Day One & Two

Hello my darlings,

OK so my time is all messed up because it is now 8:44PM and I don't know whether to use current time or EST.

Anyway, "Yesterday" was one of the most stressful days of my life.  I was literally running in the house to get things done.

One of the best things I want to mention was I got my hard drive restored!!!  This was really affecting my life in so many ways.  I want to thank Tunstall & Tunstall @ http://www.datarecoveryservices.com (613.723.1225)  They honestly did the impossible!  The heads had broken off on in my hard drive and the exact moment my backup failed.  Chances are slim that it would happen both at the same time... but sometimes that's how life is.  Anyway, I can't say enough about them, beautiful to deal with beautiful outcome.  I would probably carry on about them, but I have no AC on my laptop and need to fill in everyone on what else I'm doing, but let me say I am so pleased with the results.

OK so stressful day.  I tried feverishly to get everything done and needed only about 2 more hours to be finally finished, so a few things were left undone just to catch the flight.

The first flight was to Montreal, a little plane but the trip was OK, nothing major to report.  The second flight was the 7 hour-long flight.  Let me try to explain in a way that you might get.  1000 people, all from different cultures (including Quebec)...  each culture on the planet obviously has their own unique scent... Trapped in a hollow tube with piped air for 7 full hours.  No sleep and a poor excuse for a movie screen and you get a disgustingly awful smelling, sweaty tube of foreign sludge that seems to stick to you about 5 hours after you've left.  I don't recommend the flight to anyone.   Not only that when you land at about 4AM, and you see everyone bright and shiny because it is 10AM local time, you will hate the Swiss, just for being.  (I'm joking about that last part, you'll hate them for their scent too!).

OK so the 7 hour flight was supposed to only take 6.5 hours, so we missed the connecting flight.  I ended up sleeping on the marble floor for an hour because I couldn't stay awake any longer.  (Long stressful day + crappy flight = exhausted).

I was a little upset about Switzerland because I have heard that they have some of the best looking women in the world, I'm not sure if the airport is the best place to use for sampling, but let me just say... meh?  Maybe next time I will have to hit up a mountain or something.

So we got a flight about 1.5 hours later.  It was better... German, and served a Camembert Sandwich and Warsteiner luncheon.  :)

Landing in Germany was already a better feeling than Switzerland.  (Maybe because I slept for an hour on a cold marble floor).

Anyway, we landed in Frankfurt, got our luggage (which arrived with us on our flight, way to go airport staff!).   We then hopped on a train to get to Mainz.  Looking out the window as we travelled I noticed some very interesting things about Germany.  One was they all have Crinkle-Cut Rooftops.  Then I saw some butterflies.  I knew they were German because they flapped in a goose-step unison.  (Impressive!)  Something else I noticed was there were people drinking alcohol on the public transit.  Odd.

One of the best things though was the buildings, besides some of them looking very run-down (reminded me of Quebec sort of), some of them were really beautiful!  The Crinkle-Cut thing really works.

Also another cool thing, I could understand a lot of what people were saying to me.  I even responded to a few people (mostly in English because I don't want to sound like an idiot).

Once we finally arrived at the hotel I had a shower and took a two hour nap.  Oh my goodness were both those things heavenly!

I just got back from a walk to the closest "hub" and saw a few things that made me laugh, one was a pizza hut and one was a McDonald's.  Both places smelled the same as they do in Canada.  The oddest part of the walk was seeing people drinking on the street and that all stores sold alcohol.  Including a pharmacy-like store called Ihrplatz, which I'm guessing translates to "Your Place".

Anyway, it started raining pretty hard so that killed the walk.

OK shoot, I'm running out of time to make this a bit more entertaining to read, so I'll just give you a short rundown of tomorrow.

Tomorrow we're taking the Rhine Cruise which is supposed to take two days.  I'm hoping to have power to my laptop sometime tomorrow night so I can give you more details.

Until then Guten Abend!

*Hugs