Berlin, for real this time!

It was Palmer's last week in town, so we had one more trip to go on. After hemming and hawing trying to figure out where to go, we chose to visit Berlin and do all of the tourist stuff. Cori and I had previously been to Berlin for her concerts last year, but didn't do any real tourist stuff while we were there.

The wife took off the last few days of last week, so we hit the road early Wednesday afternoon for the 5 hour drive. As we entered town, we stopped for dinner at a restaurant we found on Trip Advisor. Pretty good, standard German fare.

The Special Olympics World Games happened to be in Berlin this weekend, so we weren't able to find any reasonable place to stay in the city. In Europe, they won't typically let you have 4 people in a room - that's why we used VRBO when we visited Nuremburg and Luxembourg, to avoid having to get two rooms. VRBO's were outrageous in Berlin this weekend, so we stayed out by the airport in the Moxy, and just got two rooms, one for the boys, and one for the girls. The Moxy is a low end traveler hotel in the Marriott chain, with absolutely no frills. We were lucky that the bathrooms in the rooms had walls - we've seen Moxy's with just frosted glass dividers between the room and the bathroom area.

At this point, I feel a contrite apology might be in order. For the last couple of updates, I've overlooked one of the previously highlighted (for me, at least) parts of my narrative... the showers in our units. I'll cover them briefly now, in hopes of assuaging your disappointment - just skip the blue part if you don't care about my shower reviews:

Nuremburg: Our VRBO had 2 full bathrooms, one on the main living level (where the kids rooms were), and one in the upstairs (where the boss and I stayed). The downstairs bath had a stall shower. I am unable to comment on that shower, as I didn't use it. Perhaps I should have, simply for the sake of my review, but I didn't. Sorry - but that'd just be weird. The shower upstairs was weird. You all know how much I enjoy the showers where it's basically a tub with a plexiglass shield attached to half of the tub... if it's been too long since my last shower review, and you don't remember, I'll forgive you, but I just can't stand them. Ours upstairs was one of those, but the tub had a weird shape. Rather than just being a rectangle, it was almost a normal shape, but the end where the spout was was square. I don't remember ever seeing a bathtub that was a truly weird shape, so that was a little odd. I didn't take a picture of it, which might have been a minor mistake on my part. 

Luxembourg: Our VRBO had one and a half baths. The shower was one of the aforementioned tubs with a plexiglass panel on half of it. Not my favorite. Moving on.

Berlin: Traditional stall in the Moxy, with a sliding door on the shower stall. We've stayed in Marriott branded hotels before that didn't have any kind of door on a stall type shower, so this was an additional bonus.

Moving on.

On Thursday, we drove downtown. Our original plan was to take buses and metros to get around, but that was when we were expecting to pay €30 a day for parking at the hotel; the parking lot at the hotel was miniscule, and was always full, so we ended up parking down the street, and driving in (being able to use our expected hotel parking fee for parking in town instead). We parked next to one of the main shopping areas, to be in the right place for our walking tour.

I've mentioned previously that we've had good luck with the "free walking tours" that are available in lots of cities; we signed up for another one, but with a twist. This particular tour was given by a company called "Can You Handle It Tours," and was called the "Rude Bastards Tour." Supposed to be more "R" rated - we chose this one to try to keep the kids engaged. In reality, pretty much the same kind of tour we've gotten everywhere else, but with cursing. Our guide, while he was quite engaging and (mostly) knowledgeable, some of the language came across as a bit forced, almost like he'd just recently learned some of the more offensive words, and was still getting a feel on their proper usage.

Only real criticism that we came up with came up the next day - I'll jump a little ahead to explain. There was a specific museum (called "The Topography of Terror") next to a lengthy section of the Berlin Wall, with an area under the base of the wall section with a bunch of displays. He told us that the sunken section was a display of the foundation of the oldest hotel in Berlin, when in reality it was the cellar of the nearby Gestapo headquarters, where political prisoners were tortured and executed. We discovered the wrong information the next day, when we went through the museum.

Flash-forward complete; let's flashback to the real blog entry now.

In the course of our Rude Bastards tour, we touched on most of the big sites - Brandenburg Gate, Checkpoint Charlie, the Holocaust Memorial, the Gendarmenmarkt (which the Konzerthaus, the German Cathedral, and French Cathedral share), and a parking lot which was the site of Hitler's bunker. The government specifically covered the bunker with cement and buried it, then put a parking lot on top of it to avoid it being turned into a shrine. As it was, there were still a few tour groups that we encountered there. Not really easy to complain about it being turned into a tourist site while we were there being tourists, huh?

