This past summer, my mom, my sisters, and two of my cousins from Alaska decided to travel some of Europe. The plan was that we would visit Germany first, and my mom would stay there for two weeks because she had a load of old friends to visit. The rest of us would visit some cities in Italy and later Paris, and then come back to Germany.
After I came back from Europe trip, I had so much stories to tell the rest of my sisters, my friends, and coworkers. One of them told me to “write it all down” so that’s just what I’m going to do. 🙂
On the way to Germany, my mom and I first stopped in Alaska and slept over at my cousin’s house. The next day, two of my cousins, my mom, and my sister (who arrived that day) headed out to Frankfurt. Since there wasn’t many people on the plane, I “reserved” myself a middle three-seater row and sweetly and soundly slept through the whole trip there, waking up only for meals. The whole crew was German and it was so interesting to listen to their accents when they spoke in English. If you want to know something about me, it’s that I really like accents (of course, not all accents.. I work in IT customer support.. if you know what I mean).
What I did like about Germans is that they’re extremely cultured people – they drive really well, dress really well, and talk super cool. German is definitely a language that I want to learn someday – after learning Spanish a little better.
When we arrived in Germany, we were met by my two cousins. One of them I haven’t seen in years, and the first thing she told me was: “O Vika ti voobshe ne izmenilas” (Oh wow Vicki, you haven’t changed a bit); considering that I last saw her when I was around 4-5, I don’t know if I should take that as an insult or compliment. 🙂
Then we drove around Frankfurt downtown. One interesting thing was that there isn’t many cops driving around in the town like back here in America. I probably saw one cop, and he was on this van-style car. I guess that means Germans just follow rules when they drive, and cops don’t need Chargers to keep up with them hehe.
We tried to park in downtown, but that was pretty difficult. I mean, all downtowns are usually pretty busy, but this one especially. So we found this paid parking garage which had some free lots. Unfortunately, we were not familiar with the German parking lot paying system. Before we drove in, a machine gave us this token that my cousin kept. When we came back to the garage, we stood, blocking the exit, by the machine trying to figure out what to do with the token. After a little while, there was quite a line that followed us. Finally after trying to ‘pay’ with a token, my cousin realized it was useless and decided to ask someone in another car to help us. He asked us to move out of the way for the other cars. So apparently, the token is used to put money on lol. The funniest thing was the man who helped us, when he told us to move out of the way, my American cousin asked him if he knew English, and like every other person in Germany, we expected him to say “Only a little”, but he said: “Sometimes I do” in this perfect Yankee American. We cracked up so hard. This guy probably moved from America and after visiting Germany, realized it was the place to live, and moved here.
Something I really want to do.
Oh and did I mention that Germans are super cultured? When we were driving on the autobahn (highway), nobody sat on our tail, and when you did it to someone accidentally, they politely changed lanes. We need this in America.
So my cousin and her adorable family live in this absolutely adorable village called Fulda that has a population of around 300 people or so. The village looks like a fairytale (no joke), and every morning church bells ring, and it’s just all so adorable.
The weather is similar to Portland. It was pretty gloomy and rainy which was perfect because that’s my favorite kind of weather :). We had breakfast, which consisted of many different breads, cheeses, and meats, on the porch among the flowers and beautiful greenery of Germany. 🙂
We visited this huge landscape park called Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe. The park is around 590 acres which all stands on a mountain slope. So basically the whole time you’re going up. One somewhat strange/weird thing was there was a humongous castle monument for Hercules. Still wondering why they had that in Germany, but it was beautiful, nevertheless.
We also went shopping in some outlet mall in Fulda downtown – which was the beginning of our many different clothes shopping experiences in Europe.
I can honestly say that I would move to Germany. It’s very similar to the Pacific Northwest with the weather. It’s very green, rainy, and dreary – perfectly appealing combination, if I might add. The food is absolutely delicious and the people are great.
Everything was just perfect, and so far my Europe trip was absolutely amazing. But this was only the beginning.