La comida

So as the month passed, my opinion of the food here kind of changed. At first I was in the honeymoon phase and I loved everything. Now that I'm only a week from coming home, I'm in the phase where next to the people, I miss the food the most!
My host mom made some incredible dishes and I liked almost all of them but after a while I just want cheese that melts, bacon that comes in strips and some ranch dressing. Oh and some sort of spicy food. Spain does not do spice and even their jalapenos are sweet instead of hot. However, I'm sure once I make it home, there will be food I will miss from here.

Spanish Tortilla
Tortilla's here are not made from flour or corn and you don't fill them with Mexican food. They are made with potatoes and eggs and they are so good. It's kind of like an omelet except there is more potato than egg and you eat it for dinner. My host mom made it our second night here and I have been in love ever since. I kept asking my host mom for it so she started making it for my bocadillos on the days she packed me a picnic for lunch and then last night, she taught me how to make it. It's easy enough that I think I will actually cook it occasionally. As soon as I get over my fear of using a plate to flip it over.

Paella
Paella is a world famous rice dish that originated from Valencia. Since this is where I am studying abroad, I knew months ago that I had to try it. Luckily, my host mom makes this every other Sunday! Other students had to go to a restaurant to try it and spend tons of euros on it but not me! There are two ways to make it, with chicken and rabbit or with seafood. And don't think that means only shrimp or fish because there was everything in it from clams, shrimp, mussels and something with tentacles. It was incredible! It's traditionally made outdoors over an open flame (my host mom cheated by making it out on her terrance over a gas flame but it's close. :P) and it's made in a huuuuuuggeeee iron skillet.

Bocadillos
Man, the Spaniards love them some sandwiches. There are literally hundreds if not thousands of bocadillo shops all around Valencia. My favorite was one that had a hundred different choices of sandwiches and every Wednesday, they dropped everything on their menus down to one euro! Including beer and sangria. Every week Michelle and I would go and try different sandwiches and salads. YUM! I loved the bocadillos but the salads grossed me out. We shared a ceasar salad one time and it tasted flowery. Almost like perfume. The next time I ordered a salmon salad and it arrived with this huge chunk of raw fish. I like sushi but this big piece was just too much. Plus, it just didn't taste good with the rest of the salad.
Every day that I couldn't make it home for lunch, my host mom would pack me a picnic to bring with me and it always consisted of a huge bocadillo. She would take a loaf of french bread, cut it in half and make one sandwich for me and one for my roommate. That is a biiiiiiiig sandwich. I can't say that I really liked her fillings though. One time she filled it with half cooked breakfast sausage and large squares of butter. Yuck. Another time it was this raw looking ham stuff. It's cured so it won't kill me to eat it but it wasn't really a big hit with me. I didn't tell her when I didn't like a sandwich but once I told her enough times how much I loved the tortilla bocadillos she just started making me that every time I asked for one. YAY!!!

This a picture of a cured ham one. Mine was a little different but I still didn't think it was the greatest. 

Sangria
Sangria was originally made by Spaniards as a cheap party punch for informal get togethers and as a way to get rid of half spoiled fruit. But the tourists loved it so much that restaurants and bars started making it and now it's everywhere! Sangria is the one thing my host mom does not make well. Bleck! I don't really love sangria anyways but since all of my friends here love to buy pitchers of it, I've been drinking a lot of it.

One thing nice about Spain is that the beer is cheaper than the soda and the wine is cheaper than the water. You can not order tap water here. If you ask they give you this disgusted look and say they don't have it. Because of course they manage to run a restaurant without running water. Come on people. I'm a tourist but I'm not stupid.

In Barcelona, Michelle and I broke down and went to a Mcdonalds ( I know, I know What was I thinking???) However, we had stayed up until 8 am and it sounded wonderful!) I was amazed to find that beer was included in a combo meal. Spain is a wonderful but completely insane place.

Michelle and I chowing down on that american crap food. Delicious! 

Underneath the coke sign is a beer brand! Hard to see but it's there! 

