Guten Tag Deutschland!

Off to Germany...my only familiar country other than the US. Which is probably why I love it the most, I feel comfortable there, people are so nice there, it is inexpensive compared to the other countries we visited, Kirk speaks the language...the list goes on. We arrived in Koeln (my favorite city in Germany and were welcomed at our hotel with gummy sheep on our pillows.

Love it!Below is one of the reasons Koeln is my favorite place! Aside from the great shopping, yummy & affordable food is the Koelner Dom (Koeln Cathedral). It is massive people and is the reason few other cathedrals and churches we saw all over Europe wowed me. They just don't compare.

They started building it in 1248 and finished it in 1880!

I love this pic of Kirk in front of the Dom! Notice the one sculpture on the bottom left which they have cleaned/restored...really shows how old this sucker is. I actually prefer the older dark and dirty look better though.

Below is the entire scope of the pic with Kirk from above. This is actually the side entrance of the Dom...the main entrance has the 2 massive spires.

Here is a pic from the inside. Oh...and unlike every other church we visited throughout Italy & Barcelona...it is FREE to go inside.

It is filled with amazing stain glass and sculptures.

I would love to have stain glass windows in my house!

Here is it from the front of the Dom. When Kirk lived in Germany he made the trek up to the top of the spires...which I hope to do on our next visit over there.

After we visited the Dom we went back towards the hotel to meet up with Jan (pronounced Yon). Jan is Kirk's bestie from when he lived in Germany...he is awesome and it was great to see him. We all headed to a bar to watch the Germany v. Spain match. As most of you know...it did NOT go well. Oh well.

After 2 days we left Koeln and headed for Werne, the city that Kirk lived in for most of his year in Germany. We stayed with his host family that night and they prepared an awesome bbq with more food than we would ever be able to consume. Keep in mind that his host family do not speak English...so I sat VERY quietly for the entire visit.

Kirk finally found a way to shut me up :)

Below is a pic of the high school that Kirk attended for the year he lived in Germany. It was so fun for him to drive me around and show me his old stomping grounds.

From Werne we headed for Berlin. One of the first things we came across was a man who was dog sledding through Germany. At first I thought there were a crap load of dead dogs laying on the sidewalk as we walked up. See Below!

I then saw this little adorable guy. The only dog that was not passed out. I could not help but feel bad for these dogs who I am sure are used to being in super cold weather while pulling some guy on a sled, but instead are pulling him through the 95+ hot sun in Berlin. We went to a few different sections of the Berlin Wall. Kirk knows a ton of information about the wall and all the history of it, so I had my own little personal tour guide.

Each time we saw a portion of the wall it had some sort of graffiti on it.

Another section of the wall... This is a Trabi...it was one of the most popular cars in Germany back in the day. Kirk LOVES these cars...mostly because they were all over the place when he lived there, so they bring back memories...not because of their amazing performance and specs.

While walking through Berlin the 2nd day we were there this camera crew spotted Kirk sporting a Germany soccer jersey and approached him for an interview - thinking he was German. They were doing a story on whether or not Germans were still going to watch the World Cup finals even though Germany lost their semi-final match. Kirk answered all of their questions in German, but part of his answer included that he was American we doubt they aired him on the actual story...but it was still a fun little random thing that happened.

This is the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin. It consists of a 19,000 square meter site covered with 2,711 concrete slabs (all of ranging heights) one for each page of the Talmud arranged in a grid pattern on a sloping field. Very cool!

It was actually a very nice place to beat the heat that afternoon.

Kirker was humoring me that day willing to be in more photos than usual.

We made our way over to the Brandenburg gate after the memorial.

Right next to the gate is the Reichstag.

It looks out onto this large area which they set up the FIFA Fan Fare sites to watch the soccer matches on huge screens. Picture that entire area filled with arm to arm Germany Fans!

