Travelling... AGAIN

We spent our last days at Garmisch (most likely last) last week. Travelling there was quite the experience. Left the A5 to go on the A8 and shortly hit a stau. (Stau for you non-German speakers, including me LOL is a traffic jam - frightening to hear of 10+km staus!... that's about 6 miles) Driving around in the dark in an area we don't know is interesting, but thank goodness for GPS. How did we ever get by without it? More the question should be how did MEN get by without it? Coming back wasn't a lot better as we hit one little village that was still in the midst of its fasching parade. Yikes!

Nonetheless, it was a good trip. I relaxed and stitched. We went on a bus ride to Innsbruck to see the altstadt and Imperial Court Palace. The mountains from Garmisch to Innsbruck are just AMAZING! One must come to Europe to just see the wonders. The older boys (DH and CG) went skiing over the weekend. I insisted they go ahead and do the Zugspitze on Sunday. Not many can say they've skiied the tallest mountain in Germany back in the states. Driving home, we came up the Romantic Road. If the Amish one time were from Germany and came to Ohio, they got it right in settling in Holmes County. The rolling hills and fields west of Garmisch are just beautiful and remind me of driving up Ohio Route 39 out of Dover towards Sugarcreek and beyond.

We stopped at an interesting Rasthof along the A7. See picture above. The "old days" of travelling the states and finding odd places hasn't died in Germany it would seem... It looks like an ice cream stand. The bathrooms had birds chirping (tape or CD I HOPE! LOL) and it just gave one the sense of a carnival or something in that stop. It was a fun place. I bet it's a nice place for the kids in the summer. There's a playground outside and an indoor kinderspiel of sorts as well.

Future travel plans... Koln to do chocolate, Netherlands to get to Amsterdam, HOPEFULLY Madrid, and maybe Venice. Those are the big things to do. There's a restaurant I want to go to but can't remember the website at the moment, outside of Frankfurt. The schnitzels and burgers (yes! burgers) are the size of dinner plates! Yes, we continue our eating and drinking across europe :)

Speaking of drinking I went to the bazaar on post this morning. My fave wine seller was there, with my favorite wine, GLUHWEIN! White gluhwein. Yes, they do make a white version. I had to buy 6 bottles. He goes to Rhine Ordinance Barracks in two weeks... guess where I'll be in two weeks. :) Gotta get my fill before going home. We may have to go ahead and commercially ship our wine collection home. It keeps growing in spite of our drinking it up.

Living La Vida Loca

Let's see... two weeks after dropping a line here, I'm still waiting on my Saab to arrive. It's not on a boat. It is in the port at Sweden. They SAY AGAIN, hopefully two weeks. They have said they will try to get us approved to rent a car. That would be great because we need the second car in our busy lives.

Things have been hopping along. Digging thru more boxes. Getting rid of lots of recyclables and trash. Finding old things I've wondered where they went to. Finding old things to just pitch! At least one box has gone out to charity. Of course, none of this stops me from buying more stuff. :D I'm trying to stop that income of stuff so we can get rid of stuff in the house. I can't see having to let people start looking at the house come June/July/August timeframe. I imagine we should probably check with the landlord if he's planning on more Americans renting or selling the house. It's a great place, just a little too far out for a decent commute. We had our first snow about 10 days ago and I had to drive David up to work. A normal 20-30 minute drive in the morning traffic took almost 1.5 hours. The roads were horrendous! forutnately it doesn't snow THAT much to make this a bad place to live. But it's also lack of Americans in the community that makes me feel a little alienated. I'd hoped to be more firendly with the neighbors but between our lack of knowing enough of each other's language and the lack of friendliness in general here, it's just not worked out. But I can shop on the economy and get by when needing to order something. THAT is good! The backerei and metzgerei make out well when I come in.

Listening to AFN radio can drive one nuts. Listening to their attempt of balancing what they provide, I caught the Ed Schultz show the other night. He had Hillary Clinton on for about 15 minutes. Needless to say, had I ever thougth of voting for her (and I would only do so if under incredible pressure to do so), I'd not be doing so. Talk about someone who doesn't sound presidential and grates your nerves with her voice and attitude. Get me a basket ready because if she actually wins, this country will not ever be the same and will continue further downhill than we already have ventured! Then again, there aren't many choices out there. I hate presidential elections. We don't vote til next November and CNN has a debate (the 1st democrat party debate) in April THIS YEAR. The campaign started as soon as the polls closed on the 2006 election. Oh to live in days gone by... no press in your face daily... news took weeks if not MONTHS to travel. I think that was a blessing. Maybe moving to the remote prairies of North Dakota will be a huge blessing come next fall :)