Germany blitzfest

Hello hello!

So the remainder of my time on the Greek Islands, was great, as can be expected. The sunset in Oia was a little bit of a disappointment. I've definately seen better in Nova Scotia. But that's okay, it was still cool.

We woke up super early on Tuesday so that we could fully use our time remaining with the rental car (we had to return it at 11am). Our waiter at supper the night before had told us about a place called White Beach which just happened to be on the only peninsula of the island that we hadn't explored that day. So off we went in search for it. Down a narrow dirt, not so flat, road we found a secluded little beach which supposedly you can swim to White beach from. It was really cool, especially since we'd only really been at completely sand beaches since we arrived in Greece. We didn't make it all the way to White Beach because of time constraints and we didn't want to get tired and not have the energy to swim back, but the beach we were on had some super cool little caves for us to explore! Not only that, but we saw animals too!! There were lots of periwinkles, barnacles, limpets and we saw a cool little crab too. I swam out around the point a little bit (but not out of sight from Graham and Tim) until I could see White beach. It was beautiful with big jagged, black rocks sticking up out of the water with the white sand beach and cliffs in the background.

After that little excursion our day was pretty laid back. We had been in the sun for a few days and pretty much just wanted to relax and stay out of the sun. So when we had to check out of our hotel we found a shady spot across the street from the beach and just hung out reading\talking for a few hours. We started heading to the port well before our ferry left and got a chance to have supper in a cute little restaurant in Fira (the biggest place on Santorini) where we met a couple from near Toronto who were on our boat with us. They're just island hopping for a month and just got engaged while on Santorini. Very nice people.

As it was our second overnight ferry and 4th ferry in total, we knew a little better what to expect, but it was still crazy. When we first got on we found seats in a big room where there were lots of people. We lasted there for a while, but Justine and I both though we wouldn't really get any sleep in a seat so went in search of a place to lie down. We ended up in a hallway, which wasn't actually too bad except for the annoying sweedish teenagers who were (presumably drunk and) very very annoying.

The ferry arrived in Athens at about 7:45, despite being PROMISED repeatedly by the travel agent that it was always on time (supposed to arrive at 6:30). Like I said earlier though, we had already been on 3 ferries and knew better than to believe him, so we weren't too worried. We just had less time than we would have liked to make it to the airport for our 10:15 flight to Berlin. The trip went pretty smoothly. When Tim arrived at Athens he had had to take a bus into Athens and then take the metro. So we were all set to do that when we saw that the metro we were on went to the airport. That seemed a lot simpler so we figured we would just stay on. Little did we know they were going to charge us 10 euros each (the bus would've only been 2 each). Oh well, it all worked out fine, we made our flight and here we are in Berlin!!

My first impression of Germanz: wet! Other than a few sprinkles in Paris (which was actually nice because we were dying of the humidity), this is the first real rain we've had. That on top of the fact that Berlin actually has trees makes it feel ALMOST like home! Or at least the closest we've been in the first 4 weeks. The other thing I've noticed about Germany is that fewer people speak english than any other place we've been. It makes it hard to communicate with people (even the people at the train station didn´t really understand) but I actually like it. I mean, it's nice when everyone speaks english, but if I worked in the tourist industry and was expected to know Italian by tons of people every day I would get pretty frustrated. It seems to me that I'm the one in their country so really I should be the one trying to communicate with them. Justine knows a little german (and I do stress the little) so hopefully we'll be able to manage, but it will definately be an adventure!

We take the train to Graham's relatives in Holland tomorrow morning, so we really don't have a lot of time, but after this and grabbing some food we're going to go wandering and see what we can find. It is really wet though so I don't know how far we'll get.

Anyways that's all for now! I can't wait to get to the dutch farm where we get to not be tourists for a couple days! Talk to you soon!!

Kaila