A traditional German guesthouse

Yachts line up for the big show

Fireworks on the Rhein (and in the rain!)

Thousands of people gather in a tent to celebrate--you guessed it--BEER at Oktoberfest

Jenna enjoying attention from a bunch of young Swiss men

Sam enjoying brew (by the liter!) with some other joyful inebriates

A happy image of our table late into the night

Tales from the Land of Bad Teeth

No offense if you’re from London or have bad teeth! It’s just such a cliché and right when we got out of the London airport and were on the train to central London we encountered a woman with horrible teeth. I said to Sam then and there, “I just thought of the title for our next blog posting…”

London was great; we were there Thursday through Monday over Labor Day weekend which was long enough to experience the full-range of activities—from early-morning coffee at Starbucks to late-night drinks in downtown London and all the touristy things in-between—but yet still not long enough to see and do all we wanted to. We did a little shopping (that is “a little” according to me but probably “too much” according to Sam), ate and drank at some wonderful restaurants and pubs, and saw as much as we could each day before falling into our (rather hard and lumpy but somehow still surprisingly comfortable) bed in our (rather small but just big enough) room at our (interesting-to-say-the-least but also charming and excellently-located and priced) hotel exhausted.

We viewed the city by land (on foot and on the tour bus), by air (via our ride on the London Eye), and by water (a short cruise down the Thames River), and believe me when I tell you that there was a lot to see. Some of the highlights included: Exploring the Buckingham, Kensington, and London Tower Palaces, walking through and enjoying the monuments and beautiful, amazingly perfect weather in Hyde, Kensington, and Whatever Parks, visiting Madam Toussad’s Wax Museum, wandering around in awe in Westminster Abbey and St Paul’s Cathedral, and spending hours walking around the city admiring architecture including Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament and several bridges crossing the Thames such as the famous London Bridge which was not, for your information, falling down. We went to the Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park which for centuries has been a place for individuals to come and express their political, religious, and social concerns and beliefs to others and listened in on some of today’s tirades. We also got dinner reservations for an exclusive underground jazz club where we enjoyed a decent meal in an unforgettable atmosphere complete with impeccable table-side service and a three-piece live jazz combo playing fifteen feet from our table. It was a great city, very alive and vibrant, and the spirit of the people did not seem to be at all daunted by the recent terrorist attacks there. I should mention that we, along with a myriad of other tourists and locals, rode “the tube” and double-decker busses all weekend without incident or feelings of fear. It may have been the semi-euphoric state I was in due to my long-over due indulgence of Starbucks, but I found myself enchanted with the city almost immediately. Sam agrees, though, and has said that it may be his new favorite trip (an honor previously held by our journey to Florence last fall) so it seems London certainly has a lot to offer.

The one downside to the city is that it is an outrageously expensive place to visit (think $20-$30 per person admission fees to attractions and over $10 for two cups o’ jo—ok, ok they were giganto triple-shot mochas with extra syrup!). There was one activity, however, that was not necessarily suggested in any of the tourist info guides that I really enjoyed and that was fortunately cost-free: people-watching. As if it wasn’t interesting enough to see and listen to people of all different ethnicities and the charming accents of the Londoners themselves, the fashion on the streets was amazing! In the past two years or so I have become much more interested in and cognizant of current fashion; living in Germany hasn’t been very conducive to satisfying my fetish because outside the major cities (and even within) people do not seem very concerned with what they wear and styles sometimes lag a few years behind what’s popular in the rest of Europe and the United States. Right off the bat, though, I noticed that the women of London are serious about fashion and I really enjoyed the opportunity to appreciate that. Sam most likely got sick of me saying, “Oh look at those cute shoes!” but he was a remarkably good sport about it. (Love you, baby!)

So if London was so amazing, where are the photos, right? Well I am very, very sad to say that we experienced a little glitch shortly after we downloaded the London photos and have temporarily lost all the pics we had stored on our computer up to that point. (No, we didn’t back up!) I say temporarily because, even though we have no idea if we’ll ever be able to recover them, we have to hope. Not only were there hundreds of pictures from all we’ve seen and done over here in Europe as well as our trips home, but there were also extremely meaningful pictures for Sam from his time in Iraq. These photos, which served as a sort of diary for him and contained countless memories, were also lost. So wish us luck in the recovery process!

The weekend following our London trip we stayed around home but did take a trip down the Rhien River for the annual "Rhien Aflame" cruise. We signed up for the trip through one of the Army’s clubs (the USO) instead of doing it on our own, which turned out to be a huge mistake. I won’t get into the details but I will say that it was hands-down the trip from hell. Thank god it only lasted a few hours! We did try to have fun and also got some pics to start rebuilding our collection, though, so I guess some good came out of it.

On September 24th we headed down to Munich to experience Oktoberfest, which Germany is of course famous for. Each year in September (and for only one week in Ocotber) there are huge tents set up (along with food stands, fair rides, carnival games, etc) at the Munich fairgrounds. Each huge tent is sponsored by a different brand of beer and exists for the sole purpose of selling that beer to people by the liter. You wait for hours to get into a tent and once inside you are thrust into a crazy atmoshere where you meet people of all ages and from all over the world who are happy to be there celebrating the wonderfulness of beer. (And can ya really blame 'em?) Many of the Germans dress in the traditional liederhosen and all the "beer wenches" wear the traditional Bavarian dresses as well, which was really neat to see. It may all sound silly (and it did get pretty silly as the evening wore on) but over six million people attend Oktoberfest each year so it's actually a pretty big deal! Definately a part of the German culture that I was glad to experience and will never forget.

This past weekend we stayed home to recover; we had a friend over on Friday and stopped by a little fair in our town (which happened to be conveniently located just a few meters from our house). It was a pretty laid back weekend, and this is a short week before the upcoming four-day weekend which we will use to tour Rome. I am so excited!

As for our day-to-day life, although we’re all done studying and are now back into “travel mode” we are still working hard. I am finished with the Education Center and am once again wearing green full time—that is, working for my reserve unit—and Sam is still slaving away (with a positive attitude of course) at the clinic. I just finished up my volunteer hours at the physical therapy clinic and am trying to work in some time to make a dent in two correspondence classes I am enrolled in. So all that keeps us busy, not to mention the fact that we’ve started up the good ol' marathon training again and are working on our grad school packets whenever we get a spare minute……and so goes our whirlwind life! As always we'd love to hear about yours so please do keep in touch. Take care and stay safe!

Lots o’ love and happiness,
Jenna & Sam

PS—Oh, before I forget, I should probably mention that I had a little fiasco with my hair…let’s just say that I had a really, really, REALLY bad highlighting experience and as a result had no choice but to go either white-blonde or really dark, so I took a chance and went dark. It’s really strange after being blonde my whole life but Sam says it looks pretty good. I’m not sure how long I’ll keep it dark; you'll be able to see in the the Rome pictures on our next posting so let me know what you think!