Brianne Blogs?

Dear Maren-

I’m so sorry that I didn’t acknowledge your awesome accomplishment of last week. I know how hard it is for you to stay up past midnight. Especially when you have been drinking. You always poop our early at parties.

But, you rocked hard until close to question mark and were super fun the whole time.

In fact, the later it got, the more fun you were.

Thanks so much for staying up late.

And please accept my apologies for not congratulating you sooner!

Love, Brianne

Yes, little tiny baby Kyle graduated from Moore High School last week. Can you believe it?

I must say that graduations are quite boring. And since this one feature the worst valedictorian speech and the history of time, it lived up to the expectation. However, they did get it done in a decent amount of time and then we got to eat at Chili’s so it wasn’t so bad.

Can you believe that I graduated in that very building 9 years ago? And Maren did the same thing 7 years ago? When did we become old ladies? Aren’t you shocked that we weren’t wearing matching moo moo’s with old lady hats and cats in our giant purses? Frankly, I am.

Congrats on graduating, Kyle and I can’t wait for you to start college which is so much more fun than high school!

Instead of telling you about Italy, I’m going to tell you about Kyle’s graduation party last week. Perhaps I’ll wait a really long time and then when you hear about the rest of the Europe trip, it will be a super-fun suprise!

So, last Wednesday, Mom threw a graduation party for Kyle. On the invitations for the party it said Party Starts: 6pm, party Ends: ?. And so, we planned to party hard until question mark.

For some of us, question mark was around midnight (dad and mom) and for others of us, it was closer to 4am (that would be the people I invited-way to go, John and Amber!).

No matter when you pooped out, we had a great time. We made John’s world famous trashcan punch like we used to in college (moment of silence for the glory of those college parties) and people loved it. The best person who loved it was this old guy who goes to church with my parents who had to have had at least 8 glasses of the stuff and was hammered when he left the house. To give you an idea of what’s in it I will list the main ingredients: Vodka, Rum, 99 Bananas and Everclear. That’s right.

 (nothing says good times were had by all better than late night drunken kitchen dancing!)

We all had a really fun time and got to see super-cute pregnant Mindy. How great does she look?

Actual graduation photos to come.

Okay, I hope you are all sitting down for this announcement. I have only read one book so far in the month of May. Yes, that’s right, this girl who averages 4-7 books a month has only read one this month. Perhaps you are thinking that it was a really really long and mentally challenging one and that’s the reason for the delay. And while I appreciate your trying to give me the benefit of the doubt, that is not even sort of the case. The book I read was called “Leven Thumps and the Gateway to Foo” and it’s a children’s book. I read it because it had an awesome title, cover and because it takes place in Oklahoma. That’s right, Oklahoma!

There were some really funny quotes from this book, but I gave it to Maren to read and so I cannot give them to you at this time. Sorry. I can say that this book was great. It’s about the land of Foo where all imagination and dreams live and the quest to find the gateway to it. It was no Harry Potter, but still great and very well written.

While I was gone on my various trips, there were some great random information offerings from our daily calendar that I didn’t want you guys to be without.

1. The longest one-syllable word in the English language is screeched.

2. Queen Victoria eased the discomfort of her menstrual cramps by having her doctor supply her with marijuana.

3. The word cop comes from the English term “constable on patrol”.

4. Tweety used to be a baby bird without feathers until the censors decided he looked naked that way.

5. If a statue of a person on a horse depicts the horse with both front legs in the air, the person died in battle; if the horse has on front leg in the air, the person died as a result of wounds recieved in battle; if the horse has all four legs on the ground, the person died of natural causes.

While I think these are all interesting, the last one was particularly mind-boggling. Who knew there was a system/code for the horses in statues? Good information to have. And also good information with which to wow the people you are looking at statues with.

My hearty apologies for the long blog absence. I don’t have a great excuse, I just didn’t want to blog while I was in Oklahoma or in the two days since my return. What can you do?

So, there is still so much to tell you about my trips and the many days between. I’ll try to get on it and get it over with so that I’m not back blogging for months on end. I really hate it when people do that.

When last we talked about the Europe trip, Zak and I were in Germany. After spending the night in Munich, we hit the road for a pretty ambitious day. The plan was to go to the town of Fussen, Germany to see the castle on which Walt Disney based the castle at DisneyLand, then drive through Austria while seeing a Crystal Theme Park and then onto Verona, Italy. Yes, three countries in one day.

