My Life in Florence

Hi! (62 more days till T.H.G. film. Booyah!)

Downtown Salem. Not far from where I live.

So Salem is almost entirely underwater and I still need to finish up these dang blogs. Did you even remember the existence of this blog? That would surprise me considering it is taking me FOREVER to write this sucker out till the end.

Anyhow lets not drag this out...

Lena.

Ha, do you even remember the name of the German lady I was staying with? Her name is Uta. She has three cats and a dog that smells like sheep crap.

Blurry Uta.

Is this jogging your memory. I certainly hope so because guess what?
I am moving on.
So Uta, her dog (Lena), and I hopped into the car and by the way it was freezing that night. Absolutely freezing I tell you. Even if I whispered something, my breath made HUGE white clouds when it hit the icy air. I kept making these weird growling noises whenever I was outside or the minute I got into the car because of how cold it was. And the car seemed to take FOREVER to warm up. I started praying to Car Heating Gods to hurry the heck up because it was like Titanic in that car.

This isn't me by the way...

Well, I was in the back seat actually, back with the smelly pooch, because we were picking up Uta's goddaughter.... who's name escapes me unfortunately. Sorry about this. I will just call her Liesel for now.

So, Liesel also has a dog. I know how to say the dog's name, but I am not sure I know how to spell her name. But here is what it sounds like: Ah-cha.
Cool name right?
She was just a puppy too. Very cute. She looked like a black version of Lassie.

Liesel (remember that's not really her name... haha) was about my age I think. At least she looked like it, but then again people tell me I look 14 and often question me this whenever I sit in the exit row of a SouthWest plane. Grrrrr...
Oh gosh I need to tell you something and here it is.... Lena is kind of crazy. Don't tell Uta this. Lena is one of those dogs who just HATES other dogs and will attack them.
ALL. DOGS.

I really needed this cat in the car...

I was warned about this, but when Uta told me that Lena didn't like other dogs I thought she would just bark.
Nope. Lena full on attacks them. And that is what she tried to do in the car. She tried to jump in the front seat and do what exactly? Rip Ah-cha's head off? I am not sure. But it was scary, especially since I was bitten on the neck by a dog as a young child and don't particularly like aggressive dogs.
Lucky me, I got to sit right next to one.
Well, Uta just smacked her and then she calmed down, but then she started breathing in my face, which made the whole carsick thing even worse.
Ok, lets move on. What a long description for a freaking car ride. Jeez.
I want to tell you something interesting about restaurants in Germany. It is NOT unusual for you to bring your dog in with you to eat and get this... they have stuff for dogs as well. I told Uta and Liesel that this is different for me because I have NEVER brought my dog or seen dogs taken into restaurants. One time while on the Oregon coast I was in this Chinese restaurant with my family and we heard a dog barking in the basement of the building. We all gave each other weird looks. My mom said something like: That's the sound of our dumpling soup!

My mother is demented. No wonder I'm so screwed up. (I just like saying that because I really am screwed up. I have 5 screws in my lower vertebras.)
Uta and Liesel were talking a lot and it was kind of awkward for me (who was sitting in the middle of them btw) because I don't understand German. It's an interesting language. Sometimes (and I REALLY don't mean to) I bust up giggling (I have giggling issues) because what they say sounds like a swear word in our language.

I suck at holding in giggles...

It is like when my brother and I film movies, while he is editing he always plays my words backwards and ALWAYS finds a swear word in them. I am a swearing machine when my simple innocent words are played backwards. I feel so naughty.
So yes there were these moments when they would glance at me after I had a little giggle fit.
Uta is really awesome, though, because she doesn't leave you out. She interpreted for the both of us.
Now here is where our story gets funny...
See... hmmm... not that what I said in this conversation was inappropriate, but I just thought you should know that a lot of the times I don't have a filter for the things that come out of this cute little mouth of mine (haha "little" *rolls her eyes*). I don't know how I got on the subject of my horse, Mr. Red-a-Roo, but we did and of course I brought up the narcolepsy issue, which my horse unfortunately has. But Uta didn't know what that was, so I had to explain it to her. Then she played interpreter again and told Liesel that sometimes when I am off galloping in the woods behind my house my horse will sometimes collapse because he just falls asleep. It has happened four times. Twice while I was on him. Twice in the barn. Scariest thing ever.

Well, as Uta was telling this to Liesel, Liesel was drinking her water and I really had no idea what part Uta was, but I eventually understood when Liesel slammed her glass down, choked on her water, and said: Oh shit.
Funniest thing ever.