One interesting fact that he shared with us; one of the largest buildings in Berlin during the war was the headquarters of the Ministry of Aviation and the Luftwaffe. That building was specifically not bombed by the allies, to use as a navigation waypoint - I just thought that was ironic. That building is still standing, and is now the headquarters of the Ministry of Finance - basically their IRS.

Another fun thing we learned... the symbol on the crosswalks in Berlin is a little different than others we've seen. The characters are differently shaped, wearing cute little hats. After unification, the folks of Berlin threw up such uproar when their crosswalk lights were all changed to the western version, they changed them all to the eastern type instead. It's one of the few things from before the fall of the Iron Curtain to thrive after unification. It's a whole thing, with a store where you can buy merchandise - which, of course there is, and of course the wife had to buy stuff there.

We also passed by a place where you can take a motorized tour of Berlin in a Trabant. Evidently, this was a crappy car that was quite well known in east Germany. Very cheap, very poorly built, plastic body panels, powered by a two cycle 600cc engine. Took over 20 seconds to get to its top speed of 60mph (if you could even get it going that fast). At one point, there was a 13 year wait for these cars.  

About the sites we saw...

• Brandenburg Gate: This sits at the site of the original Berlin Customs Wall, constructed in 1734. The site itself dates back to the 1100's, before Berlin existed. It's pretty well known now - everybody's seen pictures of it, it's one of the most famous tourist sites in Germany. It's immediately between the Embassies to the United States and France, with more embassies further down the block (including the Russian Embassy, a few doors down from the US Embassy). 

• Checkpoint Charlie: Everybody's heard of this one too, the most famous checkpoint between East and West Berlin. The city was divided into the east and west sides by the Berlin Wall (as everyone knows), but West Berlin was broken into three sectors, with different Allied governments administering each one: American, French, and British. Checkpoint Charlie (the third checkpoint - Alpha, Bravo, Charlie in the NATO alphabet) was one of the checkpoints from East Berlin into the American Sector.

• Holocaust Memorial: I'd previously seen pictures of this one online. It's a 200,000 square foot site with 2,700 rectangular pillars, each about 7'9" by 3', from 8 inches tall to over 15 feet tall, arranged in a big grid like a city, generally from shortest to tallest front to back. You can wander throughout the monument, as the passageways are about 2 feet wide between them. One of the ironic pieces of information our guide gave us (which I have not been able to verify independently) is that the blocks are painted with graffiti repellant paint. That's not the ironic part. The ironic part is that the paint was developed by a company named Degussa... one of their subsidiary companies was the main manufacturer and distributor of Zyklon B, the gas used in the extermination chambers. I found that ironic.

(that top pic of the Holocaust Memorial was of our guide, Arthur while he was telling us about it)

A repeated theme of the tour was the attitude of Germany toward France. I'm not sure how factual all of his points were, but he gave several examples of Germany and France specifically taunting each other... for example, a sculpture of Victoria, the Roman Goddess of Victory, sits atop Brandenburg Gate. Her head was sculpted to specifically be looking down on the French Embassy. Pretty much any opportunity the Germans had to thumb their noses at the French, they did so.

After the tour, we headed back to the hotel to rest up a little before dinner, then drove to (what turned out to be) a chain restaurant, but was actually pretty cool. The name of the place was BrewDog, and they've got locations all over the world. Who'd have thunk it? Pretty good food, wide beer selection, and what appeared to be a handful of free video games in cabinets.

The next day, we drove back downtown to visit a couple of museums that interested us. We parked and walked over to the Topography of Terror Museum, which was on the site of the Gestapo Headquarters. There was a lot of reading in there, stories of political and cultural dissidents who were tortured, and in some cases, executed. It honestly was a bit of an overload - it was all pictures and captions / stories. There were a lot of visitors to the museum, and it was difficult to be able to read all of them. After we finished up inside, we went outside, down to the section our guide had told us was the foundation of the oldest hotel in Berlin, which turned out to be an extension of the exhibits inside.

