Guten tag

Hi everyone! After a long journey we are now in Darmstadt, Germany! We took a 7 hour, ~400km bus ride from Chester, Cheshire through over 100 round-a-bouts to the London Stansted airport. There, we got a plane (which was late) to the Frankfurt-Hahn airport, which we wrongly assumed was near Frankfurt where our friend Neven was to meet us. It turned out to be about 120km to the west, near Luxemburg. So, obviously, Neven was not there, so we found a nice, cheap hotel for €35/night. It looked like an IKEA commercial! There was a big breakfast there for only €3 each. In the morning, we could take a bus to Frankfurt, then another to Darmstadt, but we were feeling adventurous, so we made a sign that said our destination, stuck our thumbs out and stood on the on-ramp to the autobahn. We waited there in the light drizzle under our Japanese umbrellas while I played a riff on the harmonica. 20 minutes later, a small German semi-truck picked us up. He took us right to where we were going and taught us some German (including the word for pumpkin, and some rude German driving words).