Germany...

After a horrible few hours of confusion in the dark, cold, pouring rain, we finally arrived in Germany...

Gary's apartment is in a very small quiet town by the name of Bad Nauheim, it is a 30min walk from the, only slightly bigger, town of Friedberg. Which is a good 4o min train ride away from the large banking citie of Frankfurt.

The apartment itself if great. Two bedroom, two bath, washer/(Europe doesnt have dryers), big kitchen, hardwood floors, good lighting, and best of all, Gary's mom has decorated it to look like a page from an IKEA catalog, so his place is pretty awesome to say the least.

Gary's Mom, Ursula, is extremely generous and thoughtful. Some refer to her as Ursy (which sounds like Ooshy), but we just call her "Mom." She is married to a man named Sauro; we call him Pops. Ooshy and Pops: what to say, what to say. She is German, he's Italian. He speaks maybe a word of English, so she's stuck translating between German, English, and Italian. Sometimes I can wriggle my way through a conversation on hand gestures and the little Italian I recognize from movies, but for the most part I enjoy observing them on the day-to-day. Pops will sit at the dining table sipping on his espresso, working away at his stamp colection (no joke). Occasionally he'll sit in his big chair and yell a bunch of Italian at the television, while Mom gestures for us to ignore him and wildly waves her hand in the air for him to hush. It's quite sweet, and we feel very fortunate that they are able to be here for the duration of our stay.

As far as Bad Nauheim goes, it's orchards, cornfields, and forests. This may be the coldest we've been, but at least we are in the perfect spot to see the season's beginning. If you walk for 5min in almost any direction from Gary's apartment, you run right into either a cornfield, an apple orchard, or the forest, all of which are big, beautiful, and take your breath away. And the colors, oh the colors; they are soo bright and beautiful, like nothing I have seen before. There isn't enough time in the day to go into proper detail, and probably not enough words to describe, so I'll just say that everything truly is illumiated.

We are really looking forward to Munich on Thursday - this year just so happens to be the 200 year anniversary of Oktoberfest. So in true German spirit, Caehle and I purchased ourselves authentic Dirndles to wear when we go. They're actually quite comfortable and cute. I find myself lying around the house in it sometimes. It really holds you in, like a big hug. Not much else to report... Trying to stay warm, picnics a

t the edge of the forest, long walks through the sweet-smelling apple trees, good homecooked meals with Mom and Pop, and German television fill our days. Caehle refers to this time as the calm before the storm, and I would have to agree.

PRAGUE...

PRAHA here we come.

As Caehle says, Czech us out! We are in beautiful Prague, and it only took a 15 hour train ride and our first expierience on a sleeper train. Bunks stacked 3 high on either side of an 8x8x8 compartment - a little cozy to say the least, but it beats the hell out of the North Carolina airport terminal floor. This train kinda made San Diego's NCDT look good. No outlets, no showers, no cafe' compartment...oh boy, it was a little rough. Luckily we were tired enough to sleep a good 12 hours and expierience as little of the overly cozy compartment as possible.

When we arived Thursday morning, to be honest, it didnt look like much. Exiting the train and figuring out the metro/trolly system to get to the hostel was far from easy. I was for sure out of my comfort zone; very few people spoke English, transit signs didn't ring any bells, and we had to exchange our Euro's to Crowns (100 euro = 2,400 crown). The written language was what really got me - you couldnt even wing it. In French you can usually make out what the word would be in English, especially when it comes to the important things like toilet and vino. In Czech, it's a little difficult to pick out the meaning of things. Toilets are WC (water closet), beer is pivo. Hello is Ahoj (ahoy!), and so on and so forth. All I can say is thank god for the little pictures next to the signs at the transit stations: train, trolly, bus, little person running with an arrow, all good things.

We finally made it down some small cobblestoned street where we were to take a left then a right then a left to the front door of Yan's Residence, our hostel. Like I said, initially it didnt look like much, but after we made the first turn on that cobblestone street, I saw my fathers name plastered on the side of a building, and it was then that I realized things were much nicer around the corner. Oh what a difference a corner can make. Happy music mixed with happy smells filled the small corridors of the cutest little city I have seen yet.

Amsterdam...

AMSTERDAM...

It's a beautiful city. Caehle and I managed to eat and drink ourselves into a coma here. I think because our room was a 10 bed dorm style suite, we tried to find things outside of the hostel to hold our attention. We found our way into the wide open doors of three-story Chinese resturaunts, Irish pubs, corner coffee shops, and warm sugary pastry stops. We met some great people, saw some beautiful places, froze our asses off in some rainy weather, and oh did we take it all in! No, literally, we took it all in. We ate everything. It was soo amazing, in fact, that we could only take its impactful beauty for one night. Well, that and our hostel was booked after that one night.

