its snowing in my wooden shoes.

its snowing in holland!
and i feel bad, because im so excited to go home to the snow..but its so cold here that im just really bitter.
plus we don't have proper winter attire with us, so i feel its reasonable that i dislike it in this setting.
goood. now that thats settled.
we got into amsterdam yesterday, and found our hostel and everything.
its actually ridic how much pot there is here. in all of the souvenir shops, they totally play it up. pot leaf ashtrays, lighters, flavoured rolling papers, there is everything.
as well as cool souvenirs. i bought myself a hoodie today. because of the snow. i wanted to be warm. and i liked the hoodie. :) but am now officially broke.... ugh.

i cant believe that we leave tomorrow morning. honestly, its crazy.
i wouldnt say its gone by too fast, but..it doesnt feel likeenough time.
its just been so amazing to see all that we have seen, i would love to continue it and explore more. but...its over now. like, there is no more 'oh well maybe we can make time to go here'. now we have to go home.
im really just hoping i wont freeze to death once we get there.

also, we have these two pothead brothers in our room from melbourne...and...last night, one of them got up in the middle of the night, and started peeing on some guys clothes...
the guy woke up and said 'what are you doing?'
and the guy said 'just takin a wee, man.'
and thats all.
very interesting city.

its actually a shame, though, becasue its so beautiful, but most tourists only care about the pot and the red light district, and they dont really get a chance to see how pretty this city actually is. all of the brick houses on the canals are just so lovely, but people are too busy doing drugs to care.

honestly, my hadns are so cold i cannot type.

xoxo

--t

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JENNY MCCLELLAN!

ITS JENNY MCCLELLAN'S BIRTHDAY!
SHE'S 18 TODAY!

HURRAY FOR JENNNAYYYYYY!

the land of wooden shoes and windmills.

we are officially in holland! and have been since saturday night! we are slowly learning dutch! and by that i mean Oog, Dood, Niet Nu, and Dank u. which, respectively, mean Eye, Dead, Not Now, and Thank you. yes, we are basically bilingual.
we went to Jakes relative Wendy's 27th birthday on sunday, which was freezing cold and outside, but we met a lot of his extended family, which was quite nice.
then yesterday we went up to Leeuwarden (i think thats how it is spelled) to look for Sophia Ruiter! she goes to the same university as jakes...cousin. and so we went up there and called her and went to her class and she wasn't there...but still, it was a very lovely small town! i really liked it!
and then we went out for lunch and i had a sammich. it was vair good.
then today we went to Jakes family farm, located in Huissen. it has a barn and a brick cottage and is cute and perfect for old people. i liked it, also.
then thats it.
and tomorrow we have no plans, we might go to amsterdam for the day, but we just arent sure yet.

im so excited to come home. and i know i shouldnt be, because this is the trip of a lifetime, but still, i just want to wear clothes that i havent seen in the past two months. ugh. im so sick of my wardrobe i have taken it upon myself to create new cute outfits for when i get home. its that bad.
im excited to see snow and be able to dress appropriately for it, not wear a tank top, longsleeve, hoodie, and rainjacket all piled on top of each other for any hope of warmth.
i know that i'll be travelling again, hopefully somewhat soon, so i think thats why im so okay with going home. because i know i will be out and about again soon.

ps its actually so nice to have homecooked meals again. i made breakfast the other day, and it was just divine! it was a piece of toast with an egg and cheese. and i loved every second of it. and WE HAVE FRUIT! jakes family has mandarin oranges and kiwis and bananas!
and they buy real cheese! and like, even MORE real than at home! THEY BUY IT IN THE ROUND!! yaahhh! its absolutely delish.

HOLY CRAP STACEY LAMBERT AND ARIN MORRISONI HOPE YOU READ THIS!
THEY HAVE PESTO CHEESE!
like, legit cheese...infused with pesto.
can you imagine the tastiness of the pasta sauce that could be made so easily with pesto cheese?
HOW FREAKING GOOD DOES THAT SOUND??!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!??!?!
im rambling now, and its literally because i forgot i was typing. i was planning outfits.

xoxoxooxoxoxoxoxoxoxooxox

--t

ps. 7 days! (not in the scary phone rings ima kill you way. in the im coming home in seven days way! huzzah!)

in bruges.

