Family Visit, Part Two

Ugh. So many things to post!

I haven't been very good about keeping up my blog, but I have been pretty good about jotting down random thoughts and current goings-on on napkins and in my PDA. So I'll take up a couple of posts here and transcribe those things so that you, Lovely Reader, will be able to fill in the gaps in my life.

First, the rest of my trip with the family. I'll lay out some of the highlights of the trip here:

• Took the fam to Braunschweig, my hometown. I wanted to show them the Schloss, the beautiful squares and old churches; they wanted to shop. So we shopped.
  
• We went through Cologne. As I've mentioned before, as soon as you leave the main train station you're hit with the sight of this massive, impressive cathedral. So, many pictures were taken and a tour was made through the cathedrals innards. We ate kebabs and rejoiced.
• On to Paris: my friend Thomas, who lives in Paris, met us at the station and helped us find our hotel - which, as it turned out, was right in the middle of the red light district. The Moulin Rouge was right down the street. It was amazing, albeit a little nerve-wrecking (making sure eight people, most of whom don't speak French, get around Paris at night is an adventure to say the least).
  
• Sight-seeing in Paris: yes, we was the Eiffel Tower. Yes, we saw the Louvre. Whatever you ask for, we probably have pictures of. I can only sum up the experience of trekking around Paris in a terrible haiku:

cheap trinkets, good food
so much culture to digest!
must we walk so far?

• Paris again: on the Metro to the Louvre, my stepsister's wallet got stolen. It contained 900 euros, all her credit cards, all of her identification (including passport), and a memory card full of pictures. Wow. We spent the rest of the day in Paris at the police station (where I got to use all five of the French words I know trying to explain what had happened) and at the American embassy. Joy.
  
• Paris, once more: the day of The Wallet Incident was the day we were supposed to leave Paris on a night train for Munich. We gather our bags, all eight of us, and head to the train station at eight o'clock at night. I go to the information desk to ask which platform our train was on. The man looked at my ticket and said, with (I imagine) a little Schadenfreude, "That train doesn't leave until tomorrow night." ... Let me reiterate. My entire family was at the train station, bags in hand, waiting for a train that wasn't to come until tomorrow. When I came back to the group, tickets in hand, it was obvious on my face that something was wrong. "What is it, Raychel?" I dropped the bomb. My father cursed, something I rarely ever hear him do. My sisters' jaws dropped. My stepmom looked like she was about to die. We all just sat there, on the benches in that Paris train station, tired and sick of France and without a hotel. Low point of the trip, for sure. [Many frantic phone calls to booking agencies later, we found a last-minute hotel and all was almost well. However, the bad luck we had in Paris had already soured us on the city and we were ready to go to Munich.]
  
• Munich was beautiful, what I saw of it. We spent most of the day taking trains, buses, and the Ten Toe Express to Neuschwannstein, a magnificent fairytale castle in southern Germany. The castle was magnificent, that I will admit, but no one told me it was a magnificent castle at the top of a mountain that you have to go up on foot. By "on foot", I mean "a forty minute walk up a steep hill at a high altitude in the snow." I really felt like an out-of-shape American stereotype. But, hey, the castle was magnificent!
• We spent our last day of the trip in Frankfurt. It was a Sunday and we couldn't find much to do, so we stayed in the hotel. I took a bath and watched soccer in German. Not a bad end to such a fast-paced vacation.