My first post from Europe.

It's 3 AM. Why would you write a post at 3 AM? Good question.
I currently find it impossible to sleep. In my experience, Germans, and by extension many Europeans, are amazing singers. As we got to the Herberge here in Friedrichsdorf last night, there was a group who is visiting the temple from France just finishing up a devotional. They were singing in beautiful 2 and 3 part harmony. Here's the audio from it.

I love good music.

This morning, about half an hour, I woke up to a different chorus. There's currently snoring in stereo around my head in the dorm room we're sharing. I don't know any of these guys, otherwise you'd better believe I'd just wake them up and tell them to quiet down.

Thus... I blog.

If I were to try and keep the pace up that I held today for the entire trip, I'd not only see all of Europe, but probably most of Africa as well. We were in 4 countries in less than 24 hours. I promised my mom that I wouldn't die in Europe, but this pace just might kill me.
As soon as our plane touched down in Amsterdam, we threw our things in a locker, got a stamp in our passport, and headed out to see the town. We had a two and a half hour layover- plenty of time to go wander downtown, right? We got to grab a souvenir, find some dutch food, and take a bunch of touristy pictures. Then we ran back to the train station, rode back to the airport, and got 2 more stamps in the passport (whoops!). Our plane for Zürich was late, so we had a few minutes to catch our breath.
When I upload this tomorrow, I'll put a link to the picassa site where all my pictures are. One explanation though: The first non-food and non-tourist shop we saw in Amsterdam was a “Sexmuseum”. We didn't go in in case you were going to ask. And shame on you if you thought we would :) I just thought it was a bit of a sobering “Welcome to Europe!” so I took a picture of the entrance.
From the time we landed in Zürich until we got to Frankfurt, we never had more than 7 minutes free. We got our tickets and hopped right on one train, then to another and then another. It was 8 PM here before we got to actually sit down and eat any dinner. Exhausted? Umm, yes! Totally amazing? In the extreme.