Auf Wiedersehen!

That's a picture of Yma and Amy ready to go HOME!
Whew! I'm home! As I look back through my blog and pictures I wonder...is anyone sick of seeing me wear that black jacket yet? I think it's on in every picture! :) Great purchase, Mom!! Thanks! Best item of clothing I brought along!

Abbey and I got into Wenatchee this morning around 1:30. After dropping Abbey off, I came home to a light on (thanks, Megan!) and a welcome home sign and balloons (thanks, Smeltzers!)

By the time I pulled in to my driveway, I think I'd been up 25 hours and had been in the process of traveling 24.5 of those! 13+ hours on planes, 3+ hours of driving, and the rest of the time spent in navigating airports, etc. That's exhausting. We did okay driving home...kept the sunroof open for some cool air, sang along with cd's, and stopped at a rest stop and ran and jumped around a bit to wake up! But it was worth it for my own bed! Nothing feels so good after that many hours of travel and that many weeks away from home!

I think I fell asleep immediately and I slept the clock around and probably would have slept longer had I not set an alarm! The day's been spent unpacking, calling friends, doing laundry and making some space in the house for my new roommate! My housesitter, Megan, is going to be my roommate for the next few months until she heads off to school in the fall. I've warned her that I haven't had a roommate in 6 years, but she seems willing to take on the challenge of living with me :).

Jet-lag is starting to hit, but I've found the best way to fight it is to immediately get on a normal schedule, so I'm off to listen to music at Cafe Mela with some friends lest I fall asleep on my couch at home. Hopefully I can interact like a semi-normal human being! I took a walk over to see a friend this afternoon and was out of breath about 20 steps up the hill in front of my house! After a month of walking miles and miles a day around European cities, I couldn't figure out how I was so out of breath so fast...then I remembered my body thought it was more appropriate to be sleeping than walking at that time of day!

Thanks so much everyone who kept in touch with my blogs! It's been so great to hear your feedback and know that you've been thinking of us on our travels. We had a GREAT time and we're still friends after 24 days of 24/7 companionship! We traveled well together, and I really miss Abbey today! I haven't seen her in 17 hours! :) But we have talked on the phone...my Netherlands lost to Russia in the Euro-Cup today. That's a major upset for those who don't know (which I wouldn't have, had I not been so closely introduced to the Euro-Cup in my travels!) I may post some blogs yet about my readjustment to home, but the exciting adventures of Yma and Amy to far-flung places are now completed (until next time....)

Auf Wiedersehen!

Homeward bound!

I’m sitting in the Toronto airport, having just made it through US Customs Preclearance. The nice gentleman who checked my passport said “Welcome home!” Well…almost there! Abbey and I have divided our journey home into three phases…Berlin to London: Check. London to Seattle: Half-check. Seattle to Wenatchee: yet to come. Our flight to Seattle is a little delayed at this point.
Our last day in Berlin was nice and lazy. Kristen asked, ‘Is there anything you guys want to do before you leave?” to which we replied, “Nope!” We walked to the grocery store with Kristen and helped her carry home some heavy grocery bags filled with snacks for a party for their students, and other than that we hung around the apartment until John and Kristen drove us to the airport (SO nice that they drove us…that much less lugging about of the backpacks!)
We got checked in and sat around the Berlin airport, and decided that we much prefer North American airports over European! In our experience at European airports on this trip, you wait in line to check in, then wait in line to check your baggage, then wait in line to check your boarding pass, then wait in line in security, then wait in line to send your shoes through security, then wait in a waiting area with totally insufficient seating for your gate to be posted (because they never post it more than an hour before), then join the mad dash to your gate once they post it, where you wait in line to go through passport checks, then wait in line to get you boarding pass checked to enter the boarding area, where you wait until they actually board the plane and then you wait in line to get on the plane! You may have noticed a theme here. :)
We made it to London without any problems…a little late, but no connections to make, so no big deal. Amy was most excited to see English books in the bookshops; Abbey was most excited that we knew exactly how to navigate all the transportation! We caught the Gatwick Express back into London where we caught the Underground out to Heathrow, where we found our Yotel. For those who don’t know, a Yotel is a little hotel located in the airport. This one is in Terminal 4 at Heathrow, tucked in between some restaurants and an internet area. It was so cool! The rooms are small, but definitely more spacious than our first London room, and you can’t get much more convenient than sleeping comfortably at the airport! We had bunkbeds with really nice linens, a tiny little fold-out table, and a huge bathroom with the nicest showerhead ever! Unfortunately, we couldn’t get the internet to work, but we went to bed on time instead. We got to sleep in a bit in the morning and then catch the transit to Terminal 3 and check in around 10:00.
We left Heathrow about an hour late…there was a wheelchair rugby team on our flight and it took a while to get everyone in place, but thankfully, we had a three hour layover here, so we didn’t stress too much about the delay. The flight actually went pretty quickly from London (about 8 hours). We love in-flight entertainment. I watched three movies, a BBC sketch comedy, and listened to XM radio. Now that helps pass the time!
And now I’m off to buy some food before the flight since apparently our five hour flight only offers “food for purchase.” I’ll be posting this from home!!

Down by the sea

Our agenda for today? Eat lunch at a cafe by the Baltic Sea. Mission: Accomplished.

