To-Do List.

Here is what's on the docket for the next few days:

- Apartment/house hunting
- Job interview (me)
- Follow-up appt with my knee doctor
- Soccer (Steve)
- Dinner with friends
- My mama's birthday!!!!



Things that have been crossed of last week's to-do list:

- Working in an office (me)
- Working outside (Steve and his brother painted his dad's house)
- Dinner with friends (who have two very well-behaved young children)
- A long drive up California
- 25 plates worth of all-you-can-eat sushi with Korea Steve
- Competing in Alehouse's Oktoberfest Flip Cup tournament (we did not win :( )
- Eating Filipino food

....Back at the Airport????

We have been home for almost two weeks now.... So what am I doing back at the airport???

We spent our first week eating avocados (maybe that was just me... I think I ate four in two days) and phò and barbeque, showing off our pictures and souvenirs, and spending time with loved ones. We had a busy first weekend back, driving around to see friends and family. We had a big reunion with our beloved friends from university, who can only hang out on weekends because, unlike Steve and me, they all have jobs. :P Staying up until almost 4am with those guys on Saturday completely negated any progress we'd made on getting our sleeping schedules back on track.

On Tuesday, my brother, who had been in LA, and I drove back to Redding for my MRI on Wednesday. For those of you who know my brother, I have something that will blow your mind: he and I talked NONSTOP almost the entire way home. Probably at least six hours of the eight-hour drive saw onenor the other of us chatting. And Peter did most of the talking! :) It feels really good to know my brother missed me.

Wednesday was a busy day for both Steve and me, even though we were on opposite sides of the state. I had an MRI for my knee (FINALLY!) and Steve had a job interview. My MRI was uneventful: 15 minutes in the waiting room peering into their fish tank and 15 minutes of laying down perfectly still (which was hard to maintain when that "Gangnam Style" song came on the radio in the room; seriously, why is that song popular here?? Hilarious, but.... ?????). My orthopedic surgeon should have been sent the results on Friday, so hopefully tomorrow (Monday) I will get a call from his office to schedule surgery.

Steve's interview, according to him, did not go well, but their next-day job offer begs to differ. After some discussion, however, Steve turned it down. We don't want to live in Santa Barbara. Yeah, sure, it's pretty out there, but it is also one of the most expensive places in California, fairly isolated from anything else, and neither of us are really beach people. It would have been a great career opportunity but in a crappy location. And since I have surgery and impending physical therapy coming up, as well as a prospective job offer in Redding, we will most likely end up at this end of California, at least for a while.

Now, what the heck am I doing sitting in a rocking chair at the Sacramento airport, waiting fornmy flight back down to SoCal?

Simple, really. I received a call from my old boss, who made me an offer I can't refuse, and now I'm on my way to two days of employment. Whoo!

Also, even though we spent almost EVERY SINGLE MOMENT of the last four months together, I very much miss my husband (we've been apart for over five days!!!) and didn't want to wait to see him again :P the work thing just makes it convenient.

Home.

We have made it back to California, safe and sound.

And exhausted.

Our flight from Dusseldorf was a little longer than eleven hours(!). They had some newer movies available, so I watched Snow White and the Huntsman, which wasn't nearly as good as the previews made it out to be, and I also watched Marvel's The Avengers. Twice. Even though I've already seen it.

*sigh* Whoever did the casting for all these characters is brilliant. I have never seen so many attractive people in one place, kicking ass and saving the world. Not to mention all the one-liners that I find hilarious. The Avengers is easily my favorite movie of the year. Maybe ever.

I didn't sleep much on the plane, maybe two or three hours, so when we finally landed, I was practically asleep on my feet. We breezed through customs (thank goodness, because now I can stop worrying about the horns not getting through!) and walked outside, and found out that even though we were back in the States, no one here (here being right outside the LAX Terminal 1) speaks English. We were surrounded by European tourists and Mexicans and Asians of all kinds. It was just funny to think about. :)

The highways were crowded and there were fast food places everywhere. We were definitely back in America.

I had originally wanted to go to Little Tokyo and eat some Orochon, but it was so warm outside and I was so tired that I wasn't really in the mood for it. I just wanted to sleep - after all, I'd only gotten about four hours of sleep in the last 48 hours. We ended up stopping at Tommy's and getting chili cheese burgers and fries for dinner (welcome back!). When we got to Steve's mom's house, we basically gave her and David hugs before knocking out and sleeping for the next nine hours straight.

And now we're back (and awake!)