One thing that did drive be absolutely crazy was the different beliefs on food hygiene. The milk that sat out for hours didn't faze me, the fact that our host mom cooked our dinner in the morning and then let it sit on the counter for hours didn't bug me. But the time I saw my host mom cutting raw chicken on the counter and then wiping it up with the dry hand towel before carefully hanging it back up convinced me that if I died in Spain it would be from food poisoning. That's the rag she dries dishes with!!!!! The other night, my host mom made it a point to make all of my favorite things in one meal. She was so excited and it was adorable but I had to force myself to eat. She made this breaded pork stuffed with cheese (absolutely amazing btw) but the one my roommate got was still completely raw. She was making them in batches and forgot which ones she had just put in. Then my first bite of my spanish tortilla had a long hair in it. She was embarrassed and apologized but it completely ruined my appetite. I didn't even know that was possible! Don't get me wrong. I am still alive and they just look at things differently here, but there are just some things that should be universal no matter where you are in the world.

Watching the news in Spain.

So I have been attempting to watch the news with my host mom. It hasn't been too successful because I still can't understand a single thing the newscaster says. I want to jump through the T.V and tell them to speak slower but it doesn't work that way. :( Anyway, on two separate occasions, the difference between the news in the United States and the news in Spain has been made apparently clear. The first time, we were watching a story about a man gored to death by a bull and to my shock they showed the entire thing. There was no warning about how the following scene may be upsetting or anything. Just BAM! The man's insides were on his outside and then he died. Then, this afternoon, I was watching the news again (because I didn't learn my lesson the first time) and they showed thirty people running into a store and shopping. Naked. And by the way, they don't blur ANYTHING. It was just thirty people's junk, and some shopping carts.

My Classes

I really lucked out in the classes I am taking. My advisor told me that I would get credit for either level so I decided to take the intermediate classes for two reasons. One, easier classes give me more time to explore Valencia and two, I really wanted to take the culture class that is only offered in the intermediate level. Once I got here I found out that I ended up with the best schedule because of it. I have classes Monday through Thursday from 9am to 2pm. Whereas the advanced classes have a whacked schedule. Today, my roommate started class at 9am but she won't get done until 6pm. She has the same number of classes and credits as me but they divvy them up in a crazy way so she ends up with awkward breaks in between her classes. And they aren't even long enough to go anywhere. 

Grammar Class:

My grammar professor is a nut. He's hilarious, but definitely a little different. Our first day he went on a mini rant about how smoking is good for your health but the government doesn't want us to know this because they want to have a heavy tax on tobacco products. If people knew that it was actually good for your lungs, they wouldn't accept such a high tax. Then, when he went on a smoke break and found out that one of the students smoke, he congratulated her. He also hates the beach so he likes to show us disgusting videos and photos of what the sun does to your skin. We tried to turn the tables on him and YouTubed a video about smoking but he just said that it was nonsense. On the first day, he broke down the different area of the city and wrote on the board where the best bars are in each area. Anytime we ask him what he did the day before, he answers with I drank beer so I'm guessing he knows the best spots. 

The class isn't very difficult yet. The first week I felt like I learned absolutely nothing but it's starting to pick up. I think that he knows that no one really wants to come to class, it's just the price we pay in order to come here, because we are always playing games. Pictionary with spanish words, dominoes with conjugations and dating show style questions and answers. I don't learn anything about spanish grammar from these games but they are a good way to pass the time. He has finally started breaking the classes into periods of grammar exercises with games that relate afterwords so we'll see how it goes. 

Culture Class:

This class is a little more difficult. Mostly because she expects us to get through the same amount of information she teaches in four months during the year. We had to buy a book for this class that consists of nothing more than 300 power point slides on everything from prehistoric art (cave art) to roman music. This wouldn't be a problem if I could actually read the print but it's shrunk so far down that it's almost impossible. However, she doesn't really like sticking us in a class room so we have a field trip every week. The very first day of classes we all file in, expecting to listen to a lecture of Spanish history and instead we all left class and hopped on the metro to go to a museum. Now true, it was a museum of the history of Valencia but given the choice between five hours in a class room or five hours in a museum, I'll take the museum! It's been a long time since I've been in a school that had field trips but I'm remembering why I loved them so much. Last Friday, we took a train to a city outside of Valencia and hiked a mountain to see Roman Ruins! She teaches in Spanish (obviously) but since she knows English she is always translating what she just said. I think I would like it better if she just stuck with Spanish because I usually understand what she says and hearing everything twice just makes me tired. 

