Francophile in the West

After a lovely week in the Czech Republic, my parents, my aunt, and I flew to Germany for a week in Cologne (Köln in German) for my mom’s bi-annual work conference (same reason we were able to travel to China two years ago and Australia two years before that. She has the best job ever!).  Cologne is famous for its huge cathedral in the center of town. We all were able to take a quick tour of the inside and we went back a couple of times to explore at our leisure as well. For being your typical old-school Catholic cathedral, this one is pretty amazing. The scale is unbelievable! My dad and I were in awe of the size of the columns supporting the ceiling at the back of the cathedral; they had the girth of a very old tree from the Red Wood Forests, at least! Absolutely massive and beautiful.  My dad and I walked through the Chocolate Museum (and bought lots of chocolate, of course), as well as a great art museum whose very German name I forget, b...

Over four weeks without a blog post! Y’all must think I’ve fallen off the face of the Earth. I am alive, I am doing very well, and I’m having a blast in Europe!!! Let’s play catch up, one post for one week at a time. This post’s edition, the Czech Republic! Me with all of my gear at 5:00am on the day of my flight to Europe.  The first two weeks of my time over here were spent with my parents and one of my mom’s sisters. We left the USA on August 30 th and took separate flights into Prague (I had to fly separately because I couldn’t buy my ticket until I received my work contract from France. Blasted paperwork!). I checked my big backpacking backpack through for the flights, and it wound up being left in London for a little while. This was scary, seeing as that’s all my clothing, shoes, etc. for 9 months! It all worked out well in the end, though, and I was able to retrieve my bag without any trouble when it arrived on the next flight from London. Whe...