We had a day left on our Eurail pass and a day in Berlin with nothing planned, so we decided to head north to see the Ostsee (Baltic Sea) today. We didn't really know where to go, so we picked out a couple of seaports on a map and looked them up online and managed to find Stralsund, a little port town whose Old City is an UNESCO World Heritage site, so we decided to go there. It was about a 3 hour train ride away, so we set out around 9:30 and got there just in time for lunch. We had no map of the town (this seems to be our M.O.), so we headed in the direction of the big church steeples we'd seen as we came in to town. The Old City is situated on a bit of land surrounded by lakes and an inlet of the Baltic Sea. We found a pedestrian/bike path and bridge out to the old city which led us directly to one of the two remaining gates in the 14th century wall. We walked straight through the center of old town to find the sea and got lunch at a little cafe. I had the daily special which turned out to be fillets of three different kinds of fish (neither I or the waiter could interpret what kinds of fish :)! I didn't realize they were all different, so I filled up on the first kind, which was really good, and I wasn't too sad I didn't have room for the others because they weren't my favorite. The waterfront was undergoing lots of construction for a new events center, so it wasn't exactly peaceful, but mission accomplished :).

After lunch, we had no agenda, only a list of trains returning to Berlin in the evening, so we set out along the waterfront for a while and got away from construction. It turned out to be a really cool old town. It has lots of nordic connections with trade, etc. so it looks quite different from other towns we've seen on this trip. And there aren't too many German port towns, so we were glad to see one :). We found the other remaining town gate and entered through there, finding the Rathaus, St. Nikolai's church, Johanneskloster (an old Franciscan monastery destroyed by the war), a cool shopping district (when the sun came out in the early afternoon, the pedestrian traffic increased dramatically!) and the Marienkirche. Is it just us or does every town in Germany have a Marienkirche? This Marienkirche is just beginning a restoration project, so it was interesting for us to see what these old churches look like before they pour a ton of money into restoring them. It was a huge church. It also had a strange monument just outside the church that we couldn't figure out...there was no plaque left on the monument...at the top was the communist hammer and sicle and below was a relief of a "comrade" shaking hands with a "working man" we think...leftover from the days of East Germany? There were also lots of memorial stones around the church yard with apparently Russian names, all of whom had died in 1945.

As we left the church, we checked our watches and saw that we had about 18 minutes before the next train left for Berlin, so we power-walked to the train station (first hurrying we'd done all day) and made it in plenty of time to by some beverages and snacks, catch the 3:39 train and be back in Berlin for dinner with John and Kristen. Perfect day! The scenery between Berlin and Stralsund was mostly farmland, (including lots of "wind farms" for power) and it could have been scenery from the Midwest except for the very German-looking towns (if you could ignore their "Golden Arches") and the poppies growing wild along the fields. We were wondering if they harvest the poppies along with crops...opium for the cows?

So going back to yesterday...sorry that we're out of order here but I thought I'd start with what was fresh.

Yesterday we slept in a bit, had breakfast all together, and then Kristen took Abbey and I around Berlin a bit to find some souvenirs. We started out at the Kurfursterdamm shopping area, which was mostly worth seeing for the Keiser Wilhelm Memorial Church there. The church was bombed out in 1943 and the congregation elected to leave the ruins of the bell tower. It's now open to the public as a testament to the destruction of war, as well as to the call of Christ to forgive those who have sinned against us. It's a powerful testament indeed.

In the evening, we went to pick up John's sister, Stephanie, at the airport (the one we met in Erfurt). She was returning from a trip to the states. After we'd dropped her off to get some sleep, we all headed to John and Kristen's Tuesday night student gathering. It was so much fun to meet some of their students, share a meal with them, worship with them and visit with them afterwards. Most of them speak excellent English, but they made Kristen translate for them so that she could practice :). Abbey and I were so excited to be able to see this part of John and Kristen's ministry here...what a wonderful community for these Christian students in Berlin!

So we fly to London tomorrow evening. Thus begins our travel home! Hard to believe our time here is almost over. The biggest challenge remaining may be repacking our bags and keeping them under the weight limit. We're not too excited about hefting those again, but it's the home stretch. Literally. I had to laugh today...on the train ride back from Stralsund, it smelled like something was burning and Abbey's response was "Well, if the train's on fire, at least I don't have to heft my bag!"

Downtime...

Good morning! (and it's 1 a.m. back home as I write this, so I guess that's the correct greeting :). We had a lovely day of doing nothing yesterday (so sorry that the web album pics won't be exciting pictures of all we saw...more like goofy pictures of the little we did). In fact, all we did yesterday was catch up on computer time (including sharing of favorite YouTube clips with eachother), go to the post office and grocery shopping with Kristen and then had a great "girls' night in." Spaghetti with homemade sauce for dinner (ah, home-cooked meals! Abbey says she really misses cooking...me? not so much :). After dinner we had a movie night...we shared "Stardust" with Kristen and she shared "Hoodwinked" with us, both excellent and entertaining movies. John and Kristen don't have a TV (they're heavily taxed in Germany) so we watched on a laptop. We still somehow didn't get to bed before midnight, but that's per usual for this trip...every night we say "maybe tonight we'll be in bed before midnight" and only about twice has it happened!

Today we're planning a bit of sight-seeing and European chocolate shopping before we go to John and Kristen's Bible study tonight. We're excited to meet their students and see this part of their ministry here. Hope you're all doing well! We come home in 3 days! That's crazy!

Flowers, free grace, french fries, fast trains, and fruhstuck (breakfast :)

Wow! Hard to believe it, but we're back in Berlin. Actually, what is hardest to believe is that it's only been two weeks since we were last here! Time has flown and we've packed a lot in!

It was an approximately 14 hour train trip from Geneva to Berlin!! We took the night train which left Basel about 9:30 last night and pulled in to Berlin at about 8:30 this morning. We actually both slept pretty well. The only other night train I've ever taken was in China, and at least this bed was a little over 6 feet long, more than could be said for the Chinese one! Kristen met us at the station and now we're happily fed, showered and doing laundry! We're pretty excited about the laundry thing, but I'm sure that's less thrilling for you at home :). I'm proud to say that I think I packed well...I've worn every article of clothing I've brought along and most have been laundered several times and reworn. I am looking forward to some variety in the wardrobe department though.

