CostcoWarrior

Fanta’s Up 30 May 2008

We’re hanging out in the lobby of our last hotel on our last night here in Europe. The lobby is apparently the happening place–looks like 2 tour buses just showed up–Asians and Indians and lots of alcohol already flowing…me and the hubby, on the other hand, have out our last liter of Fanta. Bottoms up, friends.

Today we went to downtown Frankfurt for the big shopping day–over 10 kgs of stuff to bring home. ALL of it food. Who wants junk for the shelf when the chocolate is heaven on earth?

Funny story of the night: We walked to the restaurant about 1/4 of a mile from our hotel for dinner. A few schnitzels later we walked out to DRENCHING rain pour. By the time we ran back, we were soaked all the way through. Guess since we had a down pour on the first day of the trip, we could only expect a down pour on the last day of the trip.

We started going through our pictures–deleting, croping, fixing, etc. We’ve gotten through the first 4 days. Just call me TriggerFinger, k? Here are a few teasers for those of you chomping at the bit…

fahrvergnugen 25 May 2008

Finally! We have a room with wireless internet access, after 11 days this is the first place to offer it. Everywhere we go they want to charge you at least $3/hour, and you have to fuss with with the stupid keyboards and the stench of smoke. enough ranting… We are still loving our time in Europe.

Since WarriorWife (WW) wrote the last post I figured I would write something too. The first thing I want to mention is the driving. I love driving over here.

Although the Netherlands were beautiful and we enjoyed our time there I was excited to cross the Germany border and see my favorite sign, the white sign with the diagonal black lines. This sign represents the lifting of ALL restrictions on the Autobahn, or in other words hold the gas pedal to the floor until you get to a construction zone. (unfortunately it seems there are lots of construction zones) Our trip high is currently 212KPH (~131MPH). I only held the speed for a few minutes, but in just 3 minutes I covered over 6.5 miles. I’m sure we’d get better gas mileage if I held back a little, but I figure this is something you just can’t let pass you by. We still average about 35MPG, so still that’s not bad. I normally go between 160KPH and 180KPH though.

We’ve also been on some VERY narrow roads that have often gotten WW’s parents a bit nervous. We took a short video of this, so click and enjoy. (this movie was taken in a small town north-west of Dresden called Meissen, and home of Karl G. Maeser)

Narrow Road

Windmills and Schnitzel 22 May 2008

We’ve raced around for a week now and have seen so many incredible things! –even in the POURING RAIN! It seems we’ve been either following or chasing bad weather the whole trip so far—3 umbrellas later, though, we’re still having fun and are glad it’s not too hot.

The quick travel log so far:

The Netherlands:

• The Keukenhof Garden—most of the tulips had their heads chopped off, since it was so late in the season, but there were tons of AMAZING orchids and lilies. Some of the lilies were as big as my head! The garden had some fun parts too—we ran through the hedge maze pretending we were Harry Potter in the Goblet of Fire maze. Yeah…it was a literary moment that we literally got lost in.
• Zanse Schaans (old recreated hollandish town) was fun to walk through—over little bridges and down an old time street. We toured one of the operating windmills and had a blast climbing up through to almost the very top. It was so fascinating to learn how it all worked. One of my favorite sites was a 35 foot wall, floor to ceiling, 2 feet deep, of different Kloppen (wooden shoes) that you could buy. I liked the fluorescent pink ones.
• The Temple was small and we got a bit lost getting there. We showed up just 2 minutes late, but they were so excited to see us that they had everyone wait for us to join the endowment session. The session was actually in English because only 3 of the 10 people in the session weren’t American—it really is a small world, eh?

