Some last stories from Europe

Well our last full day in Europe was an exciting one. We stayed in this hostel in Koln, but we were going to leave at 6 in the morning so we could catch the train and make a boat that was an hour and a half away. Since the guy running the place didn't want to get up that early to check us out, we turned in our key that night. So after a resstless night of sleep for Kara (she had to listen to a very loud snorer (Steph, I feel your pain of the sleeping porch) we were in the hall getting ready when the snorer gets up to go to the batchroom, turns out that he was a man in his 40's who only wore a night shirt and tighty whiteys! What a sight at 5:30 in the morning. Then we proceed downstairs and try to leave, but the door is locked and you need a key to unlock it even from the inside!! Foiled again! Julie pokes around and we discover a door/window, but it only latches from the inside. Being the Macgyver fan that I am, we take a piece of string and latch it to the handle, close door, and pull on the string to close the latch. And that is how we successfully broke out of a hostel!

Well, we ended up not making the boat. Turned out that it was a thirty minute walk to the boat dock from the train station and we arrived with only 25 minutes. So we saw the boat pass us by without us on it. We decided to take the train and meet up with the boat a little bit upstream. We were on the train facinated by the scenery that when it came to our stop, we weren't ready to go. Julie, who was always getting ready 5 minutes before our stop and double checking to make sure that we had everything, was apparently really worried that we were not going to get off the train jsut gets up and gets off the train with just her backpack. Leaving Kara to carry all the rest of the stuff. It didn't help that Kara was laughing at Julie's rush to get off the train.

Well, that is it for our journey...at least for now!

A'dam Rules

We had a whirlwind visit to amsterdam. We went on a weekend, which might have been a bit of bad planning on our part since we weren't really there to party. and apparently things are three times as expensive on the weekends. The only good thing about it was that the lines for the museums were short all morning. Anywho, we took many pictures of the canals. On a side note, Kara, who is known for her excellent sense of direction, has been lost this whole trip...she is always turned around and backwards here in Europe (she swears that it is because the Atlantic is on the wrong side), but she must have found her bearings in Amsterdam because she navigated it like a pro...true story.

Tomorrow we are off to float up the Rhine! And then home!

Valkenburg

So we finally saw the land of our ancestors...Valkenburg. It was amazing as the 300+ pictures we took of the castle ruins and the surrounding town will attest to. The velvet caves (made by centuries of excavation of the local stone) were a greater history leasson than we expected. It had been used as a chapel when the French invaded the area, a refuge for locals and soldiers during WWII, a restaurant/cafe and is used for the local Christmas market. We also cleaned the town out of all merchandise that had the word Valkenburg on it. Julie got to watch Dutch TV. And Jessica, we got to see Knight Rider, are you jealous or what?

Next time we want to go to the local amusement park, or as we like to call it...Gnomeland.

We are now in Amsterdam and loving the canals. We are gonna hit the vanGogh Museum and the Anne Frank house and hopefully get a canal tour.

See you next week!

Yeah, access to internet

We have been lucky to have so much access to internet lately, so blogging has been easy.

I am going to talk food for a sec. We have had such good food here, from the brauts to turkish wraps to French cod with yummy sauce and the crossants and the crepes (Kim, I found your favorite crepery!!) and here in the netherlands we had vla which is almost like pudding with chocolate sprinkles which they buy by the box! And as much as we´ve been eating, we have been walking more, so no weight gain!! We are off to Valkenburg today...then who know, we are debating about Amsterdam....maybe the countryside where we might stay!

Look what happens when we dont stick to a schedule

So we spent less than 24 hours in Brussels, or Bruxelles as the French Belgiuns call it, so we had to make the most of our time. The night we arrived we went out to a traditional Belgium dinner. A lamb stew that was most excellent. We also partook in some Belgium beer, kreik(?), which is made with a special bacteria found only in the Brussels area. Yum yum.
The next day was a busy one. We had to find Belgium waffels, Belgium fries, Belgium chocolate and Mannekin Pis (supposedly the most famous site in Brussels). We meandered our way to the city center, which took more time than expected (go figure). So we had very little time to complete our to-do list. We had to march quickly back to the hostel, get our bags and zoom off to the train station. With 20 minutes to spare till the next train to Maastricht we arrived, but still needed to buy the tickets and find the train. The travel center was packed, but we spotted a ticket machine (something we have been avoiding, cuz machines rarely speak English) and took our chances. It looked as though the travel gods were still on our side, because it had a button for English and a purchase button for Maastricht. Alas when it came time to pay, they only accepted "weird" credit cards...no Visa, no MasterCard and definately no American Express. ;) Foiled again! We had to go to the Travel Center where there was a line just to take a number. When Julie finally got to the machine where every one was getting a number, it told her that she didnt need a number she needed to go to the counters on the other side of the Travel Center. We finally had our tickets in hand with 6 minutes till the train left. We love running up stairs with all our bags. :) Julie got on the first open door of the train that she saw, just to make sure we made it. It turned out it was the door to the conductor/engineer area and we werent supposed to go that way (mainly because of the huge gap between the platform and the train that we had to leap with all our baggage). But all that matters is that we made it and now we are in the Netherlands only a few miles from Valkenburg. And we accomplished every thing and more in Brussels. (ps the Belgians dont really eat the waffels it is a touristy thing, but they were still very yummy)

Signing off from the homeland....

Julie and Kara

One minute blog

Finally a normal QWERTY keyboard. We made it to brussels where we are going to have Chocolate. Next we are to Valkenburg....most excited about that . Well time is out on the inter net

6 gigs of memory just wasn't enough

Well we bought 4 more gigs, hopefully that will get us through the next week. We got to see Notre Dame and the Eiffel Tower at night...such a wonderful city. We are off to the land of Chocolate, Belgium so wish us luck.

