My ancestral lands...

I went back and read my last entry to see where I left off, and wow - I was such a whiner! Sorry about that!  But...life is back to being grand in Rachel's world! I'm over both my respiratory infection and sprained ankle. Yay! After my "friend swap" at the airport, Elsa and I took off for a couple days in Cologne, Germany and some major planning about what we wanted to do for the rest of the trip. Here's how it turned out:

Perfectly!

1. 2 nights in Cologne, Germany
2. 5 nights in Biberach, Germany (small town in the Black Forest of Germany)
3. 3 nights in Lucerne, Switzerland (Elsa left after this :( ...)
4. 2 nights in Interlaken, Switzerland
5. 1 night in Frankfurt, Germany
6. 1 night in Amesterdam, Netherlands
7. Home!

Cologne was amazing! It turns out that there was a German gay fest in town. hahaha - can you imagine? This mostly meant that we were able to get food from street vendors and listen to some great music from a large stage, which we were all about. Our second day was spent exploring the town and cathedral. I think I may have mentioned it before, but churches are so fascinating to me. Some people get tired of seeing so many different churches/cathedrals in Europe, but I don't think I ever will. Each of them is similar within their denomination but different in their own right, too. Catholic cathedrals are so ornate and particularly fascinating to me. I'm so detail-oriented that I can get lost spending hours looking at some of the details within these cathedrals. It's hard to put into words, but I especially love the gothic style cathedrals I've seen so far. On the flip side, I really love the little chapels I've seen along the way, too. They seem to hold a special place in my heart because of their simplicity and how small yet defiant they look. These tend to be in smaller towns or out in the country (like Iceland) and look so strong compared to their area. It's like they are beacons for wandering souls.

After Cologne, we headed to a little town of about 3,000 people in the Black Forest called Biberach. We stayed at a nice, quaint hotel thanks to http://www.hotels.com/ and loved every minute of it! We highly recommend Schwarzwaldstube in Biberach, Germany (http://www.schwarzwaldstube.com/) should you find yourself over in that area. Seriously, this was my kind of place! Since we were there for 5 days, we spent quite a bit of time exploring the area. We rented a car, so Elsa drove and I navigated. Learning to navigate German roads was quite interesting! The most important lessons learned were:
1. the map you're using is probably out of date
2. pay no attention to the road numbers
3. just follow signs to your town/city
4. there's nowhere to turn around if you miss an exit

Other than that, it was grand! We had lots of laughs along the way getting to our little town of Biberach, but we successfully made it! I'm happy to report that the car did, too... :) We drove to Strasbourg, France the next day and spent the day exploring the town. Our second day we went to a castle in France and drove down the "wine road" of the Alsacean region. Our third day was spent at a Roman bath in Baden-Baden, Germany (http://www.carasana.de/roemisch.html), and we loved the Baden-Baden area so much that we went back on our last day to hike around the countryside and castle ruins. We had such jam packed days that we spent the evenings relaxing on our balcony, watching the sun set, and enjoying Alsacean wine. It was absolutely perfect! This stretch was definitely a highlight of my 8 weeks on the road.

After Biberach, we took a train to Lucerne, Switzerland and spent 3 lovely nights there. Lucerne is right on Lake Lucerne, so we went paddleboating our first day and just explored the city. Thanks to our Eurail passes, we snagged decent tickets to Mt. Rigi and spent an entire day exploring that area. The views were absolutely stunning! (http://www.rigi.ch/de/welcome.cfm) We took a beautiful ferry ride out to the mountain, a cogwheel train up to the top, hiked about halfway down, and then took a gondola the rest of the way. Our gondola got us into town 5 minutes before our ferry was due to leave, which we thought was perfect. Much to our dismay when we landed, the ferry was supposed to be a 10 minute walk from the gondola station. Elsa and I just looked at each other and ran. There was no way we were going to wait another hour for the next ferry!

Elsa took off for home yesterday, and I left for Interlaken. It was rainy yesterday, but I still managed to see some absolutely stunning views from my train. We passed gorgeous little towns right on lakes in the Alps and saw many waterfalls. Next time I'm in Switzerland, I definitely want to check out some of these little towns along the train route. Interlaken is to Switzerland what Queenstown is to New Zealand - the adventure capital of the country! I had plans to paraglide over the Alps today, but the weather had other plans. Oh well...I'm setting off for a hike in the mountains now, and hopefully tomorrow will be nice enough for paragliding before catching a train to Frankfurt. It's hard to believe my time overseas is almost done.

I've really really enjoyed my time in Germany and Switzerland. These are definitely two of my favorite countries, which works out nicely since my ancestors are from here, too. :) Everything here runs so efficiently and on time. I inherited one of those qualities, but I'm going to blame my chronic lateness on the tiny bit of me that's Welsh. :)

See you all in a few days!