Blogs from Aachen, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, Europe - page 3

I will start telling about yesterday. There is a lot so be prepared to read. Our plane arrived in Frankfurt around 8 o'clock in the morning. The jet lag was awful! I had only slept about 2 hours on the plane so by the time I arrived in Aachen I had been awake 29 hours with only one 2 hour nap. Yea, I think it's pretty safe to say that I was tired. Getting off the plane was exciting. It was the first that I actually experienced of Germany first hand. Getting onto the train was... not so easy. The trains work differently in Europe than they do in America. The do not wait. If you don't have all of your baggage and all of your butt on that train in the three minutes that it ... read more

The following entry was written in seat 42 J of a United Airlines Boeing 747. There are only a few more hours. The plane ride is about halfway through. Joe is on my right and Bailey on my left. Today was an intense mixture of emotions. Wake-up was the usual time and the first event for the morning was a visit to Arlington cemetary. It's odd to think that I was totally uneffected by the capitol building, the Jeffereson memorial, even the White House. And really, Arlington itself was not what provoked emotion, but only the number of headstones. I had known before that Arlington was a very large place, but looking about on every side of you and seeing nothing but death represented by white grave markers and loving epitaphs...That gives one a feeling of ... read more

Leeds - Aachen - Białystok So we have a 12th anniversary and Orthodox Easter to celebrate. The idea: visit Kasia’s folks and have a relaxing dip in the thermal baths of Aachen on the way. How can we do it in face of the high price of rail travel? Well, we got to Aachen for about £75 which is not too bad. Then a “Spar Night” from German Railways got us the overnight sleeper to Warsaw at a reduced price. From Leeds to Brussels we booked through with Eurostar. That ticket includes any Belgian destination, and that means the German border, if you are prepared to go on a regional express, train wait an hour in Verviers (grab some food there) and then chug down the hill on a local train. So for £75, that ... read more

DEUTSCHE VERSION WEITER UNTEN / GERMAN FURTHER DOWN Hard to believe but true, more than one year has passed since I came to Rurberg. Tomorrow I will be saying goodbye to what's been my home for the past 14 months...feels odd. Not sad, not happy....oh wait, actually, yes, sad because it IS a little paradise and I've made some dear friends, and happy because I am going back to what I love most: Traveling, exploring, discovering...aaah, feels good - this freedom! The car is chock-a-block full, packed up to the roof with all kinds of stuff that I might need during the next 4 months. I'll be cruising around Europe for a while in that big comfy car and once I get rid of half the gear (which I am going to put into storage ... read more

The last weekend of August Kate and I spent the weekend in Aachen, Germany attending some of the World Equestrian Games. The two-weeklong games are held every four years in a different country. In 2010 the games will be held in Kentucky. I would advise anyone thinking of attending that they start seeing about tickets. We bought our tickets in late January, seven months before the games, and all the seating for the finals were sold out. The World Equestrian Games are the Olympics of the equestrian world. What was interesting is that the games consisted a good number of events that we have never seen at any other equestrian event. Vaulting, team dressage with wagon, an endurance competition, and a carriage competition that consist of driving wagon and a team of horses through an obstacle ... read more