Skiing

We have now skied the past three days and so far are having a great time, although the weather here as turned quite warm (40 degrees F) and rain has hit the slopes, so we are hoping for one more day of skiing out of this week. Think Snow, in an ironic twist apparently ST Petersburg had a record snowfall last weekend, can't win them all. From these pictures you can see why we love this area, it is so incredibly gorgeous.

Germany

So we have been here a couple of days, but we have been having so much fun that we haven't taken the time to post the pictures we have taken, so in the mean time here is some evidence that we are truly here, and our friends Peter and Whitney have joined us from France.


The culinary options here are right up Josh's alley. Apparently Peter likes the meaty fare as well

Oh Starbucks, how I love thee..

As many of our blog readers are aware we love Starbucks, in fact some might say we might be addicted. So living in St. Petersburg without our great love is difficult. When we (maybe I should say I ) saw the lovely green Starbucks sign here in Prague, I was immediately overcome with the sense that order has been restored to life.

That was until I realized that my skim chi tea late cost slightly shy of $10- I love you Starbucks, just not $10 a cup love you.

A new turning point in my life- I must be grown up.

I am really hoping that Starbucks isn't as expensive in Germany!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas Family and Friends! We hope that everyone had a wonderful day. Josh and I spent a fantastic day in Prague. We began our Christmas day with mass at a beautiful church we found here. These pictures don't do it justice....

I think I was meant for this church- it is a bit difficult to see in the pictures but every pew has it's own heater! Nothing short of fantastic! For the record, at our church in St Petersburg we kneel on the cold stone floor.

Merry Christmas- Warsaw and on to Prague

As the sign above shows we are now in Czech Republic, and almost to our destination of Garmisch for a week of skiing and relaxing in the Bavarian Alps, but for the next three days we will be in Prague. Here we will enjoy our 5th Christmas together, although this is the second one we have spent together out of the country, but away from our families. We were remembering our first christmas together this morning, which was spent in Korea. We cooked a christmas meal that we ate together on the top of my footlockers in my 12 foot square concrete barracks room, BOY have we come a long way!On our most recent leg of the trip we saw this sign several times. We have no idea what it means. Any of our Polish Speaking friends out there we are yearning for some insight. It seems this sign was accompanied by long lines of traffic for us, which made us fear it, yet still we don't understand it. A few days ago in Warsaw Nikki went on a hunt for the Warsaw Christmas Market.

Eventually we found a Polish Pottery outlet, no translation needed, Nicole knows exactly what that sign means. Notice she didn't even take a second to pose for the photo, she was on a mission for pottery.

Eventually we found the Christmas market, yet apparently we were a little early, as most of the stands were closed.

Eventually all the stands open, and Nikki had a great time hunting for some bargains. We hope happiness finds you all this Christmas.

on the road

With our day of touring and shopping in Riga complete, we spent another nite in Riga getting ready for the next leg of our drive, heading west still the next drive would bring us out of Latvia, and into Lithuania and into Poland.

We left Riga early on a snowy morning hoping to drive about 9 hours to Warzaw, Poland. As I was brushing the snow off the car I noticed the car in front of us had a very interesting license plate. I did not know that Latvians did vanity plates, but I am assuming that the owner of this car wanted that on his license plate, otherwise that would be quite a coincidence.

The Lithuanian countryside was beautiful but our drive was slow and long, with blustery snowy winds and lots of traffic, I think we averaged about 30 miles an hour. Nikki commented that she felt like she was on "Ice Road Truckers." We only saw two cars off the road, but both were upside down, so we opted for the slow route of caution. Under the snow, however the Roads had lines painted on them, and people generally stayed in those Lines... I was amazed! I didn't realize how much driving in Russia had changed me. In Poland we actually saw a road that was lit by streetlights, it was amazing, I almost stopped to take a picture.

Notice the lines separating lanes on the road. This trend starting happening regularly somewhere between Latvia and Lithuania, by the time we got to Poland every big road had lane markers on it.

We arrived at the hotel quite late in the evening, we were impressed by many things at the hotel in Warzaw, among them how the in room television knew who we were?

Riga

Our semesters finished this week so we packed up the car and headed west. We were out of Russia before the sun showed up for its brief daily appearance somewhere over Estonia for us. (The train eventually showed up as well, we waited for more than a minute as we realized the lights stay red for a long time for the very slow moving oil trains)

It was a little chilly, the car thinks it was -17 at some point, but the news told us that it was -30 in Garmisch Germany right now, which is where we are eventually heading, I hope it warms up there by the time we get there.

Our destination for the first day of driving was Riga, Latvia. Driving through the Baltic states has been fun, the roads are in better condition then the Russian roads, yet are still quite small and slow going, but the scenery is very pretty.

I wonder who lives in the smokestack? Does he have to pay for his heating?
Nikki could hardly contain herself with excitement as we approached the Latvian border, having been to Estonia over the summer, Estonia was old news to her. But Nikki had never been to Latvia before, so a new country was added to her list yesterday.

There it is, the Latvian border. With no real border points the EU has made country crossings a little less dramatic.

Here is a bridge in Riga, well decorated for the season of course.

The city skylight of the Old town behind the river.

Nikki must know that word in every language, it didn't take long for her to discover the souvenir shops, and off for pottery, pictures and amber she went.

The view from the other side of the hotel. We will be here for two nights and then off to the next stop, Poland.