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Margretten, Holland
William C. Collins' grave at the Netherlands American Memorial- Mo and Me Well, this certainly was a culture shock and an experience Murda and I will never forget for sure. I wanted so badly to drive on the Auto-Bahn, but unfortunately i'm ashamed to admit that i could not drive a stick. Murda was no pro at it either, but she was better than me-so she got to be the designated driver the whole road trip. i felt so bad about this b/c i'm pretty sure this knocked at least a year off the end of her life. We were so stressed!! Reading road signs and figuring out roundabouts and highways when everything's in another language was not fun. Highways don't tell you whether you're going east/west/north/south- just what town you're headed towards. We ended up figuring out the highways no prob (except for when we lost a couple hours by some huge body of water (which i think must have been Lake Constance)) just across the Switzerland/Germany border and Murda hit a curb and had breakdown #1. I was the fearless navigator- trying to read directions from some map website that i'd never used before. This only made the situation worse. We never did figure out how to navigate our directions in
Bern
mo in front of the big church the cities when we got there. We just relied on other people and the grace of god to get to our destinations (aka taxi drivers and other hotel front desks to tell us where ours was!)
It was really cool seeing the countryside in Germany and Switzerland. When you travel, you go to big cities, but i wanted to know what it felt like to go through rural europe as well- stopping in rural areas and asking for directions, talking to rural Swiss people at gas stations, etc. Not to mention all the rolling hills and the beautiful alps off in the distance, and every once in a while seeing a huge castle on the top of a hill on the horizon. And some roads went through the mountains via these really long tunnels. We were limited to the radio of whatever town we were going through, which was also kind of rough. Every once in a while though we caught a good jam that we all knew. Well, let's be realistic- this road trip was between Murda and Me as Mo slept the entire way!! no joke, i don't think she was conscience but for an hour total.
Bern
Downtown shopping We arrived in Bern to some 15 year old kid running our hotel. He couldn't tell us where to park and this triggered Murda breakdown #2. We finally found some underground parking and left our car to get some much needed margharitas and over-priced (and i use this term loosely) "mexican" food at the only place open around our hotel. With not much time, we woke up the next morning and walked around Bern's city center, ate a thai lunch, saw a cool old church, saw the capital, did some shopping, and hit the road. The road trip to Brussels was much smoother and we stopped in Luxembourg for a fantastic French dinner at La Brasserie (which i think translates to the cafe- which is weird because this place was a very cool, nice neighborhood restaurant)(the French countryside wasn't as neat at Swizerland and Germany's though). Luxembourg was a pretty neat, fancy, cool little town too. it was very pretty, but only for our memories- as it was too dark to have any pictures to show. We walked downtown after our dinner- then it was back on the road to get to Brussels.
We got into our hotel
Luxembourg
Boots, Mo, and me at La Brasserie late and went straight to bed. First thing was first in Brussels- we made use of our last day with the car to drive to Margretten, Holland. This is the location of the Netherlands American Memorial Cemetary. Our Great Uncle William Collins is buried here and no one from our family had ever been to see his grave yet. It was a very touching experience and i'm really glad we did this. I could never quite put into words the way i felt that day and what seeing the memorial meant to me as an American. After this we drove to the Brussels airport to drop off the car!!! I think i speak for all of us when i tell you how relieved we were to get rid of the car!!! Whew!!! and we were all in one piece!
The rest of our time in Brussels was spent drinking lots of good belgian beer, whoring mo out for free drinks from other college guys at the pubs (jk mo!! haha- but oh my god Mo gets a lot of attention when we're out. i admit- i'm a little jealous b/c i'm supposed to get all the attention!), and sight
Margretten, Holland
Proud to be an American! Thank you Billy Collins! seeing. We also met John Cleese at the pis bar right by the pis fountain!!! (not really, but this guy very well could have been him. He and Murda hit it off! and we met some cool united pilots- whatup tom! and a really cool old croatian guy who taught us some croatian phrases which i'm sure we were all too drunk to remember the next day). Also, we snuck in and climbed to the top of a hotel we weren't staying in to see the sun deck and get some good aerial shots of Brussels. We went into a really cool church (St. Michael's Cathedral ), the main town square Grand'Place with all its cool architecture, and most importantly- did i mention how good the beer was?! oh yea, and mo was trying to be cute on top of some post and fell right on her ass!!! Everyone ran over thinking she was seriously hurt, but she got up and was ok- so then we could laugh at her of course!
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