....And Even More Oktoberfest!

Even though we'd had Augustiner beer the night only two days before, on Friday we went to the Fischer Broni tent, which is famous for its fish dishes and serves Augustiner beer.

Let me tell you, that fish was delicious.

I don't remember what Steve and Scott ordered, but I asked for a "fish on a stick". These are whole fish cooked on a big wooden skewer, basically spit-roasted over a barbeque. There were a few different choices, but I chose the "salmon trout" - whatever that meant. I love salmon and I love trout, so I would be happy either way.

This is what that salmon-trout-on-a-stick looked like:

Sadly, it came to me wrapped up in paper rather than on a stick, but I forgave it once I had a taste of that tender, moist, delicious flesh covered in crunchy, salty skin. Mmmmmmmm!!!! On the outside it looks more like a trout, but inside that baby was alllllll salmon. SO GOOD.

Saturday was rainy and dreary and likely overcrowded at the Oktoberfest grounds, so we spent that day napping and hunting around for Bavarian souvenirs. Steve wanted to watch FC Bayern Munich play, so we headed into Hard Rock Cafe Munich to try and catch the game. Lemonade and milkshakes and potato skins and buffalo chicken wings? It was a nice taste of home.

Sunday was originally planned to be a rest day, but Steve's dad was craving fish again, so in the evening we went back to the Theresienwises, keeping our fingers crossed that we could find seats for three at the Fischer Broni tent.

We did, and along with our dinner we got some entertainment: this was our first actual evening at Oktoberfest and even though it was Sunday and I'm sure a lot of those people had to be at work in the morning, it was a huge party. People were running around yelling, people were standing on the tables singing, people were dancing in the aisles, and people were (of course) drinking lots and lots of beer. Unfortunately, all the videos I tried to take are really dark, so you must use your imagination.

ALSO: I got a beer spilled on me.

I guess that, since it was our fifth day on the Oktoberfest grounds, I should've expected it. :P Some guy from another table had come over to ours to say hello and clink glasses and talk about life; I don't really know what happened, but I heard this guy (Phil) and Steve's dad yelling something about the Blues Brothers, and Phil leaned down to give Steve's dad a hug, and one of their arms gave a hefty whack to the brand new, completely full beer on the table across from me, and a good portion of its contents ended up on my lap. AAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!! Madness. I think Billy got a little bit on his head, which was sticking out of my purse, and Steve got some on his arm trying to block the flood cascading off the table, but I bore the brunt of that liquid attack. And so my only remaining pair of pants and my only remaining longsleeved shirt and my only remaining jacket were soaking wet and covered in beer.

I kept my fingers crossed that it wouldn't be cold and rainy for our last day at Oktoberfest, and while it was slightly chilly, there was no rain. And once we got into the Hacker-Pschorr tent around 11:30am on our last day, you couldn't even tell that my pants smelled like beer.

For our last day, we still had two different breweries' beers left to try, so we headed out early so we could make it to both tents and back home alive. We started off at Hacker-Pschorr and sat across the table from these three German guys who were maybe a little younger than I am. We ordered our first beer and they proceeded to tell us that they had come by train earlier that morning and were already on their fourth beer. FOURTH!!! It wasn't even noon yet and these guys had already drank the equivalent of TWELVE REGULAR (American 12-oz bottles) BEERS!!!!!! Insane. And a few minutes after our beers arrived, a guy a few tables over stood up on his bench and, to the cheers of hundreds of Hacker-Pschorr patrons, he proceeded to HOLD HIS STEIN WITH HIS TEETH AND DRINK HIS ENTIRE BEER. With no hands! A liter of beer, in like five seconds! The stamina of these Germans is amazing.

After that no-hands beer-chugging feat, I was then unimpressed with every other person standing up to chug their beers because seriously, NO HANDS. I still can't wrap my head around that. It's hard enough for me to hold my beer with one hand, but to use my teeth??? Insane. Hats off to that guy.

Speaking of Oktoberfest insanity: one of the German guys sitting with us, Jonas, had gone to the bathroom or out for a smoke or something and met a Lebanese guy. Jonas then mentioned he could only say one thing in Arabic, which is inappropriate for me to put on this blog, and so he said it, thinking it would be a funny joke to share with the Lebanese guy. I guess this guy didn't understand when Jonas said "Please don't be offended, I don't mean it, this is the only thing I can say in your language", and so this guy PUNCHED HIM IN THE FACE!!!!!! In retaliation, Jonas kicked him and ran away.

