So I knew there was a reason we moved to Tübingen. Admittedly, since we've been here, we've found it difficult to remember what it was. But now it is clear: the Umbrian-Provencal market opened in the Altstadt today. HEAVEN!! Perhaps the highlight was the pasta with truffle sauce (4 EUR), but also the pecorino with grape must, or with truffles, or the horse milk cheese that we bought (at least that's what it seemed to say! It's really good), or the pickled salted lemons from Provence, or the panforte, the amazing bread with walnuts and olives, the unfiltered tasty olive oil, or I know not what. An orgy of eating has reconciled us somewhat to the difficulties of existence (more banking problems, for instance).

The market fills up the entire old city with people from all over the region. While local restaurants take advantage of the massive crowds of people as well, there are plenty of salespeople who speak only French or only Italian. Indeed, the cheese guy asked B if he was really Italian? Which, not so much, but cool. We also stocked up on baby artichokes for only 3.50 EUR per kilo, which we will clean and deepfry tomorrow. We're both running pretty much daily, which leaves B starving all the time, and the fridge here is only half-size, so we do a lot of shopping.

We also saw the most gorgeous apartment ever today. Yes, it's the one with the $2000 fee, and there's pretty much no way we can make it work, but what if we can't find anything else? The apartment is much larger than we had realized, with a separate bedroom, sun on all sides (it's the highest floor), an absolutely amazing kitchen--indeed, the whole place was renovated in April, but the guy who has it now is a commuter and was hardly ever here, so he couldn't justify keeping the place. I don't know if we could get it even if we could somehow borrow the money from somewhere, but it is simply the nicest place I have ever seen to live--nothing over-the-top fancy, just so simple and perfect. And since we've finally found the bike path that follows the Neckar, running would be literally at our feet.

We're both getting a bit nervous about the Stadtlauf on Sunday. Not that I have any intention of racing, due both to my general slowness as well as the fact that we are in the middle of the hardest weeks of marathon training, but it turns out to be such a big deal that it's going to be hard not to get carried away. It's the highlight of the market weekend, all the stores will be open, world champions and Olympic medalists are running, and every newspaper and TV show in the local region is talking about it. Hopefully we'll manage to focus on the fun, cheer each other on (B is running with the fast runners, me half an hour earlier with the slowies), and not injure ourselves. After all, the marathon is the real goal this fall.