Gran Canaria |Canary Islands

Where to even begin with the trip to the Canary Islands....well our train was late so we missed the last bus to the airport. So we were stranded in Frankfurt for the night with no where to go. At the last minute we decided we were better off getting a room in Frankfurt to sleep for 3 hours even if we would have to get up and catch the bus at 3 am. After a long night and a five hour flight to the islands I get three calls from the hotel from the night before saying the curtains from our room are gone...what the heck do they think I would do with stolen curtains?! And the flight back was a nightmare. Some kid with hippie, hands off parents flooded the bathroom on the plane and stood on my arm rest for half of the flight. Once we arrived back in Frankfurt we had to spend the night in the train station because every hotel in Frankfurt was full for a fair. Anyhow, everything in between was GREAT.
      We spent the days at the beach and the pool and I managed to read nearly 3 books. We spent one afternoon in the sand dunes of Maspalomas. From the bottom all you can see is sand and it seems to stretch on forever. At one near miss John nearly lead us sraight into a nudist beach. Thank goodness we were able to swerve right just in time to miss it.

Bologna

Bologna was a bit of a shorter trip though still amazing. Bologna is the city of towers. You can't walk a city block without finding a new tower or church or city gate or plaza. And the rumor is true, pizza is sooo much better in Italy.

Madrid

Audrey Hepburn lied to me. The rain in Spain does NOT stay mainly on the Plain. It rained like crazy our first day in Madrid. Never the less it turned out to be a fantastic (and mostly sunny) trip. We saw two MVRDV buildings and a Morphosis building and countless historical buildings.

MVRDV

MVRDV

Plaza de Mayor

Morphosis

Berlin

Basically 7 days of awesome and exhaustion. Everything from the Brandenburg Gate to Frank Gehry to Berlin Wall. Pictures say a whole lot more than words in this case I think so here you go.

Holocaust Museum |Peter Eisenman

 DZ Bank |Frank Gehry

Neue National Galerie |Mies van der Rohe

Jewish Museum |Daniel Libeskind

Berlin Wall

Brandenburg Gate

Friedberg

Good grief where do I even begin...It's been forever sense I updated and its hard to remember everything so I'll be brief, but here we go...

Friedberg is the town where my grandmother grew up. I was able to meet my uncle there and find her house. We decided that after coming so far, what the heck, we might as well knock on the door. It was an elderly couple who spoke absolutely no English. So unfortunately my level one German classes didn't quite cut it. They seemed to think that we thought my grandmother still lived there or and subconsciously blocked the front door. Oh well! It was still awesome to see the house she grew up in and the bomb shelter she used during the war. Here are a few pictures.

Bad Sulza und Buchenwald

Its been quite a while but there has been so much going on! I'll start with our trip to Bad Sulza Thermal Baths yesterday. Its a secluded thermal saltwater bath, spa, and sauna. The baths have several saltwater pools, indoor and outdoor. There is an entire room called "Liquid Sound". The room is round and dark with pin holes of light in the ceiling. Swimmers tuck their toes under a rail that circles the pool and float. You can hear music coming from beneath the water. It was pretty funny to walk in and see twenty people just floating in the water and bumping into each other.

The saunas are a whole other story. Once you enter the sauna bathingsuits are not allowed. Towels are permitted but rare. I sucked up the guts to go inside but I sure clung to that towel. They had a series of saunas varying in temperature and humidity. One was called the rain forest. It was dark and extremely steamy inside and the ceiling dripped water. Its ceiling had pinholes of light that looked like stars. I never dreamed there would be so many people so comfortable with public nudity though. As shocking as it was I would definitely go back.

