Chocolate. Lots and lots of chocolate.

Today Ross wanted to sleep in a bit and run some errands around town getting stamps and such so I woke up early and headed to the train station alone. I rode the train out to Niederndodernleben and arrived without any trouble, except that the train was 5 minutes late. Once there, I enjoyed several hours of time tousle to practice. I love to have friends with and share organ time, but there is something peaceful and wonderful about being completely alone in a cold, musty old church and filling it with music. Just me, God, and any dead people in the floor and walls, and music. Love! I got some major good thinking done and some really solid practice. Ross met me around noon and we ran a few registration things. Then Barry came and I held keys while he did a 20 minute reed tuning. Once Barry left, I played a bit more, listened to Ross play a bit and we headed back to town. 

Once there we enjoyed lunch, and then headed to the grocery store. It was comical. We got a cart and found the chocolate isle and went crazy. Ross and I are both pretty cautious and sensitive about trying to blend with the locals and not stand out as tourists. Except when we do our once-a-trip candy shopping. We couldn't stop smiling and laughing as we received funny looks from people passing as we loaded box after box into our cart. At one point Ross joked that he felt like a something in something and knew he was referring to the old "kid in a candy store" expression. This immediately resulted in more laughter. Ross said we should buy something besides candy so it didn't look so bad so we got one box of Korny. I don't think that really helped our cause. We opted to check out together to save on the embarrassment factor and get out of there ASAP, plus the particular grocery store we were in has been known for really rushing and being impatient if you don't get out of there as soon as you pay, despite having to bag it all yourself. We checked each line, looking for the most cheerful and goodnatured clerk to check us out. Once we decided, we got in line to finish the job. The woman who me checking us out found this highly entertaining. She would scan several items and then sneak a glance at us with a big smile as if to say "you all are crazy". We loaded as fast as we could, filled our shopping bag to the brim, paid the ridiculously large bill (and this was a grocery store so it was cheap prices compared to other places to get chocolate!!!) and got out of there fast, still laughing. The bag was much heavier than we bargained for and the whole way back to the hostel we wondered if this would all fit in our suitcase and figured we better pray hard that Prague isn't too hot because if this much chocolate were to melt, it would be awful messy. Once back, we spread out our loot just to see it all. 

We met Manfred then at 20:00 and took him out to dinner to thank him for all of his help on this trip. He has saved us a ton of money knowing about special tickets and deals on the trains, not to mention he made a few calls for us and is letting us stay at his place tomorrow. We enjoyed a great meal at a potato restaurant and returned to the youth hostel for one more night there.