Otro tres dias en Alemania

(August 20th-train in Sweden)
I was so exhausted by the time I arrived chez Simone in Darmstadt (back in Germany) after another transportation disaster… will add to the post of travel frustrations I still intend to write, but mostly this time it was my stupidity…
Anyway, I made it! And it was so incredibly hot in Germany too, so Monday we went to a lake in the afternoon and swam and relaxed and began plotting our tour of South America this fall (despite being nearly travelled out I still love planning and still quite excited for this!!). Then as we were lying on the beach clouds rolled in out of nowhere and before we could say ‘was that a drop of rain?’ the sky opened up and absolutely poured like I’ve never seen, with thunder and lightning and the whole bit. So we ran for the car and home. That evening the rain just stopped and the sun came out again and we had a delicious dinner on the patio, guess it just had to get it all out at once. Then we watched a movie (L’Auberge Espagnole which left us speaking French) and called it a night.
Tuesday I went with Simone as she had to go to work in Frankfurt. I spent the morning wandering around and seeing all the sights, the churches, the main square and the shopping street. Then I met up Simone for a picnic lunch along the Main river. In the afternoon I basically just relaxed in the park along the river as it was so hot and I needed to relax, read and write some letters. That evening we went back to Darmstadt and then out with some of Simone’s friends to an Irish pub that puts on a bilingual quiz game competition. One of the seven categories was ‘Darmstadt’ so I wasn’t any help there but under sports they asked where the 2010 Olympics were so that was a giveaway. We came in 4th out of 26 teams so not too shabby but a bit disappointing since there are prizes for the top three teams.
Yesterday I slept in, it was fabulous. Then we wandered around downtown Darmstadt in the intense heat and had ice cream (spaghetti ice cream!). Saw some of the sights, the 5-finger tower and the dome church, but it was really too hot to do anything. We spoke Spanish almost all day! But I’ve still forgotten so much and it was hard not to mix eng/fr/span/ger… aaah! Last night we went to a salsa bar but the lessons were way beyond me, oh well it reminded me of Ecuador (as did the battle with 3 huge nasty spiders when we got back!) and I think I at least have the basics down now!
I am now on the train heading from Stockholm to northern Sweden (5 ½ hours) after leaving before 6am (have been sleeping on the train) to catch the bus to the airport then another bus from the airport to Stockholm. 13 ½ hour travel day… At least I made all my connections this time!