We moved the car to another garage and walked over to the German Museum of Technology; we hadn't walked past it during our tour, but while driving home that day, we'd seen a building with an airplane on the roof - a C-47, of the same type that participated in the Berlin Airlift. Of course, it piqued my interest! Turns out, it's a museum of German technology and innovation - the museum covered everything from ships, to textiles, to trains, boats, planes... honestly, I skipped through most of the museum. I spent most of my time in the area devoted to ships and planes. Pretty interesting, they had quite a few examples of famous German planes, but I did note that they were missing (what I'd consider) two of the most famous German planes: the Fokker Dr.I and the ME-262. They did have quite a few other examples of well known German aircraft: The ME-109, the FW-190, and a burned out JU-87.

Sorry for geeking out in that last paragraph - you knew what you might find when you started reading!

We drove back to the hotel and hung out for a little while, then went to dinner at... any guesses? Of course, it was a barbecue restaurant. Long time readers will remember my predilection for finding barbecue restaurants in whatever cities we visit... this one was better than most, our waitress was from Alabama, and the bartender made one of the top three whiskey sours that I've ever had. I call that a win, for barbecue in Berlin!

Yesterday, we drove back to Frankfurt, and have had a down day today. Palmer returns to the states tomorrow morning, so that's all of the adventures of the whole Shores Family for now... whatever we end up doing with just Cori... well, you'll just have to tune in next time!

Luxembourg!

So, here's the second trip of the kids' visit, but first Rüdesheim!

Rüdesheim is a cute little town fairly near Frankfurt that we've decided that we like to take visitors to. You might remember it from an earlier blog post from about a year ago (with "K"). The boss was at work, so I loaded up the kids and drove over there. We did basically a loop of the tourist area, taking in all of the little tourist shops and wine stores. We were hoping to find some of the strawberry wine that we tried there last time, but weren't able to find any - even at the tail end of strawberry season! One thing we did this time that we didn't do last time is the chairlift. There's a chairlift that takes you up to the top of a nearby hill, where the Niederwald Monument watches over the Rhine River. This monument was erected in 1871 to commemorate the unification of Germany. Quite impressive, it stands 125 feet tall, and looks down upon the town of Rüdesheim and the Rhine River. There's also a neoclassical temple up there that was erected in 1788, at the top of the chairlift. The ride up on the chairlift takes you over the vineyards overlooking the town, providing beautiful views of the countryside. Highly recommend!

We had asked Palmer where he wanted to go while he was over here, and he's got a couple of friends he plays online games with in Luxembourg and southern Belgium, so we decided to add another proverbial stamp to our passports with a quick trip to... Luxembourg!

Thursday we drove to Luxembourg - it's not actually that long of a trip... about 2 1/2 to 3 hours. When we got to the apartment that we'd rented, the key wasn't in the lock box that I was told to check. A quick call to the management company, and they gave me the code for the other box (usually used by management)... so we could get into the apartment. I went upstairs to get the control for the garage door, and went back down to pull the car into our designated garage spot.

Our apartment was a "penthouse" unit, simply meaning that it was on the top floor of the four story building. It had a wrap-around balcony, with great views from every window. Unfortunately, no "zombie shutters" though. This will come into play the next morning... and every morning after that as well.

Public transit is free in the country of Luxembourg, so we took a bus downtown and wandered around for a while. One of the wife's coworkers visits Luxembourg frequently for his job, so she had asked him for a recommendation of places to eat and tourism advice. We went to his recommended restaurant, Charles Sandwiches. Pretty good, but the wife's Caesar Salad with Salmon evidently got lost in the kitchen... by the time she got it, everyone else was done eating. Also, the salmon was raw. I'm not sure how she toughed it out - I would not have been able to choke it down, but... I honestly wouldn't have ordered salmon in the first place, so she's got no one to blame but herself.

We wandered around a while longer, and found the "most beautiful balcony in Europe." Perhaps I should step back a little bit...

Luxembourg is the richest country in the world, due in large part to its corporation friendly tax laws. The capital (and largest city), Luxembourg City, was officially founded back in the 900's, on the site of an older Roman tower. The location of the site, at the natural convergence of two rivers, was a perfect location for defensive fortifications along the cliffs overlooking the intersection of the rivers. Those fortifications stood until the late 1860's, when the fortifications had to be dismantled to comply with an international treaty... the city of Luxembourg was so well fortified that European "superpowers" at the time were concerned that they'd be unable to take the city over. They called it "Gibraltar of the North."

Luxembourg has a long and storied history... taken over by just about every country in Europe at one time or another. How that jives with the whole "Gibraltar of the North," I'll admit, I just don't get.

