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Thursday, May 16, 2013

GERMANY!! - Chapter 1-2

Guten tag! Or.. Well... It is for me. For you guys it's probably still a good morning. :)
I tried uploading pictures to my blog this morning, but it would not work! So I will have to completely bore you with my summary of the past three days without pictures. :(
Monday afternoon, around 2:30pm, was the time which I left for Bloomington, which sits right outside of Minneapolis. The car ride up was very quiet and relaxing, as both my grandparents were either taking a nap or paying attention to the road (neither were doing both). Alas, this is when I first began to miss home already! I kept expecting my sister, Abigail, to start quoting a random sentence from her book (that she thought was funny, but usually makes little sense to me!), but she didn't. By the time we reached Bloomington, I had already taken a couple pictures on my camera, excited to summarize my journey as best as possible! We checked into the Super 8 hotel, and headed off to buy a few things before the flight on Tuesday. First, we stopped at REI, because grandpa had forgotten to pack a sun-hat for Europe. Trust me when I say, grandpa cannot survive in the sun without a trusty hat, to protect his head, on hand. A handsome, older gentleman greeted us at the door and showed us to the hat section. He was full of smiles, and laughs and was very interested in hearing about our trip to Europe! Grandma and I tried on huge, girly, sun hats while grandpa searched around in the fishing hats, looking for the perfect one. The older gentleman was telling us how great we looked in the hats, and tried to get us to buy one. I might have! ... If they hadn't been over $20... Grandpa had finally found his hat! It was a shallow head, but the 6 inch rim that circled the shallow hat made up for the tiny top. Grandma and I couldn't help but tease him about how Europeans would be able to pick us American tourists out of the crowd from a mile away! Both my grandparents had their hats, I bought a passport pouch (which I had been needing to carry my passport around my neck so it didn't get lost or stolen), and we headed out the door. We ate dinner at Culvers (my grandpa really likes Culvers), and headed back to the hotel. Talia's flight didn't come in until 8:15, and it was only about 7. To make the time slip by faster.... I played solitaire! I just happened to have brought an old deck of cards. I had foreseen being at a loss for things to do. Anyway, it took two games of solitaire until we finally left. I lost the first game (all the aces were at the bottom of the piles!!), and the second game was won with great triumph. We headed to the airport, parked, and all went in. Grandpa went through the gate, with permission from the airport to pick up Talia, the unaccompanied minor. Grandma and I waited around in the baggage claim until we saw Grandpa and Talia walking down the stairs. I was so excited to see that girl!! We hugged, searched around for her luggage (we literally had to search for it. It wasn't on the wheel because someone had set it to the side), and left the airport. My grandparents had asked someone to watch over their van while we were n Europe, so we drove to his house and dropped it off. I would like to have said that we left right away, but instead we talked to him for about 45 minutes (rather, my grandparents did, and Talia and I caught up on each others lives). Rodger Chambers, who was taking care of the van, was a very nice man. He seemed very giggly... If that makes any sense, and was very excited about the fact that we were all going to Europe! Anyway, he drove with us back to the hotel, said goodbye, and we departed from the great golden van. Talia and I hug out in the hotel room, continued to talk and talk.. and talk.... and talk. Finally, we got in bed and fell asleep. But not before a certain incident occurred... There is no talking until all hours of the night when you have an older couple sleeping in the bed two feet from you waiting to jump up and loudly exclaim "YOU GRANDDAUGHTERS ARE BEING TOO LOUD!". However, even though we didn't talk, Talia started laughing at me about ten minutes after everyone had settled in bed because I had turned on my sleep music and was having trouble turning it off. Grandpa said, jokingly, "NO GIGGLING ALOUD!", so of course we all started giggling. Grandma, only being half awake, said "They are asleep. Now leave them alone."

(Talia suggests that since the post appears to be the equivalent of a book, I should start a new chapter each day, haha!)

Chapter 2...

