Hi, my name is Rheanna and I am venturing into the blogging world as well as the European world. Wish me luck, hopefully I'll come back in one piece, just a little smaller... :)

So, here we are...looking all sexy and stuff in our backpacks. Tomorrow the shuttle from the airport is coming to pick us up and all I can say is that 4am comes pretty stinking early. 16 hours later we'll be landing in Germany...plus another 3 hour layover waiting for the train to Paris...and then another 3 hours riding the train to Paris...so, all in all it's going to be about 22 hours of travel. Piece of cake, right?

Wish us luck and keep checking in.
Megan

2 days to go...

So the trip is finally here-just today and tomorrow to get everything ready and then we are off. I can't believe it's already here! I have alternating waves of complete calm and and sheer nervousness. Silly, I know. I'm pretty much packed at this point-I've got most of the little things packed...my garden gnome, sunglasses, bandaids, tape...you know, the essentials. (dry humor is sometimes wasted in print) .

So there still isn't anything too exciting to regale anyone with yet...maybe by the end of the week I'll have some good stories to tell. Man, I'm not looking forward to typing on european keyboards...it's like teaching yourself to type all over again. Just finding the dang @ button is a challenge! I've never felt so retarded in my life than I did standing at a computer kiosk in Germany looking for the @ button so I could sign into my email. Thank goodness I converted to Gmail.

I'm sure that this thing will be updated one more time before the trip-I will try and update this thing every few days while we are in Europe, especially considering this is pretty much the only way my fam will be able to communicate with me-being on a budget means relying on free methods of communication.

peace out.

where the blacktop ends

We're down to 9 days and I haven't had a panic attack yet-I consider this to be no small miracle.

Today's great accomplishment was finalizing the last of our hostel reservations! I cannot tell you how happy I am to have that finished! I feel so much better knowing that all of the major stuff is already taken care of-transportation and sleeping arrangements. The rest is gravy...knock on wood. I'm amazed at how much prep work I have done for this trip-researching hostel costs, transportation costs, train and bus schedules, directions to and from various airports, free things to do in each city, etc. I've been watching the market like a hawk, checking forecasts for conversion rates and weeping a little bit every week when I see the dollar drop a bit more. Working with a really tight budget has really made me aware of where every dollar we spend is going. In my opinion, having less cash requires much more planning.

I know that this is a pretty boring post-nothing juicy has really happened yet, so all I have to write about right now is technical behind-the-scenes stuff. In anticipation of what's to come, I leave you with this, my traveling gnome.




xoxo, Meg