Plains, Trains & Automobiles (and Subways and Busses and Feet)

Well, after packing up a few things and storing the rest, we departed our quaint little studio and hopped in the car. From there we picked up brother-in-law Bob, who drove us to the train station.

Then, we boarded a bus to NYC...

and took the subway to JFK.

Travel tip for those without iphones: take a picture of the subway map and then just zoom in to see the spots when needed.

We took a flight to London, where my Heathrow curse was broken...

1st flight through Heathrow: would be terrorist @ heathrow got caught.  Same incident that brought the dreaded liquid regulations.

2nd flight through Heathrow: fire in the airport.

3rd flight, this time to Heathrow: public transit went on strike making it quite difficult to get out of the darn airport.

4th flight through Heathrow: Never happened because Heathrow was fogged in.  My flight got cancelled on Christmas Eve.

allowing us to fly on to Hamburg. In Hamburg we took a commuter train, then a subway, then a bus. We used some random person's phone to figure out where our accommodation was and finally walked to our temporary "home." Whew. Do you feel tired now?

We found a b&b of sorts on airbnb.com. It was supposed to include internet, but the internet stopped working right before we came, apparently. This is always a pain, but it becomes a crisis when you still have a paper to do that is due in about a day. So, instead of resting from jetlag and spending our first day in Hamburg blissfully exploring the city, we spent the first half of the day wandering from office to office on the U. of Hamburg campus trying to connect to the wifi. Finally, we found the right person and filled out the forms only to find that it would be sent to our address in a few days. Yeah, we still don't have an address. Instead, I ended up writing my paper signed in as a guest on the U. of Hamburg library computers. I got about halfway done before the library closed at 9pm. So, we went home and I wrote the rest there. Of course, I don't have a USB and without the internet I can't email it to myself, so what did I do? I went back in the morning and re-typed all that I'd written overnight onto the library computers. This is especially fun when you're using a German keyboard with extra letters and letters switched around. By the end of my 20+ references my hands were pretty much having a nervous breakdown, what with the z and y switch and the colon, quotes, underline, italics, etc. all moved around.

Finally, though, I finished!!! I finished my LAST school paper EVER and celebrated by exploring the city of Hamburg and eating a big, delicious, strawberry and custard pastry! Tom and I decided to walk downtown to his work and wherever our fancy took us.

Once again, when you don't have a map or iphone, you just take pictures of google maps.  Our b&b, the University and my work are on the west side of the lake.  Tom's work and our adventures during the blog post are to the south and slight west of the lake.  Our current accommodation (a hostel) and church are on the east.  You can see the beginning of our directions from the hostel to church.

I loved this guy.  He was playing music on that instrument and it just felt very quaint.  He looked really happy too.

Hamburg has a lake in the center of the city.  The lake is kind of separated into a smaller southern part and a larger northern part.  Tom's work is by the southern part and mine is by the northern part.  Both parts are gorgeous!  Here is a sort of panorama of the southern part:

The green roofed building in the background is called the Rathaus.  It is the city hall.  While it may not look THAT impressive here that is only because it's a bit far away and obscured by buildings.  Sadly my battery died before we went to explore it.  I'll do it justice later.  Tom walks by this everyday to and from work.

We came across this huge, imposing church.  The bells were tolling over and over.

Turns out they were tolling because of this wedding.  The bridal party came out right as we arrived.

After this we explored the Rathaus, which was having a big children's carnival in the square in front of it.  Then we walked through the park area alongside the lake and on home to the b&b.

I love Europe.