On top of the Reichstag is this cool dome where you can look out onto the entire city of Berlin. It has this cool mirrored column in the middle.

This is the opening at the top of the dome that opens out to fresh air.

Can you find Kirker???

We spent that whole day sightseeing all over Berlin. We went to Checkpoint Charlie next.

This is the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church...well what is left of it. It was bombed in 1943 and they later turned it into a memorial attraction by leaving part of the church standing and adding that memorial tower to the left of it.

We ended our trip to Germany by visiting Kirk's other host family in Alt Ruppin. Another day filled with German speaking only...so it was quiet Julie again, but they were so nice and great hosts. The adorable little girl below is Hannah. She is Kirk's host sister, Ilka's little girl. Adorable!

It is so nice to meet people who opened their lives and their homes up to Kirk and who he became so close with while he lived there. It was crazy to see how happy they were to see him and to meet me. I am looking forward to seeing them all again on our next trip to Deutschland!

BarTHelona

We left Rome for Barcelona, which was quite a little process. Our journey went like this:

1. Took the train to the Rome Airport
2. Boarded the plane about 20 minutes behind schedule
3. Sat on the runway wondering why we were not going anywhere
4. Sit in the plane on the runway for 2 hours and 30 minutes after being told that the tower computers were down so they were shutting down the airport until things were back up and running
5. Finally take off and land in Frankfurt an hour after our connector flight took off without us (I know...why were we flying to Frankfurt before Barcelona?? Oh...because even though it's out of the way it brought the ticket prices down about $300 per person)
6. Went to the ticket counter to catch the next flight out to Barcelona (which was 30 minutes from boarding) but they only had standby...so we got booked onto the last flight out (4 hours later) a little after 9 pm
7. Ate dinner in the airport with the 20 Euro voucher they gave us because of the hassle
8. Landed in Barcelona, collected our bags and took a taxi to our hotel...arrived at 12:30 am

When we arrived at our hotel in the wee hours of the morning we were surprised to see that Barcelona is like Vegas...the streets were packed with people. We were exhausted though, so we just went to bed.

Below is La Rambla (the main/popular street in the city that is packed with tourists) and packed with people dressed up to take pictures with you for money. But I was all over them this time! Fool me once...

This street is also known for pick-pocketing (as are many places in Barcelona) which made me paranoid every time we walked it at night time. It was our central route to everywhere we went during our stay.

We took a long walk on the beach which was nice. Oh, did I mention there are many people who go sans bathing suits? What you don't see in this picture is that directly to my right there was a rather large older man standing in a Peter Pan pose completely naked with his pride and joy just dangling out in the sun for everyone to enjoy. The guy was taunting me, begging me to take a picture of him, staring straight at me, turning towards each direction I turned my camera. There was no way that I was going to give that guy what he wanted though. The only junk photos that were going to be on my camera were the marble carved ones from Rome!
Below is the Sagrada Familia, a very large church by Gaudi that is insane. We were excited to see a lot of the Gaudi architecture and it did not disappoint. That guy must have been on crack!

What I did not realize when we started planning the trip was that Kirk purposely put Barcelona on our destination list because MotoGP was having a race that weekend in Catalunya. He purchased tickets for us and we spent the entire day out in the hot sun watching the races. Although this was not super fun for me, especially since it was about 100 degrees with no shade where we were sitting, but Kirk was in hot heaven. These are the bikes he used to race and he really wants to still be racing...but we don't have hundreds of thousands of $$ for him to spend on a hobby. Boo for the husbro.

This is my favorite rider (Casey Stoner). He came in 3rd in the race.

TAPAS!!! One of my favorite things about Barcelona! We went to 2 great Tapas places while we were there. The tidbits below are some of the items we had at Bar Lobo, which was down the street from our hotel. In the bowl are artichoke heart chips with sea salt (I could have eaten them all day long) and then on the right - ahi tuna with yummo guacamole. The other great place we had tapas at was called Sinatra which we found out about from a person on the street who gave us a menu and pointed us in the direction of the front door. When we walked in they greeted us with free glasses of champagne...so we were instantly pleased. The food there did not disappoint either!

