I hate, hate, hate it when bloggers apologize for not blogging more consistently... but here I am, following suit. I think it's more of an apology to myself though - not to you, dear reader (sorry.) This blog is important to me, so I'm disappointed when I can't spend more time on it.
All that to say, the internet man from AT&T is stopping by our apartment on Saturday (*weeee!) so hopefully life will get a little more normal and I can stop lurking around my neighborhood coffee shops.
Welp, today I'm wrapping up the photos of our family trip to Germany and Austria. During the last few days of our journey, we spent our time in a few little Alpine villages. The first, Berchtesgaden, was something out of a Christmas card. The houses looked like they were made of gingerbread. There were Christmas lights and Christmas trees everywhere. And the whole town center was filled up with stalls selling German street food: sausage, currywurst, gluhwein, etc. (We kinda went crazy.)
My favorite photo is that last one - it's perfectly awkward. Part of our time in Berchtesgaden was spent in a working salt mine
underground. We had to put on these silly Battlestar Galactica outfits, and then we took a miniature train into the heart of the mountain. Once we were down there (can you say claustrophobia??), they showed us how to mine the salt from the rock. We slide down a big wooden tobogan slide, and we floated in a boat across an underground lake, and we got a serious science lesson. I wish we could've taken pictures, because it was kind of unreal. I felt like a Tolkein dwarf. It's something I'll never forget.
The next day, we drove 2 hours into the Alps to a little skiing village where no one spoke English. Our goal was to rent cross country skiing gear, which turned out to be harder than we thought. My parents and brother all speak some German, but it was still pretty confusing. All I understood in their conversation was "Arnold Schwarzenegger" and "The United States Marines" but, hey - eventually we got what we wanted.
The next 3 hours were pretty amazing:
Cross country skiing is SO fun. Makes me wish we lived in a snowy area so we could go more often.
That night was our last night in Austria
and New Year Eve, so we drove back to Salzburg for the most amazing firework show I've ever seen. If you ever get the chance, try to get to Salzburg on New Years Eve. You can stand on a bridge in the middle of the city and watch fireworks going off on either side... it's insane. But incredible.
And there you have it - our trip to Germany & Austria! If you missed any of the previous posts, make sure you check them out
here,
here, and
here. Thanks for coming along on our journey!