On the internet again.

Well, I've had my computer with me all week, but I've just now been able to get on the internet again. I've kind of been typing a half-journal/half-blog, so I'll put that up here edited a bit. Enjoy!


And PS- some new pictures uploaded.

07/29/2010
Man, I love this trip! We woke up nice and early (6:30 for me, Noah was up at 6) and got ready so that we could go to the 8AM session in the Frankfurt temple. The inside of that temple is beautiful- very much the sweeping beauty of the 80's. This week, a group is visiting from France, so the entire session was conducted in French. Noah and I had to have headsets, and we did the session in German.
We headed back to the Herberge via this cool underground tunnel that we hadn't known about before and started packing all of our things. I wasn't sure my suitcase would close since this was my first try since I'd packed it back at home. Eventually, I got everything in, and we headed out. When we got to Frankfurt, we decided to stow our luggage and go out on the town for an hour or so. We found a good Döner Laden and I bought Noah lunch (I'd promised him a Döner for his birthday last month).
I am really a bit of a shopaholic I think. If we'd had more time, I saw a bunch of little shops I'd have loved to visit, mostly clothing and shoes. We wanted to try and find some good pictures of the city though, so we kept going. We got some pictures next to the sky-scrapers and on the River Main, and then headed back to the Bahnhof.
Our train from Frankfurt to Essen was an ICE (the nicest and fastest regular train in Germany) and when we got on board, we found out that they had wifi. I bought a connection, and then got caught up on emails (quite a bit happened already in my absence) and then tried calling my family. No one answered, so I checked facebook as well. Farah had sent me a message saying that she couldn't think of anything really fun to do in Berlin that I hadn't already done (I was there for like 11 months of my mission). That got me thinking: “What if I didn't do Berlin on this trip?”
I started looking around at what other options thee were. The first one that I came up with, that I actually found plausible was to go to the French Riviera. Instead of traveling all night to Berlin, and then another 14 hours to Paris, I could go overnight to Marseille, and then it's just a 3-hour train to Paris. That's one thing that I really love about this trip- that I can kind of make it up as I go along, and that's perfectly fine.
I reached my parents with my next call and gave them a bit of an update on where I was and what I'd done. I love my mom. When I told her that we'd spent an hour in Amsterdam she said “You'll have to remind me again, what country is that in?” They're on vacation as well, so it's tough to match up schedules and skype often, but it was good to talk to them a little bit.
In Essen, we decided to split up and go our separate ways- Noah went to meet up with Samuel Schmitt and go visit insitute with him and his girlfriend. I went the other direction to Oberhausen to see Wicked. I thought I'd give myself plenty of extra time and get there an hour early. I looked at the map before I stored my luggage and thought I had a good idea of where to walk. I headed out into town.
About 15 minutes later, I had no idea where I was or where I was going. I asked a couple of people, and no one knew where the theater was. Whoops. I decided to head back to the Hauptbahnhof and catch some form of bus or bahn from there. Sure enough, when I got on the right bus, we went almost the opposite direct from where I'd originally started walking. I got to the theater and realized that I didn't have the booking number to look my ticket up, so I had to ask the lady at the box office to find me in the system. Gratefully, there was no problem, and I got my ticket. I had just enough time to go to the food court at the mall next door and get some Zwiebelwurst for dinner.
I got to the theater and found my seat. I'd originally asked my dad if he thought 3rd row from the back, 10 from the end was a better seat than back row and center. On his advice I went as close as possible. It actually worked out pretty well. I was able to see almost the entire stage, and there were three rows of empty seats in front of where I was. I don't know what happened, cause no one ever showed up to fill the seats. I actually ended up moving to seats that were a lot closer and directly center at intermission.
The show was amazing, as it always is. There were several scenes where it was just simply too fast for me to catch the dialog. I found that happened most when they were 1) doing some form of a play on words, and 2)when they had to keep on beat because a song was starting (and German is so much wordier than English). I was very happy with how much I understood and laughed right along with everyone else. The show always manages to tug on my heartstrings, and in German it was no different. One thing that surprised me though was that they didn't shy away from the Hitler references at all. The police come to take Dr. Dillamond away, and his replacement “teachers” look pretty much as if they came right out of a Nazi movie. Later on, the wizard sings about how the people needed a “Führer”. I thought Germans would have been more sensitive with those things.
Afterwards, I was supposed to find Samuel and Noah, but I really had no idea where I was or where I was going. Eventually, I got a call from him, and we found a place where we both could meet, and I found them. It was really good to see and hang out with Sam. He's changed quite a bit since I knew him in the first third of his mission. Matured quite a bit. ;) He and his girlfriend took us to this large monument kind of thing. Pretty much, as they had dug out mines all around the area (we were in the middle of the Rohrgebiet) they piled it into a really good sized hill (90m). Then, someone decided to build a huge Pyramid skeleton out of metal and concrete beams. So you climb the hill, and then the ~250 stairs, and then you can see all around to the cities in the area. It was pretty cool.
When we got back to Sam's place (I'd forgotten just how intense and scary German driving is!) we had a really late dinner and hung out chatting for a while. He had internet at his place, so I was able to go online and respond to several emails. All of a sudden, it's 2:30, and I am beyond ready for sleep.