Here are some other shots from our roaming the streets of Barcelona.

There were many buildings like this that as we passed them I would turn to Kirk and say. "I want to live in this one!...no wait, I want to live in that one!"

The one below is another Gaudi creation - Casa Batllo. I think it is cool...Kirk started to get sick of all of the Gaudi stuff because it started to get a little too weird for Kirk to appreciate. He needs structure and purpose in buildings. I guess I appreciate cracked out architecture.

Yet another "I wanna live there!" place!

We watched quite a few soccer matches over our 5 days in Barcelona and the most entertaining one was Netherlands vs. Brazil. We watched it at a Dutch bar with a ton of crazy Netherlands fans! These pics were snapped after a goal...beer went flying! Everyone in a 10 foot radius got soaked.

At that moment I was glad that we had not weeded our way into the pit of orange to watch.

Although I don't have any pictures (which I am bummed about), one of the best things about our time in Barcelona was getting to meet and spend time with Justin & Jen and their 2 little munchkins. They are friends of the Bower Clan who are living out there for an unknown period of time with the goal of planting a church. They are some of the nicest people ever...which was such a relief because when we called to meet up with them when we got to town we were really hoping to hit it off with them and not find ourselves sitting in silence with us thinking to ourselves "wow these 2 are lunatics, how can we ditch them" or worse...us liking them and them thinking to themselves "man, why did Mariah tell them about us? how can we ditch them?" We loved spending time with them and got to hang out with them quite a few times while we were there. They took us to more local places that were not full of tourists which was great and Kirk went to one of Justin's soccer games on our last night there which was cool. I love making new friends!

A few other fun facts about our time in Barcelona:

• Kirk tried Sangria for the FIRST time. He liked it a lot. Anyone have any good recipes for sangria?
• I tried Paella for the first time. I thought it would be spicy...not so much.
• While on the beach there were many beautiful women in thong bikini bottoms topless with their perfect bodies...and the old fat naked guy!
• This was the only place on our trip that I was not 'navigationally' challenged. Not sure what it was about Barcelona, but I always knew where I was and many times led Kirk in the right direction before he even got his bearings! He was in shock since in our own neighborhood I get lost and have no clue unless I am looking at a compass which directions N, S, E, W are!

When in Rome

We took a train from Florence to Rome and made it from the train station to our hotel in perfect time to grab a bite to eat, then head to the pub conveniently across the street from our hotel to watch soccer. After the match, I got my hands on some gelato and Kirk had some crazy eclair thing. We then headed back to the pub for another soccer match. The rest of our time in Rome was filled with...wait for it...WALKING! "Shock me, shock me, shock me..."

I took some advise from our friend Dan and we spent our time in Rome going "to all of the touristy places in Rome, because they are worth it!" And they were...

We visited the Colosseum multiple times as it was about a 5 minute walk from our hotel. On our last morning there, we got up early and were pretty much the first people inside which was awesome. So much nicer to see things and to take pictures when there is nobody else really there with you.

It is so crazy how massive it feels standing outside of it and then even bigger when you are inside. Insane to stand there looking at the details and thinking about all of the things we knew happened there.

This was Kirk's favorite part of Rome and maybe of the whole trip. He could have spent HOURS in there. It is funny to watch him while he takes in the tiniest details of parts of the massive structure that I would never look at. Doing calculations in his head and all his other smart guy stuff.

We visited the Spanish Steps twice because we wanted to see it both during the daylight and lit up at night. It's crazy how the photos do not do it's size justice. It is a lot bigger than it looks.

Here is a pic of part of the Colosseum as the sun was setting.

These next 2 pics represent the most frustrating moment of the trip for me. I am not a savvy traveler and was DUPED into taking what I thought were harmless photos with some random dressed like a Roman soldier.

