Wedding Housing, Cont'd, and Update

Hello friends and family and comers-by! We have a lot of catching up to do. At the moment, Brendan and I are staying with my parents in Everett, WA, just north of Seattle. We moved out of our apartment in Germany, gave away most of what we had acquired over a year of living there, then flew back to the United States; more specifically, to Boston. We stayed there three nights with Couchsurfers and saw the famous Boston sites (you know, Harvard, almost everything along the Freedom Trail, etc.).

We then traveled by bus to Wisconsin and stayed with Brendan's parents for several days. Our good friends Anja and Tini, from Germany, just happened to be taking an American tour around the same time that we needed to get from Wisconsin to Washington, and they kindly picked us up on their way. We journeyed with them to Yellowstone National Park and camped for a few days on the way. It was awesome.

And ever since they dropped us off in the greater Seattle area, catching up is exactly what we've been doing. Between visiting with my parents and siblings, in-laws, nieces, nephews, friends, former colleagues, and wedding party members, it has been a whirlwind of two weeks. And in the midst of it, we are still doing wedding-planning. My sister will be refitting my grandmother's wedding dress to my measurements, AND she will be making a special reception dress for me, AND a vest for Brendan. We are still getting estimates for porta-potties, and receiving RSVPs, and planning the reception menu. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you say. Get to the point, Stina--where am I going to stay?

There are several options available to you. In order of price, here we go:

Free: Camping at Brendan's parents' farm, which is also the site of the wedding. Bonuses: it's free and it's on site, so you likely wouldn't need to rent a car. Downside is it might get pretty chilly at night, so you'd need to be prepared for that. Also, one shower for however many people decide to camp and are staying in the house, so bathroom time might be limited. And you can consider this a bonus or a downside--we'd want your help with wedding prep work.

Also free: Couchsurfing. I just searched West Bend and the surrounding 20 miles, and it yielded 16 Couchsurfers (not including Brendan's parents). Bonuses: Couchsurfing rocks! It's free and mind-opening and you can make friends with your hosts. Downside? You'd likely need a car to get to and from the wedding.

$30-$60 per night: Wellspring Retreat and Conference Center, which is also a B&B and hostel. This place looks awesome! You can stay in a dorm room with other people (read: other wedding guests! Coordinate travel plans!) for $30, or have a private room for $50-$60. Plus, let me quote Peg, Brendan's mom: "And it is only 7 minutes away travel time so we would be willing to pick your friends up there and take them back if they don't have a car." That sounds like an offer you can't refuse.

$50 and up: Hotels in the surrounding area. My parents are staying at the Bonne Bell Motel, which is cute and on the closer to $50 a night side, but last I heard they were fully booked for the weekend of our wedding. Might be worth checking to see if they've had any cancellations, though. I googled hotels near 53021 and came up with a lot of options. Upside: private room, don't have to share a shower, yada yada. Downside: it's the most expensive option and you'd need a car to get to and from the wedding.

We are so excited to see you at our wedding. If you have any questions, just call us or email us and we'll help out in whatever way we can. Leave a comment here with your email address if you want to request our phone number. See you soon!

A family of five

On Thursday, Stina and I bought the Quer-Durchs-Land ticket (39€ for 2 people), and took a 6 hour, 3 train trip to Frankfurt (am Main) to meet our friends Lena, Adam, and their 1 1/2 year old daughter Ilya. We had hoped to get their early enough to meet them at the airport, but there were no reasonable options for that, so we got there at 6 PM, and found them moments later across the street at their hotel. After a quiet evening including some Chinese food, hugs, and this (see the video halfway down), we all bedded down for a few solid hours of sleep.
The next day started pretty early. We went out to see the city as soon as it was light enough to see what was there to be seen. We walked along the Main for a bit, and then saw some ruins from the 1st century C.E. From there, we wandered to the main square, Römerberg, and found some breakfast. Walking around after breakfast, we happened upon a street market, and about halfway through it, were accosted by a man asking "Thema der Woche?" into his ZDF mic. I told him the theme of the week was Americans in France, er Frankfurt, because WE were Americans in Frankfurt. He wondered if I cared at all about German's deficit, and I told him America also has one that I'm worried about, and that the solution is to spend less, not more, because, and here's my quotable quote for the day "Consumerism breeds consumerism". Later we decided that what I meant was that, since any economic problem is only really a problem if people are not getting the things they need to live the happy lives they deserve, the solution to the problem is to make more goods available to them. Aside from increasing production, that can also be accomplished by not consuming the goods yourself. then they'll be available for other people to consume. This is contrary to what capitalism teaches, which is, if you consume more, everything will be okay. I generally find that when something is counterintuitive, it is, in fact, wrong.
But that was just a brief moment of our day.
We asked a security guard for directions to the Apfelwein. He directed us across the Main, where we enjoyed the company and giant glasses of Apfelwein. From there, we went to the park near the river, and we demonstrated the powers of the fulcrum and lever and pendulum.
Back at the hotel, everybody crashed, conveniently in phases. First I passed out, then Lena went, then Adam. Then I woke up and Stina passed out. Then Adam and Lena woke up. Then Ilya and Lena went out. Then I went for a walk to get some Döner Kebap and Falafels for us. When I got back, Stina woke up and we scarfed them down, read a little (I'm reading about the moon landing, and hoping I can someday be in a position to travel to the stars, or maybe write a show that compiles faux news articles about life aboard the generational starship), then went for a walk. Having Lena and Adam here really reminded us how much we want to travel, so we're figuring out budget stuff and where we want to go. I theorized that in order to enjoy our travels and live in the moment (as we haven't been as much), we both need to know that at the end of the moment we have a place to belong, and that nothing stressful is waiting for us at that end. So, we need a home base. We have a home base. Awesome!
We came back to the hotel, and went to sleep. Then Lena woke up, ate, and then we ALL slept.