I wouldn't have believed this story, except Jonas' lip was already starting to swell and he had a little bit of a red mark on his cheek.

WTF!!!!! Sillyness.

The rest of the day was uneventful compared to all that madness. We visited the Löwenbräu tent later that day, after Steve and his dad won me a little Bavarian lion in a beer mug stuffed animal while playing a shooting game at the carnival. Sadly, somewhere between the Löwenbrau tent and the Paulaner tent, which we revisited on our way out (I don't know why; we'd already had about as much beer as we could take), I lost the lion! So sad. We even tried to retrace our steps back to the Löwenbräu tent and to the other carnival games we'd been playing, but no luck. Lion in a beer mug was gone forever. :(

By the time we got back to the apartment, it was around 10pm, which meant we'd spent almost twelve hours wandering around Theresienwiese, where we drank too much beer and Steve and his dad playing carnival games and won me prizes, like fake flowers and a tiny Bavarian lin keychain and this creepy pink dragon-snake thing holding a little pillow that says "Love". It was a good last day in terms of getting the full Oktoberfest experience in, but a bad day in terms of "I'm exhausted and drunk now, but I still have to pack because we need to leave at 7am to get to the airport and check in for our flight." Steve and his dad went basically straight to bed once we got back, but I couldn't fall asleep. I tried to stay up and pack, but was too tired to get very far, so I went to bed, where I tossed and turned for a few hours before giving up and getting up again. I was packing from about 3am until about 5:30am, when I took a nap on the couch before getting up at 6:30am to take a shower. At 7:10am we are walking out the door and at 7:30am we find ourselves on a bus to the airport, where the bus driver is driving like a crazy man, going too fast on some slightly windy roads and I am trying not to puke.

We make it to the airport, check in, and board our plane a little before 10am. An hour later, we are in Dusseldorf, where we find out our connecting flight home is delayed an hour. Almost two hours after scheduled take-off, we leave the ground and say goodbye to Germany forever. (Or at least for a few years.)

Oktoberfest!!!

What does one even say about this? ;P

Opening day on Saturday was a bit anticlimactic, actually. It was pouring down rain, there were wayyyyyy too many people, and to get into the tent where the mayor was tapping the first keg as the official start to Oktoberfest, we would have needed to get there around 4am to wait in line until noon. No thanks. We ended up soaked and decided to head home and save the beer drinking for another day - we are here for two weeks, after all. A few minutes after we started weaving our way through the crowds to the exit, I realized Steve wasn't behind me anymore. Oh no! Since the plan was to head home, that's what I did and when I got off the subway, Steve came running up behind me - he was on the same subway but in a different car. :P

On Sunday night, Steve's dad came to join us for the Oktoberfest extravaganza and on Monday, we took a little Oktoberfest tour where we walked around with a guide who told basically told us that all the tents are very hard to get into without a reservation unless you come early in the morning. We took that as a challenge, and vowed to get into some of these supposedly exclusive tents in the coming days. At the end of our tour, we had a table reserved in the famous Hofbräu Haus tent, where we each had two liters of beer and half a roast chicken with the tour.

Let me tell you, two liters is a LOT of beer. It is six regular 12oz beer bottles, to be (within a few ounces of) precise. People were standing on tables chugging these liters of beer and doing other weird stuff like one guy who chugged one beer and poured a second on his head immediately after, and one guy who drank out of his shoe (gross.). The waitresses are amazing: they walk around in their dirndls carrying five, six, seven of these heavy glass steins filled with beer IN ONE HAND!!!!! That takes strength, people. I can barely hold one up to drink out of with one hand.

Our reservations at the Hofbräu tent lasted until 5pm, but we were one if the last ones remaining and we tapped out at around four. Steve and his dad drank a third beer, but it was all I could do to finish two. Steve refused to help me out, arguing that it was too early in Oktoberfest for me to not finish my beers. We wandered around Theresienwiese, the name of the grounds where Oktoberfest is held every year, for a little while before heading to bed around 7pm. Steve and I are renting a room out at a local's apartment and our host, Tarek, basically laughed at us because it was wayyyyy too early to go to bed - "That's not how it's done here in Munich." :)

On Tuesday we headed back out to Theresienwiese and managed to get seats at the Ochsenbraterei tent for lunch. There are only six breweries who serve beer at all the tents in Oktoberfest: the old, traditional Munich breweries who have to follow the strict requirements of the Bavarian Purity Laws. Hofbräu is one of them; the others are Paulaner, Löwenbräu, Spaten, Hacker-Pschorr, and Augustiner. No doubt some of you beer drinkers recognize some of these names. Among other things, the Bavarian Purity Laws declare that the beer served at Oktoberfest can only contain hops, grain, and water. The yeast is all natural yeast and there are no preservatives or any other additives, which gives it a much crisper taste than the imported bottled versions of these beers that we get in the States.

