I'm going to end my posting drought because he's letting me post his vacation pictures. I barely took any!

From the Volkspark hill we heard a bunch of people cheering and yelling to music down by the way. We thought it might have been a concert. It turns out it was a outdoor viewing of the euromeister. I don't like soccer but it was fun with some elephant beer (10%) and erdnuss flips (peanut puffs) beforehand.

Everyone at the event was a giant. I felt average height at least.

On Sunday the 12th we were back by ourselves. So we grabbed our brötchens and started wandering around the town again.
We ate at a vegan cafe called "Molly und Alf"

The food was alright, I think I had a seitan parm type panini. I don't think I ever had vegan cheese before - I barely noticed the difference it was so mild.

There was a band playing music in the sudermarkt and everyone was watching.



Paul wanted to rest before we walked to his old school, so we went back up the hill on the stairs to our wohnung. I got a few pictures of the cemetary and Terry imitating the Flensburger Löwe.





Later we walked around the fjord to where Paul's old school used to be.

Gangsta clothes.

Even on a cloudy day the water was nice. To get to the where the school was you had to walk all the way around the fjord, up the east side, and climb up through the volkspark. The folkspark was this huge forested hill right on the edge of the city. I don't think I've ever seen anything like it. You could live in it and nobody would ever find you.








They had a ton of excerise and balance equipment you could use. I'm not sure what was for the kinder and what wasn't but we tried it all.

By the time we got to Paul's old school it turns out they got rid of most of it when it merged into the city's university. His dorms may have still been there (?) but they were houses now.

Apparently Paul used to sit on some of these benches auf pilzen. I bet it was nice.

Our apartment was an AirBNB on Mathildestraße. It was right up the hill from the Südermarkt, which is one of the two squares in the town along the Fjord, the other being Nordermarkt.

I don't know how I didn't take many pictures. But the apartment was beautiful and huge on the fourth floor of a Treppenhaus. It had a balcony looking over the street and the yard in the back, plus it had amazing insulated windows that either tilt for ventilation or open all the way, depending on how you turn the handle.











After we settled in we walked around the city a little. We ended up at Cafe Central which had vegetarian options that Terry and I ordered... which turned out to be mostly potato. After (e:paul) had ordered a side of pommes frittes. Oops. It was still good.

It almost never gets dark near the peak of the summer - the sun didn't go down until 10, and it wasn't actually night until after midnight!

From leaving home to arriving at our first stop in Flensburg it took us almost 24 hours of traveling.

I think this is my third trip on a plane. Even though everyone always talks about hating flying and traveling I was still pretty excited. We were on a new Boeing 787 and everything, going from Toronto to Zurich, and then Hamburg.

It turns out it's pretty terrible and impossible to sleep on it. I think I want a tranquilizer if I ever fly this long again.

Luckily they fed us a lot.


The Zurich Airport was like the fanciest capitalist mall you've ever seen. I don't think I even saw a sandwich for under ~$10USD. They also had smoking lounges everywhere with huge cigarette ads. All of them have to say in huge letters "Rauchen ist tödlich" or "Smoking is deadly". I can't believe smoking is a big thing in 2016, but at least it's voluntary to go into the ventilated rooms.


It turns out our plane was an hour late to Zurich, so we missed our flight to Hamburg (by five minutes). We ran but they had already closed the gate. So they put us on a few hours later on a Swiss plane to Hamburg. At this point I freaked out a bit because I had a hard time understanding Swiss accents and thought I wouldn't be able to speak German with anyone.

Luckily we landed in Hamburg only 90 minutes later! The airport was also huge, and connected right with the Hauptbahnof via the S-Bahn. Once we got there we had a few minutes to kill before our train to Flensburg, so we walked around the streets nearby. It was amazing. I don't know why I didn't take more pictures. The area near the main train station is also the gayborhood, which isn't much for a 1.5 million+ city.




Otters for sale in the train station

And an otter in the regional express train :O

I made up for lost sleep on the two hour trip while Terry stole selfies.

And then, at 4pm Thursday, almost 24 hours after we left Buffalo, we were in Flensburg!

Here's the Flensburg Hauptbahnhof. In front of it was a park full of LARPing boys.

I meant to write about the trip to Germany and Italy as it happened but slow internet and too much to do stopped that.

The Toronto airport is gargantuan and surrounded by the biggest spaghetti of highways and ramps I've ever seen. On the way in from Buffalo via 427 you pass by a mix of greenland farmland, and suburbs with downtown's twice the size of Buffalos.

Once we were in the airport waiting g for our flight, every seat had these iPads at them, where you could order food and fake gamble. I have never spent money on gambling in my life but these iPads were pretty addicting. I could just press two different buttons on a slot machine game as fast as I can and get a bunch of free food. Snacks proved to be handy later.