HI ALL!
we are in Bruges, Belgium! andd let me tell you, it is absolutely beautiful.
now, though, to backtrack! holla.
soo we left Paris and got to Arras, all was good. we walked and found the tourism centre, all was good. we asked about getting to Vimy Ridge and everything, she said a taxi was easiest, so we were all, dope. and then asked about cheap accommodation. she told us that they had a youth hostel type thing there (!) so she labelled it on a map, and we went there.
well...let me telll you. it was a catholic church/school/accomodations... but it was cheap. it was extremely out of our way, and the night that we did stay there was so scary. i swear it used to be an insane asylum or something. because it was very institutional feeling and SCARY. and it was cold...and scary :( and me and jake couldnt get to sleep because it was just so bizarre. but eventually we did and had a bad sleep.

anyways, after we checked in there (before the bad sleep) we went back to the tourism office and she called us a taxi. the taxi took us out there, and we got one of the canadians working at the memorial to help us figure out when she could pick us up. we got there at 3:30 and it closed at five, which was too bad, but still good enough timing. we got to see the memorial first off, then there was a free tour given of the trenches and tunnels. the tour was really cool, i learned a lot, even jake learned some (once again, who knew he didnt know it all?). The tunnel system used was for transporting goods from the base place 10 km back to the actual soldiers in the front line, and it was cool....we learned a lot, actually, but i probably shouldnt blog it all.

all of the workers up at the memorial site are canadian students who sign up for a four month period. its cool that way, because it is a government job, but gets them out of the country. you DO have to speak french, which is a shame, because spencer, i swear, you would probably really enjoy that job. jake and i both agreed that we could picture you doing it.
uhm...then the taxi picked us up and we went back to scary townsville.
we decided that we didnt want to spend two nights there, seeing as it was not interesting in arras, so we are now in Bruges, which is unexpected but fun.
we went on a night time walking tour, and bruges is actually such a beautiful city. we would stay here longer, but there are no rooms available at the hostel we are staying at :(.
so tomorrow we are off to live with Jakes relatives in holland for a while, which i am very excited about. then off to Amsterdam, then home.
miss you lots!

--t

bonjour, mon amie. pt deux.

well helloooo we are in Paris!!!
neither of us expected to actually like it here, but we really do! its really pretty, and although it is very cold today,  we had lovely weather yesterday! we went on a walking tour yesterday, and that pretty much took us everywhere.
in paris there is one massive skyscraper, and you can go up to the top of it (for a price, of course) and see all of paris. we decided to do that, because then we'd actually get the eiffel tower in our view, and not be in the eiffel tower. so we went up and got this lovely view of this massively sprawling city. after the skyscraper was built, they made a law that no buildings could be bigger than it, because they hated it so much. so you just see this city that sprawls out forever, and then the eiffel tower!  it was a really cool view. all of their blocks are triangles...and you really notice it from up above.
once we got down, the sun was starting to set. so we walked to the eiffel tower. it was so pretty at night! once it gets dark, every half an hour or so they do a light show! so its lit up at night all over, then suddenly BOOM it goes crazy wth lights! so pretty!
i didnt expect to be blown away by it, but i really really was.
we went up to the Montmartre district today...and...I SAW MOULIN ROUGEEEE!!!!!!!! not the show, but the building where the show is....the cheapest tickets to the show were 80€...roughly $110...and we dont have that...but it wasstill cool.
the Montmartre district is the artsy district. van gogh, picasso, and i believe monet all lived there. Amelie was filmed there mostly. and its your typical 'Paris' area. very lovely :)
you should be jealous. i am jealous of myself.

--t

break dance, not hearts.

woooo wooooo!
we are successfully in COLOGNE.  or Köln, if your German. or Koeln, if your german, but cant find the ö on your keyboard.

anyways its really cool. you get out of the trainstation and the cathedral is RIGHT THERE. (ps martin, i also heard it was older than the o'keefe ranch...and laughed so hard when i read that).
anywwho that was really sweet. we got in last night and it was all cold and rainy, and we did our laundry. then got döner kebaps from a very delicious place down the road..
um....then today we woke up and went for a walk. we went to the cathedral, and there was a service happening, as it is Sunday...and we felt bad being tourists in a church that was being used so we left. we were going to walk up the 509 steps of the tower, but decided...that it was a better idea to go across the river to the lookout tower with an elevator.
so we did. we walked across the main bridge, and its really cute, because couples put locks on the fence part of the bridge, to show they're love for each other and stuff, and it was covered in locks. and i think that its a common wedding gift or something, because a LOT of them were engraved with dates, and it was just so beautiful. and one of them, there were two green locks, each with a name, locked to a fence, also locked together with a mini red lock, which had a date, and then a little heart key chain was attatched. it was actually adorable.
then we got across the river and went to the lookout tower. Köln is a very pretty city, and not built up very much. the highest point is pretty much the cathedral. on the river, the houses and restaurants look a lot like seaside towns. the buildings are very  narrow and tall.
after that we went to the...wait for it...CHOCOLATE MUSEUM!!!!!!! AH and it was just as amazing as it sounds! it was so much fun! and you walk in and buy your ticket, and they hand you a chocolate! and its an actual museum, about the history of cocoa and all that stuff, and even brings awareness to cocoa farmers who are being taken advantage of. did you know that 75% of cocoa farmers never taste chocolate?? so sad.
theres even a little rainforest area  that you walk in and its all rainforesty and it has the climate adjusted to what is needed to grow cocoa beans. really cool.
then, you walk into this room, andthere are all these machines, and it is how they go from cocoa beans to chocolate bars. a lot like willy wonka, except not colorfully painted. and then you walk farther, and theres this massive chocolate fountain, and a lady handing out chocolate fountain samples.
*Mary and Martin, your chocolate fountain was put to shame by this one. and Spencer...youd have gone insane. like, the first time we went to marble slab, times five.*
then keep walking, and a machine showing the melted chocolate being put into molds, and then wrapped, by chocolatiers!!!!
at the very end of the tour there was a cafe, that looked hella expensive, and a chocolate store...
so we bought a bunch of lindt chocolates. and ate them.

