almost home!

Hello once again!
We're almost home... well... we still have 10+ hours of flying... four+ hours of driving and 4+ hours of layovers... fun fun!
Today was another great day. We saw two castles (raced up a hill to see one of them... thats a long story we'll love to tell you when we get home)... had our farewell dinner, which was lovely and now are just hanging out on our last night in Germany. Hard to believe it's almost over... but we're glad to be seeing our family and friends again soon.
Cant wait to tell you all our stories and share our pictures and adventures!!!
Love, Laura and Kevin

It's been a long time! The last hotel didn't have a computer and we couldn't get the blog to work on this computer last night. Lets see what have we missed. We went to Bamburg it was pretty cool but Dresden was a much nice place!! :) but it was fun to see the churches and tour around town. The shops close at 6 though!!! Crazy and we ended up going to good old McDonalds because we were starving and couldn't find a fast place to eat cuz they were closed or a sit down take 2 hours type place. So that was those days. We also went to Rottenburg and got to walk on the stone wall around the midevil city. We aslo toured a midevil tourcher museum which showoed all sorts of crazy things. Then yesterday we had a full day. We stopped first at a Regensburg and walked on the stoney bridge and saw a midevil bratwurst station as well as some churches and other cool stuff! :) Then we got on the bus and went to Dachau. It was a very interesting place but we had to rush to get through and see what we wanted to see because our tour guide had more plans for the day. His plans were our next stop which was a palace that we didn't really get to see much of because we had 20 minutes to grab something to eat from the AMAZING(sarcasim) beer garden ... which consisted of two tiny brats :( oh well we've eaten well this whole week!! Then we toured our new city of Munich and Laura and I played around a little in the new city. Then today we got to go to Austria to visit the Sound of Music's filmed area of Salzsburg. It was very interesting and Laura and I hiked up a 90 degree incline to the top of the fortress in that city. Ok maybe not 90 degrees but it was tall and steep. Saw some very interesting things there and then headed back to Munich to do some more investigating as well as a little shopping. Now were headed off for some rest and a big day of castles tomorrow :).

Love and miss you all ... excited to see you again in 2 days!!!!! :)

Laura and Kevin

Full day in Dresden

First, an update on last night. It was the most fun we've had on the trip I think... we headed back down to the "old city" on the tram, and putzed around until it got dark. Dresden is AMAZING at night! It was fairly calm and peaceful (less tourists), and the buildings were illuminated beautifully. Our pictures dont do it justice!!! We got to almost all the buildings... and got some cool pictures, we think. It was a bit of an adrenaline rush because we had to get all of our desired photo ops in before the tram came back... we raced (literally, we ran) to the tram and made it with three minutes left before it came. It was so much fun.

Today we had a guided tour through Dresden with a tour guide. We were tired and I (Laura) had a hard time keeping my eyes open!! It was beautiful though... the hills were nice and it was all very interesting.
We had lunch at a cafe in the mall, and then had the rest of the afternoon to wander around the city. We took more pictures, explored more areas we hadn't gotten to, and found this underground fortress tour to do which was kinda cool and unexpected. It was a good day, though we're pretty exhausted so we're going to stay low key for the evening... dinner and perhaps a little wandering around the hotel, but then early to bed.
Tomorrow we move to Bamburg in the afternoon with a trip to Wiemar on the way there.
Miss you all!

first day in Dresden

This morning we left the hotel in Berlin and started on our way to Dresden. On the way we stopped at a Hunting lodge that looked nothing like the Wisconsin versions. IT WAS HUGE and beautiful. We then stopped at our new hotel and then went down to the Old town area of Dresden. We saw so many beautiful buildings and cathedrals, and much much more - wait until you see the pictures. One of the cool things we got to do was go to the Grune Wold and saw so many treasures from the area that were sent to Russia durring WWII. It was really amazing!! Then we had some free time to walk around, and we got some really cool pictures of the buildings. Tomorrow we are heading back to the same place with a tour guide so we will have more details about the cool places we saw then. Now were off to supper with the group and then later Laura and I are heading back to see the buildings lit up!(The postcards looked amazing)

