Some egg cups for Whit

She loves theses things.

6th Gear, Stairs, and Lederhosen

So what's the best thing since white bread? 6th gear on the Autobahn. I was going like 190km in this Peugot 308 on my way to Munich and Audis and BMW are still flying by me. I'm red lining it and thinking, "How are they going by me so fast?" I stop at one of my sites and when I get back in the car I have to reverse. Well R is up and to the left and you have to pull up a little lever. And that's when I noticed my little friend 6th Gear in the bottom right. Well it was 210km/hour after that...and not in the red zone. Glorious.
I meant to go to the St Lorenz Cathedral in the picture but I ended up at this church first. And after going in the church this little old lady motions me to the back to the tower. We hike up it and she lets me go by her after about 20 stairs. I kept trying to listen to hear for a stroke or a fall from this lady. I was worried about myself too (I'm carrying about 20 extra pounds right now). But I make it to the top and I did notice the sign at the bottom that said 1,50 Euros but surely they would collect it at the bottom before you hiked up like 3,000 stairs. Nope! This lady at the top only speaking German was asking for the money. I said, "Mein Geld ist in mein Auto. Ich will gehen und geben das Geld." She said not to worry about it, but I felt like I should. The church and the tower were awesome and I felt like a building of God deserved it. So after I took this picture and realized I wasn't even in the Cathedral, I ran down to my car and back up the 3,000 stairs (not really) and gave her 2,00 Euros and told her to keep the change. She gave me a postcrad. Needless to say I was pitting big time.
Finally I made it to Munich and I went to eat some Bavarian food. To my glee, there was a horde of dudes dresses in Lederehosen. Apparently, this small village has a tradition once a year where they sit around to protect the trees from getting cut down. If not many trees are cut down, it's a success. Well obviously there isn't much to do but drink. So they drink and wait, drink and wait. And then drink to celebrate a successful year for the tress. One guy said it's just another reason to drink. They offered to buy me a drink but I told them I was Mormon, and it probably wouldn't help my driving on the Autobahn. They liked that one.

Provo Half Marathon

A week ago I begrudgingly ran the provo river half marathon. I had wanted to do it, but then as it got closer I almost didn't sign up because I felt like I'd be dissapointed because I wasn't in as good of shape after Millie... but my friend Maren and sister Tracy were going to do it so I decited it'd do it anyways. I'm glad i did because I ended up feeling SOOO great and getting a PR by 2 min! I ran a 1:28! The course is so pretty and mostly down hill- (so if any of you are looking for a half marathon to do sign up for this one! it's getting really popular with 3,500 runners this year)

It's races like this that keep me motivated to run... you feel good, in controll, but you know that you are really pushing yourself. When you're finished you're just so proud of yourself for going through that much pain and not giving up!




The race finished at riverwoods where they had fruit, pancakes, and a live band! not to mention an ice cold provo river to ice your achy legs in.



Tracy, Maren (my old roomie from BYU) and me. We were all so happy because we all did better than we'd expected :)

The Autobahn to Prague

Czechs have such a great sense of humor! I rented a car at 6am. Picked up Coach and then we FLEW down the Autobahn at 110mph in the slow lane to Prague.
Prague is incredible. This is The St. Vitus' Cathedral. St. Vitus wouldn't tell the King who the queen was sleeping around with after her confesssion so the King had him killed and thrown in the river. Coach and I huffed it on it foot right after our tour ended to try and get to it before it closed. Got there at 5:42pm. The cathedral doors closed at 5:40pm. So even though we didn't get to see the inside, it was still worth the run. I've decided I love Gothic architecture. This clock is the Old Town Horologe. Some Czech guy built it in 1410 and it was cutting edge technology. It was so incredible that he was thanked by having his eyes gauged out so that he couldn't creat another one like it. He cursed it and it didn't work for nearly 100 years until someone was able to fix it.

Sachenhausen Concentration Camp

Obviously you have heard about the horrors and atrocities of the concentration camps. You can read about this which is mild compared to many of the other things that took place about 40 minutes north of Berlin.
Pictures weren't allowed in certain areas and the most touching thing I saw was this small black shoe with a colorful bouquet of flowers from the top of it. It was only about 3 inches long but very intricate and detailed. But the story is that a 16 year old Russian student saved a portion of his bread at every meal to mold and sculpt this shoe. He eventually gave it to another prisoner, a German liberal professor, just before he died. The professor said, "It was the most beautiful gift anyone has ever given me." It made me wonder if the professor had helped gived morale or encourage this young 16 year through the hard times. I was really touched. Their portions were meager to say the least, and this truly was a sacrifice for this 16 year old.

