From the most magical place on earth...

Rothenberg! That is where we are. It is an adorable little place - one of the last walled cities and preserved medieval towns. The streets are all cobblestone, the buildings are quaint and cute, and everything is expensive!! There are tons of little knick-knack shops all over, with odd dolls and lifesize bears...one of these days, I promise, we will post some pictures.

We are completely on our own now, and feeling strong! We met someone in our first hostel from Sydney, and we might have dinner with her! (OMG...we made a friend.) Also in our hostel room was a girl from Japan (who zeroed in on me and immediately asked if I was also Japanese) and some crazy old lady (probably in her 70s) from Bombei. Last night, we each found $3 bottles of wine, each, and drank them in the hostel dining hall... playing Go Fish and Jenga. Then we found Rock of Love on TV and watched that while Sarah and I exercised. Yep, it was a good night.

The rest of Prague was fun - it was so cheap in Eastern Europe! We are having trouble adjusting to prices, now that we are back in Western Europe - particularly so in this place. We are pretty proud of ourselves for navigating the Czech transportation system, so we are quite confident that we can handle anything now. Let us hope that that holds true. By the way, I have no idea where the apostrophe is on this keyboard, so, there will be no contractions in this post.

Tomorrow we head to Cologne and will likely begin our Eurail pass. The girl we met from Sydney told us that Berlin was not to be missed, so we may find our way there at some point. By the way, the next time you sit down with friends or family and wish to make a toast, clink your glasses while staring intently into the eyes of one another and say, "Prost!" It is a German thing, no big deal. We very much enjoy it.

Welp, that is all for now. We are off to read and journal and give each other much needed massages in the park. Klovezoubze!

.....Nora, Ali and Sarah (with lots of love)

On the Road Again

So just fyi, the ys and zs are all opposite and the puncuation marks are different as well. get used to it cause im too layz to change it.

So last zou heard we were in Munich heading to Oktoberfest. It was simplz ridiculous. Everz next person and their mother were wearing lederhosen or dirndl and thez were all stumbling around completelz drunk. We didn§t have anz beer there becaüse it was waz too expensive. We found our waz back to dougs bz ourselves and watched the Global version of The dailz show with Jon Steward with Doug and Quaide, Dougs roommate. Qiaude told us about his son, Janno, with whom we are now obsessed.

We had to get up at around 5 am the next daz to make our train to Nuremburg. It was prettz terrible waking up that earlz because we are still prettz jet lagged. We haven§t reallz had a good night sleep since we§ve been here, so tonight should be glorious.

Our bus ride to Prague was just lovelz. We all had two seats and were able to sleep. But once we got here, finding our hotel was a bit of a struggle. We spent about two hours looking for the hotel, wandering in a North easterlz direction. We asked tons of people on the street for help, but no one reallz spoke english and we speak no Czech. The best part of the day: we all had kangaroo steak for dinner and it was delïcious. We feel a little bad, but no...cause it was awesome and onlz twelve dollars. Tomorrow we are going to spend all daz in the Center of the citz. To all the jews in the house, we maz attend some Zom Kippur services.

ok sorrz thats not reallz funnz to read but WHATEVER. we§re tired.

klovezoubze

Well, Nora pretty much wrote about everything important that has happened, but I thought I would just say hi. Everyone is just showering now and then we are going to go and get something to eat and see Oktoberfest. We went briefly last night just to see what it was like: there were so many people it was crazy. All of the tents were completely packed so we could not get in, but we just peeked in briefly. Apparently 6 million people attend, and Munich is only 5 million people to begin with. I still can not really believe we are in Germany. Tomorrow we leave for Prague, which I am really excited for, especially because it will be our first time staying in a hostel and really being on our own!

We made it!!!

So, we made it! We're in Munich now, staying with a friend of Ali's parents. We finally had our first night of uninterrupted sleep, and it was wonderful. I hadn't slept so soundly since maybe Sunday. A quick recap of our trip so far:

The long flight from Seattle to Heathrow went off without a hitch. We were on a 747 and had those personal screens where we could each watch whatever we wanted from a selection of movies and shows, and we were all a bit smitten with our flight attendant, Owen, with his British accent and pleasant aroma. Looking at our connecting flight, however, we had somehow mistaken the time of our fight from Heathrow to Zurich - meaning we certainly wouldn't make the train to Munich and we would have to make some sort of alternative travel and sleeping arrangements...and we had a whole phone card/pay phone debacle in Heathrow...BUT, we eventually found out that we could just stay in the Zurich airport, and that we did. We found some amazing wicker love seats in the food court area (where there was a full on supermarket with raw meat, vegetables and cheese - yes, in the airport) and Sarah discovered that our backpacks fit underneath the couches so we didn't have to worry about locking anything up. Ali and I slept for maybe 2 or 3 hours at most there, but it was so comfortable to stay there and not worry about how to get to a nearby hostel when we'd have to be back by 7 a.m. the next morning anyway.

We caught the train at 7:28 a.m. to Munich, and it was packed with people probably on their way to Oktoberfest. People sitting all around us were happily sipping on cans of beer - and this was all before 8 a.m.

Anyway, I'm sure the other girls will want to update more - we've accumulated some memorable stories already. Munich so far has been amazing. It's such a beautiful city packed with so much history. Today we will probably experience Oktoberfest (we walked through it last night and it looked incredible), although we did have our own night of drinking and might be taking it easy today... :) Much love. We'll post pictures soon, too.

Gal Pals

Sasquatch 2006 (Sarah, Nora, Ali)

So, just to be clear, we haven't actually left yet. Wednesday is our plane day! But I figured I could post a sweet pic of us gal pals for all to see. We're pretty jazzed about this epic adventure we're about to embark upon. That is all for now, probably until we arrive in Europeland. Okay... loveyoubye!

In the Beginning...

We leave soon...like 2 days...woah...we're all here.