So going back to Geneva.... We had a lovely Sunday in Geneva. We had breakfast at our hotel and then walked down to the waterfront and enjoyed the views and the Sunday-morning crowd. We saw lots of dads taking their little ones for walks or to play in the park...we think Sunday morning is mom's day off in Geneva. :) We found Parc de la Grange, a beautiful park that contains the Villa where the Geneva Convention occured. The villa's under renovation, but the park was beautiful, especially the rose gardens! There's supposedly a rose bush for every square meter in that park...that means 12,000 rose bushes. And most were in full bloom. So we stopped to smell the roses. Actually, that's something I've really appreciated about this trip...we've fit a lot in, but we've also managed to stop and just take things in on a regular basis, too.

Church started at 11:00 so we headed back up the hill toward St. Pierre's cathedral. We attended the Presbyterian Church of Scotland service that met in the little Auditoire de Calvin next door to the cathedral. We really enjoyed worshipping in our own language again today. The church was quite full and what an international community...Americans, English, Scottish, Sri Lankan, French, Swiss, Nigerian, Korean and more! It was a cool experience for both of us because the church traditions/denominations that we were both raised in and that we attend now had their roots in that city and even in that auditorium! But more than that, it felt like the church universal meeting in that one room. How cool is that! Their pastor was Scottish (and fortunately talked very clearly and slowly...probably because English was the second language of most people there). They had a guest preacher yesterday, too, a Dr. of Theology from Sri Lanka who's a member of the church, but currently teaching at a university in New Jersey. His grandson was being baptized that day. He spoke about Jesus' compassion on the people he came into contact with and how "Freely you have received. Freely give."

After church, we set out in search of a French restaurant since we were in French Switzerland. We found a restaurant that looked good, and when we asked for a menu she said, "We only offer the one 'plate du jour'." So we said, "That sounds good!" even though we couldn't read the French :). Turns out it was really good! Salad and all-you-can-eat steak and french fries. Literal "french" fries. :) I think we each ate about a steak and a half, plus two servings of fries!

After all that food, we hauled ourselves back up the hill to the International Museum of the Reformation. The museum was pretty good. It was less about the religious reformation and more about the social, economic and political consequences of the reformation, especially Calvin's contributions to it. By the time we were done with that, it was time to think about heading back to our hotel to pick up our bags and head to the train station for our night train. We walked back by way of the original "Calvin College," a secondary school in Geneva started by Calvin. We had to climb up on a wall to see the school because it was under so much renovation, but Amy had to see the original :).

So that was our whirlwind tour of Geneva. It's a very pretty city with a very different atmosphere than any of the other cities we've seen this trip. We enjoyed it, but we're honestly glad to be headed back to German-speaking lands...not that we really speak German, but we've been here long enough that we at least know how things work...kind of...a little bit...well, at least restaurants and trains and public transport :).

I heart Washington state smoking laws!

We're in Geneva, Switzerland today. I’d never imagined how different two places in the same tiny country could be until we left German Switzerland and came to French Switzerland…the language is different, (which is proving a hard adjustment after a couple weeks of trying to figure out German), the buildings are different; the culture is different; it‘s just hard to remember we‘re still in Switzerland!
We took a late morning train from Interlaken and it was only a little over 2 ½ hours to get here. The Lake Geneva region is beautiful as we passed through it on the train…vineyards sloping down to the blue lake and it looks like some low mountains on the other side. Very pretty. One of Switzerland’s guidebooks called it the Riviera of Switzerland :) . Geneva is a cool city…lots of twisting little streets and stairways, a big, old city wall, lots and lots of “green space.” It was really a pain when we were trying to navigate it, but once we’d found what we needed to find and just started to explore and wander, it grew on me :). Our goal here is to see the Reformation-related sights in town and we found most of them this afternoon before dinner. We started with the Plainpalais Cemetery because it’s just across the street from our hotel. It’s a little cemetery that’s old but still pretty empty…it’s now reserved for city and state figures, but John Calvin was buried there in 1564, a very plain grave in a cemetery of fairly elaborate headstones. We kind of stumbled upon the Reformation Monument or Mur des Reformateurs in Bastian Park. It features four huge statues of the major figures in Geneva’s Reformation history…Guillaume Farel, John Calvin, Theodore de Beze and John Knox. The rest of the wall features prominent figures in the Reformation history of the other countries where Calvin’s teachings were spread, as well as telling the story of the Reformation in relief carvings…pretty cool, but only partially in English so we figured out what we could and decided we would have benefited greatly from some translation :). Next we found the Auditoire de Calvin…a tiny little church dwarfed by the St. Pierre Cathedral next door where John Calvin would teach daily at 7 am for anyone who wanted to attend before they started their work day! He did that for two years until his death and then other reformers, including John Knox, continued the tradition. The Auditoire also became a refuge and worship center for Reformation-related religious refugees in the early years, nursing an international church body. Today, the building hosts Scottish, Dutch and Italian congregations in Geneva. We’re planning on attending the Presbyterian Church of Scotland service there tomorrow morning and are really looking forward to that. A nice gentleman at the Auditoire directed us to the Reformation Museum which wasn’t on any of our maps, but by that time they were closing so we plan to see that tomorrow.
Instead, we wandered down to the lakefront, saw Geneva’s famous flower clock (all decked out for the Euro-Cup), and the Jet d’eau, a fountain out in the lake that shoots a jet of water into the air (yeah, that translates “jet of water,” romantic name, eh?) By that time, we were ready for dinner, so we found a restaurant near Geneva’s Fanzone (yep, the Euro-cup is here too!) and watched the Spain vs. Sweden game on the big screen while we ate. We would have stayed for the Greece vs. Russia game because the restaurant had a nice “local hangout” feel, but it was also very smoky! We can’t wait to get back to Washington state smoking laws! Now we’re trying to pack for our night train tomorrow, listening to Spanish fans celebrating in the streets below, and catching up on pictures and internet. There's two new blogs for me today if you're trying to keep up :). Thanks for reading, it's fun sharing this with all of you!

