Closure

This is effectively the last post for this short-lived blog.

We arrived home from Europe last night after a HELLISHLY long plane ride.  It involved waking up at 0445 in order to check out of the hotel in Frankfurt at 0500.  Our flight was at 0720 or something like that.  Then it was two hours to London-Heathrow airport.  We had a 2.5 hr layover (thank goodness... we had to change terminals and such and that took FOREVER).  Then it was a long long long plane flight back to Raleigh-Durham International Airport.  

The plane from London to Raleigh wasn't too crowded so I had a two-seat row to myself.  Thus I was able to grab a little bit of sleep in between watching the in flight movies of Marley and Me, and Get Smart.  

Customs is very annoying in Raleigh, and the line was sort of long.  ><  but we got through ok, and were happily welcomed home into the United States.

After picking up the car from a friend's, it was a pretty long drive home to Virginia.  I tried to stay awake since we would be driving into deer country in the dusk, but motor vehicles make me really sleepy.

It was an absolutely GREAT trip, and it took the right amount of time.  At the end we were definitely ready to come home.

Highlights:  

-All the castles

-Obersalzburg/Eagles Nest

- watching the interaction between the guys selling eiffel tower souvenirs and the police.

- the TGV train and the RailJet train

- Luxembourg 

- mountains rising out of the edges of lakes

Lowlights

- lack of REAL pillows

- overnight train bunks.

- being a 'tourist' and getting overcharged for it

- cold cloudy weather in Paris

- rude people on the slow trains in the Rhine

- waking up at 0445 to come home

- missing home

Last Day

hmmm so in 8 hours or so, I'll be on a plane headed for London, and then to North Carolina. and then a drive home. Long story short, I'll be home tomorrow.

Not TOOOO much to talk about this time.
Toured a couple castles. Did some Rhine cruising. Saw more castles.
Took a couple trains.
Went to Nurenburg and visited the Nazi Documentation Center. That was actually very well set up. It talked about the rise of the National Socialist Party and its fall. It showed some propaganda film too. I forget what it was called. Triumph of the Will I think.

I have to say, whoever said that Germans are quiet is full of crap. They are loud and obnoxious on the trains. and rude. ><
Especially to people who dress weird (there were some teenagers who had mohawks and colored hair and stuff like excessive piercings). it was sad.

After Nurenburg, we went to Rothenburg. Just in time for the end of some sort of medieval festival. It was pretty cool, and pretty full of drunk folks. Good beer though.

and I had forgotten to add that Bacharach was home to the Tentacles Convention. Which is like a D&D (thats Dungeons and Dragons) convention. It was pretty funny (we went and ate at the hostel that hosted it. GEEKS haha. :)

and now we are in Frankfurt. WOOO!!! (kidding, Frankfurt is not that exciting).

I can't wait to get home and post the rest of my photos. and sleep in my own bed.
Europeans don't understand "real pillows" very well. They fail.

I'll post again one last time from home. sooo... tootles!

into the Last Week

First off... I'm sad that no one has commented on the last post yet. :( Let me hide my tears.

Ok. I know I already talked about Paris, but let me reiterate the awesomeness of our trip to France.
Blah blah, pulled into Strasbourg, took the TGV the next day to Paris, came back, got a reasonably solid nights sleep. The next morning we took a train to Luxembourg and spent the day there. but the day isn't done yet!!! then we hopped on a City Night Line train towards Hamburg. Hamburg is a LONG train ride from Luxembourg. We spent a couple HOURS in Hamburg looking at miniature model trains. Miniature Wunderland or something like that. Then we hopped on a train and headed south to Bacharach. Awesome German town.
The next day was a castle trip to Berg Eltz. Very awesome castle. Very awesome English-speaking tour. Always a good thing.
Tomorrow holds some Rhine River cruising and another castle.

Leaving France

Yeah yeah, I know... I'm slacking off.
But first, a HUGE thanks to everyone who's been keeping up with this blog and/or leaving me comments. I love you guys!

