Missed Connections

So at this point, we were pretty proud we hadn't really had too hard of a time with trains and buses. Than it took us 6 hours to travel the  roughly 100 km's from Innsbruck to Fussen. Not entirely our own fault, as our route contained 3-4 transfers and no direct lines existed, but still. One train changed platforms and so we missed that one, causing us to miss the next couple.

Eventually after 5-6 hours on stinking trains, we found Fussen. Where at midnight, we were going to walk to our hostel. Luckily, when we asked a nice family which street was _(insert long Werman word)_, they discussed it, found directions online, discussed it some more (in German), before looking at us and saying "how about you just get in and we'll drive you!" They must not have had much confidence in us :) Anyways our hostel was a cute old house with a let-yourself-in and then find your room policy after hours, that was rather convenient.

The next morning we walked for an hour towards to the [Schloss] Neuschwannstein Castle and the [Schloss] Hohenschwangau Castle. The Neuschwannstein Castle in the castle that Walt Disney was inspired by for the design of the one at Disney. It is also the castle Milessa grew up wanting to see after seeing pictures around her house growing up since it was one of Darla's favourites! Both were set beautifully in the mountains overlooking a valley and stream.

From Fussen, we had to make our way about 100 km's to Rorschash along the coast of Lake Constance. Though nothing very touristy was here, we had arranged for Couchsurfing with a young couple there, Ona and Andy. Our arrival was supposed to be about 7, but it was 1030 by the time we showed up. This time, we got on the 1st train fine, then on the ensuing connection, we got on the right train, wrong half. Apparently sometimes the back and front of trains go different places after a few stops. We thought something was funny we came to a stop travelling one direction, stopped for 10 minutes, than began travelling the opposite direction.

We decided to ignore it. Bad choice.

Somewhere along the way we asked a conductor to help us get to our destination and he set up a route with another 4 connections. Unfortunately, one of our trains was late, causing us to miss our last train, and arrive even later, where our gracious host Andy was waiting at the station patiently. Ona had made a delicious meal of rice, chicken, and chili peppers (she was Thai) so we enjoyed an amazing meal on arrival! After a good long visit, we went to the sleep on the air mattress and floor of their balcony apartment. In the morning we visited again with Ona before heading on a train to Vaduz, Lichtenstein, a tiny little country beside Switzerland you can drive through in 10 minutes.

With Rosemarie!

There we got some groceries and needed to use internet to get in touch with another Couchsurfing host, Rosemarie! But to use internet, we needed to buy a drink in this café. Seeing how fancy it was, we prepared ourselves for some $$very$$good$$ coffee. My cappuchino and Milessa's sparkling apple juice came to 11 Swiss Francs. Wow. Anyways we met up with Rosemarie, who lived in a loft-style open-concept single room apartment. It had great views of the mountains! She was a great host and was so excited to hear about our travels and also to tell us all about her little country of Lichtenstein!

The next day we said goodbye before doing a small hike up the Lichtenstein Castle, where the royal family still lived and was still head of the country. We also walked around the city centre and enjoyed being in such a tiny country before walking over a bridge and standing on the border of Lichtenstein and Switzerland and heading on a train to Interlakken, Switzerland.

Oh this was also my birthday. What an amazing way to spend my birthday, between 2 beautiful countries! I was also treated to some nice coffee thanks to Mil :) Getting to Interlakken took some time. On the way we met an Aussie guy, with Swiss roots now living in Switzerland, who spoke 14 languages/dialects. He was a university and private language professor, go figure. From Interlakken we hopped on an incredibly scenic train to Lauterbrunnen.

On the final connection, an American lady was on-board and as the train closed the doors and we drove off, she realized her husband wasn't with her and he had no tickets or bags or anything at 930 at night! She was pretty in shock and it was absolutely hilarious to hear her go off (in a laughing way) about what a hectic day they'd had and how it figures her husband would miss a train because he wanted water. As the conductor came by for tickets, she explained it all to him (in a frenzy) and asked what to do. He merely said don't worry, get off the train, go have a drink, your husband will show up. He reminded us of Ryan Husband if that helps you picture his chill and somewhat sarcastic demeanour. We got off the train, helping her with bags, and suddenly her husband shows up thanking us for helping his wife! The conductor just smirked. Apparently to get up this leg of the journey, you could take a 5 Franc train, or a 60 Franc taxi. When he missed the train he grabbed and taxi and got up before we did, silently telling us the price, smiling, and telling his wife it was only 6 Francs! They were hilarious to watch!

Upon arrival in Lauterbrunnen, the views of the valley were spectacular! Sheer cliffs 800m up, waterfalls off the side. A great birthday present. However on arrival at hostel, we found out something went wrong with the reservation and the only room in the town which was less then 50$ per person was booked out. The friendly staff lady made many phone calls and somehow found us a double room for much cheaper in a hostel we previously thought was full. Don't know how that worked, but we were very lucky.