Germany:

• Berlin—huge city! So many people and so many big buildings and so few places to park. We took a bus tour around the city that had 15 hop on/hop off points of interest. The bus drove past a section of the wall that’s supposedly the only part left, although we think it must have been rebuilt for the tourists (have to research this when we get back). On the whole, though there’s lots of history here, it wasn’t all we’d hoped and much bigger than we liked.
• Potsdam—a suburb city of Berlin. We toured two palaces’ grounds. The first one, Cecilienhof is where the conference of Potsdam was held—the allies meeting solving the end of WWII problems such as what to do with Germany and what to do with the SS war criminals. The grounds were peaceful and the hotel (former palace) is gorgeous. It’s pretty pricey and they have very high-end clientèle. We watched a police escort of one dignitary out—the whole thing took 20-30 minutes. Very cool!
• Werdau—here we met all of the members “The Warrior” served with. They were so friendly and loved visiting. One older woman even brought her pictures of “The Warrior” she’d kept from when he was there as a missionary 8 years ago. The ward now has a ward house newly built that’s big and beautiful with lots of windows.
• Buchenwald–cold and depressing. A good experience, but on the whole not one to get really excited about. Life is so much better if we work hard to love one another.
• Meissen–the little town where Karl G. Maeser was from. We found his house that has a little plaque, but our favorite part was the drive up the super steep winding road to the church complex on the top of the hill above the river. My mom was sure we were all going to die. The rest of us loved the craziness of it!
• Dresden–was a few hours walking through the rebuilt old sections of town. Everything here was destroyed in the war and they’ve spent forever rebuiling it. The biggest sight is the rebuilt ‘church of our lady’ or the Frauenkirche. They used all the original stones they could find and then fit in new ones to make up for the stones that were completely destroyed. It’s a pattern of light new stoned and black aged old stones–amazing!
• Freiberg–we got lost trying to find the temple there, but enjoyed a quick stop when we did find it. We also ate at a guest cafe on a little pond. This is the height of asparagus season, so we all had their seasonal asparagus schnitzel dishes. Asparagus here is different though, most of it is thicker stalked and white–it’s all labeled as french asparagus…if it comes from there or not?
• Seiffen–beautiful drive up in the mountains to a total tourist trap of a town all based on the hand made wooden Christmas toys. We got there late in the day (luckily, at least for our wallets) and the shops were only open for 1 more hour. All the shops take VISA and you could get suckered into dropping a ton of money in that one main street. We walked up to the town church while my parents shopped.
• Nuremburg–Really cool old town that we toured on an electric ‘train mobile’. We got lunch and just enjoyed the old old stone buildings.
• Munich—was rainy and overcast. We walked around for an hour and then watched the famous Glockenspiel play. It was built in 1500s and all the movements are based on the clockworks. The bells played a beautiful melody and we enjoyed watching the FLOODS of tourists milling the square with their cameras and video cameras aimed upwards.

Since we have no storage or real display place at home, we spent a lot of time thinking of what to get for souvenirs. What to buy? What to buy? In the pewter museum/shop in Zanse Schaans, we stumbled on the perfect idea—Christmas Tree Ornaments! With last Christmas totally taken over by the remodel, it will be fun to decorate our tree with reminiscences from our trip for our first “real” Christmas together. We’re really excited about all the ones we’ve gotten so far, and try for one from each city.

Aufwiedersehen! 13 May 2008

Six months of planning, lots of packing and repacking, and we’re off!

The Netherlands, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland…

Chocolate, Wurst, Rotkohl, and Pomme Frittes…

Tours, Gardens, Concerts, and Culture…

It’s gonna be amazing! We’ll be internet junkies, so you’ll see intermittent posts while we’re away.

WOOOOHOOOO!

und Tschuss!

#35 – Finish a whole book of Sudoku puzzles 8 May 2008

This is it. The first accomplished task from the Bucket List…

I bought this book with a gift card at Barnes & Noble. It quickly became my constant companion. I loved it! I took it to work. I took it on the bus. I took it in the car (while my husband drove). I took it to family functions. Sadly, I must confess, I even ripped pages from it to take to church–just in case the meetings maybe perhaps got a teensy weensy bit boring…

Just 2 months later, I finished it–all the puzzles* solved! My husband shouted hooray and promptly forbade the buying of another one.

*I did try to do the few included 25×25 grid puzzles as advertised on the cover, I never completed them and I gave up after 8 hours on them–just NOT FUN–too complicated, too long, and the squares are just too tiny.