No, THIS is how you pronounce your name!

Hello everyone!
So its only been about 6 weeks since my last post!! Whoops! In my defense, I have been traveling for 5 out of those six weeks.  So as you can imagine, updating my blog was about the last thing on my mind whenever I had a free hour or two.  But, I have three more weeks here in Douai, and lots of glorious, glorious free time, so I will try to summarize my last 6 weeks as best as I can!

But in perhaps more important news--today I received the revolutionary news that for 24 years now, I have been mispronouncing my own name!! God, how foolish I feel! Thank the heavens for the incredibly sweet and kind woman who intervened and told me how my name should really be pronounced.  Ok...in case you haven't yet noticed, this is positively dripping with sarcasm.  I was doing something administrative, and the woman asked what my name was, so I told her. She stopped what she was doing, pointed her nose at me and peered at me in disgust over the top of her glasses.  "No," she replied, "you mean "Kree-steeein Ka (disgusting hissing noise that originated from all the phlegm residing at the back of her throat") -eeel."  Ok, I get it, I'm in France and yes, I know that French people will say my name with a French accent, just like no matter how hard I try, I will always say their names with a bit of an English accent.  But never once has the thought of correcting them on the pronunciation of their own name crossed my mind. Bitch puhlease. Normally I am a pretty cool and collected person, but I had to take two deep breaths before I trusted myself to open my mouth to respond. 

Okay, so its the little things like this that make me look forward to going back to the United States.  BUT...it is the huge things, like in the paragraphs below, that make me not quite ready to leave yet...

So I'm just going to start from the beginning, and I imagine it will take me a few posts to make it through all six weeks.  So here goes:

So six weeks ago, I met one of my best friends from home in Germany.  Perhaps one of the biggest highlights of the vacation was our day trip to Castle Neuschwanstein in Bavaria.  The bus dropped us off at the bottom of a hill in the town of Neuschwanstein.  The Castle itself was about 25-30 minute walk up a nearby hill.  The tour guide gave us all our tickets for the tour inside the castle, and then we all went our separate ways before meeting up for the tour later.  Kel and I made it to the top of the hill, and I showed her the bridge where we hiked to last time to get a better view of the castle.  So if you look closely at the picture below,

you can see a V-shaped gorge in the center--that is where the bridge is.  Unfortunately, the bridge was closed for the winter season due to all the snow.  Well, rebellious as we are, we decided to hop the fence and go anyway. So we ditched the tour and went hiking instead.  After walking a few minutes, we ran into an older couple who did the same thing we did, so we felt comforted and continued on.  The only trouble we encountered was a VERY steep part of the trail that was so icy that it was impossible (seriously--it was impossible to find enough traction to climb it), so we had to veer off the trail and climb some rocks.  The view from the bridge was so beautiful--especially with all the brand new snow that was falling.  We grabbed some pictures and then headed back down the hill--our tour bus was scheduled to depart in an hour.  So after a few wipe-outs we made it down the really steep part of the trail to the junction point where the trail branched off in 4 different directions.  We laughed at all the danger signs, and I had Kelly take my picture by one as I was pointing at it and laughing.  And here, ladies and gentlemen, is proof that karma exists.  Because that stupid gate was the trail we were supposed to take back to the castle. Instead, we continued down a different (wrong trail) that basically pointed 90 degrees downhill and took us ALL the way down the hill. 

Kelly climbing around the fence that closed off the trail to the bridge

Kel and I on the bridge, with Castle Neuschwanstein in the background!

My meeting with Karma.  This is me being dumb and laughing at the "Danger Ahead" sign.  Seconds later we miss our trail and take the black diamond ski slope down the entire freaking mountain instead of the easy winding road that everyone else took.

In the end though, we made it! This is the road we took down.  It doesn't look to bad, but pictures can be deceiving, ya'll.  Kel asked someone to take our picture by the sign where someone is wiping out....and as she was walking up to the sign she wiped out herself (probably the 89th wipeout of the day between the two of us).  Hahaha...sorry Kel but it was hilarious! :)

Ok, so that was the day we got disoriented in Bavaria.  The next day, I woke up with these itchy, huge red welts all over my face, arms, and ankles.  Kel and I (naively) hoped they might just be spider bites, so we went to the pharmacy to get some medicine to put on them.  The pharmacist took one look at the bites, started laughing, and said, "I think you have something in your bed." We went back to the hostel, went to the front desk, and I swept my hair back somewhat bashfully so they could see the welts. The guy took one look and said "oh that's nasty." (gee thanks, guy...I had to walk around for 4 days with those things on my face, thanks for boosting my confidence).  Anyway, he found the bedbugs dwelling in the wooden part of my bedframe, and he immediately refunded us our money, switched our rooms, and gave us tokens for the washing machines.  So we spent the whole day washing our clothes, disinfecting our suitcases (we didn't want those buggers traveling with us for the rest of our trip!), and showering (it just felt gross).  We decided to go to a beerhall that night with the refunded money we got for the bed bugs.  We walked in and were ushered by a round, sprightly waiter to a spot next to some older German men.  The waiter then asked us if we wanted one liter, two liters, or 5 liters of beer. We looked around and saw that everyone had the tall skinny glasses of beer, so we said 1 liter please, thinking that's what everyone else had.  The German guys started laughing and old us we had been tricked into ordering the biggest size beer they had.  Oh shucks...

Kel focusing on her Augustiner beer

My delicious dinner that one of the German guys recommended.  It was half a chicken, with a potato and cucumber salad.  While I was trying daintily cut into the chicken, the German guy told me, "You are supposed to just pick it up with your hands and eat it." So I did, and just then the waiter walked by and cried out in broken English, "she uses her hands to put it in her mouth! I like, I like!!"...

After the beerhall, we went back to the bar at our hostel, which was actually really crowded and full of various characters.  Kel and I sidled up to the bar, and we started talking to the guys next to us who were from the US but have been teaching English in Munich for the past 5 years.  It turned out that I knew one of their cousins, who went to the University of Iowa.  Then, I turned to my right and started talking to a new group of people who just walked in.  They were a group of glaciologists from Vienna, and it turned out that we had all been in McCarthy, Alaska last summer and we had some mutual friends. So Bernie and I became great friends over this.  Anyway, Bernie and his friends were reallllllyyy drunk (and hilarious) and were thus causing a bit of a disturbance (see video above). And for those of you who know how Kel and I can get together...you know that we MAY have been contributing a bit to the overall atmosphere of partying.  Then, around midnight, this old German guy walks into the bar with a huge McDonald's sack.  He pulls out a cheeseburger from the bag, and gives one to the bartender, then walks over to Kelly and I and puts one between us.  Then he proceeds to pull out about 15 more cheeseburgers and starts throwing them to people around the bar.  It was rather ingenious and a very creative way of making friends. 
Anyway, shortly after that Bernie got kicked out of the bar, and Kel and I went to bed, as we were heading off to Rome the next day!

To be continued later...I'm afraid I'll get carpal tunnel if I type any longer...