Stadshotel de Paris Heerlen

... bad, but considering everything I did today, it was a long day.

Coming up the stairs I met our neighbor lady, Rosvitta. She is a talker, but very nice. She's the lady that cooked that traditional German dinner a couple weeks ago. I told her all about my day, and she was happy for me and kept telling me how my time here is just going to fly. She also said that if I ever get homesick I can always come back here to my family. That was ...

... and got a few things checked off of the list: Met with the rental guy and looked at the apartment and took some pictures of the apartment, then went to the bank and finished my damage deposit account and set it up so my rent will automatically be paid on the last day of every month.

I decided that I won't be able to go to Oktoberfest, at least not in Munich this year, anyway. I will try to go to another festival somewhere ...

... br>2. hang up my flyers advertising my excellent proofreading skills (trying to make a little money on the side)
3. make a copy of my new apartment key for landlord
and and and...

WHEW!! all of this stuff has to get done sometime, I guess. I am just glad things are finally starting to come together, or at least they will have a little more by tomorrow night.

Going to bed for now!

... They told us we were at the highest point in Belgium, which was somewhere in the Nature Park.

We decided to call it a day for the roadbook, and make a detour to just get into Luxembourg for fuel, and to make sure we 'did' all the countries.

Looking back that detour cost us some time, but did mean we visited Luxembourg, even if it was too dark to see it.

... on.

We stopped at one point, because the roadbook wasn't very clear, at which point Gaz and Charlotte came up behind us. They had been left behind by the V8s, as they were in a Series vehicle, so we said we'd stick with them.
At this point, Kieran noticed a strange noise from our engine, which was duly investigated by James. It was diagnosed as the fan belt tensioning pulley. But we didn't do anything about it at the time.

... Markus are going to a friend's house for dinner, so I am going to through a raging party here. HAHA. Not really, who would I even invite? Guess I could go get some people off the street and bring them up, doesn't that sound like fun? :/

Actually tonight at St. Elisabeth there is an organ/sax concert that I read about in the paper, and I was planning on going to that. Sounds like it could be interesting. I ...

... then I will really not know anyone, but it will come soon enough (only my 12th day).

So now I am at school. Things are much different here. The teachers don’t have their own classrooms, they move around like the students do in the US. Sometimes you will see a teacher will a cart with all of her/his materials, or they will just be carrying them. I was supposed to see an English class, but they were taking a test ...

... quick to traverse. On the other hand, the combined population of those three countries is around 27.5 million compared to our population of about 3.3 million. They have about one tenth our land area and ten times the population.....so their population density is nearly 100 times what it is here -- and correspondingly, features and attractions are far more densely packed there. You can see a lot more a lot faster.

We 'trundled down past Maastricht towards Germany. The deviations were big ones but we still were able to make good time! The scenery was worth the deviations though. We past by some wonderful little towns and river gorges. Very nice bit of countryside. Will have to return there sometime, God willing!

... I ate inside once. The bartender had us taste-test some local wines - yum. We stayed there until about 1 am after me stumbling through a bunch of bad German and teaching the locals a few things about English. I swear to God they were laughing at us, but they were cool anyway. That was some strong wine, and we fell asleep immediately. Until of course, the other people in our room arrived back from Bonn, sufficiently drunk. Ahhhhh, Germany :) USA tomorrow!!!!