Saturday PhotoDay

Normally, I would do these on Friday, as you know, but since that was already taken, I am spilling over into today. There are a few random pics that I took that I just wanted to share from Germany.

How much sluttier are the German bathroom signs than ours? Seriously, these are tiny mini skirts.

They leave these gummy sheep on your pillows, in the hotel rooms. Adam ate his in the afternoon, and then spent the afternoon sleeping, which we chalked up to just being tired, but then he said he could not wake up, and I was like, how weird. It wasn’t until we were going to sleep, that I actually looked at the gummies, and saw that the first word is Shclaf. Well, due to my singing Silent Night in German, I know that schlaf is German for sleep. So Adam took sleep gummies in the middle of the day, and then couldn’t stay awake.

Speaking of beds, this is how the beds are there. Two twin beds fused – yes fused – together. We each get our own blankets, and the sheets are the fitted kind, so you don’t sleep under them. This place is loco.

This is a sign that hangs up when you’re going through customs in Atlanta. You probably can’t see it, but on the bottom of the screen, it says “No Phones or Cameras” so of course I took out my camera phone to snap a pic. After I got it, a lady by us was like, “It says no phones or cameras” and I said, yes, that’s why I took the picture. Worth it.

Germany: Day 2 Part 2

After finishing up with the museum, we had only had time to get to a chocolate shop in town to get chocolates, and then we had to get back to the hotel so that Husband could have another meeting. While he had his meeting, I was all set to spend those 2 hours getting ready for the gala, and then I sort of lost track of time…while I was looking at Pinterest, oops. Finally, I got my butt into gear with about an hour to go. I hurried and did my hair, curled it all up. It looked really cute for about 15 minutes, I think, and then it started to fall, even though I had used my super-duper extra hold hairspray. Finally, when there was like, twenty minutes to go, Husband finally came back to the room, and was a flurry as we both hurried to get ready. I pulled on my Spanx (honestly, these are the devil. Has everyone worn these? They are awful.) and got my dress on, added the jewels, and I was done. He finished closely after me, and we went as fast as we could downstairs. While waiting for our transportation, we snapped a pic:

You can’t see the curls, but they were there, at least for 3 more minutes. We made it to the location of the gala, which was a secret, and found out, it was being held at an old steel mill. Holy crazy! We stepped in, and they were handing out alcohol aplenty, and we couldn’t see any waiters with no alcohol, so we didn’t get anything to drink. We took a look around, and saw that they had a moving sushi bar.

I didn’t partake, naturally. For the first half hour or so, it was all schmoozing with people, and finally, we made our way to our seats. While we were sitting down, there was a gal on the stage, on a pole, just sort of going back and forth, high up in the air. I can’t describe it any other way.

We watched her for a while, then there were the opening speeches – three of them, and they seemed to go on for a while. Luckily, we had some water by then, so that was nice. After the speeches, they served us our first course, venison pie and a salad. I wish I could have gotten pictures of everything, but it seemed weird to take pics at such an event. Taking it of the entertainment was ok, but it seemed odd to do it of the food. The pie was not very good, but I’m not adventurous. After they cleared the first course, we had some more entertainment, a guy and a girl who used the poles to do acrobatics. It was pretty cool. After they were done, we got our second course – coconut curry soup and a seafood wonton. Seafood, gross. The soup was pretty good. After they cleared that course, it was time for more entertainment, a drumline. They were awesome! They drummed, and had light up LED stuff on them, which turned off and on in time with the beats. After the drumline, we had another course, a beef filet with potatoes, that was really good, even though the steak was basically rare. I made my way through it, though. Then we had a long wait, so pictures were taken of everyone.

