Well. I am still very very happy. for 3 reasons.
the most recent first: giuseppe had his parents over from italy last night, and a few of his friends who speak italian, so there were 6 of us a the dinner table. delicious dinner - pasta, prawns and muscles cooked by giuseppes mum. although that made me happy, it was the fact that i could understand a large proportion of the converstation, IN ITALIAN, just based on what i know in Spanish. how happy would that make someone feel - to understand a language you´ve never studied!!!!
ok. now, germany, the 2nd reason. cheap flights from santander (1.5 hours from bilbao) means travelling is a must - $55nz dollars to fly to germany (31€) - that is insane.
so we flew into frankfurt, stayed there for 3 nights in a hotel, very nice comfy beds and our own rooms - very different to hostels i´ve been staying in in the past!!! the 1st day we walked around a lot, the river as fannnnnntastic, and the old quater, and just wow, the scenery of all the different leaf colours was breathtaking. i felt like i was truley in europe, especially with bikes lining the pavements, typical european houses everywhere, pomme chips (chips in a cone smothered in tomato sauce and mayonaise), and i even managed to understand basic things because of dutch. crazy - that made me happy like the italian situation also. very happy.
the next day we met with leni, who is a friend of jarons who was an exchange student in the usa but lives in mannheim, so she visited us in frankfurt and we walked around a lot more, even playing frisbee in the huge park in frankfurt which i really really liked, it was fab!!!! remember how i like gardens and walking around in them? i was in heaven here, the trees were just amazing. we didn´t ´go out´ as such, but had a beer and chilled at the hotel (getting a noise complaint along the way from the front desk!).
sunday was a magical day. we went to mannheim for a wee while (1.5 hours away by train), but the highlight of the day was heidelburg, a town with a castle on its hill, and wow, with the setting sun it was really really really ... i´m running out of adjectives to describe how beautiful everything was. everything was just a dream, seriously breathtaking. you need to see the photos to grab a slight understanding of it .. it doesn´t convey the real beauty tho. wow it was cool. had yummmmmy sauerkraut, nürnberg sausages and püree potato and a beer of course, and i was even more in heaven. alllllll the food i had in germany was soooo good. i have definatley put on weight, i ate everything in sight bcause it was soooo good. plus it reminded me of home i guess (marzipan, speculaas etc).
we came home yesterday after a lot of travel - 1.75 hours on bus to airport, 1 hour waiting, 2 hours flying, .5 hours waiting, .25 hours on bus to bus station in santander, 1 hour waiting, 1.5 hours on bus to bilbao, .40 hours on metro back home to Las Arenas. (9 hours all up)
so that was my trip extremely quickly summed up.
unfortunately i have a 10 page essay and presentation due tomorrow on the european monetary system... so i had better start it ......
happy halloween everybody!!! p.s. now the time difference between spain and nz is 12 hours, we put our clocks back the other day - much to all of our surprise - we turned up to find that the train we thought we had missed wasn´t going to leave for some time :)
besos!!!
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