A Sad Day.

After 10 years, three speeding tickets, multiple minor fender-benders, and 80,080 miles, I have finally had to get rid of Victoria - my beloved 1982 Volvo 240 DL Station Wagon. It was a very difficult decision as it is the first and only vehicle I have driven since I was 15, but it was time to let her go to greener pastures.

She will now be lovingly taken care of by the person that has serviced her for the past ten years. Hopefully at least some of her parts will live on in other Volvos for many years to come...

I have made a Flickr album in Victoria's honor here.

We Are Home!

After a 13 hour train and bus ride, five hours of sleep, a rental car, a nine hour flight, a six hour delay in Newark, New Jersey, another three hour flight, and a three hour drive, we finally arrived home at 2 AM!

Needless to say, we are a bit tired, but very happy to be home!

Our Week of Traveling

After Davos, we spent the day in the tiny little country of Lichtenstein - the smallest German-speaking country in the world and one of only two doubly-landlocked countries in the world. It was really beautiful and a nice stamp to put in the passport!

We then took an overnight train to Vienna - which sounds all fancy and luxurious, but in fact the room was TINY! We could only lay down in our bunks or one person could stand in the room - no sitting was possible!

We took a day trip over to Bratislava - the capitol city of Slovakia. This was the first Eastern European country that we have visited and it had such an interesting mix of old-world and communist-bloc buildings and feel. We then visited our good friends Thomas and Mollie who live in Vienna - a beautiful city with WAY too much to see.

You can see a few more photos on our Flickr.

Zermatt, The Alps, and Davos

The past few days we have enjoyed the southern and eastern parts of Switzerland - especially what Switzerland is most famous for (after chocolate) - the beautiful Alps.

We took the train from Geneva to Zermatt to see the very famous Matterhorn Mountain. It is way more impressive than anything Disneyland could come up with and quite a beautiful sight.

The next day, we took the "Glacier Express" train through the Alps. They bill themselves as "The Slowest Express Train in the World" and it goes through some very spectacular scenery (as well as a fair share of tunnels). Despite being a bit on the foggy side, we still got to see some pretty impressive mountains and valleys in our panoramic rail cars.

We got in to the ski town of Davos last night and spent all of today hiking around the beautiful mountains and sitting by the shore of a small lake - then going to some friend's for dinner.

Tomorrow we head out to Liechtenstein before getting on a night train from Zurich to Vienna. We will take a day trip into Bratislava before visiting some good friends in Vienna for a few days.

As always, we put a few more photos up on our Flickr.

Visitor #5 and Our Last Post From Geneva!

Our good friend, Jess, just got on the train this morning after visiting us for a few days. He is a professional photographer and he was sent to get "people shots" of Europe, so he has the tough job of traveling around Europe for 10 days - not too bad if you ask us!

He arranged to fly into Geneva so we could spend a few days in Switzerland. We went around Geneva and also spent a day in Montreux - known as the "Rivera of Switzerland" - it is crazy beautiful and it even has a castle! You can see a few photos on our Flickr.


Also, this will be our last post from Geneva! We can't believe our time is coming to a close! Allison finished her internship this week and as I type this, our suitcases are strewn about the living room half full of things to bring home. We have loved almost every minute of living here (except maybe the awkward not-speaking-French times) and we hope to make it back again.

We leave on Monday for a week of touring through Switzerland and Austria by rail and then we fly back home to Springfield (and the heat!).