Hamburg? I've Been Here Before... O Wait... That Was Iowa... My Bad!

I got to use my new journal today to start recording my thoughts and whatnot while I'm not at my computer. Hopefully that will make these posts more on point and just better in general. Today started out on a really good note. I went into Florence at 12:10 to meet Veronica for lunch as I was telling you all in my post last night. It had been awhile since I had been to Santa Maria Novella and I almost got lost. This made me kind of late. Of course, she ended up being late as well, so it really wasn't that big of a deal. I had no idea where she lived, so I figured SMN was the easiest place to meet. Turns out she lives by the Duomo and San Marco, which is the bus stop that I got off of every time I venture in to town. How's that for irony?

Anyway. Veronica had chosen a pizza place she wanted to try out, which was fine by me and made the whole afternoon run quite smoothly. I ended up getting a Calabrese pizza -- really couldn't help myself: my family is from Calabria and I kind of felt like the pizza was calling to me.

Two Calabrese pizzas. Score!

So we ate our pizzas and talked for a good forty minutes before we decided to go for a walk so someone else could use the table. Those are all order tickets underneath the glass, by the way. We added our own piece as you'll see in the picture below.

I'm a man of my word.

She had never been to San Miniato or Piazza Michelangelo, so I thought I'd bring her to the best overview of Florence. We walked for another fifteen minutes to get to this awesome place. I had been there earlier in the semester with Pietro and luckily I was able to remember where it was and how to get there. We were already across the river so it really wasn't as far as I had recalled it being. The day was kind of overcast, but it didn't really affect the view much. It is probably one of my favorite places in all of Florence.

Pretty sure Veronica got the better pictures of us, but this is the one from my camera.

I had to meet David back at SMN at 3:00 and she had to get back to study, so I dropped her off at her apartment and booked it back to the train station. We got on the 3:30 train to Pisa and my Spring Break had officially begun. We stopped in Pisa for a few moments to relax, more or less, and then walked to the airport from there. Kenny, Mary, and Holly were already at the terminal waiting for us, so we sat down and just read/wrote while we waited. That was my first opportunity to actually sit down and write in the journal. It was nice to put my thoughts down onto something concrete. Not that I don't love my blog, it's just hard to make it seem real sometimes.

That's about five hours of my day and I wasn't even to Germany yet. Getting on the RyanAir flight, the cramped RyanAir flight (I think Europe has something against tall people, by the way...) we settled in and got ready for our two hour flight to Hamburg-Lubeck. I ended up watching Lord of the Rings The Two Towers on my laptop for most of the flight. After a bumpy landing, we made our way to the bus stop to get on our hour bus ride into Hamburg. I took a small nap on the bus and woke as we were pulling into the station. We stopped to get something to eat at McDonald's before we found the tram that would take us to the girls' hostel. Guess where that was? Right in the middle of the Red Light District of Hamburg. It felt like how I imagine Amsterdam would sound and appear. I think there were at least nine strip clubs within a city block surrounding their hostel. Luckily I didn't have the pleasure (HA! How do you like that pun?!) of staying in that district called "Reeperbahn."

I don't know how Holly snuck out of this picture, but this is before takeoff to Hamburg.

After dropping them off we took off for our hostel called Meininger. This is one of the most legit hostels I've stayed in whilst in Europe. They're playing some modern techno/jazz music in the lounge area as I type this. The tram system here is pretty awesome, I must say. It goes pretty much everywhere really quickly. Although we're rapidly finding out there really isn't much to do in this city. That's ok, though. We're going to sleep here pretty soon, I'm sure, but we're going to leave around noon tomorrow for Berlin! I'm so excited for Berlin and Germany in general. As I do more research I'm finding more and more jazz bars and concerts and whatnot all over Germany. Munich is well known for their jazz festivals and there are two world renown bars in Munich just for that. This has been a dream come true for me.

That's not to say I haven't had any frustrations today, because I really have had quite a few, but the good has far outweighed that bad and it's good to finally be settled in to the first leg our trip. Please pray for us, as always, as we make our way. German is a completely different language than I've ever encountered. I've even caught myself starting to speak Italian to some of them. Kind of embarrassing, really, but I'm sure I'll be doing that in the US when I get back -- at least for a few months.

I know this is a long post, and I swear it's almost done. Just so everyone has some idea what's going on for me (if you've missed a few posts) I'll be in Berlin for two nights, then we move on to Munich for two nights, Vienna for two nights with Doro's parents, then a night in Milan that we will hopefully spend with Pietro and his family.

Woo... that post wore me out. I love you guys. Thanks for reading, as always. 1100 hits is phenomenal and I don't know how I got there, but I'm extremely happy that I have some devoted readers (even if they don't comment all that often :-P).

God bless from Hamburg, Germany! Until next time! Gott segne und gute Nacht!