One interesting thing about my classes is that I have started to write my notes in spanish. Okay, more like spanglish but hey, that's still impressive to me. I was looking at my notes from last week and they all looked like this . . . Otro paises son mejores que España porque hay too many old people aqui. The sad thing is, this doesn't even look weird to me anymore. What's worse is when I can't even write a word in Spanish or English. I tried to write the word dictionary the other day and it came out a weird crossbreed of both.

English - Dictionary

Spanish - Diccionario 

Britttany - Diccionary

Easy to fix in a word like dictionary but when half of my words end up jumbled, I'm concerned. 

Apparently, during the last week, both my english and my spanish has been getting worse. Four or five days after I got here, I received the most exciting complement of my life. I was eating lunch with my host parents and they were telling me how they had noticed how much my spanish was improving each day. Then when they found out that I was only in the intermediate classes they were astounded and told me that they had assumed I was in the advanced classes because I could talk so well. I felt like a rock star until my ability to speak completely left me. Since then, I only understand half of what they are saying and can only respond with a sí or no. I don't know what happened but I don't like it!!! 

My Spanish Family

Although, you would never know it by reading my blog, I have been in Valencia for two weeks today. Whaaaaat?? How did that happen?? Time is just flying by and I have managed to fill my time with way too many things to adequately describe on here. If I tried, I would end up with a book instead of a blog. So I'm just going to write small snapshots of the super important things and hope I remember the rest.

Meeting my Host Family:
So once we left Toledo and finally made it to Valencia, it was time to meet the people that we would be living with for the next five weeks. ISA found from past experiences that it is much easier to have the students stay on the bus and call them up one by one to meet their host parents. It kind of left us with the feeling of a pet shop puppy. Noses plastered to the windows, "Oh Pick me!! Pick me! Bring me home with yoooou!" Of course, my roommate Meagan and I were some of the last to be called. I finally stepped off the bus and a short, round, blond woman came up to me and kissed me on both cheeks. Wait? What? This is my spanish madre? I was expecting someone more . . . spanish looking. She looks just like a soccer mom. Which isn't surprising since that's pretty much what she is. After she kissed me hello, her husband did the same. Then a guy in his teens followed. I knew that my family had a 16 year old son so you could have knocked me over with a feather when the guy spoke and I heard an American accent. It was the host son from spring semester! After his program ended, he moved in with his bartender and had came to help us settle in. There is no way to describe how incredibly helpful this was. He translated for us, showed us how to use the five different knobs in the shower (Yes, I said Five!) and told us how extremely laid back our host mom is. He also gave us a list of bars and clubs to go to and started every story with either "This one time, I was at this bar and . . ." or "This one morning I was really hungover and . . ." I'm pretty sure he was drunk the entire five months he was here.

Madre:
After living with her for two weeks, I can honestly say that we got the best mom in the program. She doesn't follow any of the rules laid out by ISA and she does 8 times as much work than she has to. ISA had given us all a list of rules, laying out how much laundry we can have per week and explaining that the host parents won't let us drink or have alcohol in the house. What a laugh. She does laundry every day and I don't think a lunch or dinner has passed without her offering me wine, beer or sangria. She also insists on remaking my bed every morning because apparently after 26 years, I still can't do it right.  When I first got here, I talked to her the most but somehow she has gotten harder to understand. I think she keeps forgetting to slow down and so I just do a lot of smiling and nodding. She absolutely loves showing me her photo albums and showing off the pictures of her daughters wedding. Sometimes, we hear her watching the DVD of the wedding over and over again.

