Europe in a Day

I've lived in the D.C. area for over 4 years now. For the most part, I really like living in the area and a couple of Saturdays ago I was reminded of one of the reasons why I like living here. Two Saturdays in a year, some of the embassies in D.C. open their doors to the public. One Saturday is dedicated to non-EU countries and the other Saturday to EU countries.

This year we went to the EU countries Saturday. (I've been to both the non-EU countries and EU countries in the past.)

Our first stop was the Embassy of the United Kingdom. I've been to this one before, but the person I went with had never been and I definitely thought it was worth it to go again.

They gave us free sunglasses as we walked onto the grounds of the embassy and they had some beautiful cars near the entrance.

The British ambassador's house. When I went to the embassy before, we didn't do the tour of the house, but this time we did. It was pretty cool!

The main hallway in the house. It's pretty fancy!

Look at that huge table. They said it was set for 32 but 34 could fit on there. They also mentioned that they don't usually have it set up for that many people. The table can be broken up into smaller sections and used in smaller rooms in a more intimate setting, but they had it set up to show the largeness of the table and the room. :)

This is a sitting room where they usually retreat to after dinner. I thought the couches looked quite comfortable and inviting. Of course we could not sit on them, but it felt pretty homey.

The grounds of the embassy were beautiful!

These two men were from a bigger group of men who had been playing the bagpipes for the visitors. Sadly we were inside the house when they were actually playing and by the time we were done inside they had already finished their playing.

Of course I had to get a picture with the Matt Smith cutout as Dr. Who. I've seen all of the most recent episodes of Dr. Who through David Tennant and a lot of the Matt Smith ones but only one with the most recent one, Peter Capaldi.

The British flag made out of stones (or at least the blue parts are).

Our next stop on our tour was the Finnish embassy. I had already been to this one too, but I also really liked this one and thought it was worth it to go again. We ended up having to wait in line for an hour to get in, but it was cool. The architecture of the building and the food samples they have in there made it worth it. :)

Inside the Finnish Embassy.

I love this wall of windows in the embassy.

There was this guy playing the accordion to entertain us as we waited in line for the food.

The one selfie Heather and I took together. Heather does not like getting her picture taken, but we decided we needed to get a picture of us in our British sunglasses in front of the Finnish embassy. :)

The final stop of the day was the German embassy (where the French and German embassies combined their cultural information tents.)

I'm not sure what the building is used for, but I liked it!

They had part of the Berlin Wall there. The red lettering on it says "We are the People." I really liked the grounds of the German embassy. Since the embassy was a little ways away from the other embassies and the grounds were larger, I felt a little more like I had stepped into a foreign country. The grounds were really nice!

I liked these old German cars. Aren't they cute?! The building behind them is the German ambassador's house. This house was definitely a more modern style than the British one.

I have no idea what kind of car it is, but it's pretty cool looking. (Notice that the license plate is upside down.)

This is the library inside the German ambassador's house. It's a cozy room, but to me it's not as inviting as the British sitting room.

By the time we got to the end of the German embassy grounds, Heather and I were pretty hungry. It was 3:40ish and we had walked a lot that day and hadn't eaten anything since that morning (except the food samples from the Finnish embassy), so we decided to eat at the German embassy. They had bratwursts and knackwursts and pretzels for sale. They had other things too, but that's what we ended up getting. The food was pretty dang good!

After we were done with the German embassy, the embassies had closed for visitors, so Heather and I walked toward Georgetown to go to Georgetown Cupcake. When we got to Georgetown Cupcake the line was long and it was hot out and we decided we didn't want to wait in line. But we still wanted a treat so we went to a frozen yogurt place across the street instead and it sure did taste good!

After eating our frozen yogurt, it was time to go home. We walked across Key Bridge to catch the metro at Rosslyn.

 Overall it was a fun day! Thank you D.C. embassies for opening your doors to the public one day a year. 

All the Light We Cannot See

Apparently I am on a, IShouldReadSadWorldWarIIbooks, kick. I read The Book Thief a couple of months ago and I just recently finished All the Light We Cannot See.  

I stayed up until the wee hours of the morning to finish this book (and felt it the next day at work). I had to see what happened. How was it all going to end?

All the Light We Cannot See is a book based during World War II. Marie-Laure is a French girl who lives with her father in Paris. Her father works at a nearby museum where he is the master of all the keys in the building. Marie-Laure goes blind at a young age and her father builds her a small model of the city so that she can learn her way around and get about by herself. Marie-Laure and her father eventually have to evacuate Paris as the Nazis come and occupy the city. They escape to Saint Malo, a small coastal town in France, where Marie-Laure's crazy great-uncle lives.

Werner is a German boy, who lives with his sister and other orphans in an orphanage in a small German mining town. He and his sister find a broken radio one day and bring it home. Werner studies the radio for awhile and then fixes it quite easily. People in town start to come to him to get their radios fixed. When he comes of age, he is recruited by the Hitler Youth partly because of his knowledge of being able to fix radios and other such instruments.

Of course, the stories of Marie-Laure and Werner interconnect at some point. This book is not what I expected it to be, but I really liked it!

The stories in this book tell tales of courage and guilt and love and selfishness and obsession and goodness and doubt etc etc. I thought the book was well written. I really got sucked into the book and grew to like the characters or not like the characters depending on who they were. I must say, though, that the author switches back and forth between time periods and stories and at the beginning I had a hard time keeping track, but it eventually became easier as I grew to know the stories and characters.

Having read The Book Thief in the past couple of months and now this book, I think it's time for a more lighthearted and not so realistic book. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets here I come...