Today we had a visit to Buchenwald, the concentration camp 8 kilometers from Weimar. The guide told us a story hard for most people to believe about a woman who had lived in Weimar while Buchenwald was operational. When the camp was liberated, the American troops forced 1,000 citizens of Weimar to walk through the camp and see the death and crematorium and labor camps. A woman, who had been one of those 1,000 came to visit the camp a few years ago. The guide who led our tour was the same who had lead hers and he told us that when she came to a photograph of bodies piled by the crematorium she said "I have seen this. The Americans did this, not the Nazis. The bodies were too fresh." (The photograph is one of the men who died in the first few days after the liberation because they were in such poor health before the liberation.) Its so hard to believe that after all these years someone can still believe something like that.

front gates at Buchenwald

You grow up learning the history of the World Wars and the Nazi regime but it is an entirely different story to be standing where those people once stood. There was a memorial plaque that I found very interesting. Originally it was intended to have the names of all those who died in the camp to be placed on the plaque. The artist however had a difference of opinion and the result is somewhat of a cross between he two ideas. The plaque, as it sits in the ground now, is heated to exactly 98.6 degrees, the temperature of a living person. It represents the lives of all those lost within the gates of Buchenwald.

plaque

hidden urns found during a renovation

cremetorium

Erfurt

We got to visit Erfurt last week, a neighboring city of Weimar. I haven't had time to write much because of our language course but here are some pictures! Guten tag!

Weimar

Clearly I am not so good with the whole blog thing, but we made it to Weimar!! 11 days ago to be exact...Anyway Weimar is absolutely wonderful!! Its sort of a cross between the epitome of a quaint little German town and a hub for artists, musicians, and young people. A very interesting combination. The piazzas are beautiful and so active with street vendors and a street musician here and there. We were taking a walk in the park yesterday and there are families and old couples everywhere, and there is a little old man sitting at the end of a bridge over the river playing the violin. I mean what the heck?! Everything here is so surreal and seemingly perfect. We have yet to actually find a "bad part of town". John has litterally had me over every square inch of he city, from the Bauhaus buildings in the south to the rail yards in the north to the park in the east and all the way to the suburbs across the river. 

As of now I have decided that the German bakeries and chocolate will be the death of me. Even heir bottom of the line chocolate is fantastic! And there is seriously a bakery on every corner with fresh bread. We learned our lesson the hard way though that some things don't ranslate exactly as you think they will. Our first night here we went to a kebob shop and ordered a pepperoni pizza and what we got was a ham and jalepenio pepper pizza. I'm pretty sure most of the German words I have learned are for food. Oh well I'll learn the rest sooner or later!

We have been living in a hostel for the past two weeks which has been quite the experience....both good and bad. We actually met several English speaking students who had come to Weimar for school as well, so we are already meeting people! Our hostel stay has been so prolonged because it has been so difficult to find a place to live! As if it weren't hard enough in English, we have to translate everything from German and then cross our fingers and pray that when the apartment owner answers the phone they will speak some english. But success at last!!! I have a beautiful hard wood floor room with three giant windows that open up over a stream and a garden. So things are looking up and hopefully this will mean oportunities for more travel soon!

For now here are some pictures from around Weimar

Frankfurt

We're finally in Germany! It certainly was quite the experience.

So here's what I've learned so far:

        1. Never, ever try to carry two 40+ pound suitcases up and down escalators in a crowded airport. You will fail miserably.
        2. Why yes, a hostel check in counter CAN double as a bar.
        3. It takes a small army of people (several Japanese, a couple of Australians, me John, and a super helpful German) to figure out the train ticket kiosk.
        4. European modern art museums are waaay more sketch than American ones.
        5. Germans love the Hoff too.

I'm sure I'll be learning many more invaluable lessons along the way. On to Weimar tomorrow.

Germany Bound

I'm leaving for Germany tonight! We fly into London and then on to Frankfurt in the am....well technically the pm with the time change. I've got more stuff with me than I know what to do with and I'm sure I'll be quite the entertaining site walking through the airport....I finally caved and took a second bag. I'm not so sure about this whole blog thing. Its just slightly weird to be writing about myself...maybe I'll keep up with it or maybe I'll just get really distracted by everything! Hopefully there will be more to come!