Palaces and Kegeln

We are excited to announce that we got jobs. Both of us will be teaching English for a school called Inlingua. We will mainly be teaching business English. Basically, businesses pay the school to send a teacher to their business once or twice a week. The cool thing is that we get to use company cars to get to and from these businesses so we don't have to mess with the bus and it won't cost us anything. Also, we will be making more money than we thought we would. We will be making about 14.5o Euros and hour. We are very excited. Tristan starts teaching his first course on Monday and Sarah probably a week after that.

As far as our recent travel experiences go we were able to visit a palace here in Munster. As with most old European buildings, the architecture was brilliant. Also, it had a huge garden in the shape of a massive star. The garden was surrounded with water and had a big pond in the middle. There were also several botanical gardens. Here are a few pictures.

Kegeln is a game somewhat similar to bowling. It is a little more difficult because the lane starts out very narrow and gets wider towards the pins. Also, there are only nine pins and they are arranged differently so it is nearly impossible to knock down all of the pins in one roll. The ball is much smaller and there are not finger holes. Also, the ball has to be rolled underneath a cord that hangs less than a foot above the lane.

After the kegeln, we ate at La Romantica Italian Restaurant, and it was the best Italian food we have had yet!

Guten Tag!

After a two hour delay and a lost bag, we made it to Germany! It was a long flight and we were very tired when we got here. We are still suffering from jet lag but it's worth it. Today, we took the train into downtown Munster for a little sightseeing. Here are some of the pictures from our tour.

This is the first church we saw. It was built in 1175. The architecture in all of these churches was amazing. However, during World War 2 the whole city was bombed and all of these churches were nearly destroyed. They were all rebuilt using the same design with the debris left from the old building.

The church below has an interesting story. It is right in the middle of the shopping district in downtown Munster. The buildings on each side of the street are full of stores. If you look closely at the picture on the left you can see three cages just above the clock. When anyone would speak out against the Catholic church they would be beaten and then hung in these cages for everyone to see. It is a practice they still do today for those who break the law (not really!)

This is a picture of the inside of the above church. The architecture and detail on the inside is absolutely amazing. Everything is hand carved and the windows are hand made.

The picture below is of a Catholic cathederal. A cathederal is different than a church because it is much larger and has more meetings. This cathederal is the fourth largest in Germany. Just like the other churches, it was destroyed in WW2 and rebuilt afterwards with the debris from the old building.

The picture on the right is the inside of the cathedral above. The one on the left is an astronomical clock that was made in the early 1500s. Apparantly it was way ahead of its time for technology because it shows the position of the planets and the sun. Also, everyday at noon figurines of the three wisemen come out little doors in the top and bow to a figurine of baby Jesus.

We were able to see a lot of cool stuff today. We also were able to try some German food and it was really good.

Getting ready to go!

As most of you know, we are getting ready to go teach English in Germany for six months. We have been very busy in the last month trying to finish our certification course and have had very little time to relax. We are leaving in two weeks and still have a lot to do.
We will be living in a city called Munster. It is in the northwest area of Germany near the Holland border. Both of us will be teaching there. We are very excited to see Europe and we hope to have time to tour most of it. We are looking forward to such a great opportunity. Here are some pictures of the city we will be in.