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!
Friday, August 27, 2010
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Monday, June 14, 2010
Friday, June 4, 2010
To Frankfurt and Valencia
This is not one of the promised blog posts to come.
Our plan had been to leave Magdeburg on Wednesday, May 26th to hitchhike to Frankfurt. We stayed Tuesday night so that Stina could go to choir practice. She's awesome at singing, by the way. ;)
But Wednesday rolled around and Stina wasn't feeling well. So we hopped on the ol' interwebs to find out what our options were. We decided we could take a Sachsen-Anhalt/Thuringen ticket (28€ for up to 5 people) to Gerstungen and then a Hessen ticket (31€ for up to 5 people) to the Hahn airport about 120 km from Frankfurt (Ryanair's hub). In theory, we'd then use mifahrgelegenheit.de to find 3 other travelers, and we'd wind up paying 12€ per person. Not bad, considering that the bus from Frankfurt to Hahn is 12€ per person alone. We'd spend the night in either the airport or the forest outside the airport. We weren't positive this would work. We couldn't be sure we'd find anyone to share the price of the tickets, but that was the least of our worries. The real problem was that, while there's information on the Hessenticket online, it doesn't show up when we use the train route planner. Also, the bus to the airport (which is the only way to get there) seemed like it might be another one of Ryanair's schemes to make money (I'm not saying it is, just that I couldn't tell if it was part of the national transportation network or a more private company that wouldn't recognize the Hessenticket).
Anyways, the whole point is moot. We found someone else's Mitfahrgelegenheit. It cost more than the ideal circumstance of our travel, but less than the probable outcome. So we left Thursday morning with this fellow, and arrived early Thursday afternoon in Frankfurt. It was still several hours until Angelika got off work (our CS host), so we ate some carrot-lentil mush, and found a park to read in. We met up with Angelika no problem. Made some dinner, went out for tea, and slept. The next morning we took this kinda expensive bus to Hahn, hung around for our flight (during which time I saw more Americans than I've seen in the past 9 months, including one reading a Magic novel), and flew to Valencia.
Here the airport is in the city. So we simply took the subway (1€ for a rechargeable card, 1,90€ per person for an AB ticket) to Christiane's flat. Since getting here, we have:
grown to hate my flip-flops
spent a total of about 10 hours on the beach so far
eaten many plates of tapas
gotten ice cream at regular intervals
gotten lost and seen a rat *this big*
visited a museum celebrating the 32nd America's Cup (which I now know is a sailing race)
stabbed my ring finger with an orange tree branch
seen the purplest flowers and agéd tiled buildings
learned "una carafa clara, por favor"
relaxed with Buffy and Smallville
buried me in the sand
and hung out on a balcony looking over the rooftops of the city.
Stina has managed most days to write her 2000 words. We've started doing sit-ups on the beach. And we never get out of bed before 11AM.
Tomorrow we start hitchhiking to Faro, Portugal. Press your thumbs for us!
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Hello, May
I promised my sister-in-law a blog post by Friday.
I almost kept it. If you are up very, very late on Friday night in Washington state, you might read this before you consider it Saturday, even though it technically is Saturday.
Sorry, Naomi. Better late than not at all, though, right?
Also, sorry April. Even when we are lax in the blogging department, we usually manage one a month. So what happened during April that kept us away from our blog?
At the end of March, just after back-to-back visits from my sister, Amelie, and Brendan's dad, Wes, we hosted some couchsurfers for two nights. When they left, we just breathed. It was delightful and busy and socially and mentally engaging and just . . . like home, having Amelie and Wes come to visit. I wished Amelie could have stayed just a little bit longer, because the weather got warm the day, the very day, she left. Ergh.
Here's a post to come: Visit with Amelie, and pictures.
Another: Visit with Wes, and pictures.
And then we took a trip. We hitchhiked to Kampen, the Netherlands and visited our friend Anna, whom Brendan met at university. We stayed with her four nights, then hitchhiked Düsseldorf, to visit our couchsurfing friends Anja and Tini. We stayed with them two nights, then took a Schöneswochenende ticket back to Magdeburg. That's another post to come, in which we detail some of the happy happenings and dumb decisions that come along with hitchhiking.