A day in the Alps!

Picture with me our setting for lunch today…sitting in a hiker’s shelter along a trail in the Alps. Our menu? Swiss cheese and salami sandwiches, carrot sticks, bruschetta chips, and swiss chocolate. The smell? Fresh mountain air. The sounds? A little brook to our left and from across the valley, the music of cow bells as they grazed for their lunch. The views? Wildflower-sprayed green meadows, cut by streams, dotted by cows and evergreens rising to greet the mountains and beyond the meadows…nothing. Clouds. As far as the eye could see, clouds! :)
Yesterday we decided that come rain or shine, we were going to hike in the Alps today. I’ve wanted to see the Alps since I was a little girl and we weren’t about to sit in town and not even try. So we caught a morning train up to Grindelwald and set out. We started by taking the gondola from Grindelwald up to one of the peaks, Mannlichen. It’s advertised as the world’s longest gondola track and we really enjoyed the ride up and the free Ricola drops that they handed out with the tickets :) . In Grindelwald, the bases of a few of the peaks were visible, but the gondola carried us right up into the clouds. We had planned to hike a ridge trail to one of the train stations cradled up in the mountains, but that trail was still closed due to snow. So we picked another station lower down and further away and started hiking. In the Alps! It snowed on us, hailed on us, and rained on us and it was still great! We had to watch our step pretty closely at first as the trail was alternately snowy, muddy, slippery, or a stream, but as we got below the snow line, we were able to enjoy the views of wildflowers braving that harsh environment, the unbelievable green of the high alpine meadows, the village laid out in the valley below us and occasionally, a rocky outcropping hinting at the huge mountains that stood above the clouds. I have decided that I will have to return to the Alps as many times as it takes to see them on a clear day! I can’t even begin to think how BIG the views are up there when the mountains are out. It was awe-inspiring just seeing what we could. After our lunch break, we finished the hike at Alpiglen, a little train station, and bought tickets down the mountain on the little mountain train. There’s a train that goes all the way up to one of the arms of the Jungfrau, the highest peak in the region (making it the highest train station in Europe), but tickets are around $200 (!) and it was only intermittently clear up there today, too. It was chilly up there today (around 1 degree Celsius). I had to buy a hat at the gift shop on Mannlichen (they didn’t gouge me too badly) and by the time we got down, we were ready to sit indoors and enjoy a cup of coffee.
We headed back down to Interlaken to plan our trip to Geneva tomorrow, use up our internet time at McDonald’s, enjoy dinner with Swiss wine (not at McDonald’s) and then head back to our cozy room to pack up. We’re watching Netherlands play France on TV now. Interlaken is quiet tonight because all the Dutch football fans are in Bern watching the game. Apparently a special “fan” train went out earlier today with over 2600 people on it! Just from Interlaken! And there’s still quite a bit of orange around town!
Well, I’d better get packing. We come home a week from today! Hard to believe!

Hup, Holland, Hup!

When I bought my orange Holland sunglasses in Salzburg, I had no idea that we'd be entering the Dutch fan zone in Interlaken. But all of the Netherlands games are being played in Bern (only 45 minutes away) so the Dutch have taken over this city. Even Interlaken has a Fanzone and the orange is painting this city like the Swedes painted Salzburg yellow! Abbey and I are getting used to the car horns blasted at us from Dutch fans expressing appreciation for my sunglasses and we no longer jump out of our shoes every time it happens :).

We arrived in Interlaken last night. Realizing that we had no address for our guesthouse, we called the lady who owns it who promptly insisted on coming to "pick us up." That meant walking to the train station and leading us to her guesthouse, an easy 3 minute walk from the station. It's a really nice place and I've concluded that guesthouses are the way to stay in Europe!

Interlaken is beautiful! We had our Swiss cheese and chocolate fondue last night for dinner and after exploring the town a bit we made an early night of it. This morning we'd hoped to head up into the mountains, but while it was a gorgeous day here in the town, the mountains all had their heads in the clouds and the live cameras in the train station didn't look promising. So we elected to chance it tomorrow and spent a leisurely day in the town instead. We started by walking along the Aare River that runs between the two lakes that Interlaken is between. We walked as far as the second lake before heading back to find a cafe for lunch. After lunch, we souvenir shopped and then dropped some stuff off at our guesthouse and headed up to the base of the mountains for a short hike. We found a little trail that headed up to a viewpoint overlooking Interlaken and then quickly navigated the slippery and rocky trail back down before the rain that we saw moving across the lake found us. So that was our "leisurely" day :).

And here I sit at McDonald's in Interlaken, Switzerland, watching Austria play Poland (go Austria) and catching up on internet business! Thanks for reading!! I've posted as far back as the 8th and added some albums on Picasa!

"How do you solve a problem like...your hostel being on top of a mountain?"

We’re settled in for a nearly 6-hour train ride today, so I went ahead and unpacked the computer so we can spend some time catching up on typing our blogs (even if we can’t post them) and downloading pictures. We’re heading from Salzburg to Zurich and from there to Bern and from there to Interlaken. We reserved three nights in a guesthouse in Interlaken based on our recent success with guesthouse accommodations.
We had a gorgeous and sunny day in Salzburg yesterday. All the mountains were out and what a beautiful city in such a gorgeous setting! This is a place I want to come back to.