Next morning, we dilly dallied until we wandered over to the train station for the ride back to Magdeburg (Schönes Wochenende Ticket-37€ for 5 people). This time, though, we had a mobile entertainment unit: Ilya. Now we're having a lazy Sunday as our first day as a family of 5.

Bullet Points Three and Four Filled Out

• Stay in cheap hotel, discuss lack of dedication to hitchhiking/tent-camping.

The guys in the pickup truck took us as far as Vicksburg, and according to our estimations it was about another 350 miles to Dallas. It wasn’t quite dark yet, so we tried thumbing it some more. Nearby was a place called the Deluxe Inn, and a grocery store. That Deluxe Inn looked so tempting, and so much more comfortable than a tent would be. We called and found out it was $45 a night, and we made up our minds that if we didn’t get a ride we would stay there and stop off at the grocery store for dinner and travel food for the next day.

And then we got a ride. A very nice retired man said he wasn’t going far, but he could at least get us across the Mississippi. We mentioned to him that we’d considered the Greyhound (because at this point we were already a little concerned that we wouldn’t make it to Plano in time), and he was kind enough to drive us by the station to find out how much it would cost. It would be over $80, and that was too much, so he went on and took us across the river.

The place he left us was rather deserted. Down the road a little ways was a gas station and an “Adult Superstore.” By now it was pretty much dark and there were no streetlights at the highway entrance, and hardly any cars entering there anyway. We felt a little discouraged, because we probably wouldn’t get any farther that night, and now we were without the Deluxe Inn we’d already made up our minds about. We walked down to the gas station, though, to see if we could find anyone headed west.

We were hungry so we bought and ate some sandwiches, and then we walked around where truckers were parked to see if any were leaving. No one was, or if they were they weren’t headed west, and we felt shy about asking regular car drivers. We overcame that at one point and asked some people who were pumping gas and the woman we asked got a deer-in-the-headlights look on her face and suddenly seemed to lose the ability to speak, so we decided to try thumbing it at the gas station exit. We decided we would take the next ride either direction and if it happened to be east, we’d try and get back to the motel.

And that’s where we ended up. A couple around our age picked us up and took us directly to the motel parking lot. The couple was nice, though at one point we were afraid they were going to ask us to get out of the car on the side of the highway, but that’s a story to tell in person, so ask us when you see us next.

We got the cheapest room they had, which was tiny but all we needed. We got to watch some House and relax and take showers with good water pressure for the first time in two weeks. It was nice, but with our travel budget, extravagant and unnecessary. We could have just pitched our tent somewhere nearish to that gas station and started out hitching early the next morning. I don’t know that I believe in karma, but the fact that the next day we couldn’t get another ride out of Vicksburg and tried for 4 hours to do so before giving up and taking the bus makes me wonder how different things would have been if we’d been truly dedicated to the hitchhiking and tent camping from the beginning. We would have left on Monday instead of Tuesday and based on the time we made getting back to New Orleans, I’m sure we would have made it to Plano by midday Wednesday or earlier.

• Greyhound journey to Mesquite, TX, where my cousin Michael picked us up.

I’ll just tack this bullet point onto the end here because there isn’t much to say about it. My dad and his internet skills helped us figure out when the next bus was leaving Vicksburg, and we called Michael and Danielle to make sure arriving by bus would work for them. They generously offered to pick us up in Mesquite, so we took 8 hour bus ride and made it there by a little after 10pm Wednesday. Just in time for Thanksgiving.