spent at least some of it with some space to put our bags properly.

Nesselröden was a tiny town, you can google it, that you can walk the entire town in maybe 30 minutes. It was incredibly cute like everything you could want out of a small country Germany town. Everyone was very friendly and I myself spent about 30 minutes over the course of 3 days outside. I managed to get Covid, either before our trip but no symptoms, in the airport there, or in Berlin, who is to say but it struck more or less in Nesselröden. I wasn't too bad but pretty obviously sick, just a sore throat and being tired thankfully but still a drag. Thankfully Sam didn't test positive, or really have symptoms, so he was still able to go to the wedding with a mask on. I quarantined for 3 days in a room of about 10'x10' but which I really just stayed in bed for 3 days. They brought us all of the food for our meals and so we spent a lovely, rather undisturbed, somewhat boring, three days in Nesselröden. We were brought food from the rehearsal dinner straight up to our rooms and it was delicious. I had roast duck with potatoes and kraut of some sort, Sam had a great steak with an almost tangy sauce, mashed potatoes, and green beans. Everything was exceptional.

The day of the wedding Sam left to go attend the festivities at noon not realizing the wedding was set to go till 4am. Yes. A 16 hour wedding. I just chilled in the room, this was probably the most boring day but it was good to have the rest. Sam brought food for me from the wedding though out the day including a plate with 4 different pieces of cake on it as they had a smorgasboard of cakes laid out for the guests. All in all it was kind of a blur for me, mostly because I spent three days in a tiny room and had all my food brought to me... I think Sam had a better time, he had friends to catch up with at the wedding and had the unique experience of attending a German wedding in a pretty church. They did the ceremony in both German and English and there was praying and chanting and then just a lot of partying. We heard the next morning that the good times did actually end around 2:30am not the planned 4am but by then we were already well asleep.