TaTa

J&K

Bonjour from Paris!

Well we have arrived in gay Paris! So far we have seen the Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triumphe, the Louvre, Montmartre/Socre Cour and many Paris "rue"s. We spent our first romantique night in a laundry mat doing our one load twice, cuz of a lousey machine. One thing we love about Europe is the beautiful arcitecture, especially the spiral staircases...one thing that annoys us is the keyboards...very different set up. Sorry for qny typos things qre different here: One thing we could do without is all the smoking, but Julie wants to bring home the Autobahn...so efficiant. We are also very big dorks (as many of you well know) cause we played the 80s Autobahn song by Kraftwerk while driving AND took video of it :) we have also been facinated by the bathrooms over here. We have had a variety of paying ones, moving ones, some hqve been an afterthought (in a closet on the staircase), automatic ones on the street (kara had a hard time figuring that one out). Sorry for the random stories Paris has worn us out.
Au revoir!

Lost in Freiburg...well maybe Germany

So Jamie gave this great advice about getting places to stay before getting there....well, we decided to be adventurous and not do that. Kara had printed all these wonderful directions for driving through the Alps and across the German countryside and to Freiburg where we were planning on staying the night and dropping off the car in the morning, but didn't have a map of Freiburg itself...only the name of one hostel. However, she was not nervous going into town (surprisingly enough, since she has been a worry wart the whole time), but she was finally gaining confidence and we had seen a million signs for zimmers and Pensions (places to stay for those who don't know). So even if we didn't find the place, we could surely find something else. Well, we get into Freiburg and it is bigger than expected and we find no signs for rooms anywhere. Oh, and we arrived a few hours later than expected (partly due to sight seeing and partly due to construction detours and partly due to getting lost several times) so it was dark. We stopped and asked for directions from a gass attendent that spoke a little bit of English (like everyone here) and we somehow managed to get the gist of what he was telling us. However, some of the landmarks given were not found. And we couldn't find the street names of most of the streets. And they are very narrow and we didn't know if they were one way or not...but Julie got very good at turning around in tight spaces. ANd we got very good at finding our way back to this one roundabout which we visited about 5 or 6 times. On our last attempt we turned down a street....it started to lead us into a residential neighborhood and we thought for sure we were lost beyond hope. Then Kara spots this teeny sign just below a street sign. It was quite hard to read, but Julie stopped and Kara got out and ran back to see what it said. "Backbacking Hostel <----" We had found our way!!! In the most round about, not knowing where the heck we were type of way! After this, finding a place in Paris should be a breeze!...let's hope...

Off to Paris we go!

Julie and Kara

Oktoberfest!!!

Funny thing about Oktoberfest...we drank no beer. I know! It seems blasphamous, but it is so much more than beer. It is a huge carnival with beer. One of the best things we saw was a ride that consisted of a conveyer belt moving up a ramp and you have to jump on it and hopefully keep your feet under you on the way up. Funniest ones were...a guy accidentally doing summersaults and ladies in traditional dresses on their backs with feet in the air. Histerical. We ate lots of brats and walked up and down the streets and saw some very drunk people. Very drunk... Well we are off to see the alps tomorrow hopefully the clouds won't be in the way. Auf Wiedersehen!

Beer is Beer, but it seems like Wassa

Beer is the same in germany as it is English, so it is very easy to order. And I knew they drank in Europe but the extent is...wow. The Kegeln club friends of ours had two right after breakfast, one at the train station (where we were there for 5 minutes jsut dropping off our bags) and then we stopped at two bars where some of the guys had two more beers at each bar.....ummm doing the math says they each had to 7 beers before lunch. Our other German friends assure us that it is not typical as Keglen clubbers are extreme.....jury still out on that one, there was a lot of drinking on the trains too.

Plans....Schmlans

So our plan was to go to the midievil town of Rothenberg on our first day in Germany, but Kara (after reading that just saying "Hi" people will be nice) says "Hi" to a guy on the train when were letting others go by.....and to say the least within an hour of landing in Germany had beers in hand. It happens that a "Kegeln" club (German Bowling team) were on there way south for a weekend of kegeln and two of their members were ill. Long story short we detour to Bamberg and drink beer after beer, go out to dinner at a local restaraunt and then played kegeln. Kegeln is a played with 9 pins and a smaller ball. The lanes we used were the same (ish) as bowling, but normally it is narrow at first and gets wider nearer the pins. They gave us the room intended for their friends and it was awesome. A very comfy bed with comforters :) and bathroom...so nice to have a hot shower after the plane. In the morning we ahd a traditional breakfast of bread with cheese and salami or butter and jam. The coffee is awesome...I put milk in it and it barely changes color, yum. After breakfast we toured the city (had more beers) and then took the train to Ingolstadt. And now we are in Ingolstadt for the night then off to Oktoberfest, back on our schedule.

Love to all, we miss you and cant wait to bring back our stories to share with you all.

Proust!

Count Down to Take Off

We leave the day after tomorrow! The butterflies have taken permanent residence in my tummy. Our trip starts briefly in Frankfurt, then we are off down the Romantic Road toward Rothenburg and Ingolstadt. Sunday October 5th we will arrive in Muchen (Munich) for the last day of Oktoberfest. Then a few days of meandering through the Bavarian Alps and the Black Forest before we head to Paris. From Paris we will head North through Belgium to our ancestor's home Valkenburg. We will spend most of the last leg of our trip in Amsterdam with a little boat trip down the Rhine to end it all. Wish us luck and keep checking in for updates. Auf Wiedersehen! Au revoir! Tot ziens!