Then I made a trip to the restroom, and in the washings of my hands, I lost my CTR ring. I have never been so sad! I had nothing to do then, I couldn’t find it, I had no idea where it went. I went back to my seat, and we had another act, a singer. I don’t think she was famous, she only did covers of stuff, but she was fun, and really good. She sang a few songs, and then they gave us dessert. For dessert, they gave us pieces of cake cut into the shapes of puzzle pieces, they had three different kinds: carrot cake, coconut cake with mango sauce, and a chocolate mousse cake. This was served alongside a banana papaya ice cream. It was all good, but when all was said and done, it took us 5 hours to eat dinner. You read that right: 5 hours. Finally, after the meal was done (and the alcohol was flowing to everyone but us 4 Mormons) the dancing begun. The singer was singing an oldie tune, which I now can’t remember for the life of me, and Husband and I started dancing. He took ballroom, and I can’t dance at all, so he was basically twirling and spinning me around, and I just followed his lead. My dress was perfect for twirling, it really spins out and is awesome, so a few drunk Germans were trying to get us to go up in the front and dance, and after a while, we finally did, and that was a lot of fun. After that song was over, Husband went to go talk to someone, so I just hung out by myself, sort of near a friend I had made, and danced, just by myself, doo doo doo like I do. When it was nearing the end of the singers set, she was doing the thing that singers do, when they’re like, “Oh, I’ve had so much fun here, thanks for coming out, etc.” and then when she was introducing her next song, she said “Ok this one’s for you, blue dress” and pointed at me, and I almost died. It was a great song, so I danced my heart out (which basically consists of doing shimmys and shakings and some twirls) and then I was EXHAUSTED and HOT. So I went to the back of the room, where there were no people or heaters, and cooled right down.

At this point, I looked at my watch, and saw that it was midnight. Now normally, this would be just fine, but we needed to be up at 5 the next morning, to catch our flight on time, so we left, right as the party was going to get started. We heard a DJ was up next but I just couldn’t justify in my head staying up all through the night and then just catching my flight and trying to sleep there, since I already know that I wouldn’t have been able to sleep there, so we called it a night. After getting some pictures taken by the photog they had there, we went back to the hotel, and finally, went to sleep. A smashing night, a smashing success. Hopefully they’ll put the pics from the party online, and I can show you them soon!

Germany, Day 2 Part 1

Today was our last day here, so we had to make the most of it all while going to all of the work obligations that we’re here for. I should have explained, the reason we’re in Germany is because the company that Husband works for is having their 40th year anniversary. So they’re having a gala tonight, and that’s why we came – to go to the gala. This morning, we had to go to a thing of speeches, which was interesting. Because we speak English, and the founder of the company doesn’t, we needed an interpreter. They handed out headsets to all of us, and while they spoke their German speeches, and interpreter spoke into my ear while I was trying to pay attention to that. The only issue with me, is that my brain kept trying to listen to the German speeches, even though I kept trying to tell it to listen to the English coming in through the ear piece. The way they interpreted this, and I didn’t know this, but it makes sense, is that those speaking get their speeches to a girl, and she translates them into English, and then reads them. Well, when the founder got up to speak, he kept going off his speech, so our interpreter couldn't keep up. She would laugh at something he was saying, but then apologize to us, saying that since he was going off speech, she couldn’t follow him. It was funny.

Finally, the speeches ended after a few hours, and after a good lunch, we split into groups. One of the groups went on a tour of the factories, but since we went on that tour in December, we chose instead to take a free afternoon. We walked into town, and found a museum that we went into. I honestly don’t know what the museum was about, because they had such a varying list of things inside. The outside had light sabers over the entrance:

And then on the first floor, it was all movie memorabilia

And then the second floor was religious stuff.

And there was a place I could use a feather quill to sign a piece of paper, and it took me forever to sign my name, those things are hard to use!

The third floor was animals and medieval times things

And the top floor was Star Wars.

They even had the movies playing (In German, naturally) to sit there and watch. I don’t know what this museum was, but it was so much fun to look through. Look forward to the next part of Day 2!

