Back in the West

These photos may be in need of captioning - in no particular order they are my leg after falling down some wet steps, Jess' shoes being laid to rest in a mall trash bin, me with the biggest dyke in Holland(!) and the precious little town of Edam.

Less than 20 days in Europe and so much has happened - I suppose that is what can happen when you can drive through multiple countries and experience their unique cultures and languages within a few hours. Flying into the Frankfurt International Airport was like any other fancy, big airport we have been in lately. The public transportation, however, felt very, well, German. It was so clean that it didn't have any smell and instead of using the area surrounding the train tracks as your trash bin, there not only was a trash bin on the train, but next to every set of seats! It was also silent - an experience we have not had in a very very long time. When we emerged into one of Frankfurt's main squares in the middle of a workday, the sight actually caused us to stumble a few steps back in shock - there was no one there! Well, hardly anyone...and the people that were there were not trying to sell anything, befriend us, or try to get our attention in any way. As a contrast, on our final taxi ride to the Delhi airport while sitting in traffic, an Indian ladyboy (I am forgetting the proper term now but Hindus believe they have mystical powers and can curse you) stuck her (his) hand into the car with neatly folded 10 rupee notes between her fingers urging me to add to the collection by smiling, batting her eyelids, and repeatedly jabbing my thigh with her hand. Jess on the other side of the taxi is having fashion magazines opened and thrown in her face while she is simultaneously yelling at the ladyboy to leave me alone. Moral of the story, if something goes terribly wrong for us, it is because we didn't give some rupees to the ladyboy AND the transition from India to Germany felt like we were both coming home to a familiar place and entering an alternate universe as the two countries could not be more of a contrast. That being said, we loved India - there is truly no place like it on earth that we have been to - and being in western Europe has also been spectacular. Drinking tap water, eating salad, and not being grimy at the end of a day are all greatly appreciated novelties for us.

While still transitioning to life in the West we thought it high time to buy a car. Please do not jump to conclusions by assuming that Jess and I are prepping our families and friends for the announcement of a civil union with our decision to buy a minivan, but yes it just so happens that a minivan is the most responsible and biggest purchase that we have made individually or as a unit. We had been told that buying a car in Europe while not being a part of the European Union is nearly impossible, but hey, we like a challenge. We found a guy on the internet in the city of Koblenz near to Frankfurt who sold campervans and also bought them back when travelers were done with them. After realizing that we actually cannot drive manual cars not to mention an old VW Westfalia on the Autobahn, we decided to try our luck elsewhere. We proceeded to spend the next 3 days in the office of a Lebanese man who refused to speak English to us and was referred to only as chief by his trusty assistant and our new friend. Before setting off in the sun with our legally registered, export plate-d minivan, we discovered that Koblenz is actually a lovely city filled with historic buildings, a rich history, and darling people. We then continued on to Cologne, Bruges in Belgium, a few small cities in the Netherlands including Amsterdam, and then back into Germany to Bremen a few days ago and Hamburg as of yesterday. I think this is the fastest we have been moving in the past 10 plus months, but getting in our lovely minivan every few days and driving for a few hours through lovely countryside is not so difficult a task. Here is a varied list of things we have learned recently - Belgian waffles really are better in Belgium, the cheese in Edam really is as good as you would think (Jess snarkily points out how much sample cheese I ate there), blonde children might just be the cutest, our minivan does indeed have a CD player and Melanie C isn't so bad, electrical tape does not permanently repair shoes, Jess is average size for a woman in the countries recently visited, my German is not so shizey, Holland and Netherlands (colloquially) are the same thing, Lebanese men know how to export a car, swans are nearly deadly, Belgian beer really is that delicious, Colin Farell is sadly not running around Bruges, Formula 1 racing might actually be interesting, German bars really look like how they are imitated to be in the states, neo-Nazis exist, Grimm fairy tales can really help a city's tourism, the west is obsessed with cleanliness and there are no smells here, Van Gogh didn't start painting until the last 10 years of his life, finding a parking spot for a minivan is not so easy in a city planned a thousand years ago, and to round the list out, people are kind to us wherever we go.

Jess and I, being of a certain breed, are naturally inclined to plan and perhaps you could go so far as to say that we can even overthink things on occasion. Thankfully, traveling beat that out of us pretty quickly so here we are, in Hamburg, with our minivan embarking tomorrow on a journey into former Soviet occupied Germany and Poland. We decided this yesterday and think it will be great fun - vodka, accordions, perogies and all.
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