Our trip started out in quite a funny fashion. We entered our destination of Fussen, Germany into our navigation system, Gert and she took us on quite the trip. Alas, she did not take us to the town of Fussen but to a street named Fussen at least 50 miles away from our intended destination. So, instead of a majestic castle, we got this field and home in a small German town. Thanks, Gert. We could have been upset about this crappy detour, but we found the whole thing quite funny. We discovered about half way there that we weren’t headed in the right direction, but decided to see where Gert wanted us to go and loved where we ended up.

After that odd trip, we headed for Austria and the Swarovski Crystal Theme Park. Yes, I said crystal theme park. There are really no words for how strange this place was. I think the best word for it is “trippy”. It was so strange and yet so wonderful that it’s too hard to describe. Needless to say, we loved it!

 (this was a crystal dome and when looking at this picture, it makes me feel like Zak and I are trapped behind the glass and it will be someones mission to rescue us  from this evil spell we are under. Isn’t that what you thought when you looked at it?)

After the theme park, we headed to the capital of Austria, Innsbruck. How beautiful was this city? It has a center area that is really really old and they don’t allow cars there. It’s all pedestrian along the winding cobbled streets. We loved this place. And, to add breathtaking natrual views to the architectural beauty, it’s nestled at the foot of the Alps.

 (the golden roof behind us is from the 1st century and is in the middle of the all pedestrian old town)

After our yummy lunch in Austria, we headed for Italy. Our two days in Italy are to follow soon.

Let me take a moment to tell you about our roadtrip to the great state of Oklahoma. I worked Friday night at Ezra’s and Maren and Jeff picked me up at 7:00am to hit the road. I’d say I started out pretty good. If not 100% on my game, then at least in the vicinity of on my game.

Sadly, this did not last. As the hours passed and the miles increased between myself and my bed, my mental status took a southward plunge. I found myself obsessed with thinking of celebrity names that started with the letter N. I also made the mistake of drinking 1.5 liters of Mountain Dew in about 20 minutes. So, on top of incredibly tired I was jittery. Good times.

As the time went on, I started to behave like a child. I started asking permission to do everything and Maren had to invent a game to keep me entertained in the car. She told me to look for deer because she kept seeing them. Strangely enough, I didn’t seen any deer at all for 30 minutes even though I looked really hard. Then, right after I gave up and stopped looking cuz I was mad, Maren sees one. Sounds fishy, no? I think so, too.

Anyway, after 30 hours awake and a day on the road, I finally got pooped out around St. Louis and had to take a laying down rest. Luckily, Jeff and Maren took pity on what they were calling “poor little Brianne in the back” and stopped for the night.

Needless to say, I was feeling much better the next day. Although I did continue to ask for permission for some reason. Luckily, that has now completely faded and I’m back to doing exactly what I want to do when I want to do it.

And for those of you who miss Oklahoma and are wondering, we’ve already been to Ted’s and have been to Sonic twice. And yes, both rocked!

Reminder to the readers who might need to make a call for this event: Zak’s 27th birthday is the 21st.

Sorry for the delay in blogs. I lost some brain power during my time without sleep for the roadtrip to Oklahoma and forgot to blog.

Day five, Zak and I took a morning train from Amsterdam to Duesseldorf, Germany. Why did we do this? Because this was the only city in Germany that had an automatic car available for renting that would let us return it in Switzerland. Or so we thought. We arrive at the rental car place, give him our papers, sign some stuff and get in the car only to notice that it’s not a car but a mini van and that it’s not an automatic but a standard. When we explained to the guy that we reserved an automatic he said “but I don’t have any automatics”. Yes, but we reserved one and it said it was available here and you had a month to get the car you said you had for us. “This is not my problem” was the response. (Remember this phrase as it comes up later in our trip) So, we got in the car and it took Zak 4 tries to pull out of the street without stalling.

I have never driven a standard and Zak learned about 10 years ago but hasn’t driven one since. Take a moment to imagine how crappy a situation this put us in and you will have accurately imagined our morning with this car. So, we took Villem (that ’s what we named our mini van) to a parking lot and Zak practiced driving while I tried to crack the code on the built-in navigation system which we named Gert.

After that less than thrilling adventure, Gert led us successfully on our way. After we got on the highway, our stress level declined greatly and we were able to enjoy just how lovely the German countryside is. Plus, we were on the Autobahn and were going 140km per hour which is over 80 mph and it was awesome!