Padre:
If my host mom didn't meet my expectations of what a spanish woman looks like, the dad more than made up for it. He looks just like the stereotypical middle aged spanish man in Saturday morning cartoons! For the first three or four days, we just kind of tiptoed around each other, neither one of us knowing what to say or if the other person would understand. However, once I started coming out to the terrance to drink coffee while he smokes, we started talking up a storm. I actually have a reason to be grateful that my parents got me used to the smell of smoke. I get a ton more spanish practice everyday than my roommate because she usually just talks to our host mom. El Padre purposely talks really slow so my poor overloaded brain can keep up and when I look confused, he will either repeat it, act it out or find another way to explain what he is saying. I've had hour long conversations on everything from the American Healthcare system, what I want to do when I get out of school, the spanish government, to the problem of forest fires in Spain. The last resulted from a extremely complicated article that I had to read for my culture class. I am pretty good at reading in Spanish but this article had me beat! Even with a dictionary in hand, I couldn't understand more than a quarter of it. So I asked him for help. He sat with me and read every single line of this three page paper and explained every single word that I didn't understand. If I had to describe this man in one word, the word would be patient! It took him an hour and even after I told him that I thought I could struggle through the rest on my own, he just kept going. That day in class, my classmates were completely confused but I was answering questions left and right.

Hermano:
My host brother is 16 and he actually speaks a little english. He learned it from playing online video games so he's a little inconsistent on the vocabulary but he has almost no accent. We don't actually talk that much because I have this weird habit of being unable to speak spanish with anyone who knows a little english. I really need to get over that but I can't seem to forget that I sound like an idiot in spanish. Plus, he speaks really quietly so I can almost never understand what he is saying. So then he tries to switch to english but then he gets frustrated with not being able to explain what he is trying to say so we both end up giving up. Not to mention, he is 16 so he spends most of the day in his room, playing video games. No matter where you go, somethings stay the same!

Madrid and dancing the night away!

Sorry that I haven’t written much since I got to Spain, I have been super busy with meeting my host family, going to classes and exploring Valencia. The only thing I want to do when I get back is sleep. Which usually leaves me trying to do my homework in the morning before class. I should know better but that hasn’t stopped me yet. 

Madrid and Toledo weren’t super exciting for me. We went on the most boring walking tour ever invented in Madrid and then went to an Art museum. The walking tour might have been more interesting if I could understand the guide’s spanish better but I don’t think so. He mostly walked us around and then asked us what the different buildings had in common and what was different. (I understood this part) He had a serious thing for remarking “This building has columns, this building has this kind of windows!” and so on and so on. The Art museum was cool though. Same guide but I just basically ignored him and looked at all of Piscasso’s paintings. Weird shit but fun. :) 

The second night in Madrid, my roommate and I decided to hit a club and see if it lived up to it’s hype. It does. It cost 20 euros to get in but the place was crazy so it was worth it. It was seven stories high and each floor had a different drink and different music playing. We started out by climbing the stairs all the way to the seventh floor and then made our way down to the mojito floor. After dancing there for a while, we eventually made it back down to the bottom dance floor. I wish I had a picture of this floor. It was huge! In front of the dance floor there was a stage with professional dancers and then in the middle of the floor this fog machine came down from the ceiling and would randomly douse all of the dancers. I danced so much that I broke my shoes! :( 

Madrid!! Finally!!!

So after all of this travel, I finally arrived in Madrid and met my study abroad group. I can’t say that the first two hours in Spain gave me a good start. From the time my plane landed to the time the ISA shuttle left was about an hour and a half. That should have given me plenty of time. Sadly, my morning just did not run that smoothly. I always place all of my electronics in my carry on, which means that my backpack is always pulled aside to be searched. I suppose that two camera cords, two camera chargers, a computer cord, a Zune charger, a battery charger and something like 20 different adapters (Every possible adapter for my computer and a handful for my non apple electronics) would look pretty suspicious in an X-ray machine. It doesn’t really bother me and it doesn’t take that long for them to look in it and decide I can’t make a bomb with it. However, this time I had decided to put my pick up information in my backpack. Do you see where this is going? Yup, when I got to Madrid I discovered that all of my travel documents were missing. Damn security people. I was lucky in that I remembered which terminal I was supposed to meet them in but I couldn’t remember the directions to the terminal, or where at in the terminal. But I had no choice but to wing it. However, it took British Airways over an hour to unload our luggage. At this point, I’m going oh crap. Once I got my bags, I basically ran to the bus stop that would take me to the right terminal. That stupid bus stopped a dozen times before finally dropping me off ten minutes before ISA left. I should have made that damn shuttle but my sleep deprived brain couldn’t figure out how to get to the arrivals area. I wandered up and down the first floor for the longest time looking for my group. By the time I finally figured out that a staircase going down usually means there is another floor, it was too late. So I missed the shuttle. Luckily, I had my hotel information and the number for a private shuttle bus. All I had to do was call them right? Sure, no problem. Now if only I could have figured out how to work the pay phones. I can’t even use the excuse that the instructions were in Spanish because I could read the instructions just fine. I just couldn’t get it to work. I punched the code for a coin call, inserted money and then . . . nothing. Over and over again. I probably spent a good twenty minutes trying to get the pay phone to work and when I finally gave up, I was almost in tears. Seriously, I wanted to go back to British Airways and beg them to take me back. I was done with Spain. Eventually, I decided to break down and pay the ten euros for the internet at the airport and email ISA for help. I asked someone for directions to an area that had chairs (most of the airport didn’t) and then promptly got lost. (Hey, it’s been a while since I had a conversation in Spanish!) Finally I just gave up and sat down against a wall, unpacked my computer and . . . found out the internet was down. 

