sausagefest

a very belated entry about germany.

my trip to europe was incredible.

i met the boys in amsterdam and we then flew on to germany together. we arrived in munich and proceeded to take a subway, a bus, and a few trains to wangen. at one point, we thought we were supposed to get off the train. rob made it off. then the doors closed. then we realized we hadn't wanted to get off there anyway. thomas picked us up at our final destination and we somehow managed to fit 4 large boys, me and all our bags into a car the size of a go-kart.

thomas' parents made us incredible meals when we were with them. his dad is an english teacher, so he speaks impeccable english. his mom speaks basically no english, but luckily we had some great translators :)

we spent one night in wangen and then were off to snowboard! it involved a VERY early morning wake up our first day and a lot of standing around. the rental shop had lost our confirmation and size details, so they were starting from scratch. the dude helping us was clearly still intoxicated from the evening before and gave me a board that was too long, boots that were too big, and one binding that was also too large! (yup, just one. the other one was fine.) the boys spent the first couple hours on their butts but by the end of the second day, they were legitimately snowboarding!... even if we did stay on the bunnyhill the whole time. if i do say so myself, thomas and i were pretty good teachers :)

we snowboarded two days. the night in between was spent partaking in apres ski... drinking outside, under the stars, with live music. we stayed in a really nice hotel suite... big bathroom, 2 bedrooms, kitchen, living room with pull out couch and free breakfast! lunches were spent out on the mountain... the first day we had sausages and beer. the second day, we took the gondola up to the very top of the mountain and ate apple pie for lunch.

after our second day of snowboarding, we drove back to wangen, where thomas' parents live. we dropped off their car and then proceeded to take 3 more trains to get to stuttgart, where thomas is currently interning. we arrived at our final train station very late... and then had to walk 30 minutes with all our luggage... in the dark and snow. it was a long night. when we arrived at thomas' apartment, we realized he had forgotten to bring bed linens from home. we had 5 people, 4 twin sized beds, 2 blankets and 1 pillow. timmy and oskar slept in their (still damp) snowboarding clothes, wrapped up in towels and window curtains. i lucked out... because i shared a bed with rob, i got a nice warm boy AND the blanket! thomas got his own bed, pillow and blanket :)

the next day, thomas got up early to go to work. the bromance and i discovered that thomas had no food in his apartment. for breakfast we had potato chips and chocolate bars (are you sensing a common theme? vacationing with boys=gaining 3 kilos in a week) breakfast of champions, really.

we walked/snowball fought our way through the streets of stuttgart and then took a bus downtown. it was gorgeous... but unfortunately, it was also monday. which meant all "touristy" type places... porsche museum, planetarium, etc... were closed. instead we did a *fREEZING* walking tour of the city, with an afternoon stop in a nearby mall to warm up. we had a lovely dinner the last night with thomas and were up early for our trip back to amsterdam!

had we driven from amsterdam to stuttgart, it would have taken us 7 hours. i had suggested we fly, thinking it would save us time. nope. with all the public transport, missed connections and delayed flights, it took us 14 hours to get back!