We started our day with the Sound of Music tour. It was a small tour company, only 8 people in a VW van instead of a huge tour bus and we really liked that. Our whole group was American except for a sweet Australian girl. Australian, not Austrian. The Austrian’s don’t like Sound of Music and seem to only grudgingly accept the tourism money it brings them :). The tour was okay, but we really didn’t see that much that was Sound of Music related. If I did it again, I’d do the bike tour because several locations are not accessible with the van. The tour was worth it just to get out into the countryside surrounding Salzburg though. They took us all the way out to the lake district in the mountains…the lakes were turquoise and the mountains were green and the villages were ridiculously picturesque. So beautiful. But being in the mountains is starting to make us homesick and while we’re excited for what we have yet to see, I think we’re both getting ready to head home. We’ve elected to head back to Berlin after Geneva rather than squeezing in another city, because it sounds really good to just hang out with John and Kristen for a couple of nights. We’re looking into getting a night train.

As I told you before, with the Euro-Cup being in town, we weren’t able to book two nights in the same place, so our backpacks went with us on the SOM tour in the morning and after the tour, we were dropped off in the city center and had to get the backpacks to our next night’s accommodations. Small problem. Our next night’s accommodations were on the TOP of Monchsberg. We had thought we could just take the funicular up to the fortress and walk along the top of the mountain, but the only way to take the funicular was to pay for another entrance ticket to the fortress, which we didn’t want to do. Our next option was to haul our packs to the other end of the old city, take a lift up to the Modern Art Museum and walk back along the mountain to the hostel. Well, as we walked to the lift, we passed the stairs that we’d taken the day before. We looked at each other and laughed, because when we’d taken those stairs yesterday, we’d both said “Man, I’m glad we don’t have to do this with our packs on!” And now we decided we’d rather just head up than walk all the way across town and back along the mountain. So we hauled our packs up that mountain…all 335 stairs up that mountain…not including the steeply sloping grades in between staircases. When we finally reached our hostel, we dropped our packs and gaped at the views of the city from our room!

When we’d recovered a bit, we headed back down the mountain via the stairs so we could count them, and then found a café with wireless and booked rooms for Interlaken and Geneva…that’s all the reservations we’re going to need for the rest of the trip! That’s a good feeling! They didn’t have any outlets at that café and my computer battery died literally the minute that we’d finalized our lodgings in Geneva!

We wandered for a bit in the Mirabell Palace Gardens, which was refreshing. They had an arbor covered in blooming jasmine and the whole park smelled lovely, the roses were in full bloom and the landscaping was unique (each park has had it’s own feel which has made it really fun to see one in each city.) The park is in the “new” city (ca. 1600’s instead of 1400’s) and as we walked across the bridge back to the old city, we came across European football fanaticism at its most glorious! :) The Swedish fans that have been painting the city streets yellow with their shirts for days had all come together into a huge, police-escorted sea of humanity making their way to the stadium for the game against Greece. They were singing and chanting and waving flags and stretched down the street as far as we could see in either direction. I’ve never seen anything like it. I think the Greek fans were even a little bit in awe. I saw several Greek fans jumping into the crowd to get their pictures taken with the Swedes. :) After watching in amazement for a while, we headed to a quiet café and watched Spain beat Russia and chatted a bit with some New Zealanders who’d come up for the football. Then we decided to brave the Fanzone to watch kick off of the Sweden/Greece game on the big screens. The Austrian equivalent of Ryan Seacrest was hosting the events.

We had fun watching the huge crowds for a bit, but then we’d had enough of the noise and chaos and we hiked back up “our” mountain. Away from the crowds, on the back side of the mountain, we walked along the footpaths and paused to watch the lightning of an incoming storm light up the mountains in the distance. It was a beautiful night with storm winds gusting and thunder in the distance and when we reached our hostel, we sat on the tables outside and watched the lightning over the Hohensalzburg for about half an hour, I think. The night views of the city were amazing and the lightening even more so. It may be one of my favorite memories of the trip. And we must have had the “best seats in the house” for the storm, because after we’d watched for about 10 minutes, a police van pulled up to the hostel on the footpath and several police officers jumped out, pulled out their cameras and started taking pictures! :)

The hostel proved to be very clean, and I slept great with my earplugs in, though Abbey said the Euro-cup celebration noises went well into the night/morning and they were clearly audible up on our mountain from the city below.
Well, I’ve now typed a full page for this blog entry and should call it quits. The Alps dominate the views out both sides of the train and occasional castle and fortresses dot the lower slopes. Sometimes I can’t believe that I’m actually seeing these sights.

Romania has vampires. They win.

