Gary's European Vacation, Part 1

I am feeling much less jet-lagged this evening, so now I have some more time to post about my vacation. Raspberry and I flew across the pond on Thursday the 18^th to see our good friend Maverick. Maverick fled the country last summer to join her husband, who is currently serving in the US military overseas. If you want to know how I came up with the nickname “Raspberry”, you’ll know when I post a picture of her wearing her distinctive coat at the Eiffel Tower in part 2 (I also couldn’t come up with anything better).

The trip got off to a good start with a great night of sleep on the plane, at the expense of watching the second Pirates of the Caribbean movie. This was my 4^th trip to Europe in my 26 years of existence, yet it was the first time I was able to sleep on the transatlantic flight. After a good four hours of sleep on the plane, I was relatively refreshed when we arrived in Frankfurt around 9AM on Friday morning (Germany time).

We cleared immigration and customs without being asked a single question about what was in our bags or why we were visiting Germany. Strange, but I guess they like Americans there. Maverick met us at the airport and we proceeded to tour the city of Frankfurt. Frankfurt really didn’t seem like a place that attracts tourist. There wasn’t anything exciting to do during the day and it was very much a business town. Hence, I have no pictures and no funny stories.

I survived until about 8PM on Friday before crashing due to lack of sleep. Despite my struggles sleeping in over the past couple years, I was up and refreshed for a new day at 10:30AM Saturday morning after 14+ hours of sleep! We spent Friday in Trier, which is a city near the Luxembourg border and within 30 minutes from Maverick’s home. Trier has a lot of ruins from Roman times that we explored before ending the afternoon with the German tradition of coffee and cake. Here are a few pictures from the afternoon.

Gate to the city of Trier in Roman times. The blackish exterior occured over time and is not due to fire.

Thanks for vandalizing a 2000 year old structure. My trip is complete knowing that Tina and Alex professed their love for each other at the gate to Trier on 3/4/2006.

The remains of the Roman Bath. A lot of the ruins were underground, so you can't see much in the picture.

I slayed all challengers at the Coliseum. They didn't have a chance against me.

The evening was spent getting fired up for the Michigan-Ohio State football game. Thankfully, the Armed Forces Network picked up the big game, so I was able to watch the showdown from the comfort of Maverick’s home. Even better, the AFN is not allowed to show normal commercials, so I was able to see some entertaining AFN specific commercials with basic cooking tips, family holiday greetings, messages from senior military officials, and the importance of abstinence.

Since Maverick gets a great rate on US phone calls, I called FlyingV to yell ‘Go Blue”, only to learn that his roommate, the temporarily hated BuckeyeBoy, pranked him by painting a large red block ‘O’ on his living room wall for their big gameday party. It was ok since FlyingV is planning to paint his condo soon...

I was sad to learn about the passing of the great Bo Schembechler, and even sadder to see Michigan lose the football game. We need to stop losing to those bastards. I'll post a fond memory of Bo at some point in the future, but Michigan football is not the focus of the Germany posts so I'll stop for now.

By the time the game ended, it was nearly 2AMand time for bed. We had to wake up at 7AM for the next leg of the trip, so I needed to get over the sadness of the game and get some sleep. There are more funny stories in the next part, so you don't want to miss it!

Stay tuned for part 2: The French – "Pfft. They’re everywhere"!