And if you haven’t yet, go to the main page and check out all of the changes! :-)

Although I’m a morning person by nature, I much prefer going into work later rather than earlier. Then I can wake up when it’s light outside rather than when an alarm clock wakes me, and I have time to ease into my day rather than rushing to get out the door. My scheduled start time this year is 9:30 AM, and when I got that schedule, I couldn’t have been happier.

Well, TECHNICALLY that’s my start time. I think I can count on one hand the number of times this school year I’ve actually made it in at 9:30. The building opens at 7:30, and I’ve been getting there usually somewhere between 7:30 and 8. Yes, I’m a workaholic. We’ve established that already. And there’s been a lot to do this year–SO much to do, and I’ve been trying to stay atop of it all.

Finally last Thursday, a bunch of big things that had been scattered started to come together, and by yesterday, they were almost complete. I’m still marveling at the speed at which this all happened (well, speed and a lot of work on my part–I was at work for 8 hours this past Saturday!) When I left work yesterday, I left with a smile on my face, because I could finally see the light at the end of the tunnel.

So this morning? I actually had set my alarm for 8:30, but when 7:30 found me wide awake, I decided it was a good time for pancakes. Oddly enough, John was already awake and riding his unicycle in the living room (don’t ask), so I grabbed him, and off we went to Denny’s.

It was an absolutely perfect start to the morning.

A mug of sheer bliss.

For some reason, these signs always catch the artistic part of my eye — I have no idea why. They’re not particularly aesthetically pleasing — they’re just plain old warning signs. But they somehow fit in quite nicely with the art deco style of the Tower Bridge in downtown Sacramento, and so I finally got around to taking a picture of them. They actually kind of crack me up. A bit of paraphrasing as my brain translates the signs:

Sign 1: Keep away from the gate.

Sign 2: No, seriously, stay away from there.

Sign 3: DUDE. GATE. GET THE HELL BACK.

If there were a fourth sign, I think it would involve an electrical shock.

I’m so weird. :-)

Tower Bridge sidewalk signs

But at least the weather in Sacramento has been more or less phenomenal since we’ve gotten back — a few hot days, but overall it’s been unseasonably mild, and, I hate to say it, definitely nicer than most of the weather on our trip. So I’ve been enjoying being outside, and soaking up the last of the golden rays that bathe everything in the most amazing late-afternoon light. I don’t want to hurry through this time — I’m not ready for it to be autumn and winter. But since it’s inevitable, I’ll make the most of what summer that’s left.

Feet running across the Tower Bridge in downtown Sacramento.

Anyway, in the meantime, I had the privilege last Saturday of going down to Old Sac to meet up with a former student (he’s attending a different school for his senior year) to take his senior pictures. I think we spent most of the time making fun of each other, but all in all, it went pretty well. I’m not done with the post-processing yet, but I wanted to toss up a couple that I liked from towards the end of the shoot.

I had so much fun with the light — I couldn’t have asked for better portrait-taking conditions. :-)

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On Monday morning, July 19th, we got up, went and availed ourselves of our free breakfast at our hotel, and got our stuff packed to head to the train station.

At this point in time, we have packing down to a science. We LONG ago dispensed with the “his and hers” bags and went to a more practical system. My backpack (the big orange one) contains everything we don’t really use on a regular basis. This includes our cooler weather clothes (since I still haven’t convinced John to get ditch the TWO pairs of jeans and TWO hooded sweatshirts he brought with him), souvenirs, the small food bag we have, and the small toolkit we have. One of his bags contains all of the clothes we typically wear and the toiletries bag, and his smaller backpack has our laptops. When we pack, I’m responsible for packing my clothes and everything that lives in the big orange pack, and he’s responsible for his clothes and everything that lives in his packs. It works out really well, and there’s none of the usual scrambling of “did you remember to check the shower” or something like that.

Anyway, so we got on our train, which wasn’t one of the ICE trains (Germany’s high-speed network), just a little regional one. So I was expecting it to behave like a little regional train, puttering along at around 55mph. Then about 10 minutes into our trip, I glanced at the GPS readout on my phone, and about fell over. We were puttering along at the quite glorious speed of 102 miles per hour. OMG SWEET.

