This is a catch-up post. And it will be painful.

So I’m afraid I’ve been neglectful. In my defense, it’s because I’ve either been having fun in Europe, or I’ve been getting sick in Europe. Info on both to come!

After that scintillating adventure of airport mishaps and craziness, I did INDEED arrive to Frankfurt. I know, I know, miraculous, and only five hours late or so. Thomas and Christiane were there to pick me up, the sweet dears, and then we absconded into the German countryside, two hours away from Frankfurt.

Most German countryside looks like this, from what I can tell.

It also looks like this.

I know. Ridiculously pretty. It’s not even fair.

We journeyed to two castles near their home and one museum my first full day there. The museum was incredibly amazing. Their town, called Wanfried, was a border town back when Germany was divided. By the sheer luck of things, when an American general and a Soviet general were picking towns to go East or West after the war, Wanfried was decided to be American, or West Germany. The rammifications of East German poverty and the craziness of the division are still visible today; as we were driving through some towns, I’d be told “This used to be East Germany” and you could still tell – the houses are more dilapidated, there’s no industry, and all of that. Craziness. Anyways, this museum told of some of the history of the Holocaust, and then had a lot of remaining remnants of stuff from the border. Crazy things like a bobcat that a guy drove up to the fence, climbed into the bucket, and then launched himself over the bridge. Things like ice-climbing shoes that people would wear to climb the fence and get over the barbed wire. Just…crazy things. It was a small but very …heavy sort of place.

Ashley: I took a few pictures of tanks and helicopters and patrol cars for you. But really, you just have to go with me next time.

The castles were a little more cheery.

This one, the Hanstein castle, was especially awesome.

The view from the top (of this crazy crazy tower with so many stairs) was also really really marvelous. I don’t know if Germany is always that lush and green and expansive, but just…wow. So impressed.

To explain just how crazy these stairs were… A picture. Yes, they were that narrow, and no, no handle rails. If you tumbled, you tumbled for a long time.

The other ridiculous thing about Germany is that these types of castles are remarkably ordinary. Omnipresent even. It’s impossible to drive 5km without seeing a castle just hanging out on the top of a hill. Like. This type of view is normal to Thomas and Christiane. The mind reels!

The next day, Thursday, we went to Wartburg, the home of Martin Luther for 10 months while he translated the New Testament from Latin to German. Wartburg is a great old castle, but I was somewhat dissapointed with the way they had transformed the castle into an entire tourist show. Practically everything on the tour was a modern copy of something else that “might” have been part of the castle in mideval ages…so that was late. There was an especially impressive mosaic done in a room…but from 1902. Lameness.

They did have some of Luther’s stuff there, and that was awesome! I saw pages from his translation manuscript, as well as his travelling spoon. It has a hinge right at the bottom of the handle so it can be folded into two. Because a spoon without a hinge is so large… Right.

We then got caught inside a large tower while a mighty rain stormed about us for about 10 minutes. We spent our time gawking at how fast the rain had come on, how hard the rain was falling, and approximately how wet we would be if we tried to make a run for it. (Approximately we would be very. very. soaked through.)

After that, we headed to a place called “Dragon’s Canyon” which is basically a long path where a lot if it is narrow and between rocks. It was very cool, and SO GREEN.

The day after that, Friday, we went to Gottingen, where Mummy went to school, and I regrettably didn’t take too many pictures. (Fear of looking like a tourist often does that to me.) Mom, I did get a picture of the school’s “Mensa” though. Just for you.  And after our return to Wanfried, Tristan, Thomas, and I went swimming in their local lake. See that island on the left side of the picture?

Yeah. We swam to it. And it was awesome.

I ended my trip to Germany with a walk in a forest to a little waterfall that is only a few minutes from their home. We took pictures and were generally adorable.

(My camera took a particularly exciting dive off a not-so-level surface into the mud in order to get this picture. Luckily it was not a fatal dive! But yes, the dangers of self-timers.)

Tristan and I pictured above.

Thomas and I above.

And that’s all you get for now. More pictures from Madrid and Burgos later! (Mainly because I’m recovering from food poisoning or something. And I know I promised a story, but this blog post has taken me entirely too long already.)

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