Photos of Darmstadt, Frankfurt, & Mainz

I am finally putting up the photo albums of my short trip to Germany in February. By short I mean I left on a Friday and returned on a Monday. I'm still surprised at how much I managed to see given those few days, but it all made an impression on me.

Darmstadt

Frankfurt

Mainz

More Trippin'

I promised myself and others this would be the year of remaining stateside for a longer period of time than last year's world tour. Tell that to the airlines who seem to be giving flights away these days in the form of mistake fares I discovered for both Stockholm and Madrid.

I'm going to Stockholm in September for an obscene discount in airfare. It's a direct flight each way, so no layovers. I had been to Sweden before, Helsingborg and Malmo, on a day trip that was part of my Denmark vacation. I liked these two towns, but they didn't offer enough excitement for me and I decided I would probably enjoy Stockholm instead. I was true on my word that I'd come back when I booked the flight, and I think I'll love visiting this city.

I snagged a mistake fare on Delta for the end of December to Madrid. I hate Madrid. I know I've mentioned this many times before. For $238 round trip total, there was no way I could refuse this offer. What I'm trying to do is use it as a base to go somewhere else, like Barcelona, Lisbon, or maybe even to the UK. Whatever cheap tickets I can find on a low cost carrier will be fine.

I still haven't planned the "Big Trip", I try and take during Thanksgiving week. I am hemming and hawing over where I want to go. I have my mind on a few places, but still haven't made a final decision yet.

Watch this space!

Crashed

Last week, my computer, overheated by Microsoft updates, somewhat crashed. The updates kept freezing up my computer, causing me to shut down. Apparently, when you do this, it leaves behind some components that ruin your operating system.

Thankfully, the IT department at work are a great group of people, and helpful to situations outside of the realm of work. I purchased a 500gb external hard drive, turned everything over to them, and they returned my laptop the next day - saving all of my precious files on the external drive. I then had the task of rebooting my laptop and erasing every single thing off my hard drive. I think I would've had a nervous breakdown had I lost all my photos and the various documents I had been saving for years.

The only drawback, and it's very annoying, is that in addition to all my favorites disappearing from both Firefox and IE, is that all the tags and collections in my Adobe Photo Album have disappeared too. All my hard work down the drain. Still, there's always the alternative, and that's to have no photos to go with those no tags and no collections. I'm starting from scratch in more ways than one.

So, this has postponed the online album creation for my Paris, Brussels, and Antwerp trip as all my tags fell off and I have to reselect and tag all over again. Again, I'm trying to look at the bright side and be grateful that I even have all my photos, but it still stings like a bitch.