Lets see here... Zurich was pretty... nice looking? We pretty much pulled in to the city late at night and took a stroll down the river/lake the next morning before the train pulled out. The lake was gorgeous, and clean looking (American lakes could take notes on this and follow). Besides the abundance of EuroPride Zürich 09 flags, theres nothing to report here.
Lucerne had the same pretty lake theme going on. And it was a HOT HOT HOT day, so everyone was out tannning/swimming. Ewww old men in Speedos. BLECH!!! We walked around in the old town, looking at shops and old buildings. They have some war monument that is a lion, and that was pretty cool. I watched a very twitchy baby bird harass its mother for food. Besides that, it was a quiet town.
I wasn't so impressed with Bern. Although we had a nice hike by the lake, we arrived at the bear pits to find that all the bears had died of old age and they were building a new bear area. The new bears were still housed in the zoo. So no bears for us. We took a walk up the old town streets and found Einstein's apartment (but I didn't want to pay 9 swiss franks to go inside).
After that, it was on to FRANCE!!! haha. Nothing too exciting happened the first night there, but yesterday we took the TGV (which is a really fast train which tops out at 250 km/hr or something like that) to Paris. It was a cloudy, gloomy day, and it was threatening to rain the entire time. Because it was pouring cats, dogs, and... sheep... we didn't go up into the Eiffel Tower. We stopped for lunch in an English-style pub (i wanted fish and chips). Then we visited the Arc de Triomphe. It was pretty awesome looking. We weren't too impressed with the Louvre. It was rather stuffy inside. But thats ok. It was still kind of nifty before I got tired. We took another TGV back to Strasbourg where we have been staying.
But now we're leaving for Luxembourg and Hamburg. Yippee!!
Nearing the end of our trip here. :(

A quick blog this time

This is to compensate for yesterday's novel. haha
Today we visited the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial, outside of Munich. It was really sobering. Really sobering is an understatement actually. I'm not really sure what to say beyond that. I didn't take any photos because it just didn't feel right.

Now for some updated plans for the next couple days. Tomorrow is our Castle Day in southern Germany before we head to Switzerland (Zürich and Lucerne). Beyond that our plans have changed. The weather is looking stormy in the Alps, so we're ditching that plan of action, and instead heading to Strasbourg (in France) and then to Paris for a day. Then back to Strasbourg, up to Luxembourg, then on to Hamburg (to look a bunch of model trains, a really large set up actually), then back to the Rhine to finish out our trip. It should be a lot of fun (even though its a LOT of train travel).

I'm thinking that's all for now. Its going to be an early morning tomorrow as we're catching an 0551 train to Fussen.
Until next time!! (hopefully wifi in Zürich or Lucerne?)

Greetings from Munich

Hey everyone!
After a couple days of wifi-less existence (a truly horrid thing I assure you), we have arrived in Munich.
Let me bring you up to date with what's happened as of late.
First off a few observations:
-beer is indeed cheaper than water and soda in Germany/Czech Republic/Austria
-i see a lot of graffiti all over the place. i guess its no worse than DC, but still.
-lots of Europeans smoke. Its like walking through an endless cloud of smoke.

