EUROPE

I made it to Germany, not as easy a trip as I had hoped, but it's ok. On one of my trains I didn't have a seat because it didn't occur to me that traveling on the 22nd of December in France would probably be a big huge mistake. Talk about holiday traveling. So anyway, the lovely people at the train station were nice enough to sell me a ticket, despite the fact that I didn't have a seat, so basically I sat on my duffle in a small area next to the bathroom for 4 hours with about five other people sitting around. I'm not telling the story very well, but it definitely was way less than ideal.

Yesterday I went to a Christmas market in Ludwigburg with Shannon, her fiance Justin, and his parents (who arrived yesterday). It was really cool, and really really cold. It's really cool because at these markets you can get hot spiced wine and you pay for a mug, which you can return to get some money back, or you can keep. I kept. Cheap souvenirs, also useful for drinking hot beverages.

We went back to the train station to catch the train, and ended up having to wait for a little while so we did what any good German would do and had a beer at the bar in the station. It turned out to be not such a bright idea, because the train we got on didn't have a bathroom. We ended up getting off the train halfway through our train ride to find the toilets, and we were searching and searching, and finally ended up going to a really cool bar acroos the street from the station. It actually wasn't a dive, despite the proximity with the train station.

So far so good. I've learned some German words. I spoke French with a guy at the train station yesterday (around 2 in the morning... by that time of night, and after enough drinking, probably ANYONE can speak French!) He was cool, just trying to get to his grandparents' for the holiday.

Going on some train thing today. I'm trying to take pictures.