Arriving in Lauterburnnen was such an amazing birthday gift! If I thought the view at night was good, the view in the morning was a million times better! We could the whole valley, the 3500+ meter mountain to our left, and the Cliffside and waterfalls even better. There was also the constant sound of dozens of BASE jumpers opening their parachutes after careening on the top of the cliff. The hostel was filled with adrenaline junkies from around the world who had come to this valley to BASE jump on a daily basis.

 After breakfast and making some reservations for lodges for our coming 4 day hike up the Schiltorn, we headed off. We hiked over an hour along the valley floor before heading up a steep slope that would take us 800m to the top of the cliff (from 500m valley floor to 1300m Gimmelwald elevation). After a couple hours, we made it to Gimmelwald and found our beds at The Mountain Hostel and amazing views of the valley and mountains across it. That night we did some much needed laundry before playing pool for a good while. At night we met a whole bunch of other travellers from the USA, mostly California and the west coast. One girl was from Calgary and all 6 of us had a great time visiting that night.

The less scary cable bridge over the falls!

The next day was supposed to be a relaxing day, but we ended up doing a Via Farrata track from Murren to Gimmelwald. If you've never googled images before, do it now. I don't know how Milessa forced herself to complete this climb. Via Ferrata is like a more controlled, safer version of rock-climbing. Instead of climbing right on the rock face (though some do that) you mainly hike close to cliffs with some extremely exposed sections climbing along a cliff-face on rebar that has been pounded into the rock. The whole time you wear a harness and are clipped in to a cable that runs the length of the 'track' unless you don't want to clip in, but that's stupid. Anyways at one point, we scaled along a cliff for about 30m and when we looked down, our feet were on rungs of rebar and straight down 800m of nothing! It was terrifying and somehow Milessa forced herself to do it only because the thought of me doing it myself scared her more! It was my birthday present from her ;) We have a couple pictures, but google 'Murren to Gimmelwald Via Ferrata.' Another section took us along a suspension bridge 3 feet wide, with railings for only a small chunk in th middle, 100m long, and about 1500 feet straight down to the bottom of the crevice.

Terrifying suspension bridge

Can you believe she climbed along there? She´s definitely
faking that smile- can you see the tears?

Upon arrival back in Gimmelwald, we hugged it out and bought some homemade Swiss milk, cheese, and sausage from an honesty shop in the back of this guys house. Open his fridge, take your food, leave the money. So yummy! We relaxed and played pool the rest of the day while Mil tried to lower her adrenaline levels back to something more manageable. The next day we packed up and left on our hike to the Rotstuckhutte, which sat at about 1900m elevation and at the base of the Schiltorn. We hiked through Murren, bought food and water for the next couple days, and made our way through farmers fields, forests, raspberry patches, over streams and next to stunning mountain views towards Rotstuckhutte.

On the way, a specific little mountain caught my attention so I left Mil to rest at the bottom while I ran up to the top for great views and nice little box where people left something important to them and wrote a note. I left my bracelet from Laos before running to the other peak on paths only 2 feet wide and cliffs on either side. During my little gallivant, Milessa waited and had many people stop and talk to her, obviously. One guy was just walking carrying a deer like animal on his back which he'd shot in the mountains and was carrying down like the manliest thing you've ever seen.

  After we met up an hour later we continued hiking for an hour with only light rain to Rotstuckhutte and set up there for the night. Generally, this place only lets people stay if they purchase their set meals and it costs about 75 Francs per person, but somehow they allowed us to eat our own food and only pay 25 pp! We were getting very lucky with hostels here in Switzerland! We ate dinner visiting with a couple guys from Geneva (1 from America, 1 from Sweden) and had a great visit with them, telling them our plans to hike to the top tomorrow. They decided they'd join, though they may have regretted the decision by the end of the hike the next day!

Lichtenstein

Lauterbrunnen Valley

A royal hubcap at the Lichtenstein Castle, Mom!

We´ve never been so far away from eachother

bread fight

This pic is from google but shows what it was really like.

