Next stop! All aboard!

Our next stop, Heilbronn, was going to be nice because I'd have a chance to catch up with Shelly - an old friend of mine from my Iowa days. She graciously offered to host us. (shelly - thank you again) Heilbronn is a smaller town and as we rolled in on the train - I decided that this is the Iowa of Germany. Yep. Green rolling plains and gentle farming with infrequent big industry. Just like Iowa.

I won't go into too much detail, but Shelly and Keith made the week awesome. Took us to meet some friends, had some dinner, made some food, drank some beer, saw an 80's rock cover band, ate lardo, and just had some fun. The last day, Lo-Lin and I walked up to the vineyards. Beautiful.

I just wanted to make 2 additional comments. Beer here is not as exciting as in other places around the world, rather it is straight forward, good tasting, and plentiful. Enjoyable all the time. The second comment is food-based. I love food and Heilbronn did not disappoint. I've been wanting to try proper lardo for a while. For the uninitiated, lardo is pork fat with a bit of crispy skin that has been melted and spread like butter on bread (or pizza or other mediums). It is *rich* and creamy, but a little bit of texture too. It sounds gross (Shel wouldn't touch it), but it is top notch country cuisine. The vendor even asked me twice (he spoke English well) - Are you sure you want this? You know what this is? =) Yep. and I loved it. p.s. it was served with another piece of bread with pork tartare ;)

Now to the photos: 36 photos. This one is of some sort of meat/cheese filled baguette that I had. SCRUMPTIOUS! The meat salad in the pictures looked great too.