I can’t believe where I am sitting as I type this. Our guidebook suggested a privatzimmer, a room in a private home, kind of like a bed and breakfast, outside of Salzburg. We made reservations there, but when we arrived, the lady met us and said she had no rooms, but her friend down the street did. So she loaded us into her car and drove us about a mile down the road. We were disappointed, because the first house looked so cute. And then we saw our room here. We’re on the top floor of a Bavarian home. We have a HUGE room with a breakfast nook, and a huge bathroom tucked under the eves. There’s even a skylight in the toilette! But the best part by far is the little balcony out back. I’m sitting on a Bavarian balcony, with red geraniums in the flower boxes watching the sun set over the Alps(!) on a lovely summer evening! Wow. And we got a deal on room because the other gal had overbooked! Our hostess is super sweet and there’s even a washer/dryer across the road where we are currently doing a much-needed load of laundry.
So that’s our introduction to Salzburg! Salzburg is gorgeous. I really like this city. It’s kind of a crazy time to be here because the Euro-Cup soccer finals are going on right now and Sweden is playing Greece tomorrow in Salzburg, so the town is overrun with soccer fans from across Europe, but especially the Swedes. The Mozartplatz, the main town plaza, is fenced off with three huge screens set up to show all the soccer games. It gives a really fun, international feel to the city.
We got in to Salzburg at about 1:00 this afternoon, and after dropping off our bags at the guesthouse, we made our way back to town. We had no schedule for this afternoon, so we just wandered around the old city. We saw the house where Mozart was born, Mozartplatz (big screens and all) where we took pictures of the outside of the Dom (huge church) and St. Peter’s church and monastery. St. Peter’s had a beautiful, flower-filled cemetery in the churchyard. Seeing a staircase that seemed to lead up the mountain, we took it and ended up following a beautiful path to the top of Festungberg where the Hohensalzburg, the fortress that dominates the city, is located.

We had a few hours until they closed, so we went ahead and got tickets to see the fortress. You really don’t get to see much on the tour of the fortress, but it’s all about the views of the city and mountains really. And they were breathtaking views. We headed back down the mountain and ate Weinerschnitzel and Apfelstruedel in a little courtyard café with views of the fortress and watched the France vs. Romania game (the title of this entry is from our discussion of who we would cheer for in the game). We found some souvenirs, a café that has wireless for tomorrow, and booked a Sound of Music tour. Yep. We’re going to be that touristy! :) And we decided to declare some loyalties for the Euro-Cup so Amy bought orange Netherlands sunglasses, and Abbey is going to cheer for Sweden, since she can blend right in with the blue-eyed, blonde-haired crowd!
And now we’re trying to decide where we are going to stay when we get to Switzerland, so we can book a room tomorrow.

Leavenworth's Report Card

Well, I’ve officially been to the real Bavaria now and have prepared a report card for Leavenworth to see how the tourist trap theme-town compares with the real thing.
Natural Setting : A The mountains here are gorgeous and they actually remind us a lot of home. We kind of miss that place :) .
Touristy gift shop selection : A- Much of what we saw here could easily have come from Leavenworth
Town appearance : B+ Window boxes? Check. Shutters? Check. Decorative details? Check. White and Brown color scheme on building? Check. May pole? Check. Church steeple? Nein. Cows? Not nearly enough. Castle? See below. Horse-drawn carriages? Check.
Castles : F We’ll go with a pass/fail here and since Leavenworth has none…they fail.
Store Music : D In Leavenworth, all stores play German-y type music. In Bavaria (and Germany in general) they play American music…especially ca. 1980’s American music.
German Bands : A- We miss you, Jeff and Crystal, every time we see a German band here :) Leavenworth gets an A- because the band can’t possibly consume as much beer as the bands here did :) .
Climate : Well, it rained on us, so we’re going to say that Leavenworth’s climate is superior. Judging by the ferns and moss, it rains quite a bit here.
Other outer tourist activities: A- Lots of hiking, white water rafting, etc in Bavaria and Leavenworth!

Here I sit in by far the nicest hotel that we will stay in on this trip. We’re in Fussen, Germany in Bavaria. We’re staying at a lovely hotel set in a park-like area of town. The path to town from our place meanders along the Lech River until it comes to the old city wall and then you find yourself in a ridiculously picturesque German village with huge mountains towering over it. As the train climbed the vivid green rolling foothills to this town, you could see the white form of Neuschwanstein Castle on the mountains above the neighboring town. We had a bit of time before the first bus headed out to the castles, so we hefted our packs to our hotel, about a 10 minute walk, got a map from the extremely helpful gal at the desk and then took the path (described above) back to town. We arrived just in time to cram onto a bus with the hordes of other tourists (and this isn’t even peak season!) and take the 10 minute bus ride to the neighboring town. Neuschwanstein actually stands on a mountain directly across from the castle that King Ludwig II (who built it) grew up in. We started by touring that castle: Hohenschwangau (which means Highpoint of Swanland--the swan is the signet bird of the Bavarian royal family). Hohenschwangau was beautiful. It’s current structure and furnishings date to the early-mid 1800’s when it was rebuilt after Napolean had destroyed it. It’s still owned by the Duke of Bavaria and all the furnishings are original which was unique to the castles we’ve seen. It was pretty elaborate, used as a “retreat” home for the Bavarian royal family. The family history is quite interesting. Ask me about it if you want to know more, but I won’t bore those who don’t care with details. :)

Ludwig II modeled Neuschwantstein after the stories told in Wagner’s operas, pretty much a literal “fairy-tale castle“. Wagner was a friend of his. Only 1/3 of the castle was complete when Ludwig was deposed and he only lived there 172 days. What was completed is unbelievable though. It was built in the mid-late 1800’s and again, everything’s original. I’ve never seen anything like the throne room. Throughout the castle, the moldings and floors and furniture and doors all required more man-hours than I can imagine and there’s even a room that looks like a cave, including stalactites! Everything is very grand and every inch of wall space is painted with murals and designs. And the incredible interior cannot compare with the magnificent views! I think I took a picture out of almost every window, but the best views were from the throne room and the king’s living quarters, looking towards Hohenschwangau, Alpsee Lake and the peaks beyond. So beautiful! I was kind of expecting Neuschwanstein to be disappointing, since I’ve wanted to see it since I was a little girl…but it was really, really cool! :)

We headed back to town for dinner and after dinner the sun was actually shining, so we sat at the edge of a fountain in the town square and ate lemon sorbet in the sun. As we headed back to our hotel, we heard music coming from the courtyard behind the Rathaus (city hall) and stumbled upon a free concert. We didn’t stay long as the sun had disappeared and clouds threatened rain again, but it was another lovely and unexpected moment. And now the birds are singing outside our window, I hear the fountain in the pond nearby and I’m going to go take a shower and settle in to this really inviting bed!

