Hallo Munchen!

Guten Tag!

We arrived in Munich after a six hour train ride from Berlin. It felt great to arrive at our hotel after a long day of travel. The hotel in Munich is a little smaller and less modern than our hotel in Berlin. However, we have a refridgerator now and they have mineralwasser, coca cola, and apfel saft (mineral water, coke, and apple juice) in our fridge for free! Furthermore, they refill it if you drink something from the fridge. Also, Internet is a lot more reasonable at 3 euro (about $4) for 24 hours.

Munich is a smaller city with more historic looking buildings. Munich is also a very expensive city because the city and people here are very rich. For example, they have stores like Dolce & Gabbana, Rolex, and Tiffany Co.Yesterday we walked to the Glockenspiel which is about a two minute walk from our hotel. This is a great big clock in the Neues Rathaus (New City Hall). It is similar to a cuckoo clock with statues of people that move around the clock at certain times. After little sightseeing, we walked around to find a restaurant. We eventually found a place that was not too expensive. Eventually, Allie and I sat down at an empty table. I, however, forgot to mention to Allie that it is a norm in Germany to have people sit at your table. Shortly after we sat down an older couple came and sat with us. They spoke some english and said they were visiting from Dusseldorf. It was very nice to not be completely ostracized with a language barrier. Allie and I split a plate of wiener schnitzel, which was lecker (delicious). I had a beer called Andechs DoppelBock Dunkel. It is a dark bock beer with about 7.1% alcohol by volume which makes it much stronger than any American beers. After having one half liter I was rather happy and enjoyed using Allie as a shoulder to lean on when walking back to our hotel. I love Germany!

Today
Allie and I walked over to a church called the St. Paul Kirche. It was a very pretty church. Luckily, a door was open so we were able to walk inside. Something miraculous had happend to me upon walking into the church. For the first time ever, I had felt calm and like a weight had been instantly lifted off of my shoulders. The church was very quiet and pretty empty. It was certainly an experience I will never forget.

I must also admit how much I love the beer options here. I can get a half liter of beer from the grocery store for less than one euro. Furthermore, beer is cheaper than juice in most cases. When Allie and I were walking around Munich this morning we say countless people drinking beer before noon; I love it!

Museum Island in Berlin



Ryan on the train ride to Munich

St. Paul Kirche

Sendlinger Tor, the gate to the old munich city, built in 1318.

Glockenspiel

Interesting things we have noticed in Germany...

Our hotel has a Burger King connected to it and they have a few special for a limited time. They are selling something called a California burger and California wrap. Also they have a Texican wrap. furthermore they charge you for ketchup and mustard. Europeans like to use mayo on their french fries.
American films have different titles in German for example Saving Private Ryan is called Den Soldat James Ryan.
Allie and I enjoyed our last day in Berlin. We are watching South Park in German now.

Auf Wiedersehen Berlin, wilkommen sie Munich.

This was arduously typed on a kindle, so it is short.

Rainy day in Berlin

This morning started out great because we were able to sleep all night!! yay!! We started out by having crepes, which comes in many different flavors. I had Nutella and Banana and Ryan had Baileys, yes the alcoholic beverage was a flavor. Then we went shopping a little and relaxed because it was a gloomy day.

Around 4 o'clock we went on a bike tour around Berlin and had an AWESOME time. Our tour leader is from Seattle so she spoke English the whole time and we saw many of the sites we haven't seen yet. It was a group of about 20 people and they were from all over the world. There were some students from Texas who are studying in Innsbruck, Austria, so we got their contact info so they can give us some tips on where to go when we are there. We also had a nice talk with a family from Holland. It was so great to answer questions they had about America and also here about Holland. They get about 25 days for work holiday and were surprised when we said we get about 1-2 weeks. The daughter who is about 19 is a fan of the TV show Gossip Girl and 90210 and thought that was what America was light, so she was a little disappointed when I told her America wasn't like those shows at all! They were also surprised when we told them our schools serve burgers, fries and pizza. The son, who is about 15, smiled really big when we said that because he was jealous.

Something interesting that we both found out is that in Berlin, everything is literally been torn down and rebuilt multiple times. So you think you are seeing something old, but really its not. Throughout all the power struggles, the new leaders would destroy anything that the previous leaders built and build something over it. Now, Berlin is trying to rebuild a lot of the old buildings, except they will be new...weird?

Ok I will hand the blog off to Ryan!

The memorial had a melancholy, gloomy feel to it. The overall feeling from walking among this memorial was a sad feeling of knowing what this represents. Many of the history in Germany is actually surrounded around war and other sad events. Alas, this is an example of a long history of war.

Fun Fact: When Hitler came into power, he randomly started taking down all the statues in the city in the parks and on tops of buildings. He wrapped them and had them sunk into the rivers. He didn't explain why, but they now know it was because he was preparing for the war he would start 3 years, he knew the city would be destroyed and wanted to save the statues.