Spaten was served at the Ochsenbraterei tent, which is also famous for their roast oxen. Delicious. The tent was very colorful and a live band was playing. We had a beer with lunch before moving on to the agriculture fair, which is present at Pktpberfest every four years. We walked around looking at animals for a while before heading to one of the Paulaner tents for yet another beer, where three Germans tried to teach us how to properly pronounce the words to "Ein Prosit", which is kind of the cross between a toast and a song. Whenever the band begins to take up "Ein Prosit", everyone is supposed to clink glasses with their neighbors and take a swig.

We took a peek in the Hippodrom tent, which is supposedly where all the celebrities go and is supposedly impossible to get into. It has a circus theme inside, which was really cool, and almost immediately after we walked in, a waitress asked if we wanted a table. So much for being impossible to get into. But by this point we'd already had two beers, so we passed on the chance to sit at this elite tent. Maybe another time.

Wednesday found us at the Augustiner Brewery & Restaurant rather than at an Augustiner tent, where Steve booked us reservations for dinner. It was there that, alongside sausages and roast duck and pork knuckles and potato dumplings and other goodies, we were able to try Augustiner's Edelstoff beer. Fun fact of the day: Edelstoff is rumored to be the Pope's favorite beer. That's right - Edelstoff is on tap at THE VATICAN.

After three days of beer drinking, we took a rest day, which consisted of lots of sleeping and a trip to Therme Erding, the thermal bathhouse right outside of Munich. It has a Hawaiian/island theme, which was kind of goofy, but it was very relaxing. Plus they had a salt room where all the walls were lined with salt bricks. Way cool. Never seen one of those before.

And our days in Europe are trickling on by.... Still can't believe we head back to the States soon!

Final Countdown.

We have arrived in Munich.

It is weird to think that after four months of traveling around, we are finally almost home. In less than two weeks, we will be boarding a plane back to the States and life will return to normal. Whatever that means.

We arrived on Wednesday evening, which gave us a few days to explore Munich before the tourists start pouring in for Oktoberfest, which officially begins on Saturday. We wandered around and went on a free walking tour to learn more about Munich's history, and managed to abstain from drinking beer for those two and a half days because once Oktoberfest officially starts, I'm sure we will have more than our fill.

Steve has spent most of his time trying to decide what FC Bayern München merchandise he wants to buy (they seriously have it all here - not only can you buy the jerseys and shorts and socks, but you can also buy Bayern Munich shower gel, iPhone cases, and baby pacifiers, among other things) and we have spent a good amount of time just relaxing during the rainy parts of the day, but I am still trying to wrap my mind around the fact that we will be going HOME soon. How are we even going to function when we get back? There are all sorts of things that we will need to do when we get back - my knee surgery, finding jobs, and looking for a place to live are among the top priorities (obviously) and we both have good leads as far as getting jobs go, but what happens from there? Normal life? How are we going to transition back into having to drive everywhere and not worrying about exchanging currency? Presidential elections are coming up soon after we get back to the States, but what do we know about what's going on? Sure, we read news online occasionally so we aren't completely in the dark, but I'm sure there are all kinds of other things that have happened that we just don't know about. We've been gone for so long... Wait, you mean I can order from this menu that is written in English AWESOME! You mean I have to start paying bills again? Notttttt awesome :P It will be interesting to see how long it takes us to really get back in the groove of things. And how difficult of a transition it really is - it could all be in my head, who knows. But I am excited to head home. We both are.

It'll be nice just to not have to lug around a heavy backpack anywhere. Whoo.

See you soon, everyone! <3

Act Like a Tourist - Use the SalzburgCard.

So pretty much every city we've been to in Europe has their own version of the SalzburgCard, which typically give discounts to museums, restaurants, etc.

The SalzburgCard? Everything is FREE.

That's right, free. Awesome, right? And there were a ton of stuff on the list of stuff in the brochure that we actually wanted to do, so we each bought 48-hour SalzburgCards and proceeded to act like serious tourists for almost all of those 48-hours.