We got home and breathed some more.
I've dedicated myself to writing. For long years I've considered myself a writer, but I haven't produced much. Well, that's just silly. So now I'm writing every day. I'm currently following Stephen King's advice in On Writing and meeting a word count every day. I started with 1000 words, what he recommends for the beginning writer, upped it two weeks later to 1500 words, and starting tomorrow won't stop writing until I've hit 2000. That's what Stephen King says is his target limit for each day. So, wow! I'll be writing as much as Stephen King!
Brendan discovered a new love while we were in Kampen: animating. Here are the videos he made in two days of working in Anna's studio:
We're working on getting the materials and space he needs to continue animating here in Magdeburg.
Thanks for reading, family and friends, and thanks for the bugs to write more. It lets us know you are reading. Promised posts soon to come. Promise.
I almost kept it. If you are up very, very late on Friday night in Washington state, you might read this before you consider it Saturday, even though it technically is Saturday.
Sorry, Naomi. Better late than not at all, though, right?
Also, sorry April. Even when we are lax in the blogging department, we usually manage one a month. So what happened during April that kept us away from our blog?
At the end of March, just after back-to-back visits from my sister, Amelie, and Brendan's dad, Wes, we hosted some couchsurfers for two nights. When they left, we just breathed. It was delightful and busy and socially and mentally engaging and just . . . like home, having Amelie and Wes come to visit. I wished Amelie could have stayed just a little bit longer, because the weather got warm the day, the very day, she left. Ergh.
Here's a post to come: Visit with Amelie, and pictures.
Another: Visit with Wes, and pictures.
And then we took a trip. We hitchhiked to Kampen, the Netherlands and visited our friend Anna, whom Brendan met at university. We stayed with her four nights, then hitchhiked Düsseldorf, to visit our couchsurfing friends Anja and Tini. We stayed with them two nights, then took a Schöneswochenende ticket back to Magdeburg. That's another post to come, in which we detail some of the happy happenings and dumb decisions that come along with hitchhiking.
We got home and breathed some more.
I've dedicated myself to writing. For long years I've considered myself a writer, but I haven't produced much. Well, that's just silly. So now I'm writing every day. I'm currently following Stephen King's advice in On Writing and meeting a word count every day. I started with 1000 words, what he recommends for the beginning writer, upped it two weeks later to 1500 words, and starting tomorrow won't stop writing until I've hit 2000. That's what Stephen King says is his target limit for each day. So, wow! I'll be writing as much as Stephen King!
Brendan discovered a new love while we were in Kampen: animating. Here are the videos he made in two days of working in Anna's studio:
We're working on getting the materials and space he needs to continue animating here in Magdeburg.
Thanks for reading, family and friends, and thanks for the bugs to write more. It lets us know you are reading. Promised posts soon to come. Promise.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Friday, March 12, 2010
Solo Stina
My desire to see my sister as soon as possible when she arrived at Tegel airport in Berlin did not outweigh my budget concerns about spending 25 euros each way to get there and back. It did, however, outweigh any apprehension I felt about hitchhiking alone. I knew the apprehension was illogical, anyway, based on all the conversations we've had with solo female hitchhikers, yet it was still there. The best way to get over it was just to do it, hitchhike alone, and yesterday I had a really good reason to try. I figured if I could get to Tegel for free, it wouldn't be so bad to spend 25 euros on the return trip since it meant I got to spend that much more time with Amelie.
I set out from home around 7:45am and took the #5 tram to Opernhaus, then the #9 tram to a stop at the north end of town, Krähenstieg. I was trying to get to an Aral gas station where Brendan and I had once tried to hitchhike to Hannover. We gave up that time after waiting for two hours and being offered several rides to Berlin but none to Hannover. I figured this was the perfect spot to hitch at yesterday since Berlin was exactly where I was trying to go.