07/30/2010
Today was quite the day for my “Places I've been”-list. We got up and had breakfast with Sam and Luise and then packed everything up again. It's turning into quite the routine, this whole “stay for one night and then jet-set off somewhere else” thing. So far, the longest we've been in any one place was at the temple in Friedrichsdorf for 17 hours.
Sam and Luise took us to the bus that brought us to the Gladbeck train station which sent us off on our longest train travel yet. We traveled to Essen, and from there caught a train to Köln. We originally were thinking about taking a bit of a day trip through the city and seeing things there, so when we pulled in, we decided to head first to the Dom. As we were heading out of the Bahnhof, I saw a map and suggested we stop and locate the Dom first (because of my wandering experiences yesterday). We looked on the map, and I found the Bahnhof, and saw right next to it the Dom. Sure enough, we literally stepped out of the Bahnhof, and looked up.
And up.
And up.
This cathedral was enormous!
We started heading towards it, when we realized that we had 15 minutes until the train we wanted was going to leave, not 50, so we sped things up a bit. We ran around to the front side, bags in tow, and took some pictures. Then we walked through the Transept on our way back to the Bahnhof, where we just managed to catch our train. It was practically perfectly timed.
That train took us from Köln to Mannheim, where we had just about 40 minutes. Noah still can't get on a T-mobile hotspot, so we decided to head out into the city. Instead of walking, we went over and hopped on the first Straßenbahn that we saw and rode it a few stops to a bridge over the Rhein River. We got out there and took some pictures, walked to the next stop, and rode back to the station, where we just made it on the train with 2 minutes to spare.
We then rode all the way from Mannheim down to Basel. Unfortunately, we only had 6 minutes between trains in Basel, so we didn't have quite enough time to head in to the city. We caught the train to Bern and rode straight into the center of Switzerland. I loved the Rhein valley, but Switzerland is gorgeous! Deep valleys and green hills, I loved it all. Best was though, as we got closer to Bern, you could actually see the Alps. Real mountains, in Europe!
Tony was supposed to meet us as we got in in Bern, but he was still 5 minutes out, so we looked at some schedules in the train station for our trip out. As we were standing at a kiosk, a man came up to us and asked if we were looking for a day pass. Noah looked up at him, and asked him: “Deutsch?” I couldn't help but laugh out loud. His Schwiezerdeutch was so thick, that Noah thought he was asking us something in French.
We headed up to Zollikofen (the little town outside Bern where the temple is) with Tony to drop our bags off in our room. It was really nice how much cleaner and nicer everything in Switzerland seems to be. We rounded a corner, and there was the temple! I love the feeling of coming around a corner and seeing Moroni in all his glory :)
We decided to head back in to Bern for dinner. After walking around for a bit (I love the part of downtown Bern that we saw), we decided on a nice swiss cafe. We each ordered Rösti, Tony's with cheese and egg, Noah's with Bacon and egg, and mine with a nice Wurst in some sort of Soße, Jägerisch I think. Anyway, it was 20 CHF, but it was really good to have a nice, enjoyable sitdown meal.
We walked around, saw a bit more of the city, and then decided to call it a night. Noah's and my pass was only good until midnight. We got back to the Herberge, and then realized we were locked out. We had to call the night-attendant and have him come let us in. Joachim and Viktor were already there. We hung out for a bit, chatting; tried to find some available Wifi; failed at that; and now it's time to call it a night. We've got an early morning tomorrow.