Finally!!

Okay, this is going to seem like such an inadequate post, considering it’s been so long since I posted, but it has to be short since I’m sitting in a hotel room in the Netherlands about to try and find out as much about Amsterdam on a Sunday as I possibly can. Ironically, the TV is on in the background, on MTV, playing the episode of Viva la Bam! where they go to the Netherlands, and they are about to head to Amsterdam. Irony is fun!

My folks came last Friday and we spend the first few days touring around Munich. We did my pathetic walking tour of the stuff I know in Munich (read = not very much), as well as going to the Olympic Tower for dinner, having lunch at the Hofbräuhaus, and making a day trip to Neuschwanstein. For anyone who doesn’t know (and in case I didn’t write about it the last time), Neuschwanstein is the castle that was the inspiration for Disney’s Cinderella’s castle.

Then we traveled to Berlin. The actual drive to Berlin was quite the adventure because we ended up in a big snowstorm and missed a turnoff. The problem was that it was such an easy route from Munich to Berlin (get on Autobahn 9 and stay there till we see Berlin) that I wasn’t following along on the map and didn’t notice the error until we had been driving for an hour or an hour and a half at about 150 km/h! That was the detour from hell! Actually, though, we saw parts of Germany that Germans didn’t even know existed! We got to Berlin and spent 2 days touring around there. We saw all the main sights: the Brandenberg Gate, Potsdamer Platz, the Reichstag and the Siegesäule (Victory Column). We had dinner in the TV Tower and had a generally good time. My family is so impressed with the transit system here! I think they were skeptical when I said that we would be parking the rental car from the time we got to Berlin until the time we left, but that’s exactly what we did and it worked out great! If Edmonton had a transit system like some of the cities here have…

Then we drove to Bad Hersfeld where my family met the family I stayed with on my exchange. We were all really excited to see Hanna again, and I was happy to see everyone else, as well as to have my two families meet. It was especially good to see my little brother, Felix, again. He was 4 the last time I saw him and now he’s 10. TEN!! Wow.

Now we have driven to the Netherlands are had dinner with my dad’s cousin, Rob, and his wife, Suzanne, and their two daughters Mareike and Jesse. We had the most amazing Japanese restaurant. They cooked the food right in front of us, which I’ve seen on TV, but never actually experienced. The funniest part was when he shot fried eggs at us and we had to try and catch them in our mouths. Trust me, it was awesome!

Now we will be in the Netherlands for a few days and then down to France, then to Italy and then back up to Munich. Yikes!! Okay, gotta do some research now, have a great week or two!