Today, Gus was training me on how to use StudierenPlus, another part of the Hochschule Reutlingen website. This site is specifically for students looking to sign up for RIO workshops. He taught me more about the site, as I am going to be linking our external website to this StudierenPlus to make registration easier for students.
Once that was complete and I had done most of my work for the day, I left the office around noon. I was going to run home to eat some food, but ran into a friend on the way. We both headed to the Mensa in order to eat before the Tübingen excursion that some of the RIO students were attending.
We began with a tour of Tübingen. I somehow got roped into giving an English tour for part of the group so that we would have smaller groups to tour with. I wish I knew more about the sites in Tubingen, but I did what I could. We took a beautiful walk around the city and I showed them, most notably, the castle and the Marktplatz. We ended our tour here and my colleague Tobias and I grabbed some Kaffee und Kuchen in our free time. We had about an hour before we had to head back to the Neckar River to do our Stockerkahn (punting boat) ride.
I attempted to Vine for the first time. I think it turned out pretty well!
The Stockerkahn ride was so peaceful and beautiful on the Neckar. We got to lean back and enjoy the pleasant weather, all while hearing stories from our Stockerkahn driver. The man reminded me a lot of the gondola drivers of Venice.
We were informed that the Tubingen Stockerkahns were originally from hundreds of years ago when there were no bridges connecting the banks of the Neckar River in the city. The Stockerkahns were used to transport people and goods between the two banks. Yes, there is another place in East Berlin that also uses boats like these, but the seating is different - in the Tubingen Stockerkahn, you sit facing the rest of the boat, which makes for easy conversation; up in Berlin, the seats are "church-style" in that everyone is facing the front. Stockerkahns are different from the gondolas because of the way they are driven. The Stockerkahn drivers use the bottom of the river to push off and drive the boat, while the gondola drivers paddle.
And, now that you know everything you could possibly want to know about Stockerkahns, I digress.
One last note - I got to drive the boat. :) It is so much more difficult than it appears!
*Pictures to come; my computer is being moody!*
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