We didn't take any photos yet so the picture of the tower is a stock photo of something in Berlin. Pay no attention to it.

Wednesday, Sept. 22: Kayla had a cold. She woke me up around 4 in the morning to tell me there was a mouse in our hotel room. I missed seeing it, but he chewed into our potato chip bag and was sneaking them into the radiator to finish them. This lasted a couple hours at least. That's when we figured out why the hotel had a sign that said not to bring food into the rooms. We checked out and had planned to go to the nearby beach. First we needed breakfast, so went to a little shop. Kayla wanted another one of those weird gooey things from before. I had a not-so-weird pizza. We split a box of cream puffs. Nutritious, huh? We went to the train station and before leaving for the beach wanted to reserve a spot on the night train to Munich. Usually for a night train you need reservations. It was one of those take-a-number lines and we waited there an hour, but did get it. Then we took the train to the beach. It wasn't that far away, maybe 45 minutes. It's a very nice beach, with lots of soft sand. We were first looking at the shells, all the little clam-like shells, then found a long angular one; I think I remember it being called a jacknife clam or something. We thought it was really unusual. Then we walked closer to the water and saw thousands more of the same kind, and it didn't seem as unusual anymore. I did find something that might be unusual. It's either a fossil whale or dinosaur bone, or someone's old soup bone that's turned black in the ocean. I'm not sure yet, but I'm hoping it's a fossil. Either way I'm giving it to Kayla as a present. Too bad she couldn't enjoy the beach much because of her cold, so I hope we can get to another nice beach on this trip. We went back to wait in Amsterdam for the night train. While waiting, we talked to a retired English guy who travels everywhere. He seemed like an old college professor and gave us some tips. I also found an automat. I've wanted to find one ever since seeing one on tv a couple years ago. The day before, I thought I had found one, but it was an "automaat", which I guess mean ATM. I got Kayla another gooey thing from this one. Mmmm. The night train had little rooms with 6 beds (3 stacked on each side of the room.) We thought we might have the room all to ourselves, which would have been nice. We did for about 3 hours, then it filled up with Germans. At one point in Germany the train was stopped for a long time and I think police were searching for a terrorist onboard. They didn't tell us anything though, so I'm just saying what I heard another guy say.

Thurs. Sept. 23: We got to Munich at 7:30 this morning. We were greeted by stands selling a variety of German foods, including pretzels as big as your head. We'll get one later. We went online to find a place to stay. I guess Oktoberfest is kind of a big deal; the closest place we could find was 3 hours away in a hard-to-get-to town called Krumbach. We eventually got here, and then eventually found out how to check in. We weren't sure if this hotel was a restaurant or an apartment building. It might be all three. Kayla is sleeping and fighting off germs. I said germs, not Germans. Just to be clear. That's about it so far today. Later we might go to a restaurant and order things we don't understand.