I’m SO all over this high-speed travel kind of thing. I love trains so much.

The other nice thing? Because I’m (sigh) over 26 and John and I are traveling on a saver pass (two or more people) we were required to buy a first-class pass. We haven’t had much opportunity to use it until now, as most trains we’ve been on have been second-class only. But German trains always seem to have both classes–SWEET. Heck, yesterday a… train attendant? (like a flight attendant, I guess?) came around and offered us newspapers and snacks!! Oh yeah!! First class also usually means air conditioning, bigger tables, and more seat room and leg room. I’m all over that.

So yeah, it’s nice to actually use the first-class passes we paid for. Why can’t air travel be that comfortable and comparatively inexpensive?

When we got to Nuremberg, it was only about 11:30 AM, but, continuing with the good luck we’ve had so far this trip, our hotel let us check in and leave our stuff in our room. I LOVE the feeling of taking off my backpack and leaving it somewhere so I can go explore — sooooo nice! We headed back to the metro from whence we’d come to go into the Old Town part of the city. When I got there I realized I’d somehow managed to leave my camera in the room. I’m thinking my shoulder was tring to sabotage me or something — it’s tired of lugging that camera around. But at least I had my phone camera, as always.

On our way into town, we stopped at a McDonald’s to see what their local offerings were (since the only other German town we were in, Neusorg, was too small to have a McDonald’s, or any sort of fast food place, for that matter.)

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All hail the pun. I had to smile when I saw this. :-) Although, if you think about it, we have the hamburger, and Hamburg is a city in Germany... so why not the Nuremburger?

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Old Town Nuremberg is really pretty — it’s its old European feel that is one of the reasons Hitler chose to hold the Nuremberg rallies there. He was apparently all for the traditional feel. The old town itself is centered around a large market square (Hauptmarkt) and a number of neat churches. I think we went into almost all of them. ;-)

My favorite church was St. Sebaldus, the only Lutheran Gothic church I’ve been in this entire trip. It started out as a Catholic church when it was constructed in the mid-1200s, but when the Reformation happened, it converted to a Lutheran church. However, with an eye toward preserving the “medieval piety” (according to the brochure I picked up at the church) they saved the icons, wall paintings, and shrine to to St. Sebald. I looked him up, and had to laugh. First, apparently no one’s really sure who St. Sebald actually was, or when he even lived. He was some hermit who came out of the forest somewhere between the 8th and 11th centuries to evangelize to some townspeople, and then died. Second, they built the church and the shrine to him before he’d officially been canonized by the Catholic church (which didn’t happen until 1425.) Heck of a risk there. I can just imagine it now — “O hai, we know you built a church for this dude, but FOOLED YA! we’re not actually going to make him a saint.” Heh.

For some reason, St. Sebaldus's shrine is held up by large snails. I have no idea why, but I grinned and had to force myself to walk (instead of run) over there to check it out when I saw it. :-)

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Anyway, you all know by now that I’m a huge sucker for the Gothic churches, but even by normal Gothic church standards, this one was one of my favorites because it still had a lot of its original paint job inside, and hadn’t been Baroqued almost at all. I don’t know why, but seeing the original medieval paint job is one of my favorite things about Gothic churches. A lot of places would paint almost the whole inside with not just religious art, but different designs and patterns almost like wallpaper. They’d go straight up the pillars and over the archways with really vivid colors. I would LOVE to see a Gothic church that’s been completely restored to what it would have looked like in the 14th century — not just by removing any design elements from later time periods, but with the original paint job restored to new.

I am so lucky that John is as patient with me as he is about seeing pretty much every single church we’ve come across on this trip. :-)

The door of the church had that kind of scary looking guy hanging above it, and it was supposed to represent a soul descending into hell. The top of the door handle is actually a skull. Kinda creepy, kinda cool.

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Sorry about only having cameraphone pics on here. I did go back right the day we left Nuremberg and take pictures with my real camera, but those will have to wait until later when I get around to posting them. :-)

Original medieval statue with original pattern painted on the wall around it.

