I can't sleep

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There are no clocks in the room so I haven't a clue what time it is - but I can't sleep. It's still dark outside so i'm going with 4ish am. As i'm laying here restless and trying not to wake up Jeremy I had a brilliant idea that i wanted to journal this trip...googled "write a travel blog" and here i am. I considered journaling the real way but my hand hurts after writing 2 sentences anymore and besides what fun is journaling if i can't share it. Most won't be interested but i know a few who will be so for you and for me I shall write.

Sweet Jo from MTT gave me a ride to the airport yesterday, my flight was delayed by an hour and I stressed because I knew I only had an hour to switch planes in Iceland. I had REALLY big plans to read on the flight - in fact I brought 3 books: The Girl Who Played with Fire, The One Year Bible (of which i'm behind, since April twenty something) and the Five Love Languages - an impulse buy at B&N. Naturally, i picked up The Girl first, got about 20 pages in and slept soundly until the ding of "we are starting our initial descent " in an icelandic accent.

We made up time in the flight and I easily walked to the next gate and boarded the next flight to Frankfurt. Back to The Girl for about 20 minutes, and then out like a light. Woke with about 15 minutes left before landing. So much for catching up on The One Year. Getting the bus to terminal 1 was relatively simple, got to the DB to buy the train ticket to Mannheim and found it was leaving in 10 minutes - perfect. Put my head back in The Girl and after about 15 minutes looked up to see these little foreign neighborhoods and realized I was missing out on the scenery - duh put the book down and look around, you're in germany, at least look at it.

Jeremy was waiting for me when i got there at 2:30, in fact, he had been there since before noon because he thought i said between 12 and 2, when in fact i said between 2 and 3. So he stressfully watched for me as every train from frankfurt came in. I got a little pouty because J wasn't happy "enough" to see me and he was his usual awesome self and gave me a double dose of smoochy i love yous and i got over it. Contrary to what i had just said to him - i was thrilled to be here. We took an hour walk through the main part of town, got a Starbucks and then he left to go to the rink for his afternoon session and i walked for 2 hours.

Some highlights of my first day: non-homeless man peeing in the underground walkway, the one-man-playing-six-instruments contraption, my cute scarf from H&M, fruitless attempts at buying a german/english translation books at 3 book stores(would really come in handy as i know next to nothing, dankashone very much), the nice guy at the mini market who gave me a free bottle of water because i didn't have any euros yet, walked to Luisenpark but found it to be...just a park.

It's not warm here, not cold but not shorts/tshirt weather either. Mannheim is not a tourist town, it's more like a real town where real people live and work. Lots of people ride their bikes everywhere and all the sidewalks have red brick lanes that are for bikes only - watch yourself. Our room is tiny but nice and i love that the windows are huge and open right up with no screens.

J got back around 6:45 and we walked to dinner at an Italian place and shared a bottle of chianti -- in part as a silent toast to Sandi and Andy in memory of my last time in Europe and in my mind it's not a trip to europe if you don't drink Chianti. I got nice and glowy from that and decided that every night we will share a bottle of chianti. Lots of talk about MTT and the direction we want to go with the international hockey stuff. We came back to the hotel and watched the first part of a documentary called Come with Me - about cults and people that got out of them. cree-py.

and I still can't sleep. The window is open and there's lots of street noise but i can't bring myself to close the awesome window.

J's throat is killing him from yelling to the kids and from some grubby bug he probably has picked up. I'm going to the pharmake (it's actually apothake but my intuition told me the word should be pharmake so i'm going with that...) in the morning to find something for him and then we're going to Heidelburg(berg?) for the afternoon.

enough for now.

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Comments

[Joannie]

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Hi Jen- love the blog idea. I'll be following. LU