Germany: Day 1

Hello, friends! I am writing from Germany, I once again have had the good fortune of being able to go to Germany with Husband while he is on business. Not here for very long, only 2 days, in fact, but still, awesomeness. We landed this morning at about 8:00 AM, and made our way to our hotel, 2 hours from the hotel. I was pretty wiped, I didn't sleep as much on the airplane as I would have liked. I woke up today at 3:00 UT time, to be able to be tired enough to sleep on the airplane. I even took 2 Zzzquill on the plane, hoping it would help me sleep, and I didn't get more than about 2 hours sleep in the whole 10 hours, so that sucked. So, we get picked up by the airport shuttle guy and its me, Husband, his coworker, the coworkers wife, and their 4 month old baby. We were told by them that the baby had been so good the entire flight, and that's awesome, but then the baby cried/screamed/etc. the entire drive down to the hotel. Holy cow was that awful.
So finally, we get to the hotel, and they all have a work meeting, which means I got to come up to the room. I explored a bit, and learned that they have a thing in this hotel that the lights don't turn on until your room key is inserted into a slot, what? That's so weird.

Its so that you don't leave the lights on when you leave the room, but still, so weird. Of course, I had to see if they had weird toilet flushers in here, and they do. I don't understand why we have a different way of flushing the toilets in our different countries.

 The way you flush is by pressing the top button there. Anyway, after taking a nap, then eating lunch...napping again, finally, it was time to get to dinner. They were having a dinner for the company, and before we had come, I had asked if I should bring any clothes that are nicer than jeans, just in case, and Husband told me no, it wouldn't be needed. Wellll...at this dinner, we were literally the only people in jeans, I've never felt so underdressed in my whole life, it was awful. The dinner was good, and nobody made me feel weird about just wearing the jeans, so it was just myself putting that sort of pressure on, but ugh I was so irritated that I hadn't brought other clothes. Also, they had carved the hotel out of butter there.

After dinner, we decided to go down to the saunas, which are apparently a huge thing in Germany, I had no idea. They had like, 4 or 5 different kinds, but I'm not entirely sure what the difference is, because when I go in them, they're all just so hot to me, and that's all I can think of. And to top off the experience, I saw a naked guy. Full on, full-frontal, with a shot of butt afterwards, naked guy. I've never been so creeped out in my whole life. Of course to him, he doesn't care that he's naked, whatever, but to me, I just wanted to leave after that.

So there's day one. We're only here for one more day, so stay tuned to find out what happens next!

And Now, The End

Finally, our trip comes to an end, and on Friday, we were set to fly out of Frankfurt at 7:25 AM. When we awoke at 4:30, I couldn’t help but notice that while it was 4:30 for us in Germany, it was 8:30 PM back home. That sort of thing really messed with my mind. We hurried to get ready, finish packing, return the rental car, and got to the airport at about 5:45. We SPRINT across the airport, because it’s huge and we need to get to a different terminal. So we get to the right one, and Husband is checking us all in, and I happen to glance up at the Arrivals/Departures boards. Our flight was to leave from Frankfurt at 7:25, as previously mentioned, to Paris, then we’d fly from Paris to SLC, in one shot. Luckily, they post everything by time, so I glanced at the flight to Paris, and I see one word:

CANCELLED

Uh…what?  Then I think, maybe I’m looking at the wrong board…or time…or something, so I frantically glance around, and no, that’s us, that’s our flight. So we get into this line that we’re directed to, to see what other flights are happening. We are automatically booked for a flight leaving to Paris at 1:15, but there’s no flight from Paris to SLC until Sunday. So we get in this line and wait. And wait…and wait…we were in that line for 4 HOURS. When we finally get up to the counter (keep in mind, they only had 2 people to wait on all of us) it took another 90 minutes to get us onto another flight that day, get it all squared away. Our new flight had us leaving at 12:45, landing in Chicago at 3:35, and then leaving from there to SLC, landing at 7:30. I was so glad we got to be on another! We RUN across the airport once again, since we had to get to the opposite terminal again, and we barely make it with 30 minutes to spare.

The flight here was nice, I won’t like. I had a great selection of movies I could watch, so I watched many that I had been wanting to watch, but never got a chance. The meal on this flight was a little more delicious, I thought, it was lasagna.