That afternoon, we made one fatal mistake. We got off the higway. People who don’t know how to drive standards should aviod the lower gears at all costs. If that means you don’t eat between 7am and 7pm, so be it. My tip to you. However, we didn’t know about this piece of wisdom, so we stopped at a gas station/Burger King and stalled 3 times on the way to the parking lot. It was at this gas station/Burger King (man alive do the Germans love the BK. We saw no McDonalds and there was a BK every 15 feet of highway. For serious) that we learned that Zak’s Bank of America card had been shut off.

Because we couldn’t call the 800 number on the back of the card because of our Europe phone issue, we had to track down a collect Europe BOA number and call that. What we learned was that Zak’s account information had been “compromised” and they had shut down the account without notifying him in any way. When Zak explained that we were in Europe and needed money, they said they would stay on the phone with him while he found an ATM, turn on the card for the two minutes they could verify it was him using it and then turn it back off and he couldn’t use it again. What?! Zak was so mad. He kept saying to the guy on the phone “this is absurd, I’m in Europe and need money”. It was quite the party at this rest stop.

So, after we spent some time dealing with this, we tried to leave. Tried being the operative word. Zak pulled out of the parking spot and then we needed to reverse. Easy enough, right? Sadly, no. Each time Zak tried to reverse, we got closer and closer to the curb in front of us until we were on the curb in front of us. Okay, not such a huge issue, right? Except that the curb in this sad little tale was on the top of a hill and if we went forward another 18 inches, our car would have plummeted down this hill and landed us on the highway. Not good.

So, I’m a little nervous and Zak is mad and we can’t move backwards in our car. At this point, a man in a white car pulls up thinking we are broken down. He gets out of the car and comes over and has to show Zak how to put the car into reverse. Aparently he wasn’t in reverse the whole time and that’s why we weren’t moving backwards. Makes sense to me. Problem solved, right? Nope. Even with the car in reverse, Zak couldn’t get it to get off the curb. So, we both had to get out of the car and push our giant minivan off the curb and back into the parking lot so we could leave. Alas, how I wish we had taken pictures of this spectacular moment of our trip. Even then we had the sense of humor to know how funny it was.

And back on the highway! So, we kept driving that day and ended up in Munich in the afternoon. We loved Munich. It was so much prettier than we expected. The hostel was great. It had a bar downstairs with $2 beers during happy hour and an elevator.

The guy at the desk recommended a restaurant for us for dinner. It was this local brewery and it was fantastic. We had some great German food and really great German beer and it was so cheap. Good rec, front desk guy. We had the best potato pancakes there.

The odd thing about our visit to Munich is that on the way to our hostel, we passed these to huge monuments. One was like in mini Arc de Triomphe and the other was this giant dome thing with a horse. So, we asked the girl at the desk what the monuments were for and how to walk to them and she said, ” I do not know these monuments”. So, we decided she was dumb and asked the guy after dinner and he didn’t know what we were talking about. Nor did we see them on our walk around that night or on the way out of town. We called this our bermuda triangle moment from Munich. We both saw them, were pretty sure they existed but couldn’t find them again and no one knew what we were talking about when we described them…odd.

In a few short hours when I am done with my shift at Ezra’s, Maren and Jeff and I are headed off to the great state of Oklahoma for Kyle’s high school graduation.

 Since I was tired of planning trips due to the European Conquest, Maren was completely in charge of this one. I don’t know how far we are driving, what route we are taking or when exactly we are coming home. For someone who is usually in charge of things like this and prefers it that way, I must say that it’s finally starting to bug me that I don’t know these things nor did I have any say in them. Life is so hard when you like to be in charge…

In unrelated news, as I have been working on my final project for my class this week, I have had to type this name multiple times: Chiankornwanich. You try typing that in a hurry. I assure you, it was challenging. Sadly, Mr. Chiankornwanich wrote a pretty good research paper that I used more than once in my paper and thus I had to type his name way more than any person not related to him should have to.

Also, I’m still not done telling you about my trip. We still have Germany, Italy and Switzerland to cover which was the last 5 days of the trip. But instead of making it 5 separate blogs, I’m going to try to condense it down to 3 for your sake and my own.

Spoiler alert: in upcoming blogs about my trip you will hear about

1. camp swiss

2. wine and beer

3. a lady named paola

4. how we got lost in verona for 4 hours

5. the problems with our car

6. the hours and hours of train travel

7. the maze that is the zurich airport

8. the schizophrenic guy we sat next to

I know, with these and other stories in your future, you won’t be able to sleep from the anticipation of it all. (Is it just me or does it seem like I am advertising for my own blog? Certainly not what I meant to be doing. It was meant to be more like a “scenes from the next” type scenario that they give you at the end of an episode to tell you what’s happening the next week.)

