last night in bishkek

we leave tomorrow for our seventeen day trip to central europe.  we have been planning the trip for over a month.  we laid out clothes weeks ago.  yet still here we are at the 11th hour trying to get packed an organized.  today we went to osh bazaar and bought some kyrgyz souvenirs to give to the couch surfers we are staying with. a little bit later tonight i am heading over to marykay and sasha's to drop off our car which we are keeping in their garage while we are gone.

our flight is at 600am tomorrow morning and we are going to have to get up around 300am to get dressed and get a taxi.  we are hoping olive sleeps through the trip to the airport.  after connecting through moscow we fly to vienna where we arrive at 1000am.  we almost immediately board a train (the station is at the airport) and head to bratislava where we will be met by our first couch surfing hosts.

if we aren't dragging too much by then (there is a four hour time difference from europe to central asia) the plan is for roland and victoria to show us the old town christmas markets in bratislava.    we spend two nights with them before returning to vienna (only 40 minutes away by train) where we will be hosted by rainer and kahlia.  we stay with them (and kahlia's visiting family from australia) through christmas morning.

from there it is off to prague for six days and five nights.  we have rented an apartment so to have some conover time.  this might be the part of the trip we are most excited about as we have heard so many wonderful things about prague.

after prague we take off to germany where we will meet up with our friend kerstin and her daughter (who is a couple of months older than olive).  we will spend new years with kerstin and her family.

from there we have no idea what we are doing.  we will have a little less than a week left.  we have a couch surfing invitation to stay with a couple in munich.  we might go to salzburg.  or we might head back to vienna early before flying out.

nina will be staying at out house and watching boone while we are gone.  we are all (except perhaps for boone and nina) pretty excited about the trip!