NUTELLA IS GOOD! (Talia's contribuion to this post)
We all woke up at 7 (well, I was up at 5 because my brain has an inner alarm, oie..). Grandpa, Talia and I ate breakfast, made bets on what grandma was doing (it had been 45 minutes and she still hadn't come out to eat), and made small talk . After I had thrown my dishes away in a garbage that I later realized read 'Waffle Batter Cups Disposal Only', we headed back to the hotel room. Turns out, grandma hadn't been doing anything of the things that we bet she had. We packed our stuff, put it on a cart and got on the shuttle for the airport. When we arrived at the airport, we quickly walked through security (those new detectors are AWESOME), and weren't arrested. *phew*, gate F10 was waiting for us. Talia and I, being the hip teenagers, stopped at Caribou Coffee and each got a White Chococlate Raspberry Mocha. All I can say about it is "MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM". It was the best mocha I have yet to drink. Since it was only about 11, and our flight didn't boar until 1:30, Talia and I camped out on the chairs and played Temple Run. Or rather, she played Temple Run. It was fun teaching her how to play! Then we hunkered down on the ground and played cards. Talia doesn't play cards that much, so I taught her how to play war, speed, slap jack, and Egyptian rat race. That girl wooped me at war! I took some more pictures; most of them were of Talia and me. THEN. It was time. In nervous excitement, Talia and I ran off to the bathroom one last time and boarded the plane. Our seating arrangements were a little weird, so we all traded seats. Talia ended up with the window seat, I sat next to her, grandma was in the end seat across from me, and grandpa sat behind her. Aaah, the butterflies in my stomach must have been having a circus because I could not calm down. Neither could Talia! I mean, we weren't screaming, or even moving around the much. But we could see it in each others faces, "We're going to Germany. We're going to Germany. We're going to Germany". While we were on the plane, it was becoming increasingly obvious how much Talia adored my camera, which Jordan lent me for the trip. I was keeping count of how many times she said 'I really like your camera'. So far, I was at about 13. The plane trip was relatively uneventful. Both Talia and I took a ton of cloud pictures and fawned over how high up we were and how pretty everything looked. It's crazy how clear the water seems from 1,000 feet up. You can see straight to the bottom of each lake! When we landed, an hour later, our bodies had fallen asleep, and so it was a little tiring to walk around the Detroit, Michigan airport. We had 40 minutes until our plane to Frankfurt boarded, so we all went to the bathroom and then sat down and waited. While we waited, Talia and I played a game of iPod LIFE. In the end, I was a doctor millionaire and she was an entertainer thousandaire. We both retired on Countryside Estates and I concluded that Talia had had a better life than me because I hadn't done anything with the millions I had, and she had enjoyed her life a lot better than me. There was a girl that was sitting one seat over, reading the Great Gatsby. My grandma had been talking to her a little, and I decided to pick up my courage and say "I couldn't help but notice... You're reading the Great Gatsby!". We had a great conversation, and I mentioned how my brother had read the book and the movie and both were worth experiencing

(I'm suddenly realizing how long this post is getting.... AAH!!! I'm gonna speed things up. Or at least, try).

 We boarded the plane and sat in our seats. I told my mom that I would get a window seat, even if I had to wrestle grandma for it. But, I didn't, and grandma and I didn't wrestle either! Grandpa got the window seat, haha! Talia and I were in the middle row. We both started giggling and hugged and were restless in our seats. Finally, the plane took off and we were on our way. After the announcements had passed, Talia and I started browsing the movies on our personal screens and found The Hobbit. There was no doubt that we were going to watch it, so we did. I had forgotten how great of a movie it was! Talia and I talked about the book, and how well the movie had been done to fit it. The only problem that either of us had with the first half was the White Orc, who was not in the book at all! We both thought that it brought the focus off of the main storyline. I concluded that it was added in there for more action and suspense in the movie, even if (for both Talia and I) it wasn't necessary. Everyone knows that the movie is boring if there isn't an explosion every 5 minutes. When that movie ended, Talia and I weighed our options. 4 and a half hours of sleep, or two and a half hours of Les Miserable, and only 1 and a half hours of sleep. Yep, you can guess it. We chose the latter. I was blown away.The music was incredible, moving, emotional, deep, CONVINCING. Tears were brought to my eyes on more than one occasion during the movie. Don't worry mom, I know you're reading this and thinking "WHAT? SHE WATCHED LES MISERABLE?". Talia's watched it before, and knew when we should cover up the screen and take our headphones off for the bad scenes. Although, there were only two, and the second one had a hilarious song that Talia said we could listen to, but shouldn't watch. Alas, the movie was over and we were landing early! Only about one hour more! TUrns out, we spent the last hour and a half f our trip sitting nervously, playing games, and talking. No sleep. Whatsoever. In between the movies, we had dinner, and after Les Miserables ended, we ate breakfast. The meals were within two hours of each other Both were complimentary meals, and we didn't have to anything. Who knew they served really good hot meals on a plane? Well, I'm gonna speed up and just say we landed, and now we're in Germany and Talia's asking me if I'm done yet! Aunt Debbie picked us up at the airport, we went to a Kamps bakery, had some very appetizing pastries, drove to an old air-force museum, found out we couldn't park, left the old air-force museum, drove around Frankfurt for a little while, took pictures of this awesomely architectural building that had no specific shape or height and no two windows that were exactly the same. On the way to Neckargamund, where aunt Debbie, uncle Dennie, Emily, and Ana live, Talia and I took a short nap. I woke up every now and then to take in the beauty and catch random bits of conversation, and fell asleep again. The landscape is AMAZING! So beautiful. There's so much more nature in the city and out than I've ever seen in America. It truly is amazingly beautiful. We were all suffering for a horrible case of jet lag, and everyone but me took a nap. Talia conked out for a good two hours, and I played Scrabble with grandma and aunt Debbie to keep myself awake. The day went by very fast and I finally fell asleep at around 9pm, having been awake for over 30 hours straight. I woke up at 10:33am this morning, having slept for 13. hours. straight. The longest record so far!
Anywho, I'm so glad to be in here with my family and can't wait to share some images with you all! I wish this computer would upload my pictures :( I promise I'll try to post them later. Anyway, It's been three hours since I started writing this, so I should probably get off.
Love to all! <3

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