I’m not making any of this up. All of this really happened.

Thankfully, just before I completely lost it, I looked over and saw a kiosk for the same shuttle service that ISA gave me the number for. At that point I just had to laugh. What else could I do? So it all turned out fine. I paid an arm and a leg for a shuttle and got to my hotel in about an hour. Well worth the days worth of food I will now not be able to buy. 

I took a nap, woke up and met my new roommate. We went to our first orientation meeting which was ridiculously boring. They actually made us read aloud the safety information from our handbook. I got it the first time I read it three months ago, and again when they sent it to us in our student portal. And then again when they gave us our handbooks. Come on people! 

After we finally finished our meeting, Meagan (my roommate) and I went out to explore and to find dinner. We ended up at this dinner where we both ordered a bacon and cheese sandwich and a beer. Mostly because we clearly understood what we would be getting and we weren't feeling particularly adventurous at the moment. The sandwich was yummy but the beer was disgusting. Bleck! We had ordered some beer con Limon because we figured it would be sort of like bud light lime. Not even close. It tasted like they mixed super sweet lemonade with lemoncello and then topped it off with an inch of beer. Sweet, sour and bitter just doesn’t work so well. After dinner we decided to risk getting lost and just walk around. 

It’s weird. Last year in Costa Rica, I was terrified of getting lost. This year, I look forward to it. After we were completely turned around and didn’t even know which direction our hotel was, we just asked a police officer how to get back. It sounds simple but since it was all in spanish, it was mostly just comical. We managed to ask for our hotel just fine, but then the officer started speaking really fast so we just nodded and hoped that the other person understood. That worked until he asked us a question and we just nodded and said Si. Then we realized that he had asked us what street our hotel was on. So we looked like idiots but I'm used to that!

Back to London :(

We left on Tuesday to head back to London (All together now . . . Awwwwww!) but we had one country left to check out on our way. We stopped for a few hours in Bruges for a walk around town, lunch and later a chocolate factory. The chocolate factory was completely wasted on me as I didn’t even try the free samples but most people came out with bulging bags that must have weighed 20 pounds. Then they complained about how it wouldn’t fit in their suitcases so they were going to have to eat most of it before their flight back home. Man, life is tough on the road. :)

Famous square in Bruges 

The US flag!

My lunch in Bruges. No way was I not going to get a waffle!

My Belgium Taco. Was more like a curry hot pocket. Deep fried.

I love these fork/knives. Genius! 

Ketchup flavored chips. BTW, they are Disgusting! 

On the Ferry back to the UK

When we finally got to London and unloaded our bags it was like a mass free for all of goodbye hugs. Everyone was running around making sure that they got one last goodbye in. I was lucky because my favorite people and I were going to meet for dinner after we stashed our bags at our different hotels so I got to postpone the drama of “I’m never going to see you agaaaaaaain.” A friend from the group lent me his extra phone so I could use google map if I got lost on my way to the hostel. When I first heard that he had two Iphones, I had created this theory that one was for his numerous girlfriends while the other was for everyone else but he assured me that one provider has better rates for the international calls to his family in India while the other has better rates for in country calls. Personally, I prefer my theory. Either way, I managed to make it to my hostel without it, mostly because I didn’t have a free hand to pull it out of my purse. Numerous flights of stairs, three tube changes, and a four block walk with my luggage must have left me looking rather rough because the first thing the employee at the hostel asked me when I walked in was “Would you like me to get you a glass of water?” Which rather deflated my “I’m a total badass that can handle anything.” ego. Oh well. 

