We're Baaack! -Germany-

Okay so it wasn't exactly a "small" vacation. We did A LOT! It is going to be really hard to try and wrtie "short" stories about everything, but i will try. It was so much fun! I loved having my family here in Germany showing them what is familiar to me. At the same time it was soo weird it was like two worlds were coliding, i would look and there was my whole family at Dirk's Oma's house! It was just weird haha but awesome!

So they all came in from different directions and we all met up at Berlin. We first passed by Leipzig and picked up Ale at the train station, then we picked up my parents at the Berlin airport (they flew in from McAllen) and then a couple of minutes later we got Memo who flew in from Houston.


**Reunited and it feels so gooood!***

So while in Berlin we went and did all the tourist-y stuff of course. The first day everone was so jet-lagged and tired that we just went to eat and hung out at the hotel room and laughed too much! Then the next day was my mom's bday!!


The family in BERLIN!!


Nice graffiti we found just for my mom!


My parents look REALLY happy to be on the metro. Notice the two women on either side don't look too excited haha.

So we went to the city and saw the Brandenburg Gate, Check Point Charlie, the Wall and many other things... They got to ride on a 6 person bike so my mom LOVED that! And then we saw the TV tower, and the world clock. Under the clock there was a big memorial set up for Michael Jackson who had died the day before.

*Sidenote - I was soo shocked! I could'nt beleive it!! I found out about it in German so it was even MORE surreal. The music world has lost a great icon...


Here is the memorial for Michael Jackson. I think that is when I was like oh crap it is REAL! =/


There you can see them riding the weird bike and my mom having the time of her life! hehe


Here they are back from their ride!

Oh yea we also decided we were going to start a band and this is what our album cover will look like:

Haha JK! But it is a cool picture! =)
We ended my mom's bday with dinner at an interesting vegetarian restaurant and a visit to a castle at night. There was a wedding going on at the castle and they were playing Spanish music so that was cool and then there were fireworks!! And that was the end of my mom's bday!


Packed up and ready to leave Berlin and face our new adventures to come! HAHA.

The next day we went to another castle with some of Dirk's relatives. It is in Potsdam and the caslte is called Sans Souci (without worries in French, don't ask my why it's in French... lol) It was HUGE! And very pretty.


A little peice of the caslte... with the darn construction! nice... lol

We walked around in the gardens of the castle for most of the day and when we got to the chapel part of the castle we found that there was a funeral going on. It was very sad, we found out it was a funeral for the man who was in charge of the restoration of the marble of the castle. He died in the AirFrance plane that went down in the atlantic. He would travel a lot to Brazil for his job. This made me sad...


A flower in a fountain set for the funeral...

Then we were off to our next destination: Leipzig!! Where Mom2 is from and where most of Dirk's relatives live.



We didn't do AS much tourist-y stuff here. It was more family time and it was soo MUCH fun! First stop was Oma's house. She is such a CUTE grandma!! She had the table all set up and tons of food for us when we got there.


At Oma's house!

We rented an apartment in Leipzig for my family and Dirk to stay at. That was interesting... and fun. The shower was crazy... but thats a whole story haha. So at Oma's we just at and "chatted" and translated haha. That is until someone brought out the WINE!


After this everyone seemed to understand eachother MUCH better haha.

Within those days we also went downtown Leipzig and Dirk's aunt was our "tour guide" she studied the hsitory to bee able to explain everything to us. It was really nice. We also visited another caslte, a HUGE monument, had a picnic, went on a horse carriage ride through the forest and had dinner at Dirk's relative's gardens. (My FAVORITE part!)


This is the huge monument we climbed to the top! Look how little my family looks at the enterance! haha. Völkerschlachtdenkmal OR ---> Monument of the Battle of the Nations


My dad caught on quickly with the typical drink of the German lol. He had no issue getting used to that part hehe. This is in downtown Leipzig.

I love the German gardens!! I can't wait to have my OWN! We had a BBQ one day at one of the gardens and everyone loved it! Dirk's uncle and aunt kept showing us all the different herbs they had, we tried them ALL! We picked and ate raspberries, currant berries, cherries, and carrots!! The potatoes, apples and other stuff weren't ready to eat yet... We also had mint tea with fresh picked leaves!


Onkel Frank teaching us about herbs as my dad clutches on to his beer haha.


The kiddos and I picking cherries!


Parents = Happy!! --------------------------------Me = Happy! haha Fresh carrots!

Okay so this is getting tooo long, so to make it short -- We also visited Dresden and then Meißen (where they discovered porcelain in Europe) Then to Chemnitz (Dirk's hometown), visited a couple more castles and went on an awesome ferry ride in a huge lake.


Hellooo Memo?? haha Us on the ferry ride.

Germany Chapter ends here - Next up: Austria and Italy adventures!

Tschüss!

Marisol

P.S. I'll try to make the next not AS long! =)