We drove about 2 hours to Ülm, where we stopped to see the Ülmer Münster (we stopped there in 2007) and the Christmas market out in front of the church. We grabbed lunch, explored and headed back to the car about an hour and a half later. The next part of the drive was supposed to take 2.25 hours, but I think it ended up taking more like 3.5. We drove by Neuschwanstein so everyone could see it. It was extra beautiful because everything was covered in snow. (I have photos but they’re on my mom’s camera, and we haven’t uploaded them up. I will do a big photo update later!)

Part of our drive took us through narrow country roads in Austria. This is where we had a bit of a scare. We were running low on gas, and the GPS said the nearest gas station was about 30 km away! The roads were slick (covered in snow and ice) and it was about 6 degrees Fahrenheit outside. Needless to say, John and I were pretty tense during the last leg of the trip. We finally got to Garmisch just before the sun set. We got settled in our rooms and headed out to dinner to Antica Roma (our favorite pizza place, visited in 2007 and early 2009 too). It was delicious, as always. It was a bit too cold to stay out for anything else, so we came back to the hotel. John and Andrew went to the casino, my parents went to their room, and I took a LONG bath.

That night, when I went to take my contacts out, I was amazed to discover that I didn’t have a contact in my right eye. However, my right eye hurt quite a bit. I put some drops in and went to bed. All the next day, my eye hurt. Finally, while I was removing my makeup Saturday night, a contact came out of my right eye. It had been stuck under my eyelid. Ouch!!

So…back to our weekend – Saturday morning, we headed up to the Zugspitze, the highest mountain peak in Germany. We took about half the distance by train and the other half by cable car. It takes about 1.5 hours each way. Yikes! Unfortunately, the clouds were too heavy that day, and as a result, the visibility was very low. At one point, while we were walking around at the top, I thought I was going to die (or that I might lose a toe or finger). It was below O (degrees F) and very windy. I also struggled with a bit more altitude sickness than I did the last time around. Nevertheless, we still enjoyed a cup of coffee and a glass of beer up on top of the mountain – one on the Austrian side and one on the German side. (Yes, you can walk from one country to the other at the top of the mountain.)

That afternoon, we did a little shopping, relaxed at the hotel and had a steak dinner at one of the lodge restaurants. We tried to go to the hot tub that night, but the heat wasn’t working well enough and there was ice around the ledge, so it was closed. Booo.

Sunday morning, we went on a short hike in Partnach Gorge, packed up and checked out of the hotel and headed to Munich. The road conditions weren’t very good and it was 4 degrees F outside. Eek!

Once we got to Munich, we had lunch at the Hofbrauhaus. I’d wanted to make it there during our time in Germany, so I’m glad we were able to stop off. The original plan was to go to Dachau Concentration Camp after that, but we didn’t have time. I’m really glad we didn’t stop, too, because once we got about an hour from home, there was really heavy snowfall. The roads weren’t great and neither was the visibility, and I was relieved when we got home. (John did a fabulous job of driving us!)

We were really glad to get home to Béni, too. Our friends Zed and Shaunna had been watching him for the weekend. Shaunna posted a cute picture-laden post about their weekend together – you should check it out, especially since I’m so lacking in the picture department today.

To catch up to the present, here’s a few other things we’ve been up to:

• Schwetzingen Christmas market on Thursday evening
• Kaffeehaus in Schwetzingen on Thursday for dinner
• Heidelberg Hauptstrasse and Christmas market on Monday afternoon/evening
• Bierbretzel for dinner Monday night
• Baking lots of cookies last night! (3 more recipes to go, eek!)

1. Rundberg Rutherford (yes, it’s making a comeback!)
2. Dr. Cappy Pepper (this one really sounds stupid and isn’t that funny, sorry)
3. This is my favorite: Bernard. Then, when he becomes a dog hero and rescues someone, we can call him St. Bernard. (John’s idea)
4. Bark Obama (John’s favorite)

We won’t be using any of these. No worries. However, the names did sound great to us in our tired state last night.