I met up with the rest of my friends and found out that half of them had decided that dinner wasn’t as important as a bed. So I didn’t have to say goodbye at all. I’m kind of glad that for a few of them, I got a see ya later instead of goodbye because goodbyes are exhausting.

The group that stuck around were all from India although none of them actually live in India anymore. Once they discovered that I had never really eaten Indian food before they decided that we had to go to the Indian area of London and enlighten me to the joy of Indian cuisine. So we did. They chose the menu and then I tried a little of everything. Oh man, I ate so much it hurt to breath. They wanted me to try something from every different area of India which equaled a lot of food. I was full before we even got through the appetizers. Which might have been because they ordered at least three but it might have been four. I lost count. We talked about the Indian culture and how it changed for them since they moved to the US or England and all kinds of stuff. At some point, I made a comment and then said “what am I, the only white person here?” We looked around and almost died laughing. I WAS the only white person in the entire restaurant. At the back of the restaurant there was a mirror and all I could see was brown, brown, brown . . . blinding white me, and more brown. And when I went outside, I was the only white person I saw as well. I thought it was great. Once I stopped laughing, I just shrugged and said “Welcome to the minority Brittany” and kept eating. 

We got done eating around midnight and all of us hopped back on the tube. We made it through a couple changes before we realized that all of them would be getting off before me, leaving me at 12:30 am alone on the London streets. (Mary breath! I’m alive enough to write this aren't I?) One of the guys offered to walk me to my hostel and I gave it serious thought before realizing that midnight at home is different than midnight here. That sounds like it doesn’t make any sense but it does. There were hundreds of people still on the tube, security guards all over the place and on the street, shops and restaurants were still open and people were everywhere. It also helped that I only had to go two more stops and my hostel was less that 200 feet from the tube station with a security guard at the entrance! ^_^ It took me less than a minute to walk. And once I got to my hostel, there were about 25 women in pajama’s, sitting on picnic tables and talking. Midnight really is different in London. 

When I woke up the next day, I wanted to sing and dance. For the first time in 12 days, I was alone. No one to talk to, no plans. Just me. Until one of the guys from my group wrote me on facebook asking to meet with me that morning so he could steal the pictures that his camera had eaten. Luckily, I had copied his memory card to my computer for the Toga Party pictures. I didn’t have the pictures from after that of course but at least he got a ton back. And I got a free breakfast out of it. So it wasn’t too terrible to give up my morning of solitude. But the rest of the day was mine! I checked out of the hostel and had them store my bags. Then I just walked around. I started out in the direction of a further away tube station, planning on discovering if it had less stairs for my return trip with my suitcases but before I got there I discovered the London Eye. From there, I walked across the bridge to Big Ben and then went on to the Buckingham Palace. I loved it. When I got hot, I stepped into a gift shop and stole some AC while I read a children's book “Does the Queen wear a crown to bed.” When I was hungry, I stopped at a store and bought some food and ate it in St James Park. Then I randomly decided to walk through Hyde Park to my last hostel and see if they still had the book I had left there. (It’s been haunting me. I want to know what happens Damn it!) They had found it but unfortunately, one of the staff members had borrowed it and he wasn’t there. Bummer. Eventually, I went back to the hostel to play on the internet until it was time to leave for the airport. The tube line that I had planned on taking was down due to who knows what and since the other options either had a billion stairs and no lift, or cost me a million dollars, I tried to wait it out. One benefit to spending the night in an airport is that even if you leave two hours later than you planned, you’re still not going to miss your plane. However, after a while, I gave up on the easy way and headed out anyway. 

Buckingham Palace

The soy sauce that came with my sushi!

