Hey friends!!

So sorry it’s been so long since I last gave you an update! Life’s been pretty busy, and also, I must admit… a friend of mine recently introduced me to Alias for the first time ever, and I’ve been tied to it like an addict. It might be my new favorite show.

So, where do I even start?! I think this post will just tell you about my trip and I’ll try to write again soon with an update of since I’ve been back.

And I’ve put up pictures from the trip on facebook, or you can go to this link to see them: http://share.shutterfly.com/share/received/welcome.sfly?fid=c9db0505e9bb98ddc7e45aad1e0cdff4&sid=0IatHLluxbMnEw

Well, I think last you heard I had spent the night at the airport in Helsinki, Finland. The next morning I made my flight to Amsterdam! As I was sitting in the waiting for my friends in the Amsterdam airport, and watching as all the people from the Houston flight came around the corner from customs into baggage claim, I realized something… I sat there with my arms crossed, my backpack beside me, and a straight, emotionless look on my face “neither smiling nor frowning” (as they state in the Russian visa photo regulations), observing all the friendly Texans that came bouncing in laughing, smiling, even greeting complete strangers. I thought to myself “Wow, I bet all these Texans are looking at me thinking either dang, that girl is mean, or pissed”. I realized how much of Russia I’ve already started getting used to.

Ok, so let me tell you about my trip! It was so amazing! I couldn’t have asked for anything better. EVERYTHING exceeded my expectations… The places, the people, the FOOD (of course, everything is good when you’ve been living on Russian food – I’m not a huge fan if you can’t tell)!

So we went to Amsterdam first. I didn’t expect much from it, but I LOVED it! When we got in we walked around a bit, took some pics. Then we took a boat tour of the city – which was basically a 2 hour nap. We learned more about the city from the lady sitting behind us than from the guide. After that we went to this place called the Pancake Bakery. AMAZING! Not only was the food amazing, but we just sat in there, the 4 of us, old friends, eating, talking, laughing, catching up, drinking coffee, and relaxing. I think that ended up being all of our favorite part of the day. Then we went to Anne Frank’s house – which was great to see! The best part of Amsterdam; however, was where we stayed… a houseboat… The thing is, we rented a room for 2 people even though we actually had 4. Normally we would just sleep 2 on a bed, but the other thing is, it’s a houseboat aka small. When we started walking into the room and realized that the 4 of us wouldn’t all fit in the room with our backpacks on, everyone started laughing hysterically. Kailey was on the ground for like 5 minutes at least… if you know Kailey at all, you’ll understand that because of this, everyone from here, the laughter just kept increasing. The beds were less than half the size of a twin bed. The room, as we did our best to measure, was about 6×6 no joke. Needless to say, we didn’t get much sleep, but there was an abundance of laughter… and you know what they say, “laughter is the best medicine”.

The next morning we flew to Dublin, Ireland and rented a car. It took a while driving on the left side of the road, but Kailey, who did most of the driving, did a great job! We went to Trinity College so Joanie could see the Book of Kells in the old library there. Dublin was really cool, but VERY touristy. I think I saw more foreigners than actual Irish. But it was fun to see. There were people in the streets doing all kinds of entertainment… A guy with a creepy elf marionette, a guy that when you put money in his box he started dancing around to his music, then when the music stopped he was still, then a guy carving a dog out of sand. After lunch in the city, we began the drive to the other side of the country where our cottage was – in Blennerville, Kerry.

The drive took 7 hours (we took the scenic route) but it was beautiful! We saw the southern coast and countryside of Ireland. When we arrived at our cottage, Jack, the guy who owned it, had a fire built for us, tea, apple pie, butter bread, and chocolate treats. It was the most perfect cottage. 3 bedrooms, a bathroom, and a fantastic little living room slash kitchen.

The cottage was so relaxing. Every evening, Jack came and made us a fire, and we all sat by the fire drinking tea and talking, laughing, and crying. How absolutely perfect! We walked to town, drove around, saw some castle ruins, and most of all, I thoroughly enjoyed the BEAUTIFUL weather! GREEN GRASS everywhere! Such a nice break from below freezing temperatures and white still covering everything. We slept late, in really huge and comfortable beds.

On St. Patrick’s Day, we attended Irish Catholic mass at a little church down the road. Jack, our cottage owner, told us this is an important thing that everyone does. We wanted to celebrate the holiday in as Irish a way as possible, so we went. Then, we went to the little town of Dingle and went to their parade. It was so great. A small town parade, friends and families gathering together, kids waving irish flags, everyone with clusters of clovers pinned to their shirts. So great.

