Sunday, August 26, 2007

Travels

Welcome to our blog!
Mark and I had a great trip in Europe. Although it is nice that we are no longer living out of our bags. We now have a home. It is a very small home I must say. We arrived in Seoul on Friday but I will write about that later. First I'll go back to the Europe trip. We arrived in Germany on August 31 and spent the first night in Enkenbach (this is where I spent six months on Intermenno two years ago). It was great to be back there. So we dropped off a bunch of our stuff there (since we had all of our stuff with us for the whole year) and then headed out. We then traveled to Mark's relatives in Freiburg. Friegurg is a beautiful city in the south western part of Germany. His relatives showed us a great time. They gave us a little tour of the city and also took us on a hike through the Black Forest. This is a picture from our view from the top of the church tower. This picture is from our hike. Here we took a break and had a picnic of good wine, cheese, and bread. From Freiburg we went to Munich. The first night we went to the Hofbrauhaus where we waited for an hour before the waitress even came to our table. But it was worth it. The next day we spent the day walking and walking. In the evening we went to see the new Harry Potter movie in the theatre. It was fun to watch it in German..although I didn't understand all of it. The next day we rented some bikes. It was beautiful biking through the English Gartens which is this huge park in the middle of Munich. We also biked to this castle and then stopped in at a beer garden.
From Munich we went to visit my relatives in a little town north of Munich. They have a farm where they just opened an ice cream store where they make the ice cream themselves. It was cool to see the whole procedure of it all.
Our next stop was Prague. We stayed in a bed and breakfast in a really great area; really close to the castle. My aunt and uncle happened to be on a trip in Prague as well so we spent a bunch of time with them. From Prague we again packed our backpack and took the train to Niedergorsdorf. This is where Mark lived for a year. It is about an hour south of Berlin. We were invited to a wedding of some of Mark's friends whom he had met while he was there two hears ago. It was fun to experience a German wedding. We didn't always know what was going on but we had a blast. Here is an example of what Germans do (well at least this group) when "We will rock you" is played. For the dance the couple had hired someone to lead some group dances. We had so much fun learning different Irish and Jewish folk dances. Then we spent a few nights with some of Mark's friends. We had a great time and spent a lot of time relaxing.
We also spent a day in Berlin before we headed back to Enkenbach. In Enkenbach we spent a lot of our time visiting with the people that I got to know when I lived there. It was great to see everyone again. It is hard to believe that it was already two years ago when I lived there. We also went to Neustadt where I also lived for six months and visited some more of my relatives and my old host family. I wasn't sure if the kids would all remember me but they seemed to be happy to see me. Here I am with the girl that I spent a good amount of my time when I lived there.
I could say a lot more about the trip but this is getting really long and probably kind of boring for a lot of you. So good job if you got through it. :)
I will post soon about life in Korea.
To my friends and family: I hope you are all doing well and I think of you lots!!!!
Cheers!

5 comments:

Lori said...

Vanessa and Mark, it's so good to hear about your travels (and see pictures)! Miss you lots, Lori

kathleen said...

hello vanessa and mark, your homepage is really fun - I hope to read a lot from you.
the pictures from your journey are beautiful and it sounds like a lot of fun. I hope you will have a great time in korea.
a trillion kisses from bonn, kathleen

lindsay said...

vanessa! wow it all looks soo exciting!
makes me want to visit somewhere exciting, but i dont know if i could actually live there like you guys..must be quite an adventure!

its been too long since ive seen you, you two should definitely swing by someday. =)

miss you!
-lindsay

Sarah said...

Hello Vanessa
I want to pass a message on from all of us at HCI "we miss you and hope you are doing great"
Hugs from everyone

Unknown said...

oh my goodness vanessa, elisabeth is huge!! did you have a good time visiting the lichtis?