Anyway, while those fortifications are mostly gone, they've been transformed into a walkway along the upper city, overlooking the rivers and the Gründ (lower city) below. The walkway has been described as "The most beautiful balcony in Europe," but the person who coined that phrase was a Luxembourgish writer, so... your mileage may vary. By the way, his name was Batty Weber, so take that into account while you're weighing your answer. Beautiful? Yes. The most beautiful in Europe? I haven't seen them all, and Batty probably hadn't either.

After wandering around for a while, we took a bus back to the apartment.

Y'all might or might not know this, but this area of Europe is much further north than you'd expect. Frankfurt is about the same latitude as Winnipeg, Canada. As a result, in the summer, the sun doesn't go down until almost 11:00, and comes up bright and early at around 5:00.

Remember how I told you that there were no "zombie shutters" at the apartment? Yeah, so the sun woke us up bright and early. The rest of the family, though - they were able to go back to sleep. I, on the other hand, was up with the sun, and couldn't go back to sleep.

Once everyone else started moving around, we got dressed and took off for our first destination of the day, the Luxembourg American Cemetery and Memorial. 5,074 US Army soldiers are buried at this cemetery, most of whom lost their lives at the Ardennes Offensive, better known as the Battle of the Bulge. Patton's headquarters for the operation were in Luxembourg, and in accordance with his wishes, upon his death, his remains were sent to the American Cemetery in Luxembourg so he could be buried with his men.

After our sobering visit to the cemetery, we drove back into town and parked in a parking garage we found. We wandered around, and stopped in a kebab shop for a quick lunch.

After lunch, Palmer split off to meet up with the first of his friends.

The girls and I wandered around a little while longer (including a local supermarket, which we always enjoy), and then headed back to the apartment.

We didn't hear from Palmer until almost 11:00 that night... he had his cell phone with him, and while Luxembourg City has free internet, it's a pain in the butt to get it connected if you don't already have a connection. You have to register for an account, then use the PIN code that they send you via text message... which is all well and fine if you've got cell service... which he didn't. Evidently, the management company has received complaints from neighbors about their clients bugging them, so there are warnings all over the apartment, telling us not to contact the neighbors. When Palmer saw the buzzer at the front door, he wasn't sure which apartment was ours, so he didn't feel comfortable pressing any of the buttons. He wandered around until he found someone who would let him use their phone, and he called me to ask me to let him in. Evidently, he'd been wandering around the neighborhood for around an hour. I'd gone down twice to look for him, but he'd been walking around, rather than sitting waiting, so we didn't bump into each other.

That night, we put our heads together and used my telephone number and his phone to get him all set up with an account for the next day.

The next morning, we'd scheduled one of our free walking tours, and had to be there at 11:00. We left around 10:00 and drove down to "our" parking lot. Walking through the town on the way to our meeting place, we stumbled through a little open air market, and the boss fell in love with a bunch of pieces of pottery that she (thankfully) didn't want to carry around all day. Crisis averted, huh?

I stepped over to get a couple of bottles of water for our tour, and when I got back to the family, what should I see but my wife carrying a shopping bag with a watercolor picture of Paris in it. This makes the second watercolor that she's acquired in the last few weeks - she got a watercolor of Salzburg... while she was in Salzburg. Now, she's got a story about how she bought a watercolor of Paris while on vacation in Luxembourg.

Sometimes, I think she does stuff like this just to mess with me.

We met up with the group for our free tour, and turns out, the group was a lot larger than the groups we've toured with previously... there were probably 30 people in this group, and it just felt way too big. We toured over most of the areas we'd already explored, while picking up a few extra little tidbits of trivia here and there.

One of the sites we saw a couple of times (but only learned about during our tour) was a monument called Gëlle Fra, or the Monument of Remembrance. The monument was erected in 1923 in remembrance of the losses during World War I. During Nazi occupation during World War II, they dismantled the monument. After the war, the monument was reconstructed, but the golden angel on the top remained missing until 1980, when her dismantled pieces were discovered under the bleachers under the national football stadium. She has since resumed her rightful place, with additions to the monument made to honor those lost in World War II and Korea.

After our tour, we went back to the main square and found a place to get food, settling on a pizza place. Everyone else had pizza, while I had what was supposed to be focaccia, but was basically a really thin panini. After lunch, we walked over to the Luxembourg Museum of Archeology, History, and Art.

