Hello to Everyone in California

Hello Everyone,

Sorry for not writing much lately, actually not writing at all this summer. We’ve been away a lot from June. The times we have been here, Dianne has been traveling so I haven’t been on the computer much. We just came back from London last night. Dianne spent three days in Paris and two days in London on business and then we joined her for the weekend. She is off to Frankfurt again tomorrow and for a couple of days this week. She goes somewhere else next week and then we are off to Florida for a week to spend time with Mom and Mickey Mouse. Dianne’s on business and we are out to relax!

I’ve felt compelled to write another 10 page letter explaining our travel adventures and have kept putting it off. (I’ll attach the first couple of paragraphs that I started but haven’t quite finished.) I spent some time putting some of our pictures on the web and then ran out of time/steam. If you haven’t seen the pictures, let me know and I’ll send along the link.

I’ll also attach a Dianne quick recap of our London trip from the past weekend.

We have booked our trip to California and will be leaving Frankfurt on the 12th of December and will be in sunny California until January 2nd. Kira has a long Christmas break so we plan to take advantage of it. Dianne will be doing a bit of work, but the rest of the family will be resting, relaxing and getting caught up with everything going on in California. Will Arnold be the next governor; it’s making front page news here???

From Tom, the start of our summer vacation:

The Glynn summer is coming to a close as Kira headed back to school the 15th of August. Conner has started back at his part time daycare and the Mom & me toddler group (with Dad). The weather is turning grey and overcast and there are no more 100 degree days without any air conditioning. I haven’t written in a while, so it’s time for a Germany/Glynn update.

The vacation season started and ended badly for Dianne, but everything in between was great. We’ve got a bunch of pictures posted on the website and if I didn’t send them to you already, let me know and I’ll send them along.

The start of our vacation was a notice from the Bonn police for Dianne to appear before a police officer with regards to her excessive speeding violation. I still can’t believe Dianne didn’t faint, but after opening the letter and trying to decipher what they wanted (after all, it was in German). I think her hands shook from stress for a couple of hours. Was it time to flee the country?! It is a well known fact in Germany that people driving foreign and rental cars never get speeding tickets. All speeding tickets are issued through the use of speed cameras and for some reason these are not linked to the rental car agencies or foreign governments. As we found out, this is not the case in Switzerland. During our Spring break at Easter we drove to Italy. This requires heading south through a lot of Germany, through Switzerland and into northern Italy. All told, it was about a 12 hour drive for us over the course of two days. We had a great time. On the way back through Switzerland, we (Dianne actually) was driving down the freeway just about to head into Germany when the unmistakable bright light from a speed camera nearly blinded us. (Yes we have seen a few, but that is another story!). We quickly looked to see how fast we were going (130Kpm or around 80 mph---- it’s not that bad, we drive 150kph on the Autobahn J) and then tried to figure of what the speed limit is…we had no idea. After few minutes we figured, no big deal, it’s in Switzerland and well be in Germany in 10 minutes, nothing to worry about. Fast forward two months and Dianne is now requested at the Bonn police station. A quick internet search on speeding in Switzerland says get ready to re-mortgage your house, they are expensive. (My second speeding ticket in Germany cost me around $20. The first was in a rental car and I never got the ticket. I also got a ticket at the local store for parking crooked, $5 fine. Only accidents go against insurance BTW)

After arriving at the police station Dianne and I were escorted upstairs to meet the police officer in charge of our case. He acted like our defense attorney explaining the rules and issues. Switzerland does in fact have an office in Germany to try and collect speeding tickets. We were not obliged to pay but if we went back and were stopped we could have even larger fines and or imprisonment. We asked the officer his opinion at he stated, “ahhh, but the problem is that Switzerland is on the way to Italy, so almost everybody pays. If you plan to drive to Italy again, pay the fine. Do not plead guilty, but pay the fine.” He typed up a form stating that we were not guilty but we would pay anyway (it must be like “no contest” in the US, I didn’t quite understand), we signed and headed out the door. We noticed his picture from a speed camera taped to the wall. He said that he never speeds going home but sometimes you just have to if you are late in the morning. Speeding is no big deal in Germany! A month later our fine arrives from the government of Switzerland and we pay the $200 fine.