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After we finished checking out the churches, we wandered up through the old castle and down around the other side, then headed back home in search of someplace to eat dinner before crashing for the evening. It was a nice, relaxing day. :-)

There is a statue of a rabid, deranged rabbit at Nuremberg Castle. Apparently it's a modern artist's tribute to German Renaissance painter Albrecht Dürer, who lived right next to the castle and who painted a painting called "Young Hare". The rabbit in his painting didn't look happy, but it wasn't nearly this deranged. It was quite amusing.

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Me at Nuremberg Castle.

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I long ago gave up on trying to get him to shave.

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Changing light at the Cologne Cathedral, originally uploaded by Kari_Marie. Click on the picture to view a larger version.

I’m playing catchup right now, writing blog posts offline and going through pictures to figure out which ones to use. I have WAY too many pictures, and that’s just my cameraphone pictures!

We’re heading home the day after tomorrow — I’m not very enthused about this, but all good things must come to an end. I have to admit that my own bed will feel pretty good… but there’s also something really neat about waking up in a different place every few mornings and listening to the new sounds of the morning where I am.

Anyway, in the meantime until I catch up, here’s a fun picture. Last Thursday night we were waiting for our Couchsurfing host to pick us up at the train station in Cologne, and so I pulled out my cameraphone and took these pictures of the Cologne Cathedral picking up the last rays of the sunlight. I timestamped them so you can see not only how late it was, but also how quickly the light changed as we waited.

I love catching golden light like this.

On Friday (Day 42) we left Prague and headed to Neusorg, Germany. I had no idea where this was when I booked a place to stay — all I knew was that it was in the mountains and therefore cooler than the miserable, humid heat wave that had enveloped most of the continent. And it was, thankfully! In fact, we got a fair amount of rain, meaning we didn’t even do some of the hiking we’d planned to do. Neither of us were complaining though — it’s been a lovely chance to have some downtime and do a lot of reading and napping.

Anyway, before we left Prague, I got up at dawn and headed over to Prague Castle at 6 to make the 7AM service at St. Vitus Cathedral. Back in Ireland, I decided I was going to try to go to church in every country we went to, and so far, the only one I’ve missed was Bosnia.

I love being out at sunrise. I love being up when so few people are, and the only people who are out are out for a purpose, so they’re going somewhere quickly and generally not paying too much attention. I don’t know how someone could not pay attention to that sunrise, though — it was absolutely amazing. At the service, there were a total of eight people, including two nuns. The priest was old and wore Ecco sandals under his robe. I’m not sure why I found that amusing, but I did.

Yes, it is good to be alive.

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East end of St. Vitus, facing the morning sun.

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Facing east and the altar, with the morning sun coming through the front windows.

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After church, I wandered around town for a bit longer, enjoying the early morning peace, and then I headed back to rouse John so we could pack and catch our first of three trains of the day.

This is the last of our three trains, in Marktredwitz, Germany. They had to plug it in and charge it before we could leave. I for some reason found that amusing.

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We got to Neusorg, Germany around 6:30 PM. We checked into our hotel and went wandering around the very very small town for a bit before dinner. I found some wild raspberries -- this made me very happy. Well, that, and the 25-degrees-cooler weather.

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Our first night in Germany, we were woken up at 4AM by an INCREDIBLE electrical storm. I tried to get pictures with my big camera, as well as video with my cell phone, but for some reason neither one came out. Bummer. So you’ll just have to imagine a huge, booming storm. It was fantastic. :-)

You can't tell from this picture from our room window, but it's POURING outside. It poured most of Saturday, off and on. So I took three naps and read in between naps. It was heavenly.

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Today it threatened rain off and on, but eventually cleared up. I was going to go to church in the morning, but I found out that the local church only has services once a month (the pastor rotates through several villages in the area) so there was no church in town this morning. Oh well. So we had breakfast and took a short hike into the forest, then came back and read for a while and took a nap, then headed out for a walk to find a lake I'd seen on Google Earth, only we couldn't find it, so we headed back and parked it under a tree in the backyard to read. I can't complain. :-)

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Where we are now:

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