Day 2 - The morning

Hallo and welcome back :-)

I tried to stay up late last night, however, I had to have a short nap from 5:30 to 7 pm, then up and my hosts had a wonderful dinner prepared of cold red cabbage salad and cold winter salad. The winter salad looked and tasted a lot like baby spinach, however, my hosts told me it was not spinach. I will have to research it when I return home. We had a hard roll with a wonderful fish dish, salmon and cod in a white wine cream sauce. It was fantastic!

We stayed up and talked until midnight and I had a great time learning about their favorite vacation spots and hearing stories from there son about growing up. He is now at the University studying Economics and is in his first year.

The University system here, while hard to get into and overcrowded (sounds like UW-Madison), it costs only 250 Euro per semester and covers all transportation bus/train in a large area, and tuition. It is going up to 500. As you would expect many are not happy about this.

We discussed taxes and how their government tells them that the US does not pay as much as they did. When we talked about local, state, and federal taxes combined they were shocked that we paid so much, especially our property taxes! They still beat us in VAT (Valued added tax).

Barbara is a school teacher at the high school and teaches English. She told me that in the 70's they were getting a fair wage and the schools were in excellent shape. Since that time the pay and benefits have gotten worst and the buildings in need of repair. This sounds a lot like the same problems we face in Racine.

Peter teaches car salesmanship and business administration at our sister college here KSII. He can retire in 3 years. Barbara will not be allowed to retire early as English is a skill in need at the high school level and she will have to work until 65.

Today we are off to tour our sister college a little and the visit a castle. I'll be sure to put the names and places in when I return. It is in the far southeastern portion of Hessen.

Have a great day!
Thanks for stopping by...