5 Airports, 4 Christmas Markets, 3 Airplanes, 2 Hire Cars, and 1 FANTASTIC Holiday!!!

As I was boarding the plane in STN.

I feel like I've changed the lyrics to 'The 12 days of Christmas' ... Well for the first 5 days anyways!!

I absolutely LOVED my trip to Germany, however there were a few tiny things that certainly made the trip eventful. I'm not bad luck ... Honest!!

I was going out to Germany to see my friend Ronja, who I roomed with for a semester at BYU. Some great German Christmas Markets and snow was also a great Christmas activity so imagine my excitement when it started snowing at Stansted as we were boarding the plane. However, I forgot that the UK are rubbish when it comes to snow and 30 minutes later, with 1cm of snow on the ground, the airport closed ... We were grounded, and they cancelled all flights going out that morning. :(

The line for the ticket desk literally was as long as the airport and after standing there for half hour without moving I tried to reschedule my flight online .... To be told there was nothing available until Friday (I was coming home on Saturday). I hadn't seen Ronja in almost 2 years and I wasn't about to give up my holiday that easily and waste all the money I had already spent, so next stop ... Easyjet!! Luckily they had 1 seat left on the Bristol to Berlin flight and I had 6 hours to race across the country to go and catch it. Easy!! Until I got on the motorway and hit a car park. It took an hour to go 2 junctions to the M25, by which time I was praying that the M25 and M4 were clear. All I needed was to be able to go the speed limit and I knew I'd make my flight. First bit of good all day ... The other 2 motorways were clear and I even had time to spare.

12 hours later, 3 airports, and 2 planes and I was finally in Berlin Schonefeld.

Ronja lives about 2 hours from Berlin, and so the next day we decided to drive in and see the sights. Eventful incident number 2 .... The motor warning light came on!! Having had a car die not long after this same light came on, you can imagine my anxiety as we pulled over and called Hertz to try and find out what we should do. They said it was either nothing or the car was about to blow, but since there was no smoke, and the steering was fine, they told us to carry on to Berlin and stop at the Berlin Tegal Airport to switch out cars. To be fair Hertz were really good, I literally handed back the keys, they gave me a new set of keys and we were on our way again.

Brandenburg Gate

Berlin was amazing!! And really easy to drive in, and we managed to park for FREE!! As we were driving in we saw the angel statue that you see all the time in movies etc. We then went to look at the Brandenburg Gate, and then Checkpoint Charlie. Checkpoint Charlie is where the US checkpoint was to get into West Berlin and is obviously right where the wall was. We also went to a museum where they went through the history of the wall and talked about the amazing escape attempts made my East Germans trying to get into West Germany. We were planning to the DDR museum which was about what life was like in Eastern Germany during that time, and was apparently really good, with lots of hand on stuff and really interactive. However, by the time we were ready to go there we found out that it was going to be closing shortly and instead went to look at some of the churches and the Christmas Market in Berlin before heading home where Ronja cooked me a supper yummy German meal.

Berlin has bears all over the city ... I found 2.

Checkpoint Charlie

Brandenburg Gate at night.

 On Friday we went into Halle to go to the Halloren Schokoladen Museum. Anyone who knows me will know that anything with the word chocolate in it is something that I would enjoy. It was amazing. It talked about the history of the company, and how they made the chocolate. Then you got to see the production room. Around the museum they had models of some of the famous buildings in the area .... All made out of chocolate, and a chocolate room. . . Yes, a chocolate room!! This would so not survive in my house. Everything apart from like the couch, table, and light was made out of real chocolate. The walls and everything. It was basically heaven!!

Me, Ronja, and the Chocolate Room. 

Leipzig Christmas Market.

 After that me and Ronja went into Leipzig to get lunch and stroll round the Christmas Markets. Ronja took me to this fabulous place called Vapianos. They do fresh pasta and you can choose what you have with it and they make it right in front of you. It was delicious and really good value for the portions you get. We then went round all the Christmas Markets and I got some really cute German Christmas Decorations, fudge, and gingerbread. It was FREEZING!! The temperatures were forever below freezing and our noses were proper cold. We popped into the art gallery in Leipzig. This building was humongous, with really tall ceilings. The art was really good and there was plenty to see. My favourite piece pretty much looked like he had sloshed a ton of paint onto a canvas and moved it around with his feet ... You could actually see feet prints on the canvas.
Ronja then took me to the top of one of the tallest buildings in Leipzig where you could have panoramic views of the city. It looked so magical at night with all the city lights. Unfortunately my camera decided to spas out and took blurry shots, but it was breathtaking.

Quedlinburg.

Saturday was my last day in Germany and I was flying out that afternoon. We trotted off to this quaint little town called Quedlinburg, which opened up all the little courtyards between the houses and churches etc and had Christmas market stalls. It was kinda like a advent and you had to find these 24 little alley ways which led to the courtyards. It was so pretty, how they've tried to keep the town to look like it did originally and having these passageways that led to these open spaces... It was a bit magical.

We didn't have very much time before I needed to be back to go to the airport, and it was pretty perfect timing really. I totally hadn't really left enough time thinking that Leipzig airport would be a bit like a shed ... How wrong was I. It was actually pretty big for a regional airport - bigger than Bristol - and they were just starting to board by the time I got to the Gate... And I didn't even go to any last minute shops.

Because I  had driven to Bristol on Wednesday, it meant I had to catch the train home on Saturday from Stansted. We had landed early and my train from Paddington wasn't due to leave for another 2 hours so I managed to change the time so I got back to Bristol in time to get at least a few hours sleep before I had to be up the next morning for work ... Needless to say that it was a very long day!!

Despite all the mishaps at the beginning of the holiday, I had such a fabulous time in Germany and it was so good to see Ronja again and have a proper catch up ... It felt just like old times when we were living together. Well worth the trip!!

Just as I was trying to convince myself that I really wasn't bad luck my first shift back at work on Sunday and we got diverted. Fantastic!! We were trying to get into Warsaw Modlin and got diverted to the proper Warsaw airport due to bad weather, low cloud, and mist. After waiting around for a while we then tried to go back to Modlin to pick up our passengers for our return flight but couldn't get in again. Really wasn't having much luck with flights last week that's for sure. We ended up flying back to Bristol empty which is bad because we don't get flight pay for empty flights, but was really good because it meant I managed to get a Sunday nap in. And waiting for me when I got home from work .... Dinner!! I really do have great housemates.