Root Beers and Rabbits Ears - Days One and Two of the Surprise Trip

I've never been any good at being spontaneous. You know those people who plan things to death? Yeah, I train them. Our last trip to the US (last Christmas, which Mr K and I manged to spend both sick and stressed) I actually had a spreadsheet typed up of where we would be, what we would do, and who we would see for every day of our trip. I'm not bragging - I'm embarrassed.

So yeah, I'm not good at spontaneous. You may be wondering what this has to do with root beer. Well, for one thing, there is no root beer in Switzerland - that's your first hint.

"Get to the point already!"

Alright, alright - we just got back from a very impromptu trip to the US that all started with a stupid/brilliant idea to go to a concert. Two of my favorite bands from my high school days are touring together and I keep hearing rumors that this is probably "it" for both bands (as Mr K likes to put it, this is their first-last tour). Naturally, there are no European dates for the tour. Browsing a website around two in the morning about a week and a half ago, I noticed there were still tickets available for a show near DC. On a whim, I decided to look up flights, knowing they would be so expensive it wouldn't matter. One Expedia search later, this was not the case - roundtrip airfare was just over 400$ from Switzerland to the DC area...

Now I had a problem - actually going through with it. I was looking at tickets on a Wednesday to fly out on Saturday. I decided to go for it and ordered my concert tickets just about the time that Mr K started hemming and hawing about this not being a great time for a trip. His indecisiveness immediately made me start questioning the idea and, as of our one AM bedtime, we still hadn't made a decision, but we were already out 100$ for the show. I tried to go to sleep, but I just couldn't - I kept going back and forth on it. Around 3, I gave up on sleeping and came back to the computer, where an online chat with a friend convinced me to go for it. At this point, I decided to be brave and make the trip by myself. Naturally, Mr K woke up determined to go and so, at 5:45 in the morning, we booked our flights.

Once everything was arranged, the inevitable pre-flight-getting-stuff-done panic set in. Homework, cleaning, cat wrangling and packing, all in just two days. Before we knew it, we were in Zurich, boarding a plane and hoping we made the right choice. Prior to departure, we had decided to inform only three people about our visit: Mr K's boss for obvious reasons, my dad so we wouldn't get shot (more on this later), and our friends whose house we would be staying at.

We landed, got our car, dropped our luggage off at the hotel and headed out to do some shopping to supplement the two outfits each we had packed. Shopping done, we hit Chipotle for gigantic burritos before heading back to the hotel and promptly passing out.

The next morning, we got up and had breakfast, packed our things and headed to meet up with some friends. After a flurry of hellos and hugs, we all packed into the cars, bags of fresh, hot cinnamon bread clutched in our hands, to head to the Virginia Renaissance Festival. We wandered around, enjoying the sun and eating turkey legs, drinking root beer and participating in authentic renaissance pass-times, such as the classic game "pay-a-dollar-to-throw-a-rock-in-a-mud-puddle."

A few hours and several pounds of kettle corn later, we all piled back in the cars for the 1.5 hour drive home. Once home, we had a delicious taco dinner and a couple hours of chatting before we all passed out.

That's enough for one post. My next post will cover a couple big surprises and the concert that started this whole thing!