Thanksgiving in Ulm.  We rose and drove to the city of Ulm west of Munich, where we met up with Sheri's friend Mike from Stuttgart, another MBA student.  This was the town of our first Christmas market and the tallest cathedral spire in the world.  The cathedral was nice but climbing the spire was fun.  Up 375 steps and looking in to see the bells, and looking over the whole town.  The Danube ran through it and the part of town by the river was really quaint.  Great view from the bell tower, and the bells rang while I was there. 

I did most of my Christmas shopping here.  The market was at the base of the Cathedral.  Lots of stalls selling gluhwein and beer, sausages of every type and shape and color on fantastic bread, spaetzel mixed with everything and hot lieberkase sandwiches!  The stalls were full of glass ornaments, hand-painted rnaments, Christmas houses, children's toys, straw ornaments, entire stalls of things to make your own reches, table linen for the holidays, sweaters, etc.  Treasures everywhere, stuffed animals and puppets, marionettes and porcelain, paintings and a living creche (with real sheep and a donkey).

We went to a nice Bavarian restaurant for Thanksgiving dinner.  I had fabulous duck and bread dumpling and red cabbage (kind of like turkey and stuffing and cranberries) and a good salad with olives and artichoke hearts and goat cheese.  At the restaurant there was a toilet seat that sent out an arm when you flushed and the entire seat turned around getting cleaned by the arm - it was the weirdest thing we had all ever seen!  I must say that the toilet paper there is dreadful - it's like recycled paper towels if you can imagine. We walked down by the Danube after dinner, I would return in the morning to take pictures.