My picnic in the park

This woman was meditating or something.
She stood there humming the entire time I was there

Once I got to the airport, I picked a spot next to a charging center, plugged in my computer and skyped Jesse for three hours. Then I locked my laptop in my backpack and locked my backpack to my chair and slept for a couple hours until it was time to check in for my flight. For all that I was freaking out at the idea of crashing at an airport, it wasn’t that bad. There were always people around. Another girl on her own set up shop on the other side of the outlet and there were families and groups of friends huddled around too. It kind of reminded me of camping. The worst part of it was that since I was traveling by myself I had to bring my luggage with me to the bathroom and risk losing my spot. So I held it. My bladder might vie with my computer for hating me but I survived just fine. 

Holland and a not very interesting Amsterdam story

Leaving from Boppard was hard. We all knew that we had only one more night before the end of our tour and none of us was ready for it to be over. Not to mention, when you spend 18 hours a day with someone, you are basically forced to become close. Otherwise, there’d be a bus full of dead bodies. It’s like a crash course on friendship. I think we were all dreading arriving in Amsterdam, simply because it was our last night. 

On our way through through Holland we tried to fit as much in as we could. We stopped at a million wooden windmills for pictures and visited this little tourist town for souvenirs.

Windmills!

Wooden Shoe Museum

 For the first time since coming to Europe, I shopped. For myself. On purpose. And then I spent the next hour feeling guilty. Obviously, I’ve got problems. 

See, I have a shopping bag!

After my shopping spree we hopped back on the bus and headed for a little sea town for lunch. I had sea food of course. We also absolutely had to take off our shoes and roll up our pants to walk in the ocean. Even though it was freezing! Of course, we took pictures of that too. Are you noticing a theme here? My computer may never forgive me once I finish uploading all of these pictures. 

Later we went to a cheese and wooden clog factory. Apparently, they use the shavings from the shoe making to smoke the cheese. How convenient. I really wanted to buy some cheese for my mom and little clogs for my niece but I’d then have to carry it around for 5 more weeks, so I resisted. It was hard. Wouldn’t Hannah look adorable in some little wooden painted shoes? 

We finally arrived in Amsterdam just in time to get ready for dinner. Basically everyone under the age of thirty decided that we should stay out after our walking tour and see what Amsterdam had to offer. Which meant I had to run barefoot between the rooms half a dozen times to see what everyone else was wearing before I got dressed. Don’t ask me why because I ended up wearing exactly what I had planned on anyway.

Our tour of Amsterdam was almost entirely of the Red Light District. Obviously, I had heard of the area and I pretty much knew what to expect but actually seeing it was a different story. It’s just alleyway after alleyway of half naked women standing in glass doorways with bare mattresses behind them. All in all, there must have been hundreds of them. Some of the women were sexy and some were adorable, but others were fat, or old or just plain ugly. One part that cracked me up about the girls, was that none of them seemed particularly interested in anything outside of the their rooms. They were talking on the phone, texting or chatting with each other and most of them didn’t even look outside their window. It seemed like bad business sense to me but what do I know. However, the craziest part to me was not that there were all these women in bras and panties, or precisely placed straps, it was that this Indian family brought their eleven year old with them. I mean, Kevin was telling us the history of legal prostitution, and talking about sex slavery and even pointing out when a ‘transaction’ was taking place. She seemed pretty unfazed by it all but it kind of freaked me out. I wanted to cover her eyes and tell her to come back in ten years. 

Amsterdam

So many Bikes!

Amsterdam used to tax according to width. which explains the skinny buildings!

The only statue in the world celebrating prostitutes.

After we had our fill of window shopping, (:p I couldn't resist) the rest of the group left and we had Amsterdam to ourselves. Well along with five million other tourists. I had been really disappointed that we didn’t have time to go to Ann Frank’s house and museum. We were pretty sure that it was closed but my group decided to run over there anyway just in case. I don’t think I will ever forget the memory of running through Amsterdam in my mini skirt and flip-flops. Unfortunately, we were right and the Frank house was closed for the night. I know I’ve said this for everywhere I’ve been, but I really hope I come back to Amsterdam because I was really disappointed that I didn’t get to see the place where she lived when she was hiding from the Nazi’s. :(

Eventually we made our way back to the Red Light District because some of the group wanted to check out the famous coffeeshops. The one we went to was a bar upstairs and downstairs was a buying area and a smoking room. And yes, I went downstairs. For the million people that have been asking me, yes I bought a space cake.

