Mushrooms

I got my residency permit/visa today. :) I am now a legal immigrant.

In other news:

On Sunday night I took the train to Erlau and spent the night at Martin's parents house. Monday morning, Tilo picked me up in Erlau (his office/house is in a neighboring town, Hildburghausen) and we drove to Zella to meet with party members from Hessen, Bavaria, Thüringen and the federal government to discuss the Biosphärenreservat Rhön (a nature preserve). There has been talk of building a highway through the nature preserve, but it would ruin the natural beauty of the nature preserve. After this meeting we went to Gerstungen where members of the federal government and the state parliements discussed alternative waste management options for K+S. After this meeting Katja, Tilo and I went to Katja's office in Eisenach and got a quick bite to eat. Then Katja and I, as well as some other Bundestag members, went to tour the Opel factory in Eisenach. It was really interesting - especially watching the assembly lines up close and seeing how quickly they can actually build a car from start to finish. The executives at Opel all have to know English too, so they kept asking me if they needed to translate anything - they wanted to use their English so bad... it was funny.

Today I went to Rohr to meet with a farmer's union with Tilo. The farmers are wanting/needing more subsidies to continue farming more than just corn and soy which will exhaust the land. After the meeting Tilo asked me if I wanted to go collect mushrooms in the forest... so very quaint and German. First we drove to Tilo's parents house to eat and I met his mom and dad and his two daughters. After we went into the woods, Tilo showed me all the different kinds of mushrooms and the ones that are edible or poisonous. He studied forestry back in the day so he was really knowledgeable about the mushrooms and I learned a lot.

So I came home from work today with a huge basket of mushrooms. Martin, Micha, Johanna and I cooked all the mushrooms up and ate them for dinner. And none of us are hallucinating, throwing up, or dying yet, so I'd say it's a success.

I'll post pictures later... off to bed. :)