We finally landed in Chicago, and we take a look at the time of our next flight departing, and it’s in one hour. We have one hour to make our way through customs, security, and get across the airport to our next destination. Needless to say, that didn’t happen. We finally made it to the front of the line of customs when our flight left. Luckily, we had gotten a hold of Delta in the line, so we thankfully were able to get on another flight, departing that day. It was 2 hours later. We got through customs, security, and all that with maybe 45 minutes to spare, so we sat down to have a bite. We finally landed in SLC at 9:30, and at this point, we had been awake for about 27 hours, all of it having been spent in lines, or an airplane, or just an airport. But the time we finally made it home, it was 10:30, and I barely made it up to my FREEZING bed (We turned off the heat before we left, so the house was so cold!) and fell asleep. I didn’t sleep 11 hours like I had our first night, but I felt rested in the morning.

So all in all, a pretty good trip. And I feel like my experiences could be written into book entitled: Europe for Dummies: Since I seemed to have made so many mistakes and done so many dumb things. At least I lived!

Ticket to Ride

I had to find something to occupy myself, of course, and I was told that downtown Stuttgart is very nice. I didn't want to drive our beast of a rental car, so I wasn't sure what to do. Someone told me that I should take the train to Stuttgart, and it would be easy and only cost about 3 euros, and I should just do it. Well, if you know me, you know what a giant sissy I am. I get very nervous and anxious doing some things, and especially when I'm by myself, and especially me being in a foreign country, where I couldn't understand everything, so I was nervous. Finally, I psyched myself up for it, walked to the train station (only getting lost once!) and bought my ticket. A train came up about 5 minutes after I got there, and I didn't think it was my train, so I didn't get on it. Right as the doors closed, I figured out it was my train, shoot. The next train was coming in thirty minutes, so I just had to sit there and wait. IT WAS FREEZING so I tried to spend it getting warm, with hardly any luck. The train finally came, and off I went. I made it downtown with no problems, so that was awesome. I walked around, and walked past what seemed to be a department store, with a window display of Legos.

I also walked around a German bookstore for a while, laughing at most of the books, and the translations of the English books. I found Hunger Games, which looks cool

Doesn't Katniss look way cooler on this cover? I like it a lot. I went through a lot of stores, and didn't buy much, mostly because it's like, what would I do with a bunch of it? I found this cool building that I thought was like, the Stuttgart city hall, and took a bunch of pictures of it. Later, when I got back to the hotel, I discovered it was actually a castle that I could have gone into, and I kicked myself for not going up to investigate it further.

Dang me for not just walking up there to find out. After I finished taking these, and walking through their Christmas market, I made my way back to the hotel. I made it there with no problems, and then took a pic of the euros I managed to accumulate during the day

 The euro is weird, in that they have a lot of coins. $1, $2, $0.50, $0.20, etc, are all coin, so you collect a lot of coins with any purchases made. I felt good about the accomplishments made, and that I made it successfully there and back with no problems, and no tears.

Adventures Continue

The adventure, continues, my friends, and not always the good way you think. Last night, we had to leave our city of Attendorn and our castle hotel. We are now in the city of Stuttgart, and the hotel of Best Western. Luckily for me, this hotel is pretty close to how an American hotel, which is nice. And mostly everyone here speaks English, so double yes! On the way here, we had to switch cars, for 2 reasons. A: The original one was a stick shift, and I can't drive it, and B: we are now taking a fourth person with us to the airport, so we need the extra room. So we stopped at the Frankfurt airport again, and drove away with this behemoth:

Holy could it be any bigger?! It is huge. The van hits the top of the parking garage we were in - it's that large. Now that we have the big car, I'm actually afraid to drive it, so getting the automatic car might have been a waste of time, oops. The room is still needed!

Now, we got in, really late, on account of the GPS taking us to the wrong location. Someone, whoever put the city/address into the GPS (I'm not saying who, but maybe their name rhymes with Eve) and so we were in the total wrong location. Naturally, as we were then about an hour or so later than we intended to be, and we're all hungry, this led to small fights starting in the car, as we just wanted to be out of it. But we made it, checked in, and got on our way.

