Relaxing in Germany

Our morning departure for Germany started VERY rocky. Apparently Ryan thought it was a good idea to turn the alarm off then go back to sleep.


An hour and fifteen minutes after our alarm was SUPPOSE to wake us up I wake in a panic! The problem with waking up so late was that we still needed to pack our bags....get to the train station to take an hour long train to take us to Paris city center, THEN to walk to the bus station and hop on our bus taking us to Frankfurt, Germany at 10 am. We were fortunate that our host drove us to the train station saving us some precious time.... we apparently arrived at the train station at the right time because our train was there in just 3 minutes (the next train was another 17 minute wait). After our ride we found our bus departure area quickly and we even had 20 minutes to spare! It was definitely a close call.... but since we didn't have time we couldn't pick up some food for our 8 hour bus ride.... this was unfortunate since we only had a little bag of crackers to last us.

About 3 1/2 hours into the bus ride we made a 45 minute stop at this random bus station so the driver could have his required break. This bus station seemed like it was in the middle of nowhere.... there weren't ANY restaurants or grocery stores anywhere near by so we had to try to get something from the vending machines. We found that the vending machines only accepted coins... and I only had 3 euros worth of coins. We asked the bus box office people if they could break a bill for coins but apparently they didn't have cash in their office. We were able to afford a ham sandwich from the machine which we  split between the two of us to last the next 4 hours.  Needless to say, Ryan has lost his phone privileges.

We made it to Frankfurt where we met Marcel (Ryan's Sister's boyfriend) and we went to one of his coworker's house for a BBQ. We had our first beer in Germany!... then another. The BBQ was good and the Marcel's co-workers were friendly so it was a nice ending to a long day.

The next day and a half Ryan and I just relaxed in Marcel's apartment while he worked... we were exhausted from moving around so much and needed some Netflix and chill time... we are now addicted to the show The Blacklist!

We traveled with Marcel to his parents house near Munster, Germany... a little farm town called Nottuln. His parent's house is close to Dortmund so naturally Ryan HAD to go to a soccer game.

Train ride pre-game drink

Soccer game group photo!

Standing only seats for the hardcore fans.  Stadium had 81,400 people!

The soccer game was actually really fun... even getting packed into the subway like sardines with thousands of fans singing futbol songs at the top of their lungs was fun! It was definitely an unforgettable experience and I am glad we went.

The next day we took a short 23 km bike ride around the farm lands that surround Marcel's place.

Monastery Area

Bike ride

Cows

Quick stop for beer and pie!

Seriously the most beautiful bike ride to date

We stopped at this little milk farm that sells milk via a vending machine ALL DAY!

Milk machine

Eating pork sausage thing from vending machine

Ryan noticed a guy pull up and get out of his car to check out this wooden box thing... the guy apparently opened it up but then closed it and drove off. We were curious so we checked it out and noticed inside the wood had words carved through it. We had no idea what it meant so we closed it .... but we were still curious so Marcel's mom asked these two ladies working on the farm about it... it was a GEOCACHE!!! Of course I was super excited to have found my first geocache abroad.

Had to use 2 nails to guide a hollow egg down to the bottom of the maze

I was so happy

So our first few days in Germany have been relaxing and fun! We want to check out Munich for Oktoberfest but we are sadly coming to the realization that it is extremely expensive to get a place to stay down there. Sorry for the long post... my blogging is slacking =P.