So I'm having another sleepy Monday morning. One of these days I'm going to get enough sleep. Despite sleep depravity, Germany was awesome. The travel to and from Germany, not so awesome, but let's just call it an "adventure". So, let’s start from the top.
Stephanie and I let from Perugia and arrived in Florence just fine. We had some pasta and gelato and headed back to the train station. We didn't have reservations for the train to Munich (you couldn't reserve seats in Italy) and the train to Munich wasn't even listed. The only thing that we thought could be our train was headed to Wein. The problem is Wein is in western Austria, NOT Germany. We decided to chance it, but along the way met Mark from New Hampshire. It was Mark who told us that the train would split in Bologna and we just needed to be on the part of the train that would go to Munich.
Now that we had that information we just had to hop on the train, right. We didn't have reservations, but the Italian train man said we could just make the reservations on board. Well, he was wrong. We walked past a German train official who was yelling at people like us who didn't have reservations. Needless to say we didn't go into her car. We didn't get away from her though, Mark told us to come into his car because he had 2 extra couchettes. Sure enough, she was the one to check that car and we got yelled at and pushed to the reclining seats.
Along the way Jorg from Muster, Germany translated for us and Sara talked to the officials to see where we should go. We finally made it to some reclining seats when we met Paulo. Paulo talked to us for a while and calmed us down. He didn't have a reservation either, so he had to move in Verona where we also gained some unpleasant companions who moved and made a lot of noise during the night. Eventually, we made it to Munich and from Munich to Stuttgart where we met up with my family.
Steph and I had only eaten crackers, and nutella. Luckily, Germany has awesome pastries so I got an Apple Pastry and Steph got a chocolate croissant. On top of that we also had cheese pretzels. We did a little shopping in Stuttgart and went to Calw for some Spaghetti Eis. Later that night Anja, my cousin, cooked us an incredible meal filled with meat, bread, and cake.
On Saturday, we slept in until 9:30 which was well needed after the 3 hours of sleep that I got the night before. We ended up going to the Ritter Sport Museum/Factory and purchased a lot of chocolate, then to another town to shop, and back to Heimsheim (Anja and Norbert’s home) to have a cookout at their garden. This dinner was also filled with meat, bread and cake, but even more that the night before.
Out trip to Germany was way too short and before we knew it we were awake at 5:30 am on Sunday heading to Stuttgart. The train from Stuttgart to Munich was awesome. The train itself was nicer than an airplane, to be honest. We met even more characters on the rest of the journey though. This time we made reservations so when we got to Munich we found our car and met Bernie. Bernie seemed to know everything about, well, everything. So he told us everything about everything for 2 hours until he rejoined his family, but he continued to update us on our location and nearby sights about every hour on out 9 hour leg of the journey.
We arrived in Bologna about 20 minutes ahead of schedule (we should have had 15 minutes to make our next train) but out train to Arezzo ran 40 minutes late which caused us to miss our train to Perugia. We also had reservations for this 2 hour leg. However, when we went to out assigned seating the seats were full with a mother, her three children, and nuns (6 seats total). One of the nuns moved and some of the kids shared a seat as Steph and I crammed in. I talked to the nuns for a while, who were awesome! They practiced their English and I stumbled through my kindergarten level Italian. Meanwhile, Steph is wrangling the children who are having a mini-English lesson with her.
The nuns left and the kids got even crazier. They seemed to be everywhere, but at least we had enough seats, or so we thought. Two more women came in to replace the nuns and after while I sat in the hallway with Isabella, the oldest of the children. Arezzo came not a moment too late. Unfortunately in Arezzo we had an hour and a half wait until the next train to Perugia. We ended up getting to the Perugia train station at 10:20 pm and getting home by bus at 11pm. We were supposed to be home at 8:30. For those of you keeping count we traveled for around 18 hours.
We saw many beautiful things in Germany and through the train windows, but the best thing was spending time with family. I'm so happy I got to see my extended family and just live with them in their culture, even if it was just a couple days. Being back in Perugia is definitely not a bad thing. I'm ready to walk to where I need to go for a change. Till next time!
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