Back to brainstorming…

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This weekend, we threw around the idea of going to Paris for our 1-year anniversary, and John did some research on hotels. He came to me and said

“I was looking up Hilton hotels in Paris, and I Googled ‘Paris Hilton.’ Yeah, that didn’t work.”

Maybe you had to be there, but I thought it was pretty amusing.

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I missed last week’s Not Me! Monday, started by MckMama at My Charming Kids, so I’m due to confess some things I surely did not do this week.

When we went to the breeders last Monday, I clearly knew enough German to communicate with them, and I didn’t have to admit that our German is nowhere near where we had hoped it would be by this point.

I am very organized, so there’s no way that I would let 6 months pass without downloading videos from my camera’s memory card.  Every time I tried to download them, my computer had an error, but certainly, I would not let something like that stop me…at least not for a whole 6 months. Not me!

Since I have already said I’m incredibly organized, you will also agree that there’s no way that I’d let over 100 unread emails pile up in my inbox. Of course none of them dated back to a year ago. That would be ridiculous. I did not spend over 2 hours organizing my inbox this weekend, because it was already perfect.

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This entry wouldn’t be complete without a short and totally irrelevant video. A few days ago, I posted about a man yodeling in Garmisch. I have one other video that actually captures his yodeling better – the audio is good, but the video is best ignored. I hope you enjoy a little more yodeling. Hold a radio!

- Sarah

Yes, it’s still cold. There’s still snow on the ground. In fact, we had some showers of ice pellets this morning. However, the birds are coming back! That means spring isn’t too far away (probably another month before we see much of a temperature increase, but I can handle that)!

Though it was 35 at lunch time, I met John at the car while only donning jeans, a long sleeved shirt and Pumas. That’s right, no coat! No gloves! No scarf! Hurray!

This weekend is already starting off right. We also finally got a package from my parents that we have been expecting for about 6 weeks. In was two new picture frames to hang on our wall. One was given to us from my grandmother for Christmas, and we bought the other at Bed Bath & Beyond while we were home in December. I’m desperate for wall decor, especially in our bedroom, so I’m thrilled about this (if you couldn’t tell already).

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Also, we have a new “totally irrelevant video” today. A search that hit our blog yesterday inspired me to add this to our blog today. Someone was looking for the “Garmish yodeler.” I actually have some video of a man who is a yodeler in Garmisch! I wonder if this is who that person was searching for…

If this doesn’t skew your view of Germany, I don’t know what will. Most of Germany is NOT like this, though scenes like this seem to be much more prevalent of Bavaria. I tend to say Bavaria:Germany::Texas:US. Anyone agree?

It sure sounds like he’s saying “hold a radio” when he yodels! I love it!

- Sarah

Today, we bring you footage of skiing in Garmisch from the eyes of the skier (John, since clearly I cannot ski). In the second half, he really guns it! Enjoy!

- Sarah

And now, to wrap up this series of posts on our recent travel experiences, I bring you: Linderhof Palace and Neuschwanstein Castle.

Sunday we drove out to Linderhof Palace, which is near Oberammergau, site of the Passion Play. The palace was one of 3 homes of King Ludwig II of Bavaria (known as the crazy king). We enjoyed a leisurely walk through the area but were disappointed to find out the Palace was under construction. Thus, it was not as pretty as it could have been. (For pictures of how it normally looks, try the Wikipedia page for Linderhof.)

Sunday night was the night we had set aside for our nice dinner at the lodge. We’d be returning to the same restaurant we ate at the night John asked me to marry him. (We ate there before he asked.) Unfortunately, we didn’t know we would need reservations and ended up with an hour and a half wait. We passed the time in a sitting area chatting about some old work stories. After our dinner, we went downstairs to the bar restaurant for a Snickers pie. It was yummy as always! On our way back up to our room, the elevator door started closing on me, and I didn’t see it, which ended up in a painful whack on the left side of my body. Ouch!

Monday, we woke up to a light dusting of snow. We checked out of the lodge and headed for Füssen and beyond to go to Neuschwanstein Castle (another of King Ludwig II’s homes). I was surprised to find out that this castle isn’t from hundreds of years ago. It was built in the late 1800s and was equipped with a telephone (with a crank) and indoor plumbing, which was cutting-edge technology for the time.