Germany's Guilt

(Bottom picture) While on the tour of Berlin, our guide talked about Germany's guilt. Instead of trying to sweep their past under the carpet, they have taken responsibility for it. The company that produced the chemicals for the gas chambers is the same company that recently and freely supplied the anti-graffiti finish for the Jewish Memorial stones in the center of Berlin. And there are a lot of stones there. Did you know Hugo Boss did the Nazi uniforms? Neither did I. But our tour of Berlin was splendid. We did a walking tour and learned so much.

(Middle picture) "Where they burn books, they will also in the end burn human beings" - Heine. Here I am lying on a glass covering a room full of empty bookshelves. This memorial stands to remember when the Nazis began burning 25,000 books which didn't fit in with their plans. Symbolically, some of Einsteins work and one of Hitler's favorite authors were among them.

(Top picture) The Berliner Damme. Just a large impressive builiding on the Spree River.

Essen essen essen - Eat eat eat

Now that I am done running for a while, I eat eat eat. Here we are at an authentic German place. I ate a blood sausage, liver suasage, and a liver dumpling with potatoes and some great saurkraut on the side. My comrades got some other great German food. We've had fun. The drink is called Spezi (a mix of Cola and Fanta.) Coach Eyestone and I ate pig knuckle the night before. It was good too. I love Germany. Tomorrow Coach and I are heading to Prague for a day.

Sweden Trip

We got back from Sweden a few days ago and had a GREAT trip. I love visiting other countries and seeing the fashion, FOOD, and life styles. The "feel" of sweden was very nordic. Lots of trolls, gnomes, ships, and striped clothing, vikings, reindeer/moose and lingonberries. The style was very modern and clean (ie ikea). I felt that Sweden was kind of a mix between Germany and France. The woodland and magic of germany mixed with the glamor of france

Josh's race went well, it was an international race with lots of good guys. Going into the race he was ranked 12th out of 16 guys, and he finished 5th!

Here are some of the highlights of our trip...

Gamla Stan: old city. This row of buildings is one of the most photographed areas in the old city. it is in a cute little square with traditional restaurants all around the perimiter. The old city was soo cool because you really felt like you were taking a step back in time, it was a very large area filled with delicious restaraunts, shops, cool buildings, and street preformers.

Stockholm has alot of "inlets" and rivers and lakes. The entrance to the old city was just across this bridge. I like this photo because it shows some of the cool buildings and then this guy on his bike with a basket on it- which seemed to be very standard in Sweden.

While we were in the old city we saw a portion of what we think was the changing of the guard. They played music and wore very nice outfits.

This Troll was just hanging out in Gamla Stan. I love Trolls, Gnomes, Fairies, Elves and (all magical folk) so I had to get my photo with this little guy.

Our hotel was in downtown Stockholm near the old city. This was the view from our room. On sunday morning the bells were ringing and it almost felt magical!

After Josh's race was over we wanted to see more countryside and not just the big tourist city of Stockholm (though stockholm was great.) We rented a car and drove west. We stoped at a few castles and churches. This was one little city that we stopped at. Beautiful! Across the bay was teh castle below.

Another beautiful castle. All the castles we saw were built on bodies of water making them all the more spectacular!

An old church in the country just 30 min. outside of Stockholom.

The Food: They had some delicous ice cream. I got this tripple scoop of Lemon sorbet, raspberry sorbet (with chunks of raspberries) and tripple chocolate. (the raspberry and chocolate were a killer combo)

Lots of delicious breads and pastries

We had a really nice traditional dinner, this is Josh's plate: reindeer with lingonberries, greanbeans, and potatoe cake. I had Elk Meatballs with lingonberry sauce- so good!

This is just a country road. Many of the small country roads were lined with trees, so quaint!

I always get curious about what houses in other countries look like, so here is a Swedish house. Most of them are vertical "wood siding" with these red roofs. also quaint.

This trip may very well have been mine and Josh's last trip (alone) together for a long time. Though I'm so glad to have millie giving up on the great travels has been one of the hard things for me...so world, catch ya later.