My parents arrived in Munich on January 17, helped us celebrate the NFC championship win, and attacked Bavaria like experienced tourists. Within a matter of four days they visited the Munich Olympic Park, BMW museum, Dachau concentration camp, Neuschwanstein Castle, and Salzburg, Austria. Ryan and I haven't even been to the BMW museum or Neuschwanstein yet, and we've lived here for six months! Almost twice our age and kicking our asses. Well done, Menne's.
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| They borrowed my phone for many of their journeys, and I found this photo of Neuschwanstein! |
For our first weekend adventure, we rented a sweet Passat wagon to explore the Innsbruck, Austria area and enjoy some winter sports. I will also mention that this was the first time I have rented a car with my newly acquired Bundesrepublik Deutschland driving license. I will now have to bring my passport everywhere with me in the US in case I get carded, as they took my Washington license and mailed it back to Seattle where it will await my return in 2016. One last note on the license: Washingtonians are lucky because we have reciprocity with Germany. Other states are not so lucky and must take a written driving test (in German) as well as pay 1000 euros in fees.
Ryan couldn't take Friday off so my parents and I headed down the autobahn towards Innsbruck (home of the 1964 and 1976 Winter Olympics). Once we arrived, our hotel allowed us to check in early, so we unloaded our bags and asked reception for a snowshoeing recommendation. After assuring her that we did not need a guided tour, she sent us to one of the local ski resort areas. We drove up, had lunch in one of the lodge's restaurants, and failed to find a shop that would rent us snowshoes. As if having no snowshoes could stop us! We drove a bit down the mountain and found an area with several cars parked and what looked to be a meandering, snowy road that was blocked from car traffic. The snow was pretty well packed, so we decided to just take a snow walk! The walk ended up being more of a hike, as it was essentially two miles of non-stop uphill. We were exhausted and sweaty by the time we reached the alm, but were able to enjoy some terrible beer and wine at the top before heading back down the hill (really the worst beer and wine ever). Everyone else had the right idea and brought toboggans up with them to ride down, so we had to keep our heads on a swivel to make sure we didn't get run over. Once back in Innsbruck, we met up with Ryan and had a delicious German dinner. At least sweaty hikes in snow gear let you not care about caloric intake.
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| This is not a table-size bottle of Ketchup! |
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| The road we hiked to Birgitzer Alm (here comes a skier!). Sadly, this is the only photo of our trek. |
The next morning, we drove up to Stubai Glacier to ski. At the base of the mountain, everything looked so cloudy and foggy that we couldn't even see the peak. However, after taking the gondola up past the mid-way station, the sun came out and the visibility was incredible! We enjoyed a beautiful day of skiing with fresh powder - for only 35 Euros each! Skiing in Europe has (so far) been really cheap when compared to back home.
We also saw literally the most perfect snowflakes known to mankind. Some of the pictures look like close ups, but they aren't. They are just really large, perfectly formed snowflakes. We've really never seen anything like it before.
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| The fog! (P.S. Zipfer is the worst beer ever.) |
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| Ryan is bundled up. |
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| Alps for days. |
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| The best skiing of the day, which sadly was only serviced by a T-bar. |
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| Father and me. Picture perfect conditions. |
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| Not a close up |
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| See?? |
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| Here come the Menne's! |
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| Post-skiing beers in the snow. |
We headed back to Innsbruck for some yummy burgers and chili cheese fries (how American) and then settled in at our hotel to enjoy the fire pit and a couple of bottles of delicious wine.
On Sunday, we checked out of our hotel and headed out to find some snowshoeing/snow walking. We had found an easy trail online and hoped my parents wouldn't need snowshoes. We arrived at the parking lot and, after mixing up some mimosas in juice bottles, hit the trail. The good news: the trail we found online didn't require snowshoes! The bad news: we didn't take that trail. We ending up following the people ahead of us and by the time we realized we were headed to the wrong Alm it was too late. We basically hiked up a ski slope, resulting in one of the steepest climbs of my life. It had snowed a lot over the weekend, and there was a ton of fresh powder. After the first half mile or so, my parents decided to leave the steep "trail" and take the winding service road, which was still covered in fairly deep powder. Ryan and I were grateful to have our snowshoes and tackled the slope head on. Our end goal was to reach an alm which was apparently located at the top of this mountain. After another mile or so of climbing, my parents found us again. They were a bit farther back, but we had reached a section of switchbacks and they yelled to us up ahead to let us know they were behind us. We were surprised to see them as we thought they would have called it quits by this point. No snowshoes, remember?! We reached the alm first, and to our utter dismay, it was CLOSED. By this point, we were so exhausted from this extremely vertical, snowy hike, we were ready to give up. With the last of our mimosas gone (which, by the way, are terrible when you are thirsty on a hike), all I wanted was to sit down and have a beer! We started to trudge back to my parents to stop them in their tracks. Just as we were sharing our disappointment with my parents, another pair of hikers approached. They informed us that there was a second alm just 500 meters farther. And the second alm has a gondola down to the bottom! This was the best news possible, so we followed them over another hill and through some ski lifts to the next alm (literally pressing the limits of our ability to keep hiking). We also realized at this point that Ryan was the only of us with any cash. My near-fainting mother, who does not eat carbs, demanded bread, so we used our only 20 Euro bill to buy her a pretzel and a water and the rest of us bought the only thing that made any sense: three beers and a plate of fries. We rode the gondola down with a promise to pay at the bottom (we did) and then had to walk another two miles to get the car from the parking lot, but this felt like cake compared to what we had just been through. Again, with an excuse to eat whatever we damn-well please for dinner, we binged on a delicious Indian dinner once back in Munich. What an exhausting but fun weekend!
Rome up next - stay tuned!
xoxo
L & R
