My goodness, here we are indeed. We've had a whirlwind of a time this past almost a year, and It's not quite settled down yet, but the net stage of our trip is in sight.
Stina and I will begin living in Magdeburg, Deutschland within the next two weeks, and we intend to stay there for a good long while.
What's that you say? I need to catch you up? You have no idea what I'm talking about, or if you do, you don't know how we got from there to here 'cause we haven't blogged in a while? Well, here goes then:
Before we left Saarbrücken, We checked our emails once again. Lo and behold, Stina's email had in it a job offer from the Magdeburg Berlitz! We redid the budgets, figured out we could just squeak by if only Stina is employed and she gets enough hours, and accepted the position on the spot! After evaluating our many travel options, we decided to head to the places we had the greatest concentration friends (northwestern Germany) so I could bask in their warm glow on my birthday.
We tried to leave Saarbrücken by tramping (hitchhiking). It was a hot day, and we trudged about 2 miles from the Studentenwohnheim where we were staying with our couchsurfing host. (and where I discovered that Bulgarians play a much funner card game of BS than the American version and that Stephen King really is a good writer - Lisey's Story grabbed me. I'm on page 375. I had to leave the book with our host.) After that 2 mile trudge, we saw that our spot looked kind of dead, but we waited faithfully anyways until a lady from across the street hollered at us that no one was going anywhere from where we were standing. She invited us to her shady backyard and gave us sparkling water and then drove us to a bus stop near the freeway entrance. We waited for about an hour and a half, then gave up, took the tram back to the Hauptbahnhof, and got our quer durchs ticket. We rode the train to Bonn where we got to relax again with the most pleasant of people. We headed the next morning by train (can you tell we're tired?) to Düsseldorf and to our Magic friend's door. We couch hopped for the week in Düsseldorf, staying a few nights with each of several friends we had made before, making new friends, and indulging our passion for relaxion. My birthday was particularly relaxing, as we spent most of it lounging around a park and eating the pasta salad I had made that morning.
We hitched pretty easily from Düsseldorf to Hannover, now fully refreshed from our long stay in Düsseldorf. Our final Düsseldorf couchsurfing hosts accompanied us to the gas station in Oberhausen, 'cause they were on their way to do some geocaching out there, too. It took us 2 rides, and our last ride, a buddhist priest who wrote a book on relationships and generosity with his girlfriend, dropped us right in front of our hosts' door. In Hannover we stayed with friends of Stina's from her bible school days. They, too were game enthusiasts (like attracts like), and we spent a rollicking 2 days with them. We ate plenty of good vegetarian food, and discovered trampolines and centrifugal force and mini golf in various parks. After our stay, we hitched the most efficient hitch ever - I stuck out my thumb for the first car, he pulled over like magic and took us all the way to the central station in Hamburg. We took the Sbahn to Veddel, walked 5 minutes and arrived at our current couchsurfer's home. Now Stina's spending her days in unpaid training for Berlitz, and I'm trying to figure out what happens next. I'm researching for this weekend's Magic Grand Prix in Prague, and will be hitchhing there on Thursday. Wish me luck!
rights belong to Randall Munroe of xkcd.com
It was so pretty I just had to keep posing next to it. 
And then I had to eat it!!
