Ok...so it's been a bit of a long day and I'm about a week behind, but I won't be very sucessful in updating the entire week because I am typing on a German keyboard and I only have 18 mins to be online!

First things first, Laura and I are in Munich! We decided to come up here a few weeks ago because Eric, her BF, was coming in with a group from Ohio state and we thought it would be fun to meet them. We got in yesterday on a train that went through the mountains. Met a few cool people, one woman who helped us decipher a Garfield cartoon in German and then a group of English girls who had just done a whirlwind tour of Europe before having to return back to school. What a hard life.

We arrived around noon at our hostel, which is actually pretty nice. There are people here from all over the world (and a lot of them speak english, so it's nice to communicate with people without having to use a translation book for a change). We are staying in a dormitory style room, which is basically a huge room with 22 beds or so altogether. Besides people turning on the lights when we're trying to sleep at midnight (which I will admit is pretty early for a Friday night in a European hostel), it's been a worthwile expense.

Laura and I had yesterday to do whatever, and we hadn't really planned for anything, so we just started walking around to check out the city. We're in the center of town so it's a lot easier to get around on foot here than in Vienna. We were starving so we headed out to see if we could find a bite to eat. And what do we find amidst the Kebab and Chinese places scattered all over the streets? Subway! I think we hugged each other on the street corner we were so excited. We snarfed the food and headed back to the hostel for a free tour we had heard them mention when we had first checked in. I can't think of a better way to have spent my day. I learned so much about the city and Laura and I met a guy named Mike, who is a couch surfer. For those of you who don't know what that is (and don't feel bad, because I didn't either), it is someone in a network of people online who can just log on and find a couch to sleep on in any city in the world. For free! It's all based on references that are given you on the website. You have to get references in order to be accepted to stay somewhere, so it's kind of hard to just start being a couch surfer without knowing one, but now that I know one...free lodging baby! Or so I hope...

Anyway, aside from learning a whoooole lot about Munich (which I'll have to expound upon in another post at a later time), we got to hang out with Mike and met his friend Kim. We ate a lot of German meat and a lot of gellato for dinner and walked around the city just eating and tossing travel stories back and forth. They had a lot more than I did, so I did most of the listening. But, to make a long story short, Kim and I found out that we have a mutual friend. Kim, this random girl from Canada that I meet in the middle of Europe worked at a hostel in Ireland for the summer with my friend from church in Solon, Annie! She mentioned that she had a friend in Ireland who played the mandoline and originally lived in West Virginia. All of this fit Annie's profile to a T, and honestly, how many mandoline playing West Virginians can there be in Ireland at once? It totally turned out to be the same person and we freaked out at the idea that the world had just shrunk about 100 sizes down. So cool!

Today was spent at Dachau, the concentration camp that modeled all of the concetraiton and extermination camps that were created during the 3rd Reich in Germany. It was an incredibally sobering experience. It was a very blustery and kind of cold day, which I think was appropriate for this place. I swear I didn't see or hear a single bird the entire time I was there. I learned a whole lot and was incredibally moved by just standing in the places where this dark period in human history had really begun. I'll have to write more about my experience there later, seeing as I'm running out of time!

More in depth details on Munich adventures later!