Belated Guest Post

I have been totally MIA lately...mom just left early this morning and I am being lazy today!! We went 100% while she is here and I am tired! I know she is having a rough time flying home today. SO....I will leave you with this guest post from my sister on their trip to Germany a few weeks ago! I know I still have lots of pictures to share on Prague AND now Italy! Stay tuned, I will try and get those up this week! Until then, enjoy this from Reagan!! I had to laugh when I read it because I had forgotten about the hallway light in Prague...it would seriously go PITCH black. The first time it happened to us, Reagan and I were alone with the dogs and we freaked, then finally found a switch. Hi, this is Reagan, Katie’s slacker sister. She asked me to write a guest post about our trip to Germany and I am just now writing it – oops!! So….Germany…. We left Nashville on a Wednesday afternoon and flew for 10 years until we made it to Erlangen (At least that’s what it felt like!) We met Katie at her apartment and she then made us walk for 50 miles to Tyler’s office (maybe slightly less, but again, that’s what it felt like!) We had our first and only German meal in a beer garden and it was not as scary as I had thought it would be! Interesting observation – Europeans love them some Italian food. We ate a lot of pizza that week. It was awesome. Katie then took us on a brief tour of Erlangen. I was pleasantly surprised by the town. From reading this blog and talking to Katie, I was expecting a lot worse! It was very clean and safe feeling, with lots of young people and families. The area where Katie and Tyler live looks like it could be in any American city but there were sections that looked more “German”. If you have ever been in an IKEA and thought, like I have, “This is so cute! I wish my whole house could look just like this!”….just go to Germany and you will be cured of that idea. EVERYTHING IS IKEA! It’s crazy. When Tyler got off work on Friday we threw the puppies in our rented Ford and headed to Prague. We rented a two bedroom apartment (again furnished by IKEA) in a building with a lot of locks that were impossible to open. Seriously, neither Katie nor I ever mastered the art of opening the door. And apparently Czechs are energy conscious because the hallway lights were on timers, so they would go out after a while – not good when you are going down the stairs or trying to unlock a door and you don’t know where the light switches are! Prague was incredible – I would love to go back there with more than 2 days to visit. We walked all over the place and saw tons of beautiful buildings and sites and this post would be ridiculously long if I tried to describe it all. I will just say, if you go to Europe and have a chance, go to Prague! The rest of our trip was spent hanging around Erlangen and Nuremberg and getting to see what Tyler and Katie’s day to day lives are like. We ate at some of their favorite restaurants, hung out in Katie’s coffee shop, went to the grocery store and tried not to get run over by bicycles. I am very impressed with how well Katie and Tyler have adjusted and adapted to being so far outside of their comfort zone. I know it hasn’t been easy to figure out everything from scratch but they are hanging in there and doing well. And the puppies too! They have learned to potty on sidewalks just like big city dogs. We had a great time on our German vacation, but the best part was spending time with Katie and Tyler. We miss them very much and can’t wait for them to be back on US soil!