family vacations

So yesterday I helped put out a few fires - in German nonetheless! Laura's parents and brother (who visited our Bible Study last week) are storing some luggage in our garage while the family takes a trip to Paris and then on to Ireland for a bit. They picked up their rental car and by the time they had arrived at our house, they were stressing about potential charges on their all-German contract. So I called EuropeCar (Germany's partner with National) three different times to try to sort it all out. The guy on the other end of the phone refused to speak slowly, so my little brain was kicked into high gear. It all worked out in the end -- the hardest part was trying to get him to explain what turned out to be a hold on their credit card. Phew!

We then proceeded to have somebody get stuck in our bathroom (the keys tend to stick in the locks) for a few minutes before they went back out to their car and nearly drove off before they all exited to search their luggage for a missing jacket. Said jacket was found, all reloaded and they took off towards the autobahn. It was really funny to watch - made me remember all those trips with my family...every family vacation is some sort of crazy! We'll see them again next Monday for the luggage exchange. I hope they have a good trip!

On other vacation news: Stefan and I are hoping to camp out at Frank's empty apartment down in Bavaria this summer and use it for a base to go exploring various locales in Bayern. If you have any must-see recommendations, please post here, or send an email. I'm up to my eyeballs in guidebooks (Rick Steves is the MAN!) and TripAdvisor reviews!