The castle is a steep hike up a mountain/hill (about 35 minutes). We took the first 30 minutes by carriage but ended up feeling really sorry for the horses. They looked like they were run ragged and didn’t get much love. We didn’t take the carriage on the way down.

Photos aren’t allowed inside the castle, so we got what photos we could and enjoyed our tour indoors. Here’s a quick excerpt on Neuschwanstein from Wikipedia:

Neuschwanstein literally means “new swan stone castle.” The palace was commissioned by Ludwig II of Bavaria as a retreat and as an homage to Richard Wagner, the King’s inspiring muse. Ludwig did not allow visitors to his castles, but after his death in 1886 the castle was opened to the public (in part due to the need to pay off the debts Ludwig incurred financing its construction). The palace has appeared in several movies, and was the inspiration for Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland Park and for the Cinderella Castles at the Magic Kingdom and Tokyo Disneyland.

Oh…I almost forgot. On our drive to and from Garmisch, we have to drive through Austria for a bit. This time, when we returned to Germany, we started singing the “Deustchland song” we learned during the Euro Cup this past summer. We decided this is a new tradition that we have to keep up every time we leave Germany and come back. If you’re curious, you can hear the song on our YouTube video we took from the Euro Cup watching party in downtown Schwetzingen.

I tried to caption the photos well, so hopefully no further explanation is needed. If so, just ask! And, as always, just click on the slide show to make the photos larger.

I don’t know what I expected, but skiing was not like I thought it would be. It was much faster and scarier. Before I really get to that, let me back track to the beginning of the day. We wanted to get private ski lessons for me, but even though we checked in advance, they were booked up. They told us to check back the morning we wanted to ski, and when we did, they told us to check back at 9:30. We took a little extra time getting ready, and then decided that John should just teach me. We had heard that you shouldn’t try to teach your spouse to ski, so we were determined to prove everyone wrong. The good news is that we didn’t get on each other’s nerves…I did, however, decide that this is how I feel about skiing:

We started at the bottom of the mountain. John showed me how to put my skis on and how to stop. I practiced that a few times, and then he said it was time to go to the lift. I was a little scared, because I didn’t feel anywhere near ready to go flying down a mountain, but what do I know? I’d never been skiing before. I’m really glad the lift was a gondola, so I didn’t have to worry about pushing off from the chair and getting away from the lift ASAP.

When we got to the top, we decided to go down a medium-level run (in retrospect, that was a bad idea, but we didn’t know!). John showed me again how to stop and started to show me how to turn a little (to make the mountain slopes less steep). At this point, I lost control and went flying down the first slope. I was terrified that I couldn’t stop, and then I realized I hadn’t fallen yet, nor had my skis come off, which only served to freak me out more. I could just see the injury coming. Luckily, right after that, I finally fell, and my legs went up in the air, my right ski came off and I started to laugh. I think I was laughing out of fear. When I realized I had stopped, I started crying, because up until then, skiing wasn’t scary to me. Now it had become pretty scary.

I got up (after some difficulty) and tried again. We practiced weaving back and forth for quite awhile. As I got closer to the next big drop, I started to freak out. Eventually, I lost control again and made myself fall (I didn’t want to be out of control and wait for it to happen this time). After that, I was too scared to try again. I probably would have given it another go had it not been so steep where we were, but I was terrified by the area where we were and ended up walking down to the next lift. (Yes, I admit, I scooted down some of the way on my rear end, too.) It was hard to walk down the icy patches, and there were several of them.

While we waited for a ski patrol to come take me back to the main lift to get me down (this one only took us up), another girl from Michigan named Emily came over and asked if we, too, were trying to walk down the mountain. She had realized she had gotten in over her head on this path, too. She had skiing in Michigan, but she said they were more hills than mountains.

Eventually, the ski patrol came and took us on a snow mobile back to the top so we could ride the gondolas back down. John skied the rest of the way down the mountain by himself and met me at the bottom. After that, he took another stab at the run while I waited.

I’m still getting a little panicky when I think about going down the mountain, but I think I’d be willing to give skiing another shot under different circumstances and on much easier slopes.

