Garmisch Part Zwei

All right. I’m back to finish my previous post about our trip to Garmisch. Before I begin, John and I figured out something that happens to be one of the most ridiculous things that has ever happened to either of us. We were looking at a map and trying to trace our route back from Garmisch to Schwetzingen. The routes we were finding weren’t making sense. We didn’t recognize any of the city names. The only route that made sense…went through Austria! We actually drove for about 40 minutes through Austria and didn’t know it. I feel jipped! If I’m going to go to Austria, I at least want to know about it. There wasn’t even a sign saying something like “Willkommen nach Österreich!” or an equivalent when we got back to Germany. When you cross a STATE line in the States, there are signs all over welcoming you to a new state. Apparently when you cross a country’s BORDER here, you get nothing. My trip to Austria was a sham.

So back to that whole Garmisch thing…

John and I exploring a main street in Garmisch.

Being ourselves…aka silly happy Texans

We went to a little Italian restaurant for lunch, and I had one of the best pizzas I have ever had. Mmmm I wish I could have eaten more of it, but it was huge. So was my beer…I think this is the first draught beer I have had while in Germany. Mine is on the left.

Don’t they look like tusks?

Another shot of Garmisch:

We love the mountains!

When we got back to Edelweiss (the lodge), we decided to check out the hot tub. The view was amazing! We enjoyed relaxing in the hot tub for awhile and taking in the amazing view.

When we got back to our room, clouds were rolling in about halfway down the mountain. Again, very pretty…

We decided it was time we made a snowman. Unfortunately the face recognition feature on my camera did not recognize Frosty here and chose to focus on the mountain instead.

We wanted to go out for a celebratory dinner that night (Saturday) in honor of our engagement. John asked a man working at Edelweiss about his recommendations for local restaurants. The man sent us to a restaurant that I believe is called Werdenfelserhof. When we got there, the restaurant was full. Apparently, it is customary to sit down wherever there is a seat available, even if it’s with another random group of people. We ended up at a table with 6-7 people all over the age of 70. Across from us was a table of three drunken Germans. One of them took off his shoe and walked around to nearby tables to show them something about it. We were laughing, because it was ridiculous. This brought the drunk young man’s attention to us, and he started spouting out German. We just smiled and laughed and nodded. He could have said “I’m going to punch you” for all we know. He looked jolly when he said it, though, so I don’t think he wanted to hurt us. :o)

Soon after the shoe incident, this table of drunkards ordered a life-size glass boot filled with beer. They called John over to their table and started coaxing him to take a gulp. See…here they are trying to brainwash him:

It looks ominous, doesn’t it? Anyway, John decided he would just take a sip and not a gulp. It turns out they were playing their own little game. Whoever they could get to take the first gulp of the beer would have to pay for it. John insisted that because he sipped it instead of gulping that he was not held to these rules. Language barriers and the men’s inebriation prohibited their understanding of this. We eventually wandered back to our table to drink our colas. Yes…cola. Not coke…ugh. It’s so called a coke.

Here we are with the big boot and crazy drunk Germans.

Our food was pretty gross, by the way. The menu was seriously something like 25 pages long, and it took us a LONG time to go through. It was overwhelming! Out of all 25 pages, all I could find to order were potato pancakes (think hashbrowns). They came with a side of applesauce I was supposed to smear over the top. They were pretty good, but not a great dinner…ya know? John’s dinner was not so good. He ordered a steak cooked medium. It came out close to rare. Because we don’t speak much German and the steak had sauce poured all over it, we figured it would be a pain to send it back to the kitchen. He ate as much of it as he could. That whole restaurant experience was quite the German adventure. When we got back to the lodge, we went down to one of the lodge restaurants and ordered a drink and shared a Snickers pie. That was yummy for sure.

Sunday morning, we checked out. This was the last view we had of our room, Mr. Frosty and the mountian:

Leaving town…

Bye Garmisch!!

I have another good story from the drive home, but this post has taken me well over an hour. It’s quitting time for now. Check back soon!!