On the ferry boat crossing the Baltic Sea.
Checkpoint Charlie
The Berlin Wall border line 1961-1989.
Simon and his girlfriend, Samara, had us over for dinner while in Berlin. 
The tourist stricken old town streets of Prague.
I enjoyed petting the horses pulling the tourist carriages when they were on their off time. Their noses are so soft and they were so big and strong. I miss being around horses.
There was a talented old man in the old town of Prague playing for the passers-by. He played the saxaphone, trombone, and bellowed his lungs out every chance he got to sing along.
The Isar River that winds through Munich.
The "Work Creates Freedom" greeting that the prisoners read when entering the Dauchas Concentration Camp.
The security barrier of the Dauchas Concentration Camp, apparently some prisoners tried escaping, I wonder why?
The "Bath House" aka gas chambers, where thousands were killed because they were unfit to work...?
The Crematorium.
Something a little lighter to ingest, consumerism- we went to the BMW museum in Munich.
And then our last meal in Germany was a bratwurst.
Another beautiful, mountainous, and rainy town we visited- Innsbruck, Austria.
Gordon bought a Mamut rainjacket on sale after selling his Patagonia rainjacket to a fellow shopper (Leonardo) in the store, who then invited us over for dinner. 
A lovely view from the train on our way into Slovenia from Austria.
The streets of Ljubljana, Slovenia.
The narrow winding cobblestone alleyways.
Another tango dancefloor with live music we were able to observe on our trip, next to the Sava River.
We stopped for a few hours in Zagreb. We decided we were done with traveling and would take a night train to Sofia that left Zagreb at midnight and arrived in Sofia 20 hours later. We unexpectedly met Leonardo's brother Manuel in the park and joined him and his Croatian friends for a stroll about the city and dinner.
A train worker "tinging" the wheels of the train as we waited for a "problem" to clear up somewhere ahead of us on the tracks.
These tired feet were ready to be home already.
Gordon got into some trouble with the border police in Slovenia and in Serbia for speaking their languages. In Slovenia he was asked for a credit card and an alternative picture ID and repeatedly asked for his Slovenian passport while the officer eyed his passport with a magnifying glass and requested three other colleagues verify it was him before returning it to Gordon. The officers in Serbia were a little more relaxed about it, but still questioned his citizenship. ha ha ha, A good end to our trip, yes, Gordon speaks the Eastern Slavik languages quite well!
It was very nice, although it rained which cannot be so much fun when camping. On Tuesday there was a search and rescue team seeking out a resported missing swimmer but they never pulled anyone out of the water so we are assuming that they found the person elsewhere, anyhow it made for some anxiety and excitement. We met some nice Norwegian people while wandering about the Sognsvann Lake and it was just beautiful, green everywhere and lots of trees with water coming from several streams into the lake. It made us think of Oregon.
Bergen- famous for its rain. It rained even more there than I have ever seen it do in Oregon- surprisingly. Bergen is at 60 degrees latitude, the farthest north I have ever been! However, Gordon has been to about 63 degrees north up in Alaska. So far the most southern we have ever been is Sao Paulo, Brazil at 23 degrees south. Up there they have very short summers, less than one month and it defintely felt like Autumn. Norway is booming with very nice technical outdoor equipment and we were tempted to invest in some very nice jackets and such but the price of it all helped us control our spending. Norway was very expensive. Oslo is the third most expensive city to visit in the world, after London and New York- according to a survey held in 2006.
So, after spending several hours figuring out the bus schedules and routes we arrived at one of the three Ringstad farms in the region. We "the tourists" walked into a mechanical shop and starting asking questions. We quickly found ourselves welcomed, was offered a place to say for the night and began researching on the internet. Gordons family was Lutheran and so a lot of history can be found in the church records- dates of births, deaths, locations of residences, dates of migration, etc. We found out that we met Gordon's 17th cousins once removed (or something). We had a great time rekindling family history. 
From Ringstad we went back into Oslo and toured about with one of the cousins and saw more of Oslo, including the Vigeland Park and the Oslo sky jump that the professional flying skiiers use. 
We took an afternoon train to Goteburg, Sweeden to visit our friend Adam whom we met in the Galapagos Islands in April 2006 while diving at Gordon Rocks. We stayed with him for two nights and walked about the city eating delicious food and sharing lots of stories. Adam organizes and leads extreme expeditions all over the world (including the polar regions) for a living and is a cave dweller i.e. Batman and protector of Gotham (Goteburg) in his off time. We visited the Universeum and Military Museum. We boarded a submarine!
