Sunday, August 26, 2012

Culture Shock

Dear the lovely 5 people reading this:

I know you have been worried sick about my well being...have no fear. I'm still alive. Just hanging on by a thread though.

Our journey has had a bit of a rocky start. Soon after arriving at the airport we realized our flight to Philly was canceled and we stood there in shock. After a good five minutes of being froze we pulled up our big girl panties and figured we should talk to someone. About 45 minutes later we got our flight rescheduled. We were no longer headed to Philly, but to Charlotte instead.

After we arrived in Charlotte it wasn't long before we were boarding our long flight to Munich.  I may have slept a total of two hours on flight over. Partially due to the fact that the woman beside me was sleeping on my feet that were up in the seat. All in all we landed safely.

I was quickly reminded that my German skills aren't up to par.  After we were all gathered in the airport we had a two hour bus ride to Regensburg. We loaded up our luggage and listened to the short speech of our mustached bus driver.  About 30 minutes in I began to doze off off, but was quickly awaken by the boom that came after we blew a tire.

<quick list of everything that went wrong since that moment so I don't bore you to death>

-Carrying three large suitcases up to the 4th floor
-No AC
-Realizing they don't bag your groceries after they scan them all
-Not knowing what you are ordering at restaurants
-Taking the wrong bus an hour around town
-Bus driver cutting the engine and telling us "bye bye" when it wasn't our stop
-ATM charging me 53 dollars to take money out
-NO INTERNET!!!!!!!!!! (yet)
-Can't call on my cell phone
-Everyone in our group takes subway while Whitney and I walk miles and miles because they shut the subway down
-Getting rained on....getting rained on again.
-Getting excited about Wifi...then it not working
-Finding a spider in my room
-much more.

There have been some perks along the way. We went to Dultfest which is like a mini October fest in Regensburg. They serve you a liter of beer which was actually pretty tasty. Also, unlike our fairs back home where you might find corn dogs and candy apples they have homemade mac n cheese and chocolate covered strawberry skewers. Yum!

After Autumn, Whitney, Kristen, and I stayed up late last night complaining and planning our future traveling arrangements we decided to get up early and walk around town with our heads lifted and a better attitude.  About an hour in to our walk we stumbled upon the Black Bean Coffee shop. My love for coffee and Internet were reunited.  Couldn't be happier!

Today we are taking a boat down the river where we are getting off and going hiking it should be a good day.  That's all I got for now folks.

Hope you enjoy reading as much as I enjoyed writing you!

Much love-- Sumer