It has been many years since we have celebrated with just our little crew. In Yuma, we would typically go to Tom’s parents’ for Christmas Eve dinner and presents, enjoy Santa’s offerings Christmas morning, and then head to my parents’ for Christmas Day festivities. This year, we were smaller in number, both of people and presents, but enjoyed our Christmas just the same.
After my last post about Garmisch, I got a little discouraged because most of the photos did not show up. I am going to try something different this time, but if it doesn’t work, I may throw in the blogging towel for good. Or ask my husband to come up with a solution. Yeah, that might be better.
Here are albums for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Click to see the full album, and there should be a caption for each picture. Cross your fingers that it works!
Last weekend we took our first overnight family trip since being in Germany. Garmisch-Partenkirchen is located southeast of Stuttgart in Bavaria, just this side of the Austrian border on the edge of the Alps. Yeah – The Alps. Cool, huh? It started as two separate towns (you can guess the names) that were forced to join together in 1935 by Adolf Hitler in preparation for the 1936 Olympic Winter Games. People usually just refer to it as “Garmisch,” which probably gets the Partenkircheners’ collective goat but is a lot easier to say. One of our kids called it “Garnish,” and that seems to have stuck with us.
Even though the kids had Friday off from school, we had to wait till Tom was done with work, so we didn’t get on the road till almost 5:00. It was a beautiful three-hour drive. Well, I take that back. It was a beautiful two-hour drive (my turn) followed by a white-knuckled, dark-narrow-windy-road, we-should-have-changed-the-windshield-wipers-before-it-started-pouring, are-we-supposed-to-be-in-Austria? one-hour drive (Tom’s turn). But all is well that ends well, and we arrived in one piece. We stayed at Hostel 2962, which we thought was a random name but turns out to refer to the elevation in meters of the Zugspitze, Germany’s highest mountain, which is south of Garmisch and directly on the Austria/Germany border. Though this hostel has many individual rooms and shared bathrooms, we stayed in the Apartment, at the very tippy top of the place. We had several rooms, a bathroom, and a kitchen all to ourselves. The décor was quite unique and impressed the kids. There was the master bedroom with bricks and arches…
The sitting room with mountain peaks and birds…
The kitchen with a sun light…
And this space…
There is great debate about whether this is a snow cave or a tidal wave. Snow cave makes more sense given the surroundings, but it sure looks like a breaking wave, and they had fun surfing underneath it. Jonah took one look at it and decided to sleep in what I would describe as a mudroom with a bed.
It was late and pouring rain when we got there, so we stayed in. Noah actually came down with a fever, so it took a while to get him settled down to sleep. By then, Tom was exhausted and went to bed and Jonah was curled up with a book, so the younger two and I played Skip-Bo and had hot chocolate before I tucked them into their snow cave beds.
I have to mention at this point that the thing the kids were looking forward to the most on this trip was seeing snow. Even though we keep telling them that pretty soon they will have more snow than they can shake a stick at, they couldn’t wait to see the stuff. We haven’t been in snow since we left Maryland seven years ago, which means that Vienna has never seen snow, Noah only vaguely remembers it, and Elijah definitely doesn’t remember as he was just a baby then. The forecast called for precipitation, leaning more toward snow the closer we got to the day, so they were psyched.
Morning came, and there was a lot of rain, but no snow. However, Noah’s Eskimo Senses were tingling…
…and Tom and I were determined to have a fun family day, even if it meant getting a little wet or staying inside more than we hoped. As we got packed up and ready to check out, we could see from our windows that the tops of the nearby mountains were turning white, but we were below the snow line. We had no real plan for the day, other than to drive around and see what we could see. A short drive found us at the Olympic Ski Stadium. The ski jump was rebuilt in 2007, but the stadium itself is mostly unchanged from when it was built.
We walked through the stadium, but it was wet and downright cold. We hadn’t had rain at home for a while, so Vienna was at least enjoying using her new umbrella and thrift store boots to jump through all the puddles, and the boys were decked out in their winter attire.
We decided to get some lunch and then come back to take a gondola ride up the mountain. It was still raining, and the kids were coming to terms with the fact that we might not be seeing snow this trip. I had read about a famous restaurant where they have dancers like you might remember from National Lampoon’s European Vacation, but without the fistfight. So we found our way to Gasthof Frauendorfer and settled in for a Bavarian lunch. Four orders of chicken nuggets with fries (notice the “Garnish”)…
One slaughter plate (don’t ask)…
potato soup with bread (not pictured – it smelled so good I dove right in), and drinks all around…
Alas, there were no dancers, but the atmosphere and our waitress were very nice and the food was good.
Noah came down with a fever while we were waiting for our food, so Tom walked to the nearest Apotheke to get some medicine.
Apparently the Germans make good medicine, because he was perking up by the time we finished our meal. It had been raining the whole time we were inside, and we had almost decided to start making our way home, but when we came out of the restaurant, we found a gorgeous site: The rain had gone, the air had cleared, and the mountains were full of fresh snow.
We walked down historic, ancient Ludwigstrasse, with its fantastic murals, inns, shops, and parish church.
