May 21: An Afternoon in Frankenmuth

Let me begin this by saying that we set out for Frankenmuth without much idea of what to expect other than a store that sold Christmas stuff all year round. Based on that description, I suppose you could say this trip exceeded expectations. But that makes it sound a lot better than it really is.

Here the city looks down right scenic. Don't be fooled.

Frankenmuth advertises itself as "Michigan's Little Bavaria." It's really just an over-exaggerated version of Columbus' German Village that was bought by Donald Trump and turned into a Disney-type theme park. The food is not so great, everything is over-priced, and each shop sells tie-dyed sweatshirts sporting the town name. However, if this does not deter you, than go for it.

Similar to Disney, statues of mice line the streets.

We arrived in the town early in the morning and walked around some the little shops on the main street of the city. Most of them looked cute from the outside but once you entered there was really nothing worth buying. And there was little variety. At one end of the main drag was a little shopping center set off from the street. These stores had a bit more diversity; most of these stores were specialty or niche stores, which made them more entertaining to browse through.

In the shopping center we had a strawberry-banana crepe at a little cafe. That was delicious. For lunch, we mistakenly thought it'd be a good idea to find some authentic German cuisine so we went to the Bavarian Inn instead of the slightly better rated (on Yelp at least) Zehnder's which apparently is famous for chicken. Bad choice for so many reasons. We should have turned around when the hostess stared at us like a deer in the headlights when we entered the building. But we stuck it out and had to pick from four different menus. I still could not tell you the difference between these except one seemed needlessly expensive.

The crepe was actually delicious but . . . .

The biggest sign you have failed at picking a good restaurant when traveling is when you see buses of group tourists piling into said establishment. Unfortunately, we had already committed and ordered food by this point so it was too late to leave. The food was very similar to Schmidt's (in Columbus) but more bland and way less delicious. I ordered the Sauerbraten and a side of noodles. The noodles were covered in crushed crackers and were really dry and gross. Although I am not a connoisseur of Germanic cuisine the sauerbraten was only so-so.

. . . . the sauerbraten and noodles, not so much.

To add insult to injury, a woman in a Bavarian costume serenaded the diners with her accordion music, stopping at every other table to pose for pictures with the guests. It was way too campy for my enjoyment. We did not stay very long afterwards as we decided to spend the rest of the evening at a nearby outlet mall instead. In conclusion, while not the worst place I've ever been, it's certainly far from the best.

May 1, 2011: Good News Everyone!

When I woke up this morning I did not except it to be an interesting day by any means. And for the most part it wasn't. I went to work, came home around 10:30 pm, hurried over to Sonic's next door with Dandrich to get dinner, and came home to watch some TV before going to bed.

However, around 9:30 when I checked my phone for text messages there was a notification from the Huffington Post announcing that the President would be addressing the nation later that night. I didn't have much time to think about as we were preoccupied closing the store, but I assumed it had something to do with the bombings in Libya. As I headed to my car I checked the front page of the Huffington Post to see what President Obama had said. There was no further mention of it on the HP at 10:30 ish so I forgot about it.

When Dandrich and I returned home, I turned on the television and begin flipping through the channels to see what was on. As I passed over  CNN the headline "Osama bin Laden is dead" caught my attention. I called Dandrich over and we turned to MSNBC to watch the President's speech.

Watching the celebration of many outside the White House, I turned to Dandrich and asked, "Do you think people are doing anything here in Columbus?"

"Probably on campus," he replied. So we hurriedly pulled on shoes and rain jackets and headed over to Ohio State campus. As turned down Woodruff Avenue, we saw students in shorts and T-shirts, some in swimming attire, but all with towels, running across the street toward the middle of campus. This is actually a very common sight at Ohio State, but usually only on the Thursday night before the Ohio State - Michigan game. On that night hundreds of students brave the freezing cold to jump into the tiny yet scenic Mirror Lake by the South Oval.

Figuring that all these students must be headed to the same place, we made our way toward Mirror Lake.  This is what we found when we got there:

I guess the only thing Buckeyes hate more than Michigan is terrorists.