Space cake!

 No I didn’t get high. Due to an unfortunate allergy to Marijuana, (Yes, I am serious) and the fondness I have for breathing, I didn’t get to go crazy in Amsterdam. But I refused to go home without at least some attempt at an Amsterdam story! So I shared a piece of pot cake with a guy in my group. The three bites I had did nothing to me but whatever, it was fun. A couple guys in our group scarfed theirs down in like three seconds flat. And then they went wandering around looking for more. The few of us left just sat outside the coffeeshop on the water, drinking and talking. It was a lot more chill that most people think of when they think of Amsterdam but I had fun. And we got to see all the tourists acting like idiots, fighting and falling down drunk. Free entertainment! 

Oh, I finally finished adding the pictures on the previous post for the cruise and such. 

Sleeping my way through Germany

I slept through most of Germany. I’m being serious. In a 30 hour time period, I slept for 25 of them. I woke up in Venice, ate breakfast, got on the bus and slept until we stopped for lunch in Austria, got back on the bus and went back to sleep until we stopped for dinner in Munich, Germany. Then I went back to sleep until we got to our hotel. Then I went to bed and slept 8 hours. Then I got up and went back to sleep on the bus. This is when my cold really started to kick my butt! I felt terrible! 

Pit stop on the way to Austria

Restaurant in Austria

Desert in Austria

Munich was CRAZY!!! We were supposed to stay the night there but Munich made it to the finals in some football tournament and the hotel realized they could make a lot more money by canceling on us and charging the fans an arm and leg. Tens of thousands of fans came to Munich to watch the game in a bar! What??? Of course that may be because the cheapest nosebleed seats were over a thousand euros. These people really like their football. The Superbowl does not come close to comparing. The city was packed with drunk people in red or blue. And they walked around chanting and yelling at people supporting the other team. Think of the crowds in Bloomsday but with everyone drunk. There was broken beer bottles everywhere. I didn’t have the choice of avoiding stepping on glass because there was not a clear space in the entire city. I didn’t see anyone throwing bottles (at least before the game) so I think it was more of a Thor “This is good, I want another” SMASH kind of thing. Insanity. I think I am glad that the hotel canceled on us because we were a good two hours away when Munich lost the game. Having seen them when they were celebrating, I would hate to see them when they were drinking away their sorrows. Scary thought. 

Street in Munich

Crazy fans!

We went to a traditional beer hall for a German dinner. Three types of brats, sauerkraut, and mashed potatoes. It was pretty good but the drama outside kind of overshadowed the food. The restaurant even had a security guard checking to make sure we weren’t smuggling in whiskey and such. As soon as we could, we got out of town. Too much for us. The game started while we were on our way to the bus and the streets went from being packed to completely empty. Still loud though. 

The next morning we actually got to sleep in for a few extra hours and then we were on our way to Boppard Germany. We drove for an hour or so and then we explored this tiny town. We entered this wine shop and overwhelmed the employees. I think some of the group tried ever single thing they carried . . . twice. People were so impressed with this peach brandy that they would buy it for 20 euro and then ship it home for 90 euros. What??? 

Screw buying a bottle, I'm going for the entire keg! 

After eating lunch, we went on a river cruise on the Rhine. That was fun. I felt like death but there are worse places to feel terrible at. :D We took a million more pictures and at one point the young married couple wanted to take a Titanic picture. We all had to pitch in with advice for the perfect angle and when they had finally taken it, the song from titanic came on over the speaker. In German. We were all trying to sing along and then went, Wait. What? Why isn’t this working out right? 

My quail salad. Delicious! 

I love Germany thiiiiiiiis much!

The cruise ship

When we got to Boppard we walked around town and then after dinner we went down to the river and sat talking for hours.  Almost half the group came out. That was probably my favorite part of all of Germany. I’m sure I would have liked Germany more if I hadn’t been sick and if we hadn’t have been stuck in football fever. Even with it, I really liked the hometown feel of most of the towns we stopped in. 

Is it weird that I find these adorable?

And I loved being able to say that I had breakfast in Italy, lunch in Austria, and dinner in Germany. How many people can say that?