I've felt so disconnected without wifi this week, yet it's also kind of nice to just let it go. It's sad, our reliance on the internets, isn't it?
Anyhoo! Catch up time.
After I last wrote, our time in southern Switzerland continued to be full of adventure, friends, beauty and amazing food. Sebastian planned out a day in which we drove up to a huge dam in the mountains and walked across part of it. Sadly the weather was bad so we didn't get very far and got soaked. But it was still awesome.
We then drove down to the base of a mountain and took a little boat into a cave which contained the largest underground lake in Eurp. It was throughly entertaining, between the cave itself and the tour guide's attempt at English (basically French with "American" pronunciation) and his ramming the boat into the walls because it was his first day on the job. Here's the cave:
And Saturday ended with one of my favorite pastimes, sitting around a pot of fondue with great people to eat, drink and be merry. We have fondue every Christmas eve in my family and it's in my blood so I was quite happy.
On Sunday we went to our hosts' church, then onto some big hot springs at the base of a mountain. It was beautiful! I wish I had pictures but I had to leave my phone in a locker. It was rainy, but you could see the mountains towering above. And in the indoor part they played classical music underwater. I floated on my back for a good 20 minutes straight just listening and relaxing. Mmm.
Dinner with our group of friends followed at a delicious pizza place. Then sadly we said goodbye and went home to bed.
This takes us to yesterday, Monday. We left at 6am and headed north for Germany. We arrived in Munich and found Oktoberfest—you just had to follow the leiderhosen. Yes, all the women wear traditional dresses and heels and the men wear leiderhosen, or traditional leather knicker pants with either socks or just calf warmers! Like a knit knee-high sock but only the top third of it! Here's a sneaky pic, but nowhere near the best garb we saw:
I must say, I love a tall fellow in short pants.
We hit a beer tent (one of soo many and not really a tent but they're actually huge buildings/halls) jam-packed with people. We wandered around awhile looking for a tiny spot to squeeze in at the non-reservation tables, then a German woman told us we should sit with the table of boys behind her who were from New Zealand, so we could speak English together. They warmly welcomed us! We made some fun new friends, drank a ginormous beer and shared a huge pretzel and we sang and stood on the tables and laughed for hours. It was the craziest party I've ever seen. Amazing. I'll put a video at the bottom...
That's Cameron the kiwi in the back there... We left our friends after awhile to get more food and hit the road as we had nowhere booked to stay last night! The bratwurst was maybe one of the best ever:
We drove 15 minutes outside the city and randomly picked a hotel from the gps list. Praise the lawd they had a room available! We were very thankful and ready to sleep.
So today! Tuesday. After a confusing task of returning the rental car, we boarded a train to Salzburg. We sat across from two guys who are on holiday and going to oktoberfest tomorrow for 3 days. We were thankful to not be the ones just flying in and exhausted, though we were entirely sympathetic. We also saw their big rolling bags and were thankful for packing light and mobile!
We stopped at their hotel to see if there was a room but since it was too expensive we used their lobby computer to book another place a block away. Woot! Tomorrow we're going to indulge another of my obsessions and go on a Sound of Music bike tour! Yessssssss! So excited to walk in Julie Andrews footsteps. Tomorrow this will be me:
Here's some good, clean, crazy oktoberfest fun... Gute nacht mein freunds!
(Notice the guy falling right off the table behind us—our friend from Israel was scary wasted and we were sure he was going to get hurt at some point. Yet, he got right back up after this fall!)
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
No comments:
Post a Comment