Germany was next on the list. We flew the next day from Dublin to Dusseldorf. Julie, a friend of Laura’s roommate that lives there met us at the airport with water, chocolates, apples, and other goodies! We went to her house and met her friend Cindy from Amsterdam who lives there also. They took us around town a bit and brought us to a great place for lunch to eat donor. Donor is basically meat from the gyro like Turkish food sometimes, and then they slice it off and put it in a tortilla or a burrito and then you put sauce and cheese and other stuff. It was so good! We hadn’t really had meat the whole trip, and I haven’t had good meat since I left the states really, so it was amazing!

After Dusseldorf, we flew to Munich where we pretty much just spent the night and nothing else. The next morning we took a train to Fussen – a little town in the Bavarian Alps really close to Austria. From there we took a bus to the tiny town of Hohenschwangau where we saw 2 awesome castles… Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau. It was so pretty, but really cold. At the end, it started snowing. Everyone else was so excited because well, we’re all Texas folk. But to me, it was pretty for like 5 seconds, and then I was done with it. I do love the snow, but when you’ve been in it for 2 months straight, it gets old.

We ended up being stuck in the snow for a while because our train wasn’t until 8pm, but apparently everything in town closes at 6pm, and even the inside of the train station closes at 7pm!

That night, after catching a ton of different trains and buses because of the unexpected railway work (another long story), we took an overnight train to Berlin.

Berlin was by far my favorite city in Germany. I LOVED it. We took a free walking tour with this company that gives them all over Europe. You only pay tip at the end. But it was fantastic! The BEST tour I’ve ever been on. They took us all over the city, and we saw everything I would have wanted to see only being there one day and much more! And our guide gave us a ton of history and information about everything without ever making it boring. I could post a whole blog on everything I loved about Berlin, but to summarize, I loved how intentionally symbolic they made many of their buildings and monuments. I’ll give you just one example of this even though I could give you many…

On the square where the one of the Nazi book burnings took place many years ago, they now have a memorial. The memorial is under the ground… You look through a plexiglass plate to see an empty room filled with empty bookshelves. If you were to fill the bookshelves, they would hold exactly the number of books presumed to have been burned that day. Now, there’s no way in or out of that room. It’s sealed from any entrance. They did this to say you can’t go back and change the past. No one can change what happened that day, or that period in history. But we have to remember it, acknowledge it happened, and no matter how painful the things that happened were, and learn from it, so it never happens again.

I also loved how much the history of East Berlin is connected with Russia, and I loved how unique the city is. After the tour we also got to visit Sachsenhaussen Concentration Camp outside Berlin. It served as the main administrative camp under the Nazis and later was used under Stalin as one of his camps for political prisoners. We only got to spend an hour there so didn’t get to see it really in depth, but I’m so glad we went.

The next morning we took a train to Hamburg, where some old friends Karla and Hannah met us and showed us around town and took us to a great little German restaurant for lunch where we got to try Weinerschnitzel. After lunch we took another train to Frankfurt where they upgraded our hotel room for no extra charge – another long story – AND THEY HAD FREE INTERNET! It was awesome! Such a relaxing way to end the trip. We walked around town a bit and got some ice cream, Starbucks. (Oh, by the way, it was glorious to be able to find a Starbucks in pretty much every city we went to – they don’t have Starbucks in St. Petersburg, and the coffee is AWFUL, so it was a glorious taste from home to get Starbucks!) The next morning Laura, Kailey, and Joanie had an early flight out, so they left… I stayed and walked to the city center of Frankfurt, which is really German looking, before heading to the airport.

So, there you have it, a bit of my trip. It was wonderful to see my friends, and see the other side. haha. But, on the other hand, it was really hard coming back having seen my good friends that I miss dearly, having seen and walked on green fluffy grass, having felt refreshingly great weather, having tasted amazing food, and having used fast internet. So, I’m not gonna lie, it’s been hard readjusting to being back here. I do love being here in Russia, but because I got a taste of some of those things over spring break, I remembered how much I miss everything.

Well, I’ll try and post again soon and let you know how things have been since I’ve been back from Spring break! Oh, and I’m pretty sure I have bedbugs…delicious…but apparently that’s common in these parts…

(posted from laureninrussia.blogspot.com)