The next morning, I was alone in my hotel room, getting ready, and I decide to brush my teeth. I should mention, I'm in underpants. Literally, I have no clothes on except for my underthings. So I'm sitting there, brushing along, watching some TV, and all of a sudden, the door opens, and in comes a maid. Well this SURPRISES me, so all of a sudden, there she is, and I'm like, uh... don't know how to get out of this, and I tell her I'm not ready and she says something in German. I say again, I'll still be a minute, and she goes and gets the door hanger - you know, the do not disturb-please come in one. And then she explained to me (In German) how I had it on the wrong side, so that's why she came in. The whole time, I'm thinking, I DON'T CARE WHAT HAPPENED JUST LEAVE SINCE I AM NAKED, and she finally left. Here's what the door hanger looks like, and I SWEAR, I SWEAR I didn't have it on the wrong side, but alas. We'll never know for real.

Then later, I went to discover the town. I walked around, I found stores, I walked, I walked, and I walked. And....I got lost. I tried to find my way back to the hotel, and it didn't work. At all. I wandered around for an extra hour and a half trying to find it. When I finally did, I had to take my pants off and put them on the radiator to dry, because I was soaked. But now at least, I know where everything in town is!

Germany, Continued

Hello again! Still here, still not speaking German. I forgot yesterday to do my standard "rental car" pic. The cars here are similar to ours back home, but not quite. Here's our car:

A VW Passat! It's pretty big, which is weird, for me, usually on trips, my car is so small. But there are a few of us with all a bunch of luggage.

I thought I'd show some pics of our hotel. The first night, we stayed in a hotel called Burg Schnellenberg. It's fancy! I tried to take some pictures of it when we got there, but it was dark, so here's what I got:

Here's some of it, from the side, and sadly at night.

And there it is, impressively looming. Here's a pic off of the internet, so you can see what it's supposed to look like:

Pretty fancy. A weird thing with this place, is that there are no heaters. They have radiators in every room - including the bathroom, and you just turn that on and let it heat up the place. The pillows are weird. The blankets are weird. The toilets are weird - they flush weird and everything. And with everything in Celsius, I'm just guessing at how warm it will be! But things are good, and I'm safe, and I'm eating food I probably wouldn't. I did try a drink today that was a combination Orange Soda/Coke and while I thought it would be gross, it actually ended up being pretty good! So now, my mind is being opened all the time!

Greetings from Germany!

Hallo friends! (German already, fluent) This blog is coming to you today direct from Germany! I'm over here with Husband right now, as he is here for business, and I am tagging along. Let me tell you of my adventure so far. We left Saturday evening at 5 is when our plane took off. I wanted to sleep for the flight, since we'd be traveling all night, but alas, this didn't happen according to plan. We did get a dinner on the flight:

Delicious! That's a tiny salad in the corner, a brownie in the other corner, there's a roll in the lower right and in the lower left, its the entree. Something with chicken and rice which was actually pretty gross. But that's ok, the rest of my food filled me up. By the time our plane landed in Paris the next morning, I was thoroughly exhausted. To offset the tiredness, I bought some caffeine in a place in the airport. Diet Coke?, I said, when I saw it. Don't mind if I do!

Coca-Cola light? What the heck, Europe!? And it tastes different over here. It's sweeter. So weird. Then our plane left there, too, and after a short flight, we landed in Germany. Since it was evening, and we hadn't eaten in hours, we stopped to eat at the first place we saw on the road:

That's right, friends! BURGER KING! Naturally, we tried to convey our orders in our native tongue, which didn't go too well. We got our point across, and we got food, but still, I felt like a jerk for not being able to understand her, or able to speak her language. Oh well, I suppose.

Finally, we got to our destination, and after another dinner (I had venison! And accidentally ate some tuna tartare thing, so gross) I went to bed at about 10:30. After having been awake for about 31 hours, I was ready to sleep.