Germany

Finally back from Germany and wow I didn’t know this much could happen in two weeks. I think in a nutshell this year was the suckiest and funnest trip to Germany ever. It all started when we finally for the first time ever left the Amsterdam Airport. For years now we had been changing flights in Amsterdam but never actually stepped one foot outside of the terminal. Everything went rather smoothly until we got to the country with the worst post office clerks ever and the worst traffic ever: Belgium. That day was just simply horrible. My dad had to deposit money in a Belgium bank for the Visa the next day. But no bank in the EU-Capital wanted to exchanges dollars for euros. My parents ended up exchanging it at an American bank and then deposited the money at the post office. A nice post office where you draw number 115 and the number now serving is 23. My dad ended up going there twice which was cause enough for his dislike of Belgium post office clerks. This alone took a very very long time since parking spaces are nonexistent in Europe and my parents had to walk everywhere. Add to this extremely horrible traffic and the fact that you have been up for 30 something hours and all you want to do is sleep which my sis, my bro and I did for about 3 hours in the car parked somewhere in Brussels. The next morning we went to the US. Embassy to get our Visas which was no problem at all. The tricky part then was to get out of Brussels. It took us an entire hour to find the right Autobahn. At one point in time we were stuck in the middle of an intersection with cars all around us honking. Nobody cared if it was green or red or where the lines were. It looked like on of those chaos traffic scenes out of a movie. It was absolutely ridiculous. Before we could head back to Germany we had to stop by the Amsterdam Airport to pick up my dad’s credit card he had forgotten there.

In Hamburg we visited a couple of friends, went shopping, ate currywurst and had a wonderful surprise party for my parent’s 25th anniversary. The party was absolutely fun. My parents were totally surprised and even more surprised to see a couple of people at the party they hadn’t seen in years. Of course they hadn’t seen me in years either so it always was. " You are Gaby’s oldest daughter. My gosh in don’t believe it. You are so big now. " But all in all it was a very fun party.
We then drove down to stay with my aunt near Cologne. I finally got to see my second cousin Celina for the first time since she was born last December. She is soooo adorable. I’ll put pictures up as soon as my dad downloads them on the computer. And the wedding of my cousin was totally wonderful. Her dress was really pretty and the party afterwards was really nice too. The food was awesome as well. But it was a lot of organizing, stressful but fun. And again pictures will follow as well.

This morning when we got to Duesseldorf (the airport we normally fly out off) we meet my cousin (the other one that didn’t get married) who was dropping of her boyfriend that was flying to Greece. When we tried to check in the lady at the desk told us that we weren’t listed. We checked with another guy at a different counter and he told us that whenever the lady in Houston cancel the Amsterdam – Hamburg flight (which we didn’t need since we wanted to drive to Brussels from Amsterdam) our returning tickets (Duesseldort-Amsterdam and Amsterdam-Houston) were canceled as well. And I tell ya what’s a great feeling…standing at the airport and getting told your flight tickets have been canceled. The problem was solved rather quickly though because there were still five tickets available on the Amsterdam-Houston flight and instead of flying to Amsterdam we drove. The taxi only took two hours and we made it well on time for our next flight. You gotta love Europe for being so small sometimes and you gotta love the Dutch, they are a cool and beautiful people. The rest of the trip was pretty much routine. So all in all it was pretty cool and adventurous trip that ended with me getting a cold, losing my tan and gaining 5 pounds.
(5 pounds in 2 weeks, I still can’t get over that *shaking head* I gotta get back to the gym)