Today's wake up call came at 5am. It was so hard to get up from such a comfortable bed! Last night, Mallory and I washed some of our clothes in the bathtub to get ready for the rest of our trip and unfortunately they weren't dry this morning. We had no choice but to pack them up in our bags, wet. The good thing was that we had some bags to put them in so they didn't get the rest of our clothes wet. We got ready pretty quickly and took a taxi to the train station,where we had to get a train to Paris. When we got to the station, we had to buy tickets. The booth wasn't open yet, so we had to do them from the machines. Well when we tried to do that with our cards, they wouldn't take them because they were American cards. There was a slot to put money in, but only coins and we only had the paper Euros. At that point, we needed to make the train that was about to leave and we were basically s*** out of luck "pardon my French" (since we were in France). Fortunately, the train booth was opening in 10 minutes and the next train left in 15. We got our tickets for the 6:20am train to Paris, which took about a half hour. We were a little worried because we had to change lines at one station to get to the actual train station to head to Germany.We hurried as fast as we could and got to the station at 7:10 for our 7:20am train. It was a close one, but it was good to get on the train and be able to sit for a while, especially after carrying our heavy backpacks around France! We got some croissants on the dining cart, a good meal to leave France with.We had a good time talking, looking at all the beautiful countryside and I was able to sleep some.We got to Stuttgart, our connection, a little late and our next train was originally supposed to leave at 11:16am and we got in at 11:14am. We arrived on platform 2 and had to run….yes…with our 35 pound backpacks on…all the way to platform 16! It was definitely a work out I haven't had in a while. Well, after running all that way and up and down stairs, the incoming train had been delayed 5 minutes! Right as we ran up the stairs, the train had arrived and we were able to get on…lucky us.

This train was a bit nicer, even though the one before was fine too. We ended up realizing our seats were in a little room with 6 seats. When we walked in, there were three gentlemen already sitting there that helped us get our huge bags up on the luggage racks. They were all very nice and spoke english. One of the guys was from Turkey and was 20 years old. He was over here for an internship. Right as we got in, one of the men started talking to us right away. We eventually found out that he was from right outside of Stuttgart and is a CEO of an Engineering firm. Right away he started telling us what different things were as we left. We saw the football (soccer) stadium, the Mercedes Benz factory, wine fields, and he told us a ton of history about the different things that we saw. As we talked to him, he found out we were headed to Munich and was nice enough to write out some things that he thought were worth seeing and doing. It's always nice to find locals that can help with those kinds of things…they obviously know best! Even as we were riding along, he was telling us history about some of the different cities that we passed through. He was so interesting and helpful. I probably learned more about Germany on this train ride then I have in any history class! Well, we are about to Munich, where we are going to check into our hostel, Wombats, and probably go to the Dachau concentration camp this afternoon.

