Laura Beth in Germany

The following are a few shots of our second trip to the Alps last weekend with Fabian's mother and her friends Anja and Markus. The route this year was incredible! And yet again, I wonder where I got the strength to actually get my butt over those mountains. I think this will become an annual trip with Margit, for at least as long as we live in Germany.   Me and my love!   Alpine snow underneath my toes! This is the not-as-little-as-it-seems "hut" we slept in. And the shot that will probably scare my mother:   If you look down to the right, you can see just how steep it was! But if you look at my right hand, you can also see that there was a thick metal rope for us to hold onto at the thin spots. You can just barely start to see the valley and towns below in the background.   I really enjoy these hikes - they remind me of the Grand Canyon trip with Molly all those years ago! But man, can I still feel my calves and thighs.   Co...

Since watching way too much Aladdin as a kid, I've wanted a colorful house full of Eastern patterns and giant pillows. I'm slowly moving in that direction. Last week I put up the new tapestry. Sure, it doesn't match perfectly. And yes, maybe it makes me look like a pot-smoker, having tapestries all over my house. But whatever. It's my place! and I'm probably going to make a pillow to tie all the colors together.   As a matter of fact, I've done a lot of rearranging this week. When big life changes are around the corner (e.g. my first visit home since moving to Germany), I tend to get a little restless. Sometimes I get a haircut. This time the nervous energy burst out of me in the form of creativity. In the past three days, I've redecorated the living room, rearranged the bedroom and turned a pair of $7 jeans from Goodwill into stylish, modest shorts. (Unlike the hotpants I've seen in Stuttgart lately. So many teenage butt cheeks. So many.) ...

In the middle of June, the two Stuttgart Berlitz schools officially combined. I was automatically transferred to the new school as a freelance teacher. It's nice to change things up, but there are a few things to get used to, of course. We moved out of the luxurious location near the main station, but kept the old "Stuttgart 2" office. It has a few classrooms, but it mostly houses the administration - our director, secretary, the supervisor of pedagogy, our materials library, etc. That space is located on the Rotebühlplatz, across from a C&A department store and the Stuttgart Stadtmitte subway stop. The new space, with about 10 classrooms, is located at Marienstraße 28. Thanks to Google and its ever-increasing creeping skills, I was able to locate a photo of the building for you: You can see the windows of our new school on the third floor, just above Sophie's Brewery. We keep joking that we'll never get any work done because we'll spend all our tim...

The long-awaited debut of my vacuum modeling career: http://sprintus.eu/d_film_n30. html For all of those who weren't sure you needed a professional-grade, super-silent, high-performance cleaning machine with multiple functions for wet and dry applications... consider yourself converted.

[Webster] Paige is here visiting! She arrived after a long bus ride from Paris on Thursday. I came home to her snuggled in our guest bed, and since then we've been catching up on life and exploring different things.   We spent Friday night in Karlsruhe at the "Parking Lot Festival" - a giant student-organized event which Annika helped put together this year. We got to see her for about 1/2 an hour before she had to scurry off and complete more official duties. Paige and I danced furiously to the live Ska music, drank wine spritzers with the boys, and at the end of the evening, watched the remaining festivities from the balcony atop one of the dorm buildings. Then we biked back to our friend Felix's house to spend the night. The cops stopped us in their big van to see if we were driving drunk (in Germany you can have a vehicle driver's license taken away for driving a bicycle drunk). I spoke with them quite calmly and convinced them that Fabi was in fu...

Being purely responsible adults is never satisfactory in the long run. This past weekend, Fabi and I felt the urge to get OUT of our little "hometown" and see something new. We both had a 4-day weekend, so we planned to go to Dresden and Weimar. But due to a funeral on Friday, our plans fell through. Then our friend Jessi saved the day by offering us a free stay in her Berlin apartment while she traveled to Amsterdam for the weekend. So we hopped in our car and drove to Berlin!   It rained nonstop the entire six hour drive. And not just a shower - we're talking downpour! Anyone who has seen the weather forecast - or at this point, major European headlines - knows that Germany had extreme flooding this week. In Dresden, college kids have reported their cars being washed away, and some cities have lost power. Luckily, our route took us through and above the rain, but the drive was quite stressful for Fabi. Kudos to him for holding out!   ...

Long time, no post! The past few weeks have been busy and not-busy at the same time. The month of May has four bank holidays in Germany, two of which fall on Thursdays, and so most Germans usually take Friday - the Brückentag ("bridge day") - off too. Good for relxaing, bad for the freelancer's wallet. Whatever.   Some exciting updates:   1. I got a new bike! My very own, used-but-perfect blue bike! Last year I used the old red one from Fabi's aunt, but this year one of Margit's friends upgraded and just gave me her old one. It's much lighter and all the gears work. Yesterday Fabi and I took it for a spin to Gronau. He dropped off a copy of his Bachelor's thesis on his boss' desk, then we peddaled to Oberstenfeld and got ourselves some Bailey's ice cream before heading back. Between Großbottwar and Kleinbottwar we coincidentally saw Margit on her new, borrowed racing bike, so we rode the final stretch home together.   2. On Monday, I...