Well the time has come to settle down! At least for 3 or so months... I'm flying to Thailand tonight! James and I have spent the last 10 days exploring a few places in southern Germany. We met up in Nuremberg and stayed with his family friends for 3 nights. From there we took a train to a small town called Fuessen – it's only 1 km away from the Austrian border and nestled cozily in the alps. After spending a wonderful few days drinking delicious Germany beer and eating rich German food, we journeyed to Frankfurt. I say 'journeyed' because it ended up being a tiring 9-hour affair involving 6 different trains and 1 bus. It could have been simple and under 5 hours, but we were trying to save money with cheap trains. At one point we got on the wrong train and had to pay 25 Euro (around $40 Canadian) to get off at the next stop! Expensive 15 minutes! We've been taking it really easy in Frankfurt. Neither of us are very interested in seeing the city (largely preferring German towns) and so we've found some good coffee spots and have been catching up with some work. We also visited a girl (Alex) who I couch-surfed with in London last month (she was home in Germany to have her wisdom teeth removed).
After Estonia and Latvia, Germany has been such a breath of fresh air for me! People here are so much friendlier and happy to be walking around during the day instead of just popping over to the store to pick up some vodka (though, the climate has a lot to do with this). All of the small towns are simply gorgeous! In Fuessen, it didn't matter where I pointed the camera, every shot was like a postcard! You can see the photos by following the links I post at the bottom of this update. James and I both feel so comfortable in the small German towns, we'd love to live here for a while! Taking the train was the best way to get a feel for how Germany (at least Bavaria) is laid out. There are very few places that would constitute as 'cities' and the rest are these lovely small villages surrounding a church steeple. All of the villages are separated by miles and miles of farmland – its all very picturesque (I can't stress this enough!)
Today I'm moving on to Asia and to my job. I'm excited to be heading towards another contract – this 3 month stretch is the longest I've gone (since I was 14) without working! I have no idea what to expect – all that I've been told is that I'm living on the grounds of the orphanage and teaching in the town at a day care facility. My employer doesn't even really know what I'll be doing. I'm to 'assess' the abilities of the children there and report back to Australia with suggestions for what I can do during my 10 week contract. I'm excited for another challenge and also for a stable place to live for a while! As for James, he's going to spend a week now in Berlin and then he's flying to Iceland for 3 weeks to visit friends. After that, he'll be joining me in Thailand and he'll start working on a contract that he's got with the Australian government – developing tsunami prediction software (good spot to do it!)
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