PARIS...

PARIS...

Wandering around the deserted streets of Paris on our first night here turned out to be the best thing ever for our sense of direction. The next day we accidently slept well past our desired wake up time, and liesurely went about our day. We finally got to breakfast at another Cafe' sometime around 2pm. It was a saturday afternoon and the streets were filled with commotion. When we got to the main square a few blocks from our hostel, there were people lining the streets in different colored matching T-shirts with French writing on them. They were lining up in groups with banners, while police cars and vans surrounded the area. In one particular section police were putting on their riot gear. We asumed a parade or carnival was about to start and the police were just very prepared for the occasional out-of-hand Euro. Later that day when I Skyped with Robert, he told me the papers said the Unions were rioting in the streets of Paris this weekend. Unfortunately I had already told him about the great Carnival we saw that earlier, and how the people were lining up to start some sort of afternoon parade. When I got to the part about the SWAT gear he started busting up laughing. Oops. Apparently the Union marches and protesters are very very organized here. There was no chanting or chaos of any kind. It was quite civilized, but this was at 11am, maybe the Parisian's esspressos hadn't kicked in quite yet. It's kind of shitty too, because today (Tuesday) we're heading to Amsterdam by metro/train, and hopefully the metro is running because the front desk told us today and tomorrow are city transit protest days. Nothing runs till they get better wages, or at least just for a few days to express their power. How we managed to travel on transit protest days is beyond me. We can walk though, its only about a 30min walk to the staion so it'll be fine. Ok where was I oh yes, Saturday after plans to meet up with Caehle's cousin at the Eiffel tower around 9pm after her tour. I was soo excited. breakfast we came back to the hotel and caught up on some internet time down in the lobby, because aparently floors 2-5 dont get the WiFi. We avoided napping at all cost because thats what led to our waste of an evening on Friday night, and we had an exciting dinner to get to.


That evening we exited the metro station and swung ourselves around a corridor to avoid mass crouds and BAM! The most beautiful sight I had seen yet in Paris: the glowing, sparkling, Tour Eifel. (Mom, yes i found that corridor; it happened to be the first view of the tower I saw & I got a night shot but it's not the same because a tree is there now... but it's still pretty good!) It was the most magnifique thing I have seen here. Well maybe that and the Louvre, but both exquisite. After somehow managing to find Caehle's cousin amongst the hundreds of people, we had a litte wine and dinner at a corner Cafe'. Then we came home for some early shut eye.


Sunday was Monet's Garden... It's in Giverny, which is well outside Paris, around Normandy (sorry Dad, the beach was another 2 hours form there, otherwise I would have sent you a little sample of sand). We took the metr, to a 40min train to a charter bus that took us to his house and gardens from which he drew his inspiration. The entire time I was there,I wondered over and over, "Who gets to keep this up, whose full time job is it to keep this garden looking prestine as it has for hundreds of years, who gets to be the lucky person to put on their resume Monet's personal gardener?" Haha . (Lisa, there were parts of this place that fully reminded me of the secret garden and that painting dad had made for you, I kept thinking of how you would have loved it here!) After walking around the tour gardens and taking some beautiful pictures around the cobblestone streets we had a perfect picnic style lunch on two tree stumps, near a little brook that just happened to be across a rickety old bridge. It was honestly breathtaking... and one of the best meals I've had yet. We made or way home and I tried to upload my pictures and listen to music, but wound up falling asleep around 7pm. Caehle was nice enough to take my warm computer from my sleepy clutches and cover me with a blanket, and I didn't wake till 7am the next day.



Monday monday, the Lourve, and reserving/preparing for Amsterdam. The Louvre was exelante'... Damn, that place is BIG and AWESOME! I'll let the pictures dictate that story, I'll just say I felt kind of bad bacause I was more interested in the walls and ceilings than in the art hanging on them. There were still remains of the Medieval Louvre in the bottom levels, they were built sometime around 1360. My history teachers would have been so proud, I guessed the 1300's then looked at the sign and saw the actual date. (Boston Accent) Wicked smatt. OH! Also when we were in line at the bakery there was an undercover cop take down. Me and Caehle were in line at the bakery, and i literally got shoved while these three civilian dressed men took down this couple. It was pretty intense. When I say "take down" I literally mean they took them down, to the ground, wrestled them into cuffs and read them their rights. I mean I asume it was thier rights, it was in french after all. Yeah, gnarly, I guess you chouldn't ever steal anything from the Lourve huh!?! ha ha.

OK, its Tuesday morning. We are going to Amsterdam for only one night instead because the hostel we want to stay at is only available tonight. Then onward to Prague!