Emily the midnight ninja

I have a little story to tell that cheered me up and may cheer you up as well.

My whole life I been rather active while I sleep...talking, flailing around...one time my friend Kyndal woke up, and I was sleeping with my feet on my pillow and when she woke up again I was right side up.

My other specialty is kicking. When I was little, my mom, my brother, and I went to South Padre with some friends. So of course my Mom and I shared a bed and my brother had one to himself as this seemed the most appropriate. Well I kicked my Mom so hard I left bruises, and she slept with my brother for the rest of the trip. Well on my recent trip to Cape Cod I was sharing a bed with my friend Kat. Now I thought I had grown out of this kicking phase since nobody has complained in a while, but apparently I was wrong. I  alternated between kicking and trying to cuddle with her. She has dubbed me Emily the Midnight Ninja, which she so kindly reminded me off at dinner this evening. =)

Amazing reasons for infrequent updates

Reasons why I have not been updating the blog =)

May:
Home to Texas
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Berlin, Germany
Nuremberg, Germany and surrounding areas
Munich, Germany


June:
Arusha and much of northern Tanzania

July:
Boothbay Harbor, Maine

August:
Palo Alto, California
Cape Cod, Massachusetts
Home to Texas

In the near future:
September:
Holbrook, Arizona

November:
Denver, Colorado
Napa Valley, California

December:
Home to Texas

All of this means I have more beautiful pictures than I know what to do with. =)

Day 10: Munich

So I've had requests to explain who this mysterious Felix person is... Felix was a foreign exchange student from Germany at my high school when I was a junior. We met because he was in the band, but mostly we met because my high school was the size of a teacup. Over the last 7 years we've kept up through email and instant messaging.

Felix had to go back to Munich for class, which was perfect as I got to wander around Munich while he was stuck in class. As I am of the opinion that wandering is the best way to travel, I didn't really plan anything.  As I only had the day, I went and found one of the tourist buses to take me around the city. The bus was nice because you could hop on and off whenever you found something interesting.

My favorite stop was Marienplatz, which has lots of cool architecture and shopping, but everything was closed because it was Sunday. I kept walking around just because it was beautiful and there were lots of street musicians, and I was enjoying myself when I came upon a street fair. I bought some chocolate strawberries and sat down and listened to the traditional German music for while. This really cute dog became my best friend as soon as he noticed my strawberries.

It had been threatening to rain off and on all morning and finally started pouring, so I made my way back to the Frauenkirche cathedral that I'd seen to get out of the rain. It's a big beautiful Gothic cathedral with lots of stained glass.








My final stop was to Nymphenburg Palace, which was built in the 1600s! There was a beautiful park behind the palace where people came to work out, or picnic, take a walk, you name it. I sat on a bench for a long time people watching and eating chocolate.

May 30, 2010

Maine with Mom: Monhegan Island

So another day on our trip up to Maine, we took a ferry out to Monhegan Island, which is a famous place where lots of artists have gone to paint. Behind us is the town where there are lots of cute shops and restaurants and way toooooo many tourists.

But there are also some really nice hiking trails, so my Mom and I hiked to the other side of the island to see the views.

Day 9: Rothenburg ob der Tauber

Rothenburg ob der Tauber... another name I cannot pronounce and trying only succeeded in making Felix laugh hysterically. It's a town that has preserved it's Medieval architecture. It's a big tourist trap, but it was a lot of fun or at least I had fun. Felix complained a lot about the Japanese tourists. =)






We spent a little time exploring the town to see what there was to do. One of our first stops was the Medieval Crime and Punishment Museum. Most of the tools of torture were hideously gross, but several funny ones caught my eye. I took a picture of for my brother's benefit. The caption for the Flute of Shame reads:

"This was used for shaming bad musicians. The neck of the musician was forded through the upper round hole and the fingers were placed under the iron which shows the many finger holes. This gave the impression that the musician was playing the flute." 

Now when I read this I pictured my 6'4'' brother wearing this all scrunched up because he is so tall, and then laughed so hard that I cried.

My second favorite reads:

"The delinquent was to sit behind it, while his hands were pinched under the irons, and his feet were forced through the holes in the wood. Every passerby was allowed to tickle the bottom of the sinners feet. Sometimes, salt was rubbed into the soles of the feet and goats licked it off."

They sure were inventive in the Middle Ages...