Love you,
Laura and Kevin

Second/third day in Berlin

Hello all! We apologize for the lack of messages lately... our hotel's computer is down until Tuesday. Hopefully tomorrow's hotel will have free internet too... right now we're at the Haupt Banhof (train station) where we had dinner (a hot dog and thüringer and fries) and we found an internet station where we could pay 2€ for an hour of time. We missed you all, so we wanted to update!
So yesterday... in the morning we rode around on a tour of Berlin and saw a ton of stuff. Took lots of pictures ... and will hopefully remember what all of it was! Highlights included the Berlin Wall (a chunk that is left), Checkpoint Charlie, Brandenburg Gate, US Embassy, and the hotel in which Michael Jackson "did his baby dangling" (our tour guide had a sense of humor!) among other things. After a truly German lunch at Subway (just kidding about the truly German part), we headed out on a guided WWII walking tour. We saw some of the current governement buildings, the place where Hitler's bunker used to be, the place where Hitler's office used to be, and the building that once housed the Communist government of East Berlin (we've learned a TON about German history). We had dinner as a part of the tour, which was a really good fried pork thing with potatos. After we checked in with Auntie Mae, Kev and I headed back out to explore Berlin... we wanted to capture some pics of the city at night - and we did after three hours of exploration! :) Needless to say, we slept well last night!
Today we started with a trip to Potsdam, a city in Germany that has many Palaces and is home to many activities of WWII. We got to tour the building where the Potsdam conference was held and stood in the same room Truman, Churchill, and Stalin decided the fate of Germany. After visiting some of the palaces we then stopped in Potsdam to have lunch and stroll around a little bit. Then we dropped Aunty Mae off at another palace she wanted to check out and went back to Berlin to go to Museum Island. We went to the Pergamonmuseum which had a lot of artifacts of acient history! It was pretty cool except not all of it was in English!!! And as stated above we headed off to supper and landed here! Now were off to go compare the local ice cream shops that we found out the one we went to this morning was not local at all!!! The wall paper had the united states on it and when we looked at its web site it was .com instead of .de(never heard of it though) ... VERY DELICIOUS THOUGH!! So hopefully we can find more computers along the way as we set off for Dresden tomorrow!

Love and miss all of you!
Kevin and Laura

PS.. HAPPY FATHERS DAY DAD ... we'll call you later :)

In Berlin... after a little rest

first of all, please excuse our possible poor use of punctuation and capitalization and such... the keyboard here is a little different... especially annoying is the fact that the z and the y are in opposite places!
as Kevin posted earlier, we've made it to Berlin! our flights were long and the nearly 4 hour layover in London was excruciating - because it was 2am "our time". The flights went well - a little turbulance, very little sleeping, a big stinky man sitting next to me from Chicago to London who didnt speak English... but relatively uneventful.
After we arrived in Berlin at the hotel and found Auntie Mae in the lobby, she got us settled into our rooms and advised us to nap... which we did. The two hours made a huge world of difference... we got up and were refreshed for our "welcoming dinner" with our tour group. Our group consists of 12 people including us so it should be nice. Everyone seems very nice, although I'm sure we'll see differing opinions throughout the trip. :) The small size of the group might also limit some of the optional tours, unfortunatley, but we'll just go with the flow.
Our dinner here at the hotel was delicious - pork and potatos with a wonderful potato soup and then a variety of desserts. After dinner, we decided to go for a stroll in the city, because we really had only seen the airport and hotel. Auntie Mae accompanied us and we saw the "Banhof" (train station). There's a mcdonalds, burger king and pizza hut there in case we decide we need some american food. :)
Our next mission is to try to figure out how to call home... we've recieved a few different instructions, none of which we've found real helpful... so we're off to figure it out on our own. Then it'll be time for bed. Tomorrow has a tour of Berlin in store for the morning and perhaps a walking tour of WWII sights in the afternoon.
Dad... there's talk that Museum Island will be a part of the tour, so we're excited about that.
Until tomorrow....
Laura and Kevn

after a very long trip we finally made it here to berlin!! We are now going to take a nap because we are very tired!!