Euro-cup=lodging difficulties! Uh-oh.

We've returned to the San Fransisco Coffee Company this evening. We bought a full day's worth of wireless access and are making full use of it, so sorry if the huge number of pictures and sudden influx of blog posts is overwhelming to you all! :) We spent quite a while this morning attempting to make reservations in Salzburg. Turns out we are going to be there the same day as a Euro-cup game between Greece and Sweden. This means rooms are HARD to come by! We ended up finding two very different lodging experiences for the two nights we wanted to stay...first we're renting a room in a private home out in the countryside. They call them privatzimmers, and the home we're staying in belongs to a sweet-looking old couple. They only had one night available, so our second night is in a hostel right near the heart of Salzburg's old city and we're in the dorm there. With a soccer game that night, we're guessing that means no sleep, but the place looks pretty cool. Just collecting experiences, I guess :).

In between internet binges today, we climbed the tower of St. Peter's church here in Munich (another recommendation of our friend at the Wittenburg station). It had amazing views of the city (at least as good as the views from the Eifel Tower.) It also had a platform about two feet wide with only one eingang/ausgang (entrance/exit) door! That led to lots of shimmying around people! From there, we headed to the Frauenkirche (women's church). Nothing spectacular, but I was wondering why this church had so many mentions of the current pope...then I learned he's not only German, but born in Bavaria and was archbishop of Munich. Ah-ha.

We still had a bit of time to kill before the famous Glockenspiel display, so we wandered around, got milkshakes and then joined the throng of tourists heading towards Marienkirche to watch the Glockenspiel. It was pretty cool...not overwhelming, but not underwhelming either. Therefore, I guess it was "whelming." It's mostly cool because it's something I'd heard much about, but never thought I'd actually see myself...and here I am in Munich, watching it! Neat-o.

It started to rain as we left, so we pulled out the umbrellas and headed to the Residenz, the former palace here. It was almost entirely under refurbishment on the outside, so nothing much to see. We wandered into a couple of the various courtyards, but nothing spectacular. I think we saw the prettiest part of the palace yesterday when we wandered through the Royal Gardens and saw the back side of the Residenz.

And now I'm sitting in a barstool in front of a window facing the entrance to that same garden, highly enjoying the people-watching, which has included many soccer fans in their team colors (Germany's playing tonight), several bachelor and bachelorette party groups in their crazy clothes and (apparently a requirement for such parties here) their matching t-shirts, umbrellas of all colors and sizes, and lots of people walking their dogs (dogs are everywhere here and allowed in stores, restaurants, and on public transportation!) It's been a fairly lazy day, which has been nice and we both feel good about catching up a bit on e-mails and blogs. Thanks again for comments and e-mails. We miss you all!

Finally, we're back!

We finally found wireless today. We're sitting in a cafe that could be anywhere in the US except for the language being spoken around us. It's actually going to be strange to be surrounded by English again when we get back to the states. I've grown accustomed to tuning out everything around me :)
I posted three blogs (plus this one) today and post-dated them so you can have some idea of what day things occured, so read all the way back to June 4th, if you don't want to miss a thing :). And my next plan is to post some pictures!
One thing I love about Germany...every hour, the air is filled with the music of church bells.

Never Again

We spent about six hours at the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial sight today. I feel like I can’t really blog about the experience. I have no words to describe what I feel, except that I don’t think I can possibly feel it as deep as it should be felt. I have no words to describe what I saw and heard and read. The Topography of Terror display in Berlin was only an introduction to what I saw at the Memorial today. I think I will be processing it all for a long time, and one feels almost guilty for simply returning to daily life after witnessing something like that. There are five memorials built there…a memorial symbolizing the path of the prisoners designed by a former inmate, a Catholic memorial for all the (primarily Polish) priests who were imprisoned and died there, a Jewish memorial for the victims of Dachau as well as the entire Holocaust, a Protestant memorial church, a Carmelite convent just behind the grounds of the camp with a memorial chapel, and a Russian Orthodox chapel. There was an English Bible open in the Protestant chapel, and I opened it to Psalm 22, a psalm prophesying what Jesus would suffer, and I was especially struck by Psalm 22:24: “For He has not despised or disdained the suffering of the afflicted one; He has not hidden his face from him but has listened to his cry for help.” We took the train ride back to Munich largely in silence.
I think we were both eager for a healing walk in a park, so we took the U-Bahn (part of Munich’s mass transit) to a plaza on the other side of downtown and wandered through the Royal Gardens and into the English Garden, which is larger than Central Park! We had met a very nice man from Munich at the train station in Wittenburg who told us we needed to eat at a Biergarten in the park there, so we made our way to the German beer garden, next to the Chinese pagoda, in the English Garden. :) It was such a contrasting ending to our sober day, to sit at that table and watch the increasingly boisterous groups of men engaging in drinking song contests! The parks were both so beautiful and we felt refreshed after having walked through flowers, fountains and flowing rivers!
I now have 3 blog entries backed up on my Word Processor. We need to find an internet café with wireless! It’s raining pretty hard outside as I type this…glad it held off all day. It was even sunny this morning.

