Hotel Gladbacher Hof Mönchengladbach

Just a quick note to have a little pin in my last (which was also my first) city of my excellent European trip :)

I had a really nice evening with Alwin and Stephanie (my original hosts in Europe), walking through the old town, having some nice hot red wine, and then some beers at a local brewery. Nice night, and then slept really well to go take my train to the airport in the morning...

I had a nice 10 hour flight from Dusseldorf to Fort Myers, Florida...

... 1090; 74;ейном - целая истор 80;я.

Отл ;ичное завер 96;ение интер 77;сной и весел 86;й поезд 82;и ...

... then fry it. I'm hoping that I get another chance to go explore it in the next couple of weeks. Tanya has been really great and gave me a couple days off this week to spend with Teri. We spent a lot of the day searching for a splint for Teri but we still can't find one so we'll stick with the homemade one I suppose. At least in our search for the splint, Teri and I had a lot of opportunity to explore the city together and I had to learn my way around with out taking the strassenbahn ...

... where the students are perched on windowsills in t-shirts while frigidare temperatures gush from gaping windows. I sit and shiver quietly.
2. When one trips and falls in Germany (which is tragically a very common occurrence for me), one cannot laugh. On any of my numerous spills, I always start laughing, looking at those around me to alleviate my embarrassment by sharing in my mirth. Whenever I do this in Germany I get disdainful and slightly pitying glares ...

... couldn't keep up with me so when I turned around they were gone, that was the last time they put me in the lead.

Sunday morning I woke up bright and early and walked across the border into Lux to go catch my train. I boarded the train and as we reached the Germany border the police also decided to board. They started checking passes which wasn't such a problem and I had mine ready to give them when they stopped a couple rows ...

... Abends mit der Straßenbahn inclusive Partybuffet und Karnevalsmusik zur 3-Brücken-Tour durch Köln, da war dann von Buchhaltermentalität nicht mehr viel zu spüren. Und ein paar alte Gesichter aus längst vergangener SAG Zeit gab's auch zu sehen.


Die Bahnfahrt über die Hohenzollernbrücken und den Rhein rüber zum kölner Hauptbahnhof ist immer wieder ein netter Moment, deshalb ...

... alley where Hugo won handily.
The next day the kids had to go back to school, so we decided to head into Maastricht and have a look around. I'll let Whitney tell you about Maastricht and get to the important stuff -dinner! Trees cooked us Bami for dinner, which is a delicious noodle meal that went prettyquickly.
The following day is was time to say goodbye, so we bid farewell to the kidlets before school and got dropped off at the station with our bellies ...

... s tour wasn't the most picturesque/upbeat. I don't know if I mentioned this, but the castle is absolutely AMAZING. There are all sorts of little paths and footbridges and towers. Seriously, words cannot describe it. However, our lovely waltz around the grounds was interrupted by Johnny, who started scolding us because we were supposed to be at a Drug and Alcohol meeting with him and Rene (ps I spelled his name wrong before! Oops!) We ...

... After class we had an excursion to Oberhausen. It is a city about 30 mins away from Essen, but there really isn't anything there except for an 'Amerikanische Mall'. I didn't buy anything.. Are u proud of me? Then I went back to the hotel. Whilst there I did my washing, did some grocery shopping, worked out in the Kraftraum, practiced my singing, made dinner, prepared for my presentation Thurs and then went to bed.

So u can understand why I hadn't written earlier right?
Krefeld, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany sarah.

... Czech poetry. Oh my goodness... Zdena couldn't contain herself. She just started giggling like crazy and eventually had to leave the bar altogether. I was biting my lips as hard as I could and we were all being very sure not to make eye contact with each other or a very rude eruption would have occured. We chugged our wine and got out of there vite vite. The rest of the night was just incredible. We went to the funkiest underground jazz bar and saw an absolutely ...