Europe Post 2: Flight to Germany

When we arrived at the Detroit airport I was so excited to just get going! This trip was my first time leaving the country (excluding a quick family jaunt to Canada) and I was beyond excited to see more of the world. Lars is much more of the world traveler, so hopping on a plane to Europe was no big deal for him. Nonetheless, he was a great sport about it and let me be all giddy and excited to do basic things like buy a pack of overpriced gum at the airport shop.

It turns out the excitement of travel can quickly wear off around hour 6 in a 10 hour flight. We were fortunate enough to have no layovers, but our flight was overnight and sleeping on planes is hard! I did my best to fiddle around with the sleeping mask and mini, very thin airplane blanket (I luckily wore a scarf that doubled as an extra blanket!) and was able to get a few hours. Just our luck we had a couple very loud, crying babies right behind us. The joys of travel!!

When I was awake I tried to pass time by watching random in-flight movies. I did really enjoy Hector and The Search For Happiness, which was based on a book that I read a few summers ago.

It seems our troubles hit us much harder once we arrived in Germany. I was haggled a bit at the customs border (show me your hotel reservation -- errr, Lars has that on his phone and is already across the border since he went through the line for German citizens!).

The biggest stress of the travel came early, and that was when Hertz refused to give us our rental car! Long story short, we had paid with a credit card that Lars lent to his brother earlier in the summer, whom happened to actually be studying abroad in Germany. Because we didn't have the same card with us, they refused to let us use a different one to put down for the car! We ended up forking over almost all of our euros to be able to take the car sans insurance (thank god we had thought to take a bunch out before leaving!) and ended up driving a few hours each way to go find his brother, Nils, and grab the card.


Seeing Nils was an unexpected bonus, and lucky for us he let us take a nap in his dorm room to catch up on some much needed sleep!

Once we were feeling more awake we left Nils and drove BACK to the airport to put the card down with Hertz to ensure that our car was covered by insurance. Such an unnecessary hassle and suffice it to say, we shall not be renting from Hertz ever again!

After this whole shebang, we drove off to Saarland to check into our hotel for the night.
Our hotel ended up being the most lovely little spot with wonderful customer service. The manager put us up in the largest room (apparently it's rare for anyone to stay for more than 1 or 2 nights in Saarland!) and the room itself was gorgeous with the nicest bathroom ever. Kid you not - the shower was the most perfect shower, especially after such a long day!

   

Because we were both so exhausted from the long flight and unexpected 6+ hours of driving, we decided to just eat our late dinner at the hotel restaurant. It was surprisingly good! Not the cheapest place to eat, and we were probably under-dressed for how fancy it was, but it was warm food that we didn't have to drive out to get. I believe I had a nice salmon and asparagus dish and Lars ordered some sort of meat dish (classic orders for both of us).

We also enjoyed some massive German beers as we both felt they were well-deserved after such a stressful day!

Next post I'll get into more details about what we did while we were in Saarland and start to write about some of the day trips we took (Heidelberg and Luxembourg!).









       

Europe Post 1: Planning The Trip

     As I mentioned in my last post, Lars and I took a bug Europe/China trip after we graduated from MSU. Since I wasn't actively blogging at that time, I decided the best way to cover and talk about our trip would be to break it down into a few posts. To start off, I figured I would talk about where we decided to travel.

When planning out our trip, we decided to pick out a few key places we wanted to visit and then plan our trip in the most logical way we could to make it from one place to the next. At the top of our list of places to go was Germany - where Lars was born and used to live.

Of course visiting the entire country would be a massive vacation in itself, so we picked out just a few places to go to on our trip. At the top of the list was Saarland, the area where his Aunt and cousins currently reside. 

It's a bit more of a remote area and not the most touristy, but is absolutely beautiful! We were able to split our time there between visiting family and taking quick day trips to other areas nearby (Heidelberg, Luxembourg..). It was the perfect way to start the trip and get acclimated to the time change! Germany-wise, we also added Cologne to our must-see places in as his parents used to live there and Lars was born in the city!

To balance out the hustle and bustle of cities (Lars particularly prefers the laid-back, natural beauty) we booked a bed&breakfast in the French Alps. Thank goodness we did that because it ended up being our favorite place we visited! More on that in a later post, though..

Moving out of Germany, the romantic in me put Paris as a must-see place. We also added one night in Switzerland (only one night because $$$$), a few days in Amsterdam, and then booked a flight to Shanghai, China! His parents and younger brother actually moved to Shanghai the other year and are staying through this upcoming summer. It turns out adding that flight didn't change our ticket prices what-so-ever, so other than the jet-lag there was no downside to flying over there to see them!

       

Next post I'll talk about our flight (we had quite the experience with our rental car!) as well as our first week in Germany. Can't wait to reminisce on all of our fun experiences!

It's Been A While // Some Life Updates

Wow. It's been a long time.

I just happened to stumble upon this blog again when I found myself wondering if I had ever randomly blogged my favorite pumpkin muffin recipe. Turns out I had! I completely forgot that I had ever made this blog (being a busy student tends to do that to your memory!). It's been fun to read through the couple posts that I had written a few years ago.

Since it's been a while, I figured I'd see if I can pick the blogging back up again and thought I'd start out with a few major life updates.

1) It is now Fall of 2016 and I have graduated from undergrad! I earned a bachelor of science in Interdisciplinary Social Sciences: Health and Society with 2 minors in Bioethics and Women's and Gender Studies from Michigan State University.

Whewww - that's a mouthful! Basically I took a bunch of social science classes related to health (think medical anthropology, health psychology) and then complemented those with some "hard science" courses like pharmacology, microbiology, etc. I was honored to have received the President's Award in the spring (above), which went to the male and female graduating student-athletes with the highest cumulative GPA (not sure how I pulled it off in Epidemiology, but I graduated with a pure 4.0!).

Note the super sweaty armpits in the above picture. I had to give a speech to 1,000 people! Note to self: wear black when giving major speeches.

           

2) I'm not done with schooling! I'm officially a nursing student at Vanderbilt University studying to become a Women's Health Nurse Practitioner. They have an awesome direct-entry NP program for non-nurses, called the pre-specialty program, that basically crams an entire BSN into the first year and then directly flows into my MSN credits. It's been 6 weeks and things are moving FAST.

Fortunately for me I'm learning a lot and having fun! I've been able to explore Nashville a bit (such a fun city!) and have also made some really wonderful close friends here, which is great because Lars is still in Michigan. Speaking of Lars.....

3) Lars and I got ENGAGED!

        

We took a wonderful trip to Europe (and China!) after graduation and he proposed to me when we were taking a day trip to Luxembourg. I'm sure I'll write an entire post on that, but just know it was the best day of my life! We're getting married on August 12, 2017 and I can't wait to become my best friend's wife.

So there you have it. Those are just a few of my most major life updates. I've been feeling really swamped with studying (and should also probably work on some wedding planning!) so I'm hoping to use this blog as an outlet to relieve stress, continue to hone my writing skills, and to document life. It's funny how whenever I write posts or journal entries they feel trivial, but I get so nostalgic and happy when I find them years later. Here's to trying to document the present so I can look back in a few years and relive these happy, exciting times!




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