With the police visit out of the way, and our driver’s licenses and wallets still intact, it was time to start the family vacation. Our friends from Danville flew in to meet us and helped us do a whirlwind tour of Europe.

Dianne’s London trip update:

To All,

We just arrived back from London last night and although the trip back was a nightmare the trip itself was awesome. London is such a fabulous town - where English is spoken on every corner and people are happy to help you out! Also, there is a Starbucks on every corner, yeah! We saw the Tower of London and had a Beefeater do a 1 hour tour. The kids were not interested (Conner included - imagine that) but Tom really enjoyed the tour. We also saw the Crown Jewels there which did really interest the kids! We walked over the Tower Bridge and then saw this guy, David Blain, who is sitting in a glass box elevated off the ground on a crane. From what we hear he has been there about a week and plans to be there 30 more days. He is subsisting only on water and the box is about 7 ft by 7 ft by 3 ft.....very weird and a real crowd drawer! The Brits have been pelting him with eggs and yelling abuse at him from what we hear. All in good sport, of course! We then went on the Battleship (?) that is in the harbor which was cool. We headed off to the London Eye which is the largest ferris wheel in the world where you have panoramic views of London. Very Cool!! We then walked over to the Houses of Parliament and saw Westminster Abbey (which unfortunately was already closed). The kids were exhausted by then so off to the pub for a quick pint - home for a short rest (30 mins) and then out for dinner. We arrived home about 9:30 at night and started to watch Kangaroo Jack but everyone (including Tom) fell asleep. The next day was much less busy focused on shopping in the Oxford Circus area. We went to the largest toy store in the world which was a real hit. We arrived back at the hotel for our ride to the airport and left promptly at 1:30....and that is when the trouble began....the driver was unaware of the airport we were going to which is apparently 1,5 hours from London (uggh!). Our flight was to leave at 3:30 so we had to be checked in by 3:00 (dad would have loved this one). On the way to the airport the van started to have problems - driver thought it was electrical. We limped to the airport and made it there with 10 minutes to spare. We got onto the plane only to have the plane be held up for take off by 30 minutes.....when we arrived in Frankfurt we were greeted by the less than happy Germans who pushed and shoved to get on to the elevator. No worries we made it to the car and out of the airport on the way home....no sooner did we think we were on the way than there was a huge traffic snarl outside of Frankfurt. We were stopped still for about 1 hour and then decided we would try to make our way through the backroads. Oh yeah - Conner threw up over Kira by this point after spending 15 minutes howling away - must have been the apple juice we purchased in Germany.....It was quite late by this point - about 8:30 to 9:00 but we thought it was the best thing to do. We snaked our way through the countryside (thank god for GPS) found our way back to the Autobahn and made it home by 10:00. We probably could have taken a train from downtown London and gotten home sooner ....

Everybody had a super time and we are looking forward to our next opportunity to get to London - which might actually be in October!

We will have a quieter week this week with only a couple day trips to Frankfurt and home for the weekend. Next week I am in Hannover and Berlin and then on the plane on Saturday to Orlando. We are really looking forward to some R&R, sunshine, and Mickey!

Tom is working on an update to the Glynn family life in Germany (part 4 maybe) and hope to get this out before we head off to Orlando. Otherwise it will have to wait until October sometime. There is a slight chance we will get everyone over to Moscow for a couple of days and if not then probably London again as I have another job to do in October there. We are traveling like crazy and loving it! Poor Kailah - she feels like she is always being left. We will have to make one of these trips a dog friendly trip (not a good idea in London though - but they do like kids - at least before 6pm!)

Say hi to everyone and we will let you know as the adventure continues!

Love to all
Dianne

Sorry everyone, more to come later (but not too much later!)

Tom (Dianne, Kira, Conner & Kailah too!)