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14.5.60

Hi Darling, and Ma & Pa too

Well, we had quite a day in Tübingen yesterday - a mixture of college-
type fun and interesting conversation. The town itself is simply beautiful,
located on steepish hillsides rising from the quiet, smooth-flowing
Neckar. Its sort of romantic - rustic with lots of old houses; and the
presence of the university (it really is essentially a "university town", that
being the main reason for its existence) only adds the student atmosphere to
the already special scenic beauty. It's an ideal spot of a university (especially
from the extra-curricular point of view!).

We arrived about 11 Am, spent 2 hours before lunch walking around
the town for a while, then taking a beautiful rowboat ride on the Neckar.
This is a favorite student pastime, both for groups of boys or girls and
for couples (or even triple dates in one case I saw). There is a long, low
narrow, tree and grass covered island in the stream and we spent about
an hour rowing leisurely up one side of it, back the other, four of us and
one German student. All along the bank of the island were students reading
or just talking or lying in the sun - it was so peaceful and pretty!

While we were eating lunch back at the fraternity house a sudden
storm blew up and it began pouring rain, continued intermittently for the
whole afternoon. We went down to the Stift - an Augustenian cloister
from the 15th century, now a dorm for mostly theology students, others too -
heard a talk about the history of the town, the cloister, etc. Several famous
people have studied at Tübingen, one of Germany's best universities (dating
from 1420) - Kepler the astronomer, Hegel the philosopher, Schelling (a contemporary
of Hegel in idealism), Hölderlin, a lyric poet of the 19th cent.

From the Stift we rode up to a cafe - hangout of the students, overlooking the
Neckar valley, and sat around drinking a delicious hard cider - lemon juice
drink and sharing college songs together. We 30 from Stanford sang our
classic drinking songs, then joined them on German songs. Lots of fun of
course.

Then last night we had a dinner-dance at the fraternity house,
had a chance both to dance and have fun and to talk about German
and American universities ans student life. We finally had to leave
about 11:30 in order to stagger into bed here at 1:30.

Got to go now to ride with Dr. Tarshus to Stuttgart - another bunch of errands.

Lots of love,
George