Jeremy & Joanna Tour Europe!: Even if it's your birthday, you still need your passport to fly!!

Or so Jo discovered when she tried to get to Germany without hers!! So in a mad panic, she jumped into a cab home to get it, but only after remembering that she didn't actually have any keys to the house as she had lent them to Tori, who would be staying for a few days while Jo and Jeremy were away, but was currently taking her sister to a different airport. A quick phone call home confirmed that Shannon, Jo and Jeremy's housemate (Gingerbread house-maker from previous post), was still home and would let Jo in, Phew! The rest was a race against time... So Jo arrived back at the airport 10 min after check-in closed :( but thankfully they re-opened check in and let us through, only for the plane to be then running over 1hr late!! But we made it to Germany in the end and I suppose that is the most important thing!!

Since being here we have been spoilt rotten!! We have eaten like kings, and been taken around to some really cool places!! When we first arrived we relaxed for a few days around Wittenberg, where Jo's family live, about 1hr from Berlin. A few days later Jo's brother arrived, which is when the fun really started. We've been to the Christmas markets in Leipzig and drunk Gluhwein, been down a copper mine, visited the Kyffhauser Denkmal - a national German monument with stunning views and the deepest castle well in the world, seen one of the largest paintings in Germany, if not the world (14m x 126m), and we even were treated to an extra special surprise!!!

We were picked by Lars one morning and taken for drive, with no idea where we were going... after about half an hour we could see some small plane hangers coming into sight. Hmm this is interesting, then all of a sudden we turned into the airport, now things are getting even more interesting. It wasn't until Lars had led us over to a small 4 seater light plane that it became completely clear that Lars actually had his pilots lisence and planned to take us all up for a joy flight over the German countryside!!!!! We flew over their hometown of Wittenberg and even some of the surrounding towns. We saw some old castles from the region, flew over fields of a few dozen power generating windmills (pretty cool), the River Elbe, and some old flooded coal mines. We had such a good time that while Lars was teaching his co-pilot (Jo's brother Roy) about G-forces and altimeters and the plane going left and right and up and down and sideways and on angles that Jo and Jeremy in the back managed to reaquaint themselves with their breakfast, Ick! But in truth a great surprise, Thanks Lars!!!!!!!