After skiing, we got cleaned up and went for a drive around the 1936 Olympic ski jump in Garmisch. It’s SO freaking steep! I cannot imagine flying down that thing and then going up in the air and traveling hundreds of meters forward. Yikes!

We then decided to get a late lunch at this little pizza place I really enjoyed when we were in Garmisch in November 2007. It got fairly comical, because we’re sure we ended up retracing the same steps we took on our previous journey to this restaurant. We couldn’t quite remember where it was, so we got in the mindset of “year ago John & Sarah” and apparently did a great job, since we found it and even remembered some of the conversation that “year ago us” had. Unfortunately, the restaurant, Antica Roma, was closed for mid day and wouldn’t be open again until 5:30 (it was about 4:30 at the time). We were cold, so we got a cup of coffee up the street and waited. It was well worth the wait! We even got to sit at the same table and in the same places as we did last year. The pizza was just as I remembered it, and now I’m sure — it’s the best pizza in the whole world. I wish it wasn’t a 4.5 hour drive from where we live!

That night (Saturday), we signed up for a night walking tour with our hotel of Partnach Gorge. The gorge has a lot of ice formations this time of year, and so the tour takes the group about half a mile through the gorge to get a view of it all. They equipped us with torches to light the way; unfortunately, John didn’t like having it. It provided so much light that it kept him from being able to see beyond the light, and thus, the ice formations. He ditched the torch at the turn around point, and enjoyed the darker walk on the way back.

When we were done, the tour group stopped in a little restaurant for hot cocoa, drinks, dessert, etc. We just had hot chocolate, but a lot of people ordered the cream puff, which was huge. Seriously. It was probably the size of a volleyball. Eesh! After dinner, a German man came out and yodeled a bit. I think that was my favorite part of the night. His yodeling sounded like he was saying “hold a radio” over and over. I will try to post the video of that in the coming days. My computer has had issues importing videos lately. I’ll try to finally get that fixed so I can post videos again.

We got to Garmisch fairly late on Thursday (around 8:45), and barely made it to dinner at the hotel. The restaurant closed at 9, so we were lucky! We decided to change up our schedule and ski on Saturday and Sunday and explore the town some on Friday. In the late morning on Friday, after enjoying the breakfast buffet at the hotel, we decided to tour the Zugspitze. The Zugspitze is the highest mountain in Germany, at 2962 meters or 9718 feet.

The trip up was great. We took a train 40 minutes up to the Eibsee, a really beautiful lake. Unfortunately, we couldn’t see the lake, because it was frozen and covered with snow. However, I have seen pictures of it before and know it looks gorgeous in the summertime. From the Eibsee, we took a cable car the rest of the way up the mountain. Strangely enough, I didn’t think it was scary. The views were amazing, and I had never been up that high except in an airplane, so I was pretty excited.

We walked around the top observation area and even got to walk a bit into Austria from up there (the mountain is on the German/Austrian border). We walked a few steps in to the Austrian state of Tirol and could see a few Austrian towns, one of which is called Lermoos. I believe we have driven through there at least once or twice on our way to Garmisch. When we were done exploring, we went down one level to “Deustchlands höchster Biergarten” (Germany’s highest beer garden). We each had a small German lunch and beer. What I failed to realize, however, is that one beer at 2900 meters is going to affect me differently than one beer at sea level. We got up from lunch to head back down a different cable car to the railway, and I was surprised to discover that I was a bit tipsy. Luckily, I got to rest for a few minutes before the cable car came. In the meantime, John played with my face (photos of this are toward the end of the slide show).

To help give you an idea of where we were in relation to other things, go to this Google map. You can see the Bayern/Tirol line along the point marked A. The “A point” is the Zugspitze. Bayern is what the Germans call Bavaria, and as I mentioned before, Tirol (Tyrol) is an Austrian state. If you click on “map” instead of “satellite” in the upper right corner of the map and zoom out 3 times, you can see how close it is to Italy as well. Neat, huh?

I have to go get some other things done, so I will write about the rest of our trip later today, including how my first experience skiing went!