---t

I want an iPhone and money.

Hello all!
So, since my last beer filled blog rant, we have been a very busy couple of bavarians!! We went to Dachau concentration camp memorial, which was very informative, very powerful, and of course, very very sad. It is the only camp that was used throughout the whole of the third Reich (1933-1945), and we were able to see what bunkers looked like as hitlers reign transformed. We were also able to go into the gas chambers. Technically theyare not allowed to say they were ever used at Dachau, because they have no evidence of them using them for mass killings. They were, however, sId to have been tested, mosst likely on single prisoners at a time. It was very very eery to be in the actual showers.
On a more lively note, the next day we took a day trip to Augsburg! We went to see the cathedral, which is supposed to have the oldest stained glass windows in the world. We did see a cathedral, but didn't see stained glass, so we don't know if it was the right one. It was old though! And the town of Augsburg is just lovely.
Today we took a tour of Neuschwanstein castle, which is the original Disney castle! It was much younger than it looks, being built around 1880, never finished though. It wAs really interesting to learn about how it came about, and King Ludwig II.
Tomorrow we are off to Cologne for a couple of days, then off to Paris!!

Ta for now
--t

i heart germany

we went to this german brewhouse restaurant typething tonight, and, seeing as we were in bavaria, it was very bavarian.
the waitresses were dressed in lederhosen dresses, and they sold your drinks by the half litre...and me and jake had two beers! and they only sold the beers there, because it was a brewhouse!! it was actually so fun. i couldnt stop smiling. there was a nice old man from munich beside us who we talked to. the tables were laid out as big tables, and you sat with a bunch of people you didnt know. we met him. and he was friendly. and i spoke so much german to him!! im so proud of myself. :D

munich doesnt seem to have as much to do as berlin did, but there are a few tours which we are excited to take, such as the concentration camp Dachau, and Neuschwanstein, the pretty castle.
um..thats about it for now. :) our hostel is nice, but i didnt sleep at all last night thanks to a snoring man. he honestly snored louder than anything ive ever heard. it was ridiculous. you may think i am overexaggerating, as i have had a litre of beer, but no.

this main was like a chainsaw.
sooo no sleep happened for me.
but other than that, it seems nice :)

--t

ho hum.

well well wellll!!!
yesterday we went out to Wolfsburg to visit the Autostadt! which is where volkswagons factory is and their little volkswagon city! it was actually really cool. you get into it via this walking bridge (you can also drive in...but we didnt...) and then your in this big building where you buy tickets and stuff. which were kind of expensive. but it had like, three restaurants and a shop inside. then you could walk out and Volkswagen,  Lambourghini, Audi, Seat, and Skoda pavillions, which were just buildings which had the cars inside. the Lambourghini pavillion was weird. you walked in, and there was this orange lambo on the wall, and then it was just a bunch of really loud engine sounds and some b.a. music, and weird lights and smoke...then the wall turned around for a bit, then it came back in...and thats all it was.
all the other ones were actual showcases of their cars and stuff.
there was also a Premium Clubhouse, which only had one car in it, but it was a Bugatti and painted witha mirror paint. it was sooo very nice. i liked it..
and then they had a museum and a place to buy cars, as well as the two towers which each hold 400 cars, and there are car elevators, and they distribute 500-600 a day. it was cool to watch the elevators go up and down with the cars. you could also tour the factory, but not on weekends, which we didnt know, so we couldnt tour it.
there was also a terrain driving course which, if you made a reservation, you could get a car and go all over these different terrains, like stairs and mud and water and stuff...jake wanted to but we didnt have a reservation. hah.
then today, we went to Topography of Terror, which is the site of the old Gestapo and SS headquarters. its just their foundations, which were dug up a while after the war. it was kind of cool, because it was also located right next to a large strip of the berlin wall, so it was interesting to see how the different hard times in berlin's life were so close to each other...ya know?
we also did the Reichstag today, which was really pretty. its their main parliament building, but on the top they have this big dome which you can go up for free to visit. theres also an audio guide with it, and so it tells you about all of the city on the outside of the dome, and what goes on inside. in the middle of the dome, you can look down and see the parliament doing its sessions. we were there at night, and berlin is super pretty at night.
tomorrow we move onto munich, and its going to be a bit sad to leave berlin, we've both really enjoyed our times here.