So, I once again leave my tiny island home to embark on another trip. It’s all part of a month where I spend only 12 days in NYC and the rest out and about.

Confession: I’m leaving for Oklahoma today but I still haven’t unpacked the clothes that I wore on my Europe trip. Not only is the bag still packed, I haven’t even unzipped it. Yes, I know, it’s bad!

Finally, I’d like to say that I do know how scattered and random this particular blog post was and promise to be more coherent in the future. I seem to be very disoriented today. When I woke up to pee during the day yesterday, I turned off my alarm like I was going to get ready for the day even though I’d only been asleep for 2 hours and had a good 7 before I needed to be at work. Then when my alarm went off later, I got up thinking that I needed to take a shower when I had taken one before bed. Then when I was talking to Ezra’s sister last night she kept telling me she lived in house 7 and I kept telling her that she didn’t. And then later I realized that she does live in apartment #7 and I am a jackass. Is it possible to feel jetlagged 4 days after your flight instead of right after it? Something to ponder at the end of this maddening blog…good day.

Day four we took a train to Amsterdam, Netherlands. On the train we decided to take these pictures of us enjoying the lovely scenery for your viewing pleasure (note that the actor isn’t doing such a good job of acting like he’s not on camera-I’m just saying!).

During these pictures from Amsterdam I am going to tell you the story of our crazy day here involving cars, the American government and documents….interested? 

One theme of our trip from this point on was that on top of seeing all the regular sights in each city, we spent a lot of time dealing with various problems. In Amsterdam, Zak realized that he had left his International driver’s license on the plane and we needed it for him to be able to drive the rental car which we were picking up the next day. And so, after visiting the Van Gogh musuem, we headed over to the AAA of Amsterdam, also known as the ANWB. At this magical place, the woman told Zak that in order to get a new international drivers license, he had to be issued a Netherlands drivers license which she could only do with a document from the american government saying that he was allowed to drive internationally. Zak then said in a confused voice, ” Do you mean that I need the document I lost in order to get back the document I lost?” And this gem of an agency, the woman calmly replied, “Yes”. Uh….What!?

This city was absolutely beautiful. All the canals and the beautiful buildings were amazing.

Story continued: So, then we had to go to the American Consolate to try to get this document. When we got there, we were not let into the gate but were spoken to through the intercom system where we were told that the American Consulate can’t help an American with problems they have while travelling and good day to us. Again…Uh, What!?

That afternoon, we took a boat tour of the canals and took so many pictures that if you saw them all, you’d feel like you lived every moment of the tour with us. We loved Amsterdam. It reminded me so much of New York. I guess it makes sense that New York used to be called New Amsterdam. It was like New York but with boats and canals. Who could ask for anything more?

So, then we decided to call Maren to have her call AAA in America to see if they could send us a new copy. (Our cell phones wouldn’t call any European numbers nor any american numbers that weren’t pre-programmed into our phones. Keep this in mind as it comes up many times in the problems we encounter later in the trip). AAA said that they couldn’t help us either. So, in a last, desperate attempt, we headed back to the oh so helpful ANWB and when Zak explained it all to the woman at the desk she nicely replied with a shrug, ” I guess your friend drives” and moved on with her day.

When we were at our hostel, we asked the guy at the desk if we should take a boat tour and his response was, “Do you have canals?” and then he walked away. Aparently it was a stupid question. And once we got on the boat, we knew why.

Even with the fiasco of trying to get Zak his drivers license, we still loved Amsterdam. It was absolutey fantastic. And not just pretty in some parts, even the poorer parts were beautiful. I was so beautiful that it was also not tainted by my shoetastrophe. I bought new shoes for the trip and wore them all over NYC for the few weeks before our trip just to make sure they wouldn’t hurt my feet. Check. Sadly, after walking for 12 hours a day non-stop the first 3 days of our trip, these shoes tried to eat my feet. They gave me four blisters and my feet hurt like hell. Then, to add insult to injury, when I put on my other pair of shoes, I noticed they had a hole in the sole and let water in anytime I stepped onto the wet streets. So, we had to add a trip to a shoestore to our itinerary for the day. Good riddance evil foot eating shoes!