I'm on a boat partt 4 : Not actually on a boat :(

So as the title might emply it seems to me by the lack of the water around the landmass on which I am typing that I am no longer on a boat. Now let me tell you a little story as to how that happened. So yesterday after the night of staying up until who knows when and talking with Marcell, I got up early to watch us sail past all of the castles that were on the Rhein, which believe me there are plenty. It seemed like Oma was having a little trouble with the stairs, but she got up onto the deck and we had a "german breakfast" which consists of sausage, pretzels and beer (not much beer however) and we watched the castles go by and I played a couple more games of chess etc.

Oma went down earlier, and when I came down at 1:00PM or so I told her that it was lunch time and she told me that she didn't think that she could make it down, because there were stairs. That got me a little worried. She suddenly was so weak that she couldn't even go up or down the stairs! I told Walter, who has been unbelievably helpful on this cruise that I thought that we should call a doctor, and sure enough as soon as we arrived in Koblenz, we had a couple of paramedics come on board and give her a quick looking over. Thank his Noodly Goodness (www.verganza.com) that we can both speak german. I would be so screwed if I didn't. Anyways the paramedics said that she needed a perscription for some medication, but couldn't write one themselves, so they sent a doctor to the ship, and the doctor said, "your lungs are filling up with fluid, You need to go to the hospital". So we called an ambulance, and got Oma to the hospital. they saw her immediatley and everything, all the doctors are very nice here btw.
I stayed with her for awhile made sure that everything was OK, and then took a taxi back to the ship to get our things. As you might imagine I was pretty upset at this point, but eventually got over everything and packed both of our bags back at the room with the help of Marcelle who has turned out to be a really cool person. I made sure everything was Ok and then had my final dinner on board with the Captain and Walter to avoid any prying questions. We had a great philisophical discussion about the nature of time, ethics, utopias etc. It was one of those rare conversations on the topic in which everyone not only had an opinion on the matter. After that conversaition I have come to respect both Walter and the Capitain even more.

After dinner walter and I collected all of the bags from the room and caught a cab back to the Hospital. He is much more fluent in german than I am, and got us through everything with ease. He got the travel insurance information from Omas booking agent in LA over the phone, got ahold of the travel inurance agency told them everything. Filed a claim, and finally made sure that I had a place to stay. Which luckily the hospital gave me a room of my own. Then Walter finally left, but still he was such a big help. You could tell that this situation was nothing new to him.

As for today it is about 20 to 4 right now and I am at an internet cafe/casino filled with smoke trying to figure everything out with the insurance agency. Before I got here I went and bought some fruit for Oma. But otherwise haven't done that much.

It looks like for the future that I might be coming back to America in the next week rather than on the 4th of august, but as of right now I still don't know.

I'm sure that it will all work out somehow.

The good news is that I am safe and sound and so is Oma for the time being. I'm not sure how long I will be here in Koblenz, but It will probably be for at least a couple of days. I'll keep everyone posted on what is happening here, and We are all fine, so no one needs be worried.

with love to all
-Jesse