For lunch we had Schneeballs (Snowball in German). Not exactly the most nutritious but pretty delicious. I'm sure my Aunt Colleen could have found something healthy in them.  They are a specialty in Rothenburg and are hard to describe. It's kind of like a fried dough thing covered in sugar or icing. There is no good way eat them. I just ended up eating mine like an apple. There were children everywhere with powdered sugar on their faces from these things. =)

There is a beautiful cathedral in Rothenburg ob der Tauber called Jakobskirche or the Church of St. James. I was always hoping when I went in one of these beautiful cathedrals that I could find a concert to attend because I remember my brother talking about that when he was studying abroad in Prague, but unfortunately they all seemed to start later in the summer.

May 29, 2010

Day 8: The Berg

Most of Day 8 was spent on the train traveling to Erlangen where Felix was going to pick me up. Felix actually lives in an unpronounceable town called Herzogenaurach. Believe me...I tried to learn. So when I got there Felix showed me a little around his hometown, and then we drove back to his house so I could meet his parents and sister.

Felix had suggested that later we go to this beer festival called Bergkirchweih or just the Berg for short in Erlangen, so I went with his sister, Annika, and his friend, Jensen.  There was a humungous Ferris Wheel, and this pretzel that was larger than my head. It took all four of us to eat it. I'm a fan of fairs and festivals just in general. My friend Marla and I went to a whole lot my last year in San Antonio. She thinks any type of food tastes better on a stick, and I tend to agree with her. I didn't find anything on a stick, but the beer was delicious and they actually give you a big beer mug.




You would not believe how hilarious it is to watch the normally polite and quiet Germans swaying to the music and singing at the top of their lungs to "Livin' on a Prayer" and "Hey Jude" in heavy German accents.

May 28, 2010

Maine with Mom: Whale watching!

Been too busy to update the blog because I was in Maine for most of the week! My Mom and I drove up to Boothbay Harbor last Sunday.

On Monday we decided to go whale watching and in the process got a nice tour of some of the coastline around Boothbay Harbor. Lots of lighthouses of course.

We only saw one whale the whole time, but he was very friendly. Apparently if the whales decide they don't like you, they can swim more than 3 km away before they need to come back up for air. This one just hung out at what was apparently a very good fishing area. He or she would come up about every 4 minutes or so and hang out at the surface for a while before diving back down again.

It's called a finback whale, and although it doesn't look like it in the picture, the whale was actually huge - about 70 feet long. It's the second largest whale. The reason it doesn't look that big is that the fin is really far down its back, making it look deceptively smaller than it is.

The whales leave behind these circular marks in the water from the oil on their tails as they swim through the water.

In general it was just very pretty there. I took these after dinner as we watched the sun set. 

Day 8: Currywurst and museums galore

On day eight Cat and I went to the Reichstag, which looks like all the other building built in the 1800s, but the Germans built this dome on top of the building, which has a great view of Berlin. You can see the line of people waiting to get in. The day we were there it was raining, but it was still pretty impressive. You can walk all the way up to the top of it on this winding ramp. I don't know why we both ended up wearing all brown and khaki that day, but it's pretty amusing now.



Next we headed to the Pergamon Museum, which I highly recommend. I didn't take my camera in, which was a big mistake. The museum houses the Pergamon Altar. A very large portion of this alter was found in Turkey and transported to Berlin where it was partially reconstructed in an abbreviated version of the altar, but it seems huge when you are in there. These friezes are amazing and I wish we could have spent more time there. We only spent a few hours, but you could have spent a whole day at least. There is another whole section of the museum devoted to Middle Eastern Art. Istar's Gate was just as impressive as the Pergamon Altar, and we didn't even know it was there. The gate and processional way into the city of Babylon were decorated with blue tiles and low-reliefs of lions and other animals. The crazy thing is that they had no idea exactly how to reconstruct the tiles because nothing was left intact so they based it on artwork from the same time period.

For lunch we happened upon this place that sold currywurst, something I had been meaning to try as it is a specialty of Berlin. It's basically sausage smothered in kind of a cross between ketchup and BBQ sauce and topped with curry powder. They gave you so much that Cat and I decided to split one, but every German we saw had one to themselves and half of them were just eating what looked like a double order of currywurst and no french fries. =)


Our next stop was the Topography of Terror, which was a museum that had just opened in May. It's built on top of the former headquarters of the Gestapo and SS. These bunkers are all that's left. The museum details how the Gestapo and SS were able to do what they did using propaganda and fear. Not an easy museum, but very good and free!

Our last stop was the Checkpoint Charlie Museum. Has to be the worst museum I've ever been in so don't was your time. There are so many museums (that's pretty much all we did in Berlin) that are worth going to see that it seems criminal that we wasted our time in this one.

May 27, 2010