Now for the fun stuff.
After leaving Prague we headed out of the Czech Republic into Austria and to the town of Hallstatt. Which is basically a little tourist town on a lake. The mountain that it sits on literally rises out of the lake. The rise is so sudden that the train station is ACROSS the lake. You take a ferry to get to the town. Apparently this is common in the area, this whole mountains rising out of the lakes. I kind of like it. I also like that schoolkids take the train to and from school, and on field trips. I kind of wish that kind of transportation was readily available in the US. Actually, I wish that the train system in the US just wasn't full of FAIL due to delays and cancellations. MOVING ON...haha
It pretty much poured the day we got into Hallstatt. It was kind of a shame actually. Its a beautiful town (with really yummy fresh caught trout). We stayed at a quaint little B&B (they're called Gasthaus(es) there. Not sure what the plural of Gasthaus is.)
The next day was a tour of the Hallstatt salt mines. It was really cute actually. The poor guide had to give the tour in German (and then add the English translation for us, because my German is not so good). We got to dress up in "saltminer's clothes" (more for the fun of it, but they had a practical use) for the tour. The mines were about 8 degrees Celcius. That should be around 45 F? Rough guess. Its 11pm. I don't want to hurt my brain with conversions. The "miners clothes" added an extra layer of warmth. They also provided cushioning for the slides down to lower levels of the mines.
After that, it was on to Salzburg. Three things Salzburg is known for: Mozart, the Sound of Music, and Red Bull. We avoided the first and the last, but couldn't miss the Sound of Music tour. It was cheezy, yes, but it was a mini-van tour, and it let us see a lot of Salzburg and the surrounding area without a lot of walking.
But wait! I forget myself. before the SOM tour, we took a trip to Burchesgarten/Obersalzburg/Eagles Nest. Whew, hard to spell names. and even before that.... I saw a Ferrari Testarossa. it was in BEAUTIFUL condition. I have some photos.
Ok, back to Obersalzburg. Long story short, Obersalzburg was a Nazi fortress during WWII. 6 of the leaders, including Hitler had homes up on the mountain (which is what Obersalzburg is). It was Hitlers second command post or something like that. The buildings were connected by 6 KILOMETERS of underground tunnels and bunkers. its was absolutely crazy. We got to go inside one of the bunkers (one of the only sections open to the public). then we went up to the Eagles Nest, which was a teahouse on the top of a mountain. To get to it, you take a very narrow, very steep road in it. It goes up the face of the mountain, and has only ONE turn. its a 180 degree hairpin turn. Scary drive indeed. At the top of the mountain, there was still lots of snow. I lobbed a couple snowballs off the edge of the mountain. I couldn't even see/hear them hit anything.
The trip to Burchesgarten made Germany the fourth country vistited (the list including England, Czech Republic, Austria, and Germany). And we'd just finished our first of three weeks here.
The last day in Salzburg was spent on the cheezy Sound of Music tour. Which took a break at a luge place. So I went luge-ing. it was...exciting. Following that, we headed towards the old town to see some of the sights, and ended up watching an old car race for a while. The cars were old Jaguars, Corvettes, Porches, Mercades-Benz, and Ferrari, among others. It was awesome to watch their owners parade them around, and really open them up on the streets (some of them went FAST). Then it was off to the Augusteiner monastery for a couple liters of brew. Thats right. I said LITERS. They served their beer in liter mugs (or half liters, but we opted for a liter each). A liter is a crazy amount of alcohol to be consumed. Once that was finished, we headed to our place of stay for the night (another gasthaus) and did some laundry.
(WHEW!! Getting caught up here)
The following morning we were off to MUNICH (see told you I was almost caught up). The morning was spent in the Deutches Museum (which is kind of like the Smithsonian). It was... about as exciting as trying to see all of the Smithsonians at once. Too much to see, not enough energy on our part. haha. So we bailed and ran through the rain to a Beerhall. This place also served its brew in liter mugs, so we had some of that which we ate some weird potato dish and a mushroom dish along with some pretzels. MMMM pretzels. but man, the liter took a long time to drink.
and thats where we are now. back in the hotel that we're staying in. Its in the main part of town (i'm pretty sure there are some casinos and strip clubs near by, kind of creepy actually).

Tomorrow we're going to visit the concentration camp memorial that is outside of Munich. I forget which one it is off the top of my head (and more importantly how to spell it), so I'll provide the name tomorrow night.
After that, it'll be off to Fussen for some castles and into Switzerland for the (nearly) home stretch. There's still a lot to go, but hopefully not a lot of big cities left.
(and hopefully more Wifi so i don't have to dump long entries on you guys at once.)

Until next time!

The last day in Prague

Day three was pretty much spent in the Little Town and the Castle Quarter. The majority of the morning was spent wandering the Prague Castle Grounds and the Cathedral that was inside the castle.
The only problem with the Castle Quarter is that it is ALL uphill from the hostel, and the cobblestones are uncomfortable on the feet. :(
But it was worth it. The views from the Castle were amazing, and so was the architecture. We tried to see the Changing of the Castle Guard, but a HUGE crowd had gathered, and I am just too short to see over the heads of people.
Lunch was a sandwich and another glass bottle of Pepsi (I wish I'd saved the labels, they were cool), and it was time to check out some of the souvenir stores. They have a lot of glassware and amber stuff, but those are too fragile to take for the rest of the trip. :(
Dinner was in a nice dungeon, haha. They had good food, and I pulled the Czech labels off my Coke bottle to bring home. After that, it was off towards home.
We discovered that Batman drives a smart car, and found a couple Mercades-Benz cars, and an Aston Martin.
Overall a good last day in Prague.