Munich was a quick trip, but a ton of fun!! When we got into Munich, we took our directions that we got off google and asked someone where to go. Well, after walking around with our heavy heavy backpacks…in the rain and after asking about 5 different people, we stumbled across our hostel, Wombats. Yea, so we got lost and the place ended up basically being across the street from the train station. We definitely got made fun of for that one ;) So, since we got lost, we really didn't have time to go to Dachau since it closed at 5pm and by the time we got in and checked in, it was about 4pm. We decided to go eat something at the delicious pizza place on the corner. ALL of the pizza here is like Jersey pizza, which is pretty much amazing. I ordered an Orange Fanta to drink with my pizza and it was yellow. I guess that is the way it is here. It tasted a little duller than the Orange Fanta at home and the color of it kind of reminded me of AirBorne, so I was a little grossed out. Anyways, so after lunch/dinner we decided to head back to our hostel, shower and get ready for the night. We stayed in a 6-person room and two people were already there (not in the room) and there were two empty beds. Mallory and I took a bunk bed to ourselves. When we started to get ready, our new roommates for the night walked in. Their names were Carolyn and Maggie and they were from Atlanta. Right away we all started talking and joking around…they were a ton of fun! Well, we were wondering who our other roommates were and by the looks of the shoes by one of the beds, one was a guy. He would have been the only guy with 5 girls! Haha So we weren't sure until we saw his name on his suitcase, Robert…and that became the joke of the night. Who was Robert? So after we got ready, Carolyn, Maggie, Mallory and I decided to hitup happy hour in our hostel's bar..WomBar. As we sat and drank our beer, we could see out a window into the lobby and could see everyone came in. We decided to all guess who "Robert" was…if one of us got it right..each of us would have to order that person a drink. Well we hung out at the hostel bar for a while and met some nice people from Ohio, California, and Toronto. We all ordered chips and salsa, but the salsa kind of looked and tasted like sweet and sour sauce, so we didn't really know about that. A few pitchers later, we were ready to head out. Mallory asked the bartender if should could have the small German flag that was behind the bar…he gave it to her and she carried around all night! We decided to go to Augustine's, a beer garden and bar. When we got there we immediately got their HUGE mug of beer and ate some cheese and bread thing that was pretty good. This one table was doing this song and chant thing and if we knew what it was we probably would have joined in. One of the guys we were with went to USC…I told him that USC sucks and that it wasn't very nice to chant "Ride your Tractors"…he didn't seem to care. Haha…after we drank our giant mugs of beer, we went inside because the Carolyn, Maggie and the guys we were with wanted to eat something. We hung out and then sat down with these old Austrian guys that were having a good time. This one guy, with huge black framed glasses kept singing "Heyyy Heyy Babyy Oo Ah…I wanna knooww if you'll be my girl!"…..I joined in and it was a great time! After they left Mallory and I decided to eat some sausage. We knew we were leaving Germany the next day and knew that we HAD to eat German sausage. They serve huge soft pretzels with every meal and Carolyn decided we would probably want them later and put them in her purse haha! On our way home we kept singing Danke Sie, Danke Sie, Danke Sie!! It means "thank you" in German and we like the way it sounds. Mallory met a guy on the street who, after talking to him, found out that she worked with him at Quinton's in Lawrence. Small world! When we got back to the hostel, we went back to the WomBar, but didn't stay long. It was super smoky and really really hot. When we got back to the room…guess who was there? ROBERT!!Hahahaha so right when we walked in..he was sitting on his bead and we yelled, "ROBERT!"…and he goes, "how do you know my name?"…yea so we are slightly creepy and none of us were right on who he was…but we were so excited to finally meet our mystery boy roommate! He was there with his girlfriend, Sarah, J and they were from Australia. They were both really nice and I'm sure Robert's gf was super creeped that we all knew her boyfriend's name, but all well! They were leaving the next day, so we didn't really get to know them.After packing up all of our stuff we all went to bed. Today, we got up and ate the 3.50 Euro all-you-can eat breakfast that they offered and headed to the train station. Although we were only in Munich for a short time, it was a ton of fun and we met some awesome people! I'm writing this on the train right now….it's a lot easier to write my blogs in Word and then copy and paste them onto the internet….that way I'm not wasting time when we actually get to our hostels! When we were on the train, it got delayed because the lines were down. The train was stopped on the tracks for about an hour and because of that we were going to miss our connection in Mannheim. We ended up talking to the guy that was working but he spoke very very little English. It was really tough to figure out where we needed to go to not get into Interlaken really late. Luckily a man was waiting outside our little place on the train and spoke both German and English. We got it all figured out and got on a train in Mannheim for Interlaken. We were really craving sausage and it would be the last time we were in Germany, so when we were stopped, we picked some up…delicious! Now we are going through southern Germany and it is BEAUTIFUL!!! There are mountains and vineyards and houses with orange roofs and old, pretty churches….I can't even explain it. Mallory and I are kind of freaking out, it's so pretty! I just can't wait to get into Switzerland to see the huge mountains. We are both really excited about Interlaken…we have heard such good things! Anyways…goodbye for now! Next time I'll be in Interlaken, Switzerland!

Oh and PS….I forgot to write this in the last blog, and I think it needs to be known….

…..I fell down the steps of the famous Palace of Versailles. Seriously. No worries though…no injuries, but those suckers were slick! J