Okay - about 4 or 5 days until I leave for Europe and I'm freaking out!
I still have decisions to make about when we will be where and consider making hotel reservations for those places. I'm trying to figure out the Eurail pass and the fact that you need to make reservations to use the dang thing. What good is a pass that can take you anywhere on any train if you first have to make sure you have a reservation (paid for in addition to the pass) to get on the train? It makes no sense to me. Apparently on a lot of the non-high speed trains you don't need a reservation. High speed gets you there quicker there and gives you more sight-seeing time. *sigh*
So I'm kind of a stress ball.
On top of it trying to figure out a sermon and do things around the parish, and my house is a complete pit/disaster zone right now. I need to clean, do laundry, and pack. Oh yeah, and figure out who is taking care of the fur-balls while I'm gone (that's one of the hard parts about leaving, worrying about them - I'm pretty attached to them after 12 years).
My sister who is a scientist is pressuring me for trip details (since I'm taking my nephew with me), she's such the planner. Me with my social science background, my ENFP personality and ADD, I am a little more go with the flow. But also have been getting into that place where I am hyper-focused and information-gathering. I seem to need to understand the whole to understand the parts, so in planning something like this I end up knowing much more than I probably needed as I try to figure out what countries/cities to visit and how the trains works and etc. The result is that right now I'm in information overload. :P
And that makes me want to shut down. Take a break. Chill. I did a bit of that last night. But I can't do that too much. Too much to do.
I've got French and German lessons downloaded to my Ipod, so have been trying to multi-task and listen to those some.
At least the Eurail passes arrived, and my new carry-on convertible suitcase/backpack thingy arrived from Rick Steve's, as well as a couple other things I purchased. My extra camera battery and memory cards should arrive today from Amazon.
Last week I tried to call who I think might be distant relatives in Germany. I discovered it's hard to contact people in Germany when you don't know German! (Hence the German language ipod thing) Two people hung up on me, wouldn't even give me a chance after I asked if they spoke English and they said no. A third actually hung up on me too, but by then I'd gone on Babel Fish and tried to translate something that would make sense into German. I know I butchered it horribly, but I think I was able to convey the basic idea of why I was calling. It sounded from her tone of voice that I might be right, there could be a connection. The problem was that I couldn't understand what she was trying to say back. Once we get there, maybe I can find a hotel clerk or something who is willing to play translator for me. It'd be a shame to come that far and not try to meet.
My sister wrote and said, you're going to be close to Spain for the wedding, maybe you should do Spain instead of Germany, going to some small town and where neither of you know the language. Well Germany is closer to Paris and I think will be more beautiful than Barcelona. I don't see a good reason to go over to Spain, other than (and I was tempted) to get another country stamped in my passport and be able to say I've been there. We could maybe take a day trip over there just before or after the wedding. But if push comes to shove, I still want to go see some things in Germany, like the town my ancestor lived in, the Rhine and some of the castles, and Dachau Concentration Camp over Spain. It's just trying to figure out the route that has me all tangled up. Go across into Italy and then north, or go at a diagonal through Switzerland. The problem is I'd like to both see Italy and see the Alps.
Decisions, Decisions. Well, I need to run!
No comments:
Post a Comment