This museum is quite large, and all of the permanent exhibits are free (because... Luxembourg). We wandered through the "pre-history" areas, then explored the different floors (I wandered around a floor for a while that seemed to have a strong focus on "What do you think Baby Jesus' junk looked like?" that were painted in the 1600's and 1700's). A bit more wandering after that, and I went outside to wait for the others. Reuniting a little while later, we drove back to the apartment to recuperate for a while before dinner.

Palmer had arranged to meet friend #2 for dinner at their hotel at 7:00 (after a few schedule changes), so we drove over there and met up with his friend and his friend's mom (hereinafter referred to as "The Dutch", because that's where they're from). 

We ate dinner in the restaurant there then, playing it by ear, we agreed to go down to a "gaming" bar that Palmer (and friend #1) had gone to the night before. I drove down there with Palmer and the Dutch. We parked and found the bar, then I walked over to meet up with the girls, who had ridden a bus over (since the car only fits 5 people... next time, I'm holding out for something with a third row!).

We ended up closing the bar down, leaving a few minutes before midnight. We played a couple of card games that they had there, Uno Flip and Exploding Kittens. Couple of fun facts about the games... Palmer was the only one who had ever played Uno Flip, and the Dutch had never heard of Exploding Kittens. Uno Flip was pretty self explanatory, but the Exploding Kittens game was in French. Which none of us spoke. Yeah, that was "fun." If you've never heard of Exploding Kittens, it's a silly card game where you basically just have to follow the instructions on the cards, and avoid drawing a card with an exploding kitten on it.

FYI, kinda hard to follow written instructions on cards if they're written in a language you don't speak.

At the end of the night, Palmer and I drove the Dutch back to their hotel, then went back downtown to pick up the girls, who were waiting inside the bar. Then we headed back to the apartment.

The following morning, Palmer had arranged to meet the Dutch at their hotel for breakfast, so I dropped him off there at 9:15 and returned to the apartment to help the girls clear it out. We locked it all up at 10:00 and dropped the keys back off in the management lock box, then drove over to the hotel and parked down the street to wait for Palmer's visit to end. Palmer finished up, and we drove back to Frankfurt.

One more trip before Palmer returns to the states, but you'll have to tune in next week for that post!

Medium sized update...

So, bunches of stuff has happened, but no one thing was big enough for its own post... so I'm combining a bunch of updates into a single post.

So I took a quick-ish trip back to the states... a year and a half ago, I submitted an application for TSA's Global Entry program, to make it easier to get through security. I hoped to get it all done before we moved over here, but no dice. The first appointment that they had for the interview was the first week of May, this year. Bear in mind, I was looking at appointments in April of 2022.

Our recent trip to Dublin, we had hopes of being able to do my interview there, but that (obviously) fell through, so it looked like I was heading back across the big water.

Atlanta was one of the facilities that could do the interview upon arrival from an overseas flight, and I had a 4 hour layover there... so perhaps I could get my interview done while waiting, right? Well, I went to the booth and was placed third in line, about a 45 minute wait. An additional group of passengers arrived after me, and when the agent called up the first one from that group (effectively skipping my place in line), I went up to ask about it. He'd moved my place in line back, since I had such a long time before my connecting flight. I just got my passport back from him (since I already had an appointment scheduled for the following week). 

I caught my flight to Austin, and stayed with my folks for a few days. While there, I went on a couple of shopping sprees at HEB (we're a Texas family, after all!), and visited with a couple of friends who still live in the area.

I flew in to Nashville, and Cori (and her friend Alyssa) drove over and picked me up. 

While in Knoxville... I visited most of my folks from my old job (both fellow employees and old passengers), and visited most of my old haunts.

While I was in town, I scheduled a trip to visit one of my oldest (and best-est) friends, Larry, who lives in BFE North Carolina, talking Palmer into driving down with me - although the kids are 19 and 21, neither of them have ever met Larry, so I was especially looking forward to this trip. I also arranged to stop and see our friends Sam & Erica on our way by, as they're a short hour and a half (or so) from BFE, NC now.

The day before our trip, I smoked 2 big pork butts on the Traeger, and took one butt to Sam & Erica's, and one to Larry's. We had dinner with Sam & Erica the first night, then took the second pork butt to Larry's the next day.

Palmer & I hung out with Larry (and his wife & mother-in-law) for a few days, then drove back home.

