You flunked flank? Get the flunk out of here!

19 February-28 February 2009

Tiffany and Sean finally came to visit!!! On Friday morning, I got my booty out of bed at 5:30 and headed to the airport in Frankfurt, Germany to meet Tiff, Sean, and Harper. Like a complete idiot, I forgot my cell phone on my desk, and so I was really stressing out that something would go wrong and they wouldn’t be able to get a hold of me. Luckily, though, they strolled right out of the place and we had no problems meeting up. That was the end of our having no problems, however…most of which could have been solved if I hadn't forgotten my darn cell phone!....more on that soon.

So we picked up the rental car, they upgraded us to a station wagon (woo!) with a navigation system, and we were off. Okay, it wasn’t quite that easy. The navigation system was somehow mysteriously in the radio console and it was in German, so we had to have the nice lady who worked in the garage help us change it to English. THEN we were off. We set off for our four-hour drive to Isny-Beuren where our family Corinna, Simone, Hermann, and Silvia live. Unfortunately, a few hours into the trip, the navigation system got really confused and kept telling us to get off the highway, then get back on the other direction, then get back off and back on again. Each time it would say, “Please proceed to the planned route,” as though we knew what that was. Isn’t that the point of a navigation system??? Haha…anyway, eventually, after stopping for directions twice, and finally getting a Mapquest at an internet café, we showed up at Corinna’s house at 10:30pm, roughly 4 hours later than we thought. It took forever to get there, but we had fun once we were there.

Hermann, Silvia, Corinna, and Daniela’s boyfriend Andy stayed up with us until 2am or so talking, drinking, and playing with Harper (who was NOT tired in the slightest…haha). We had a great time. The next morning, we got up to go to a parade for Fasching (what they call Carnival in Southern Germany) in Kempton, a nearby town. We had no idea what we were getting into. The parade started, and I went to take a picture of one of the really ornate wooden masks and costumes on one of the parade guys. All of a sudden, the guy charged me, and started rubbing my hair all around like he was trying to mess it up really badly. When he finally left me alone, I realized he had rubbed a huge handful of confetti into my hair and I was now covered in the stuff. This went on for the three hours of the parade. Every time anyone caught the attention of anyone in the parade they would come up to you and mess with you. One guy even pulled open my shirt, reached down, and shoved confetti into my shirt. I even had confetti inside my bra at the end of the day. It was CRAZY, but SO fun. Tiff was saying that we should take some of the fun “audience participation” stuff back to the states for parades. Ours are super boring in comparison. Daniela caught a lot of attention during the parade because she knows a lot of the people who were in the parade (also, because she’s GORGEOUS). At one point, these guys came and carried her away down the parade for like 400 feet. Another time these two guys grabbed her and performed a weird sort of mock rape on her. Everyone seemed to think that it was hilarious, although it shocked Tiff, Sean, and I slightly at first. Apparently, it’s just a big old joke there, though. Daniela also had her shoe strings stolen, her hair ties stolen, and almost got her scarf stolen. It was so funny.

That night we went out to the Beuren town Fasching party. It was in a sort of community center where there’s a big room with a stage and a small bar area. There were skits by locals in the community (they were all in German, yet still strangely entertaining), bands that played fun music, and other performances. There were times when everyone linked arms and rocked back and forth singing these German songs. It was so fun!! Apparently in Germany, too, it’s super cool to be in the marching band. These band geeks were treated like rockstars. It was unbelievable. Everyone would jump up on the chairs and dance to certain songs (of course I did too). When the show part was over, we all drank some more and started dancing to the rock band that had started playing. Hermann danced with me for a while, I actually got Sean to dance with me, and I also just danced by my lonesome for a while. It was SO fun. Finally around 3 am, Corinna, Simone, Hermann, Sean, Daniela, and I stumbled home. Simone told us how in Germany, it’s supposed to keep you from getting sick if you run through the fresh snow barefoot and then run back inside and warm up your feet really fast. In our state of intoxication, we decided that this sounded like an awesome idea, so we all ran around in the lawn where there was roughly 18 inches of snow barefoot and then came inside and warmed our feet in heated towels. We also ate Berliners. It was awesome. After all of that, I passed out hard in my room.

Unfortunately, running through the snow did nothing for me as far as keeping me healthy. Starting the next morning, I was incredibly sick. It was a huge bummer because that day was Corinna’s birthday party with the whole family and I couldn’t just relax and try to get better. It was hard, but it was also SO neat to meet the family. Oma’s brother Franz’s widow was there and she told us some stories about Oma before she came to the US and it was just so neat to see how people really live and get out of the touristy stuff that I normally do.