A funny thing that happened at the Tiergarten (Bier Garden) was Allie ordered in German for the first time. Unfortunately, she needs a little practice. She attempted to order wiener schnitzel and ended up getting a beer with sprite and spezi ( a German drink with coca-cola and fanta).

Allie with her two drinks

Our delicious weiner schnitzel

Our tour leader drew this to explain the Berlin wall and where Charlie Checkpoint was located. Fun fact, it is called "Charlie" because it is one of the US army codes, Alpha, Beta and Charlie. The two other checkpoints are called Alpha and Beta.

The Memorial of the Murdered Jews - see the video below

Reichstag, the parliament house

We love Starbucks :)

Hey guys its Allie,

Thank goodness for Starbucks because we can use their free internet for 2 hours. Right now Ryan is talking to Judi over Skype, but the connection is a little slow.

So today we went to Potsdam! We had to figure out how use the trains, which is pretty confusing. Luckily a lot of the people here can speak english so we can ask around. Potsdam was really interesting because it is a city that has had many different people living there from Holland, Russia, France, America, and more so the city has a lot of different quarters.

We are really getting used to the area around our hotel and it feels almost like home when we get back. There is a lot of entertainment and food around our area. check out the video we posted (or will post) so you can see the area in front of our hotel!

Hopefully we can get a lot of our images uploaded to Facebook. Ryan is taking pictures of EVERYTHING multiple times, so we have plenty of pictures.

Ryan-The food here is really good, we have been eating sausages everyday. Ryan has had many bratwursts and found a delicious sausage known as a currywurst (we took a picture of this delicious sausage). The weather has been very warm and helps us achieve a full European smell.

We will try to put up pictures and video when we get a better connection. We feel really comfortable and safe here so everything is going great!

Ryan's Currywurst

Many people hang out by the fountains and climb in

These white crosses represent people who died while trying to swim across the river when the Berlin Wall was up

Bratwursts only $1.45 :)

Ryan drinking his free Heineken on the airplane

Güten Tag aus Berlin! (hello from berlin)

Wie giehts? Es gieht mir güt.
how are you? it goes well for us.

Right now we are at a local Dunkin Donuts, struggling to type on their keyboard which is different than ours! we found out that our hotel in berlin has no free wifi, and it is 7 dollars an hour ahhh, bull scheiße! otherwise our hotel is very nice and accomadating so far everything is going great! it was nice to get to the hotel after the long travel. ryan got two free beers on the airplane! heineken! so he was happy. we also got to choose our own movies and tv shows to watch. Ryan watched clash of the titans and book of eli! Allie watched disney shows. last night we had a hard time changing to the time here. Allie woke up at 11 pm and we both woke up at 1am, then stayed up for awhile then went back to bed. then we woke up at around 12 in the afternoon! we took a boat ride around the city and saw a lot of the area. it is extrememly hot today!
We have a lot of pictures and a video to showeveryone when we are able to get wifi. Ryan is doing his best to speak german but the people here speak so fast but many speak english. We have heard very few people speaking english, most people are speaking other european dialects. We hope to get used to this timezone soon because sleeping until the afternoon is going to make it difficult to see all the things we want to see before we leave for Munich. Berlin is a very modern metropolis so we are looking forward to the dichotomy in Munich with a more quanit, historic vibe.

sorry if you get confused by who is writing because we are switching off. usually if there is a big word, it is ryan typing. hes so smart. ryan is doing great with his german and has been able to order food or buy things completely in german.

we miss everyone very much and are excited to upload the pictures later! love you all!

We leave tonight!

Tonight our flight leaves at 7:40pm from Minneapolis and we will have a layover in Amsterdam then head to Berlin. We will be arrive in Berlin on July 20th at 2:45pm (7:45 am Minnesota time). I'm nervous/excited and Ryan is just plain excited, probably because we are going to Germany first! I was going to get Skittles for the plane but decided against that since Ryan ate Skittles on a plane when he was younger and threw up all over his mom right before take off.

Pray for our safe travel!

4 Days Until We Leave!!

Wow the time has flown by since we started planning this trip! Everything is booked and ready to go, but this past week we have been busy taking care of all the little things. Calling our banks, checking our medical insurance, making numerous runs to Target to buy travel products, and getting plenty of tips from family and friends (my dad is insisting that we remember to carry water everywhere...thanks dad, good idea...). Things have been even more hectic because my mom is getting married tomorrow! Word of advice, don't try to plan two big events in the same weekend. But I am really excited for the wedding and it will be a great celebration.

So back to the trip, we are crazy excited and this will be a great time for us to just have fun, see the world, grow together and also grow as individuals. And that is my Dr. Phil end quote! Thanks everyone for their support and we are excited to share our stories!

If you have any suggestions on places to go feel free to comment on this post and tell us!