The guy seemed nice enough, came up to me first and started messing around putting his helmet on me...which I thought was super nasty as it was very hot out and who knows how many different random tourists heads have been in it...let alone this guy's own personal hygiene. He never asked me if I wanted to take a photo with him. After he was joking around I looked over for Kirk and noticed he had not stopped and was still walking away. I asked him "Kirk, quick get a picture of us." Kirk was somewhat hesitant and seemed a little annoyed, but came and got my camera anyway and snapped a shot. Then the guy went over and posed with Kirk and I took the picture above of them. Kirk then reached into his pocket and gave the guy 2 Euro, which I was like "oh, that is nice of my husbro."....

...well, that is when it got awkward. The guy looked in his hand and then looked at Kirk and said "no, 5 Euro" to which Kirk's jaw dropped open and said "5...no, I will give you 3"...to which he said as he got closer to Kirk, "no, 5" - Kirk then reached into his pocket and pulled out some other smaller change and put it into his hand while muttering something to the effect of "that is bullsh*t, here!" and tossed the change into the guys hand. It was probably just under 5 Euro...which is almost $7 - As we walked away I grew super pissed. One, that I was totally duped by this guy and had no idea that he was going to charge me for taking pictures with my own camera. I thought he was just some random dude having fun with tourists. Two, I was mad that Kirk knew what was going on and did not tell me. He told me he knew it was going to cost money, but that he did not think the guy would say 5 Euro...what a rip! I was mad that Kirk didn't reply to my request to get out the camera "No Julie, this guy is going to want cash for the photo and it's not worth it." I swear, I wanted to delete the photo since I was so annoyed at the guy and at myself for being so naive!

Anyway...back to the Spanish Steps...during our day time visit. It is huge, beautiful and made of marble and when we were almost at the top Kirk stopped, looked at me and said "Man, no disrespect, but what a waste of time and money it was to build this!" I think at that point the heat and the amount of steps were getting to him.

We climbed to the top and then into the museum they have up there. It does not seem that intense, but man were my legs burning while climbing.

We got up VERY early one of the mornings in Rome to head to the Vatican. It, like most things in Rome, is MASSIVE! As we would walk farther away from it, we felt as if it looked fake with the perspective next to the other buildings around it.

Here is Kirk on the stairs coming down from the museums in the Vatican.

One of the only pics we have of the 2 of us from our trip.

We took some great advise from a friend who gave us tips on how to get into the Sistine Chapel first, before the guards come in so you can sneak some pictures which are strictly prohibited. It worked and we were in awe!

We were the 6th and 7th people into the chapel that morning and were able to get these pics. They are not the best since I did not use my flash and they (like most things you photograph in Europe) do not do it justice.

It was so nice to be in there before the crowds hoarded in. We stayed in there for about 30 minutes staring, changing seats, staring some more. So much to take in...so much detail.

Below is the only shot of us that was not taken by us stretching our arm out with the camera as much as we could. I noticed that a couple on the bridge with us was speaking German, so I begged Kirk (who hates to have his picture taken) to put his German skills to good use while in Italy and ask them to take our picture. They were very nice and caught a little off guard with this American guy asking them questions in German, and were very happy to snap a shot for us.

Other fun facts from our time in Rome:

• Best Looking Men from all of the cities we visited were in Rome
• Hotels in Rome are super expensive...and small, we realized this while researching before our trip. It was totally worth it to shell out the bucks for a very nice hotel in a great location.
• Riding the subway is a STEAL!
• If visiting the Sistine Chapel...make reservations...the no reservation line was one of the longest lines I have ever seen and was in direct sunlight for 90% of it. Praise God for the advise we got.
• Super Romantic after the sunset...we loved our night time strolls around the city.
• Don't trust crazy men dressed up as Roman Soldiers

Next stop...Barcelona!