also i bought a faux fur hat today. :D

--t

the death of one person is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic.

oh hayy berlin. im really loving you!
we've been having so much fun here so far, we've already booked an extra couple of nights, because we've just been having wayy to much to see!
we've been on three walking tours already. a general, free one, that just kind of took us to a few places, a cold war tour, which was kind of interesting, but i feel like the tour guide wasnt the greatest, and we went on a third reich tour today, which was very good.
i really enjoy learning about the cold war, and as there are parts of the berlin wall still up, its easy and interesting, and its all everywhere. as well as reminents of the second world war, there are a lot of memorials to the deaths of the millions of people. berlin, and germany in general, is very good at admitting their wrongs, and helping people learn from their mistakes in history. there is a jewish war memorial, as well as a holocaust musem right under it, that was completed in may 2005, and its right in the middle of the city. its all just so interesting to learn about, and i think even jake is learning things (who knew he didnt know it all...;) )
erhmm..yeah.
we've seen the brandenburg gate, the big tv tower (ha. the architecht died like, a year after it was built..so they call it his last erection...teehee), the reichstag (although we havent been in it yet) and a bunch of other things. there is seriously so much to see here, its insane. also, because they just did daylight savings, its getting dark super super fast, and so its getting dark out at like 430, and its really throwing us off...
uhm, what else...
thats all for now.

xxoxoxoox\
gossipgirl

VERY IMPORTANT; PLEASE READ!!

I really want a Chow Chow or a Samoyed dog.
please google to see pictures.

they are adorable and fluffy and i want to love them.
that is all.

hollaaa

heyyy sooo, convincing didnt end up working...not even for me...i think im convinced that we saw a lot of prague, and did a lot of exploring, so we are indeed moving on tomorrow, to berlin! dont worry though, its all good :)
so yesterday we went walking and explored old town (prague is like, divided into sections; old town, lesser town, jewish town, and then some different residential areas) and it was very pretty. theres this big Old town square, and its just a big touristy area but very pretty, with lots of old buildings and churches and stuff. we went over the river, and there was a bunch of boat tours, and we ended up going on one of those. it was really nice, actually, quite cheap and a great way to see a lot of the rivery parts of prague.
after that we went up to Prague Castle. its up this MASSIVE hill, and theres all these restaurants everywhere. and here, Hot Wine is all the rage. its warm and spiced and its just like apple cider...with wine in it. so i tried some, and i can understand why people enjoy it. i don't know if i would try it again...but...it was still kind of cool.
the castle itself was absolutely gorgeous. we didnt go in, im pretty sure you had to pay an entrance fee, but we walked around it. its mostly gothic architecture, and its so...haunting looking. very fitting for halloween :)
after we left, we walked over this bridge, and below it was this walking path area filled with trees which, as it was fall and changing colours, was beautiful. we didnt go down, but we walked along the edge, and it was marvelous. we just explored and explored and explored.
today we just spent all of our time walking around and exploring some more, and it was really fun. it was a really nice day out, weatherwise. it wasn't sunny, it was quite cloudy actually, but it was warmer weather than it has felt in a while. i didnt even need a jacket! i wore a cardigan and a scarf and gloves and was a perfect temperature.. and i wore pants. with leggings underneath...so my bottom half was very comfortable and warm...
yayy!
tomorrow we are off to berlin, and because jake and i both really like germany already, i wouldnt be surprised if we stayed there longer than our four night expected stay. we are pretty sure we arent going to Copenhagen anymore, seeing as the hostels there are extremely mediocre ratings for quite a high price, so we're probably going to give ourselves more time in Germany, and possibly go into Belgium to explore Brussels or Brugge.
so, thats what is happening in our lives right now.
also, jake is covered in bugbites and we dont know why. we are assuming bedbugs, but now that we're out of vienna, im fine...so maybe his clothes carried them with him?
uhh ohhh.
love you all :)

--t