Eins, zwei, drei, vier, funf, sechs, sieben, aucht, nuen, zehn

This should be quick because it’s late and I haven’t even posted the blog I wrote yesterday yet because I’m waiting for internet access! We had dinner in at the Augustiner bierhaus in Munich tonight…currywurst, pommes frites and I ordered their Augustine “Schnitt” which are waitress said meant “small beer.” For those who don’t know, I really don’t like beer, but I felt that when sitting in a bierhaus in Munich, I had no choice but to order one. Fortunately, the Schnitt was not only small, but tasted like they’d mixed it about 50/50 with water, so not even much beer taste…I’ll take it! All the people reading this who actually enjoy beer are just groaning, I can hear it now! :)
Today will mostly stick in my mind as a lot of riding on a train (about 4 hours), but we actually saw some really cool stuff in between the train rides (and besides, where else does the view from your train window include village after village built in the valleys of green-forested hills with ruined castles standing on the hill above the red-roofed homes?) We got to see a real castle today…Wartburg. It was built in the 12th century and some of the structures are still original!! It stands on a large hill overlooking Eisenach and is built right into and onto the living rock of the mountain. It was largely refurbished and renovated in the 1800’s so that a more modern ruling family could live there comfortably, but even in the early days it was a remarkably comfortable castle with convenient latrines and even a system for heated floors! I’ve seen the Tower of London, but this was the first castle I’ve seen that I really felt I could get a feel for what it might have been like to live in one. This one happens to have been occupied by St. Elizabeth in the 13th (?) century and Martin Luther translated the New Testament into German while in hiding there in 1522! Another nice thing about the visit to the castle is that we got to hike up the hill to the castle through some lovely woods…about a 30 minute hike, I think.
Eisenach is also famous as the birthplace of Bach…so we went to see the home where he was born and the church where he was baptized and where his family were church musicians. I’d love to come back for their Bachfest in July…they even have concerts in the old concert hall of the castle for that!
After a lunch eaten at the foot of the Luther Monument in town, we caught our high-speed train to Munich. Man, those things move! When one goes through a train station, they create this crazy vortex of wind…they set the “safety line” in stations a good four feet from the platform edge so you don’t get sucked in or knocked over! The fastest speed I saw our train hit (they periodically post the speed) was 201 kph! That’s just upward of 120 mph by our calculations!
We bought a German phrase book in Erfut and have been studying German…. Today, I learned my numbers and we tried out a few phrases like “I have a reservation here.” “My name is…” etc. It’s tough because I don’t know the rules of pronunciation, but people seem to appreciate our efforts and it’s kind of necessary in the smaller towns, because the older population doesn’t speak much English!
Well, it’s very late in Munich and I’d best get to bed. We’re hoping to visit Dachau tomorrow.

The best moments are unplanned

We got used to having instant and free internet our first week over here in Europe, so now that it’s harder to sign on, we’re having to compose our e-mails and blogs on my Word Processor and then cutting and pasting them on to e-mail and such. So they may be a day (or three) late, we apologize :). But we still have food for every meal and a shower every day, so nothing to complain about in the end, really!
Wednesday, we spent the day in Erfurt, Germany. Aside from John’s sister, Stephanie, and ourselves, we didn’t hear a word of English spoken all day! This is certainly a popular destination for German tourists, judging by the number of buses, but apparently not for the English-speaking tourist contingent and that was fine with us.
John’s sister, Stephanie, is married to a German and living in Erfurt (not for long though, they’re moving to Sudan!) She met us at our hostel this morning and we walked up to their apartment a few blocks away and had a lovely breakfast together. She made fruit salad and we had fresh brotchen (rolls), cheese, salami and tea. We also had really some great conversation, and received some really great advice on what to see in town, complete with drawing a walking route on our map! Armed with Stephanie’s annotated map, we set out to see Erfurt. It came through the war largely unscathed and is quite a beautiful and picturesque little town with a meandering river, narrow twisting streets, and classically “European-looking” houses. The highlights of Erfurt were…(drum roll please)

1)the Domplatz--a huge plaza lorded over by two Catholic churches at the top of a long flight of steps. The larger church, the Mariendom, was notable for having taken down all their stained glass when the war started, packing it away and then replacing it after the war, so most of the glass there is still original. While Erfurt wasn’t heavily bombed, the percussions of the bombs that did fall broke most of the other stained glass in the city….

2) Zitadelle Petersberg--to be honest I don’t know the history of the citadel, but it was impressively built and had a great view of the entire city of Erfurt. We ate an al fresco lunch up there, leftovers from Stephanie from breakfast, taking shelter from the drizzly morning rain under a viewing platform.

Koffee and Kuchen
3) Augustinerkirche and kloster--This is the church and monastery where Luther took his vows and lived for a time. There wasn’t a whole lot to see there, but we highly enjoyed getting koffee and kuchen (coffee and cake) from the little shop that the Lutheran nuns run there and there was a really cool guesthouse and lovely grounds.

4) Kramerbrucke--a bridge of houses over the river in town. The inside of the bridge was lined with cute little shops.

5) Angerplatz--a huge shopping area, but all the modern stores are in old buildings surrounding a great plaza. We bought a German phrase book in a bookstore, an umbrella in a discount-type store, beer at McDonalds (!) and then found a Dollar store. Yep, it was called Euroshop and we had to go in there. Had to. No choice. I’m not telling you what we bought there, because it might be your souvenir :).
By far my favorite part of the day was completely unplanned…as we walked through the narrow backstreets towards Augustinerkirche, we heard strains of organ music. We followed the music to a tiny little Lutheran church where the organist was playing and we let ourselves in and enjoyed the music and rested for a bit.
So that about sums up Erfurt. We made our reservations to head to Munich tomorrow (through a major language barrier!) and ate dinner (Doner sandwiches--my favorite from the AppleBlossom food court…yep, they’re German) in a great little park near our hostel. Well, time to pack up…we’re going to be incredibly efficient at this by the time we’re done.Yma made friends with a statue in the park :)