I think I may have picked up a bug while traveling, so I didn't think it'd be a very good idea to visit any more of my folks in Oak Ridge, to avoid passing anything along to them.

I flew back to Austin for a couple more days - my ticket from Germany was FRA -> AUS -> FRA, with AUS -> BNA -> AUS there in the middle.

I flew back to Germany and got over my jet lag within a couple of days.

Both kids flew to Germany the following week. I'd seen a post online a while back about a big festival down in Nuremberg the first weekend in June ("Rock im Park", if you're interested), and Cori was interested in going, and quite excited about it. The number of people expected (close to 100,000 people) gave me hives just to think about, so the wife took one for the team and planned on accompanying her. Palmer came along just to hang out with me in the city while the girls were corrupting themselves.

I can't give you any detailed info about the concerts; Cori got to see the majority of the bands she was looking forward to, and got a picture taken with the lead singer of one of her favorite bands, Bury Tomorrow: 

The final act for the third day was the Foo Fighters, just to give you an indication of the caliber of bands that were there. I will post her pics at the bottom of the page,  so as not to subject y'all to a bunch of pics you're not interested in... but they're down there if you wanna check them out!

While the girls were partying... we'd found a place a little outside of town on VRBO (a competitor of Air B & B), and I chauffeured the girls to and from the concert. The first day, after dropping them off, Palmer and I went to find the local military base...

Back in the 70's, my father was stationed at a base in Germany. I ended up inheriting a stein that he'd brought back, and the decoration on the stein said "Vilseck," which happens to be located next to one of the biggest training bases in Europe, Grafenwoehr. I thought it'd be interesting to make a quick visit to the town and base while we were in the area. We stopped in the (quiet) town and took a couple of pics...

 

Palmer & I wandered around the Exchange and Commissary on the base, and had lunch at the food court (Popeye's Chicken & Taco Bell, respectively), then took a quick pic, then headed back to Nuremberg. 

We found a sporting goods store in town to buy a beach towel and a bunch of supplies that the wife requested (that would be good for them at the festival the following days), then he and I went swimming at a local thermal bath. 

I've gotten to where I really like these; they're usually not too crowded, and have various water sprayers and little stuff to do. This particular one had a lazy river, a big waterfall, and a separate section with 6 hot tubs. There was also a little gate to an area called "Solegrotto," which we didn't figure out the first day. The first day, we swam for a little over an hour, then stopped at a store, and headed to the apartment. I picked up the girls at a convenient meeting spot.

The next day we all headed into Nuremberg to wander around the tourist area together before the first band the girls were interested in seeing. We putzed around, had a quick bite to eat, then Palmer & I dropped them off close to the festival. He and I went back to the pool.

This time, we decided to explore the Solegrotto as well, and it was weird. It was a little basketball court sized room underneath the hot tub area, with a curved ceiling and nothing in there except a pool, with abstract patterns being projected onto one of the walls. We got in, and immediately found that the water was extremely salty - probably close to Dead Sea salty. I was unable to keep myself underwater for any amount of time, which was pretty handy, as I had shaved that morning, and the microscopic cuts on my face (left by any razor) were stinging and burning. Palmer and I agreed that we could feel our skin drying out while we were still in the water. Interesting sensation, but we didn't last long in there, not more than 10 - 15 minutes. 

Afterward, we headed back to the apartment, and I went down later that night to pick the girls up.

The following day was Sunday, and nothing is open in Germany on Sundays. We all headed to the base, just for something to do. We wasted about as much time as we could there, then headed back to the apartment. The only bands that the girls were planning on catching on Sunday were playing late - the Foo Fighters started at 9:00. I dropped them off at about 8, then picked up McDonalds for the boys.

The boss and I coordinated their return trip, I left the apartment a little after 11:00 to go back and get them, I guess there was one other band that was playing at the same time as the Foo Fighters, they went back and forth between the two bands.

This morning, we got up at around 9:00, packed up and drove the 2 1/2 hours to get home. 

Palmer will be here for 3 weeks, Cori will be staying a bit longer. We have a couple more trips planned, so watch this space!

Now, as promised, pics from the festival!

Pic	Band Name
	Bury Tomorrow
	Motionless in White
	The true star of the whole show, vacuuming the stage between acts
	Kings of Leon
	Arch Enemy
	The Architects, featuring some random guy's hands
	Motionless in White
	Jack Black (from Tenacious D)
	Foo Fighters (much more crowded than the others!)