The only trouble was finding the gas station. I took a wrong turn and wasted about 20 minutes wandering up and down the wrong street before I found the right one. By 8:45am, though, I'd made it to my spot, sporting a thumb on one hand and this nifty sign in the other:
As soon as I was standing there in that familiar position any remaining anxiety disappeared. Cars passed me by and the people in them looked just as friendly and safe as they do when I'm hitchhiking with Brendan. Ten minutes later I had a ride with an on-the-younger-side-of-middle-aged man. He said he needed to make one short stop on the way, but after that he was going into Berlin.
We talked only in German and I was really proud of myself for what I was able to communicate to him and what I understood. He told me he had a twenty year old son and that he would like to travel to the US with him, but he wanted to improve his English first. I offered to speak English with him so he could practice, but he said "Überlegen und fahren geht nicht," which means "Thinking and driving don't mix."
I asked him at one point which city in Germany he thought was the most beautiful and had a little embarrassing moment where I didn't understand his response.
"Essen?" I asked.
"Nein, __________." (I still didn't understand.)
"Ezden?"
"Dresden."
"Oh, Dresden!"
Then we talked a little about Dresden.
He dropped me off at an U-Bahn station in Berlin around 10:30am. I didn't know to get from there to the airport, so I approached a young man and asked him, in German, what to do. He gave me clear instructions, I got a ticket, and hopped on the next subway.
The subway ride was long. So long, I worried I might miss Amelie's 11:10am arrival. I had to switch from the subway to a bus and by that time it was already 11:10am, so when I got to airport it was 11:25am. Thankfully her flight was a little late and had just landed at 11:19am. I asked at Information where I could find her, and got to the spot where everyone was waiting just five minutes before she came through the doors.
Together we navigated the bus to the train station and the train back to Magdeburg and now have an exciting week of visiting and sightseeing ahead of us.
I set out from home around 7:45am and took the #5 tram to Opernhaus, then the #9 tram to a stop at the north end of town, Krähenstieg. I was trying to get to an Aral gas station where Brendan and I had once tried to hitchhike to Hannover. We gave up that time after waiting for two hours and being offered several rides to Berlin but none to Hannover. I figured this was the perfect spot to hitch at yesterday since Berlin was exactly where I was trying to go.
The only trouble was finding the gas station. I took a wrong turn and wasted about 20 minutes wandering up and down the wrong street before I found the right one. By 8:45am, though, I'd made it to my spot, sporting a thumb on one hand and this nifty sign in the other:
As soon as I was standing there in that familiar position any remaining anxiety disappeared. Cars passed me by and the people in them looked just as friendly and safe as they do when I'm hitchhiking with Brendan. Ten minutes later I had a ride with an on-the-younger-side-of-middle-aged man. He said he needed to make one short stop on the way, but after that he was going into Berlin.
We talked only in German and I was really proud of myself for what I was able to communicate to him and what I understood. He told me he had a twenty year old son and that he would like to travel to the US with him, but he wanted to improve his English first. I offered to speak English with him so he could practice, but he said "Überlegen und fahren geht nicht," which means "Thinking and driving don't mix."
I asked him at one point which city in Germany he thought was the most beautiful and had a little embarrassing moment where I didn't understand his response.
"Essen?" I asked.
"Nein, __________." (I still didn't understand.)
"Ezden?"
"Dresden."
"Oh, Dresden!"
Then we talked a little about Dresden.
He dropped me off at an U-Bahn station in Berlin around 10:30am. I didn't know to get from there to the airport, so I approached a young man and asked him, in German, what to do. He gave me clear instructions, I got a ticket, and hopped on the next subway.
The subway ride was long. So long, I worried I might miss Amelie's 11:10am arrival. I had to switch from the subway to a bus and by that time it was already 11:10am, so when I got to airport it was 11:25am. Thankfully her flight was a little late and had just landed at 11:19am. I asked at Information where I could find her, and got to the spot where everyone was waiting just five minutes before she came through the doors.
Together we navigated the bus to the train station and the train back to Magdeburg and now have an exciting week of visiting and sightseeing ahead of us.
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