This is going to sound REALLY gross because, um, well it is, but I peed my pants a little there. Totally serious.
The food was spectacular that night. I had this snitzel (sp?) curry dish with this sweat and sour sauce and it was absolutely incredible. I ate EVERYTHING on my plate. EVERYTHING. It was SO good. I was very full and satisfied (No Michael Scott-ness here please...). Then the dogs got to eat some food too. Oh now I remember.... Uta couldn't finish her macaroni and cheese so she gave the rest to Lena. I don't know what it is about dogs eating off of plates, but it makes me nauseated. Same feeling I used to get as a kid whenever people would make-out in a film.
Well, it was a really fun night and even though I couldn't really talk to Liesel we were still able to communicate through facial expressions and with the help of Uta. It was a hilarious night and I had a GREAT time.
Ok that is all I have for tonight. The next dinner conversation is my all-time favorite one where my lack of a filter was a HUGE problem. So stay tuned.
Bye and stay dry you Oregonians!

Love,
Amanda

Hi there pals...

Sorry I'm sucking at cranking out the rest of these blogposts, but oh well... I am doing them now so just deal with it.
I am sort of mad that I didn't write down what I did in bulleted notes to help me remember later on because now I am writing a month later and you start forgetting things.
So here it goes. Here is what I remember...

I'm actually rather excited about this post because believe it or not I LOVE FOOD. If I wasn't a lover of food I'd be dead right now. That's right. Dead.
D
E
A
D
And since I'm obviously not dead right now, there is your stinking proof. Well, not stinking actually because I just took a shower. Yes, so I actually smell quite nice right now.

Confession Time: I like Italian food better than German food.
Why? You may ask.
Well, there just seems to be A LOT of meat (and not exactly my favorite kind of meat) and onions (and I KNOW we went over the onion issue).

But here is what I LOVE about German food:

Pretzels. (We'll get to this in a moment.)

White sausages.

Mustard.

Ok, so before I came to Germany what I knew of pretzels had to do with what I ate at Auntie Anne's Pretzel's. My parents actually used to own one by the way, so needless to say I've had my fair share of pretzels to munch on in my lifetime.

Well, German pretzels are freaking delicious. BETTER than Auntie Anne's Pretzels by far and you know what is the kind of funny thing? I hate A.A.P's plain pretzels, but good god in Germany they are freaking fantastic. I got mine fresh out of the oven and they were just perfect. Perfectly salted and just perfect. It was basically just like this really, really, really good bread.

This is what I had for lunch. Lucky right?

Some yummy goulash too. :)

Uta took me down to Freiburg and we went to this restaurant that was famous for their beer (at least I think they were famous for their beer). I just had water if any of you are wondering. Uta and I ordered some white sausages with some mustard and a pretzel and it was absolutely fantastic.

Pretty color. :)

Uta asked me what I wanted, but basically I just wanted something traditionally German and something she liked as well... just as long as it didn't include onions because you know how much I hate those dang onions. Gah! I hate, hate, hate onions.
What is interesting is that you can't eat the skins of these sausages. You have to push the meat out of their casing's. This is only for the white sausages. Lets just say that I had an interesting time getting the meat out at first. The mustard that went along with it was absolutely delicious as well. It was on the sweet side and I when I was done I literally wanted to lick the rest out of the little container it was in.

I didn't though. That would be rude.
Oh but it would be yummy in my tummy.

Freiburg was a very interesting town. Let me tell you more about it.

More cobblestones! :)

There are the water thingys and the awesome street art.

Yep... It is exactly what you think it is.

Like many European towns it had cobblestone streets, but unlike the other European towns I had visited in the past in had these little waterways/gutter-things that ran along the streets. I think Uta said they went to the river. I'm not sure if they were used for draining or anything like that. Sorry. I just don't remember at the moment. But they were certainly fun to jump over.

Now the highlight of Freiburg had to be the Munster Cathedral. This is one weird cathedral if I do say so myself.

It is made of some sort of red brick, which probably isn't the fancy official name, but oh well... that is how I am describing it. It is a very tall cathedral and surrounding it was this VERY busy market where Uta bought a lot of goodies. I really wanted to get a pretzel there or something, but we held off so that I could eat the yummy food I mentioned earlier.
Ok, so back to this cathedral. Around it are all these crazy gargoyles and such. There are a lot of rain drains (rhyming words there!) that came out of various gargoyles mouths. Well, one of these drains was actually a person and it was coming out of this person's bare butt!!! I couldn't believe it.

It was hilarious and absolutely repulsive at the same time. I asked Uta what the architects were thinking and she said: They must have had a great sense of humor.
And this was very, very true.

Later that day in Freiburg Uta bought me this REALLY spectacularly delicious treat. It was like a sugar cookie (almost) with DARK chocolate (dark chocolate is the ultimate best by the way) and nuts. What kind of nuts? Not entirely sure. I am going to guess at peanuts. Super yummy. I started munching on it and then thought: Maybe I should take a picture of this.

Yum! I want one right now. :)

And then so I did so that you could see this masterpiece.
Yum. Yum. Yum! It was good.

Here are some more fun pictures of what I did in this fun town.