The next morning, we went to Wangen am Allgau to see Onkel Adolf and Tante Resl. Those two are so incredibly wonderful, I actually cried a few times when I was there. It was just like being at Oma’s house; even down to the way that they decorate their house. We called Oma and talked to her for a few minutes and then we just talked and had lunch. After that, we went to Wangen’s Fasching parade and it was also so much fun. This time for the mock rapes, they even had beds on wheels that they wheeled down the street for their shenanigans. It was so funny. Onkel Adolf even got confettied this time. SO FUNNY. I was really sad to leave Onkel Adolf and Tante Resl, and I am planning to go back down there to see them once more before I leave Europe. I’d really like to see Bodenssee and the castles when the weather is nicer.

The next morning we left Beuren, and it was really sad to leave the Ulrich relatives. Everyone was all weepy and it was funny because a week before we didn’t even know them, and it really felt like family after that. So awesome. I fully intend to keep in touch with them all because I really feel close to them. We set off to drive to Oberstdorf, a ski town in Germany that the family told us about. Oberstdorf was an awesome town! I wish we could have skied a little bit, but it was hard with the baby. We had lunch, walked around, made a lot of new friends with the baby, and just had a great time. Afterward, we set off for Luzern (Lucerne) in Switzerland where we had been told to go because it is a “typical Swiss city.” It was snowing and dark and we were driving through the Alps. It was scary. I kept telling Tiff and Sean that we should stop at every hotel we passed (they stopped thinking it was funny after a while I think…) but we pressed on until Austria where we stayed at a really cool Gasthof. Our view from our balcony was awesome with a mountain and a castle and everything. It was a really neat town.

The next afternoon, we arrived in Lucerne after driving through Liechtenstein and we were hungry. The Alps were BEAUTIFUL and we had a really fun time looking at the views. Lucerne is also on a river that just makes it even more picturesque. Unfortunately, that’s really all the nice things I have to say about Lucerne. Almost everyone we ran into was rude, even the servers at the restaurants. It’s the first time I actually felt any anti-American attitudes. It’s weird, because I felt like they wouldn’t be that way what with the whole NEUTRAL thing…but whatever. Haha…The city was beautiful, though. There was an ancient wall around the city which was really cool. At one point when I was wearing the Baby Bjorn, I tripped on a stair and twisted my ankle. Tiff didn’t let me wear it any more after that…haha…can’t imagine why. I’m an idiot. Anyway, we left Lucerne that evening and headed off to Zurich where were planned to stay the night. Unfortunately, the hotel was crazily expensive in Zurich, so we drove on and tried to find another, less expensive place to stay. We stopped at one place where they told us we had to get two rooms because they don’t have “Big American beds,” and it ticked us off a lot at the time. In retrospect, it’s pretty funny…haha Finally we just drove to St. Gallen where we stayed at a Radisson. We ate dinner at this gas station restaurant which was surprisingly nice and passed out after getting drunk and wearing robes. It was pretty fun. We also got free movies because they upgraded us to the business class floor! Awesome!

The next morning we explored St. Gallen, and Switzerland was redeemed by the adorable city. It felt a lot like Maastricht to me. Really old, cool city where people were as friendly as if they were in a small city. We saw a neat art museum and a cool photo exhibit showing life in the ‘50s in Switzerland. The art museum was mostly modern art, and at first Tiff, Sean, and I were mortified because someone had gone through the whole museum with a Sharpie drawing pictures and writing little commentaries about the art on the walls! We couldn’t believe it, although it was pretty entertaining. As it turns out, it was a new exhibition’s artist who had made the commentaries as a sort of advertisement for his exhibit which was opening the next day. We ate the most DELICIOUS meal in a little café, and then we headed to Munich where we were staying with Daniela and Andy.

Unfortunately, we had a few issues and again got to our relatives’ house really late. I really feel bad about that, but there’s not much we could do. Driving is hard in Europe!! We stayed up for a while talking to Daniela and Andy, and then got up in the morning to do a bus tour of Munich. The bus tour was cool, but the English was awfully quiet so we couldn’t hear as much as we would have liked to. Also, it was raining and cold. But I’m glad we saw Munich. I’d really like to go back at some point because there were these two museums that are supposedly the biggest art museums in the world (modern and classical art).

After our short stay in Munich, we began our drive to the hotel in Frankfurt. We got there (surprisingly) with almost no problem, and then the next day Tiff and Sean had to leave. I felt my first real homesickness when they went through security. It was SO sad. It just felt wrong that I wasn’t going home with them. My train ride home was sad, but I got over it. The weather was absolutely GORGEOUS in Maastricht when I got home and so I went for a really long run and felt a million times better when I got back.

It was so awesome to see Tiff and Sean and the baby, but it was sad when they left. I realized though, that I only had 3 and a half months to go here, and that helped snap me back into shape. That’s not that much time and there’s still so much I want to experience. Next weekend: ROME!