It seems like the cold and flu season as finally caught up with us--or maybe we just caught up with it. Last night the thin walls of our hostel in Berlin echoed with the sick hacking of Derek, my roomates, and other people in other rooms and on other floors. Everyone on the street and in the stores is riding themselves of phelm, and nooooo one is covering their noses or mouths. Derek just coughed. So did the girl beside me. It's only a matter of time before I succumb too..... Ahh! Well, Nelly Furtado was pretty fun. She puts on a big show, and it's kind of fun to think that someone who once walked the same halls as me, had the same teachers and musical training (Sandy King, haha) as me, and sat in ... read more

Well, today is the last day of Carnivale and the last day before Lent. Ellen and Phoebe are going to give up refined sugar. I'm not. Haha, but I can still enjoy the carnivale partying! Last night was a bit tame, but BOY was last night fun! I don't really know how to describe the joy that is Maastricht Carnivale, particularly when coupled with the amazing Phoebe Friesen and assorted international friends, but I'll describe a few adventures and hopefully give you a small glimps into the past 48 hours. So, after sleeping in till 1pm after our marathon day of travel (sooo nice. Just like the good ol days of spending endless nights at Phoebe's house!) we got up, made some pancakes, borrowed 4 bikes from various friends, and set off--dutch style--into town to get ... read more

Hmmmm... So, you may notice that I'm still in Prague, and NOT in Holland, I like I was supposed to be around this time. Basically, the Eurail and online train schedules were COMPLETELY wrong, and the train we were planning to take to start off our 4 train day didn't exist at all. Nothing in that hour, nothing from that station. Lovely. To make matters worse, we were carrying around huge grocery bags because we had stocked up on cheap supplies here and didn't think we'd be doing so much walking. Yah, that wasn't a good plan. After it was all said and done, we'd gone to two train stations and two separate hostels, but the end result is that we're in a new hostel for tonight in Prague, and we'll be leaving early early tomorrow ... read more

As my dad so aptly pointed out, I finally have free access to internet and I haven't used it at all to post updates. I'm not sure why this is, because I can assure you I've been spending ample time online. I guess I've just been enjoying the freedom of random surfing too much to actually buckle down and write a proper entry. Also, I'm not really sure what to say. Prague is quite beautiful and we've been having a good time here, but we haven't really been doing anything that particularly warrents a retelling of, I suppose. On our first full day here Derek and I stopped in at a bookstore which had a great English language selection at the best prices we've seen yet and I found a book which had guided walking tours ... read more

Sigh. I was all ready to come online today and positively gush about the wonderful city of Vienna and Austria in general, particularly how wonderful the people we've met have been, and then an incident occured which considerably soured my mood. After getting up early to pack up and check out of our hostel (we're leaving for Prague today), I headed to the local grocery store, Billa, to buy some breakfast while Derek went to the bookstore. I picked out a yogurt, a coffee/yogurt drink, and a seriously delicious looking apple strudel. I was particularly excited about the strudel because Maria lists it as "one of her favourite things," so I wanted to have some before I left Austria. Well, it was not to be. At the checkout, the woman ran my things through, I paid, ... read more