BEGIN: NOON, Monday, Sept. 17

We spent most of the day up at Hohensalzburg, which is the big fortress/castle overlooking the city, one hill over from the Mönchsberg. We took the funicular up to the fortress and wandered around the fortress and the various museums. We stopped by one of the cafes and had cappucinos and Sacher torte (a delectable chocolate cake). We skipped most of the marionette museum because frankly, those things freak us both out. They were cool for the time, I suppose, but for today's day and age, they are a teensy bit on the creepy side.

From there, we went to Salzburg's Museum of Natural History. Natural history museums are Steve's favorite kind - he never gets tired of looking at animals. It was interesting just to see how they put together their natural history stuff versus how we do in the States - a lot of it is the same. Part of the building was also a hands-on science exhibit with machines and games that show people how things like balance, gravity and centrifugal force work. It would be a great place to take our kids someday. While we were there, a school had a field trip so there were pre-teens running around all over the place. It was still fun, even for us. I can't even imagine how cool it would be for a small child who doesn't yet understand how the world works to come to a place like this.

DAY TWO: Tuesday, Sept. 18

All public transportation is free with the SalzburgCard, so we took a bus to a mountain called Untersberg, which is about 45 minutes outside of the city. We took a cable car up the Untersberg - we went up 1853 meters, or a bit over one mile. From up there, we could see all of Salzburg and the surrounding area. There were little hiking trails all over the place where we could explore and see the view from different sides of the mountain.

The Alps are very pretty to just look at because they are so tall and jaggedy - not the sloping mountainsides like many of the mountains in California. Billy got to play in the snow for the first time, too.

As we were taking the cable car back down, I commented on how I wished we'd seen a mountain goat (like we did in Zakopane!) because they are so prolific here. Five minutes later, I look down and see TWO mountain goats grazing in a little patch of greenery on the mountainside! Steve and I both smile, happy we saw some, and I lamented the fact that we still haven't seen a mountain goat actually climbing the mountain. Two minutes later, Steve points out a mountain goat hopping from ledge to ledge up the mountain! At that point I decided I was the mountain goat whisperer and declared that I would like to see a mountain goat doing the macarena. FIVE MINUTES LATER WE SAW ONE!! (Just kidding.)

Our visit to Untersberg was followed by a visit to the Salzburg ZOO!!! We walk into the zoo and the first thing we see is a little red panda running around his little patch of land - Steve's favorite animal is a red panda! Other than manatees and cows and kitties, anyway. We saw many an animal, red pandas and (more) mountain goats and lynxes and tigers and MONKEYS ALL OVER THE PLACE and some pretty birds and fish and zebras and.... The list could go on. Most of the exhibits (they weren't even in cages! Just patches of land with high fences. Somehow I feel better about that than when they are in cement cages with glass windows.) had babies of whatever animal it belonged too. We spent the whole time oohing and aahing over how CUUUUUUUUUUTE everything was!

Soooo here are a bunch of pictures of cute animals!!!

YAY, animals.

For our last stop of the day, we went to the Hellbrunn Palace to see the trick fountains.

Something to note about many of the attractions we've seen in Europe: you ave to keep in mind that some of these things are tourist attractions because of how awesome they were for the time they were built. You can't look at a clock tower and think it is silly that they keep those creepy puppets that move around up there when we have better technology available. When that clock was built 500 years ago, those moving puppets were an innovation.

Same with these trick fountains.

They must have been way cool for the time, because everything is powered basically by the pressure of the water.

But seriously, the water show at the Bellagio in Vegas is cooler, and that isn't even that cool.

The grounds are very pretty though, and it was fun to watch people freak out when they got wet (some of the fountains sneak up behind you if you aren't paying attention). But overall, Steve and I both agreed that we were glad we had the SalzburgCard and didn't pay the 10euro each to see the fountains because they were pretty anticlimactic.

DAY THREE: SalzburgCard good until NOON, Weds, Sept. 19

For our last stop in Salzburg, we headed back out to Stiegl brewery in the morning to visit their brewery museum. It was pouring down rain once more, so when we checked out of our hotel, we put our stuff in lockers at the train station and took a bus out to Stiegl (rather than walking, like we did with Michael). The museum is half a how-to kind of thing about beer, and half a history of beer in Austria. After the tour of this three-story museum, we had the opportunity to try three of the Stiegl beers in the restaurant downstairs, and afterwards we both were given pint glasses as a thank-you gift for visiting. It was a very good final use of the SalzburgCard, even if it was before noon. :P


And then we took a two-hour train ride to Munich.... OKTOBERFEST, HERE WE COME!!!!!!