A Vacation from a Vacation

Hey there everyone! I suppose some of you might read this blog every now and again. I also realize I am approximately 43 days late writing a blog updating on our summer events. We spent about 3.5 months travelling before heading back home to Canada for 1.5 months for a couple of weddings. First was Starlet and Kresten Krogsgaard's wedding early August and that was way too fun and both of us were in the wedding party! The 2 weeks before we were able to re-adjust to being home and help out with wedding preparation. Not before we both got wicked sick in bed for a few days upon our return where we even wondered if we had malaria. Luckily we didn't die. Although we both lost a bunch of weight! I hear you're not supposed to talk to about your wife's weight unless you maybe say "you have a complete of," before that word, so I'll only say I lost about 30 lbs during our few months travelling! None of my cloths fit, even my wedding ring felt bigger! So during our time in Canada, most of it was spent between Weyburn and Winnipeg, with short stays in Regina. In total we made 4 trips there-and-back from Weyburn to Winnieg. We put a good few km's on the Matrix this short summer! We also felt pretty bummy of the summer not working. It's pretty hard to get a job for only 1.5 months when you want 5 weekends off in that time... go figure. So we enjoyed the dream summer spending time with both of our parents, all of our siblings, and many of our friends. Lots of tennis, biking, longboarding, and whatever else you do in Weyburn. Oh ya that was fun getting a staph infection from falling off of my longboard. Which only happened because me and Milessa were double-boarding down a hill, fell, and Milessa landed on top of me which resulted in a solid skid, slide and burn on the pavement instead a graceful roll. 1 Week after my epic bale and light roahrash slight healing, I caught that staph and it wreaked havoc on my forearm, creating some nasty looking boils that only malaria pills (doxycycline) could fix. They're my new miracle drug. I made to get lots of extra for our trip in South America where we need loads of pills for malaria zones. Later in September we spent time in Winnipeg and were blessed to be a part of Amir and Cristen Hamad-Hussein's wedding; so much there too! We were so glad we were able to make it work to be home for both of these weddings! Somehow we managed to not get too used to the comforts of being home and with family and booked a few flights to Europe, where our global adventure continues!





mens day fishing! yummy jack.

chocolate fondue




buff jump day!




tyler broke a sign in the store. we made him confess and take it to the girl. epically hilarious!




our package arrived 2 months after sending from Malaysia!



Ussie with the Gauthier fam!



with Amir and Cristen!



Lowell took us playing tennis, and schooled us. especially enjoyed playing with Sean all the way from Kansas!

 
 

Arrival... Again

Well it does seem to have been a long time since we last wrote a blog! I'd like to make the following excuses: hard time finding computers, I hate typing lots on my iPhone or tablet, anything in Europe is expensive, we've been having too much fun doing other stuff, I'm a bad long distance friend. Ok, that's it! And now that I'm done making excuses, I can start updating you on our travels in Europe! We first arrived in Frankfurt, and soon realized we were not in travel mode. We had no map, forget they spoke German in Germany, and had made no plans :) so we somehow navigated our way on trains and buses to city centre exploring the Dom Romer (big cathedral type thing) and enjoyed/were appalled by seeing an incredible amount of people walk around the streets drinking beer, wine, or liquor. Laws are a little different here. After wandering around, we fell asleep early that night and woke up the next morning for breakfast and tried our luck at finding a bus to Weurzburg. Most people take trains around Germany, but recently bus services have opened up and although not as fast or convenient, they are about 1/3 the price of cheap trains! Unfortunately, bus stations and bus tickets are not as easy to use either and so we weren't able to find the right ones and ended up with the train to Weurzburg. Once there, we called from payphones and asked a million people for direction to Aut Main Brucke (Old Main Bridge) where we were going to meet Debbie Yeboah, my good friend from Athletes in Action who's in Weurzburg playing pro basketball! Somehow we found her and we had a great time hanging out and having her show us the city, palace, churches, the castle, good ice cream parlours, and the bridge where people are constantly standing around drinking wine, from morning until night. That was a pretty hilarious hangout spot for just about every group of people. That night we met a couple of her teammates and then went with them to the annual wine festival in the city square where, although we didn't have any wine, we had some delicious Bratwurst sausage! The seeing number of people in the centre square in a smaller city just hanging out was a really fun experience.

The next morning we took a bus to Munich, where we stayed at The Tent hostel. It's literally a massive tent with 100+ beds in one giant room. So cool! It had a great atmosphere there too with a giant fire pit, volleyball court, and lots of open space. From In Munich there was another festival going on at another river! So we went there and enjoyed walking around there and again people watching for a while. We also went to a palace called Nymphenburg Palace and walked around it. It was an incredible palace with building surrounding a huge courtyard and lake in the middle. The next morning we were up early to see the Olymipic Park that held the 1972 Olympics. Seeing the soccer pitch and the massive amounts of tennis courts was pretty cool. Also, that park had the largest single roof in existence, as it covered much of the stands, walkways, and the theatre. However it was a stretch to call it a roof. There was also a man-made lake and ill next to the stadium which made for great views of the city and its many churches. From there we headed to a Church of Christ and had a great service and visit with some of the members. When one particular father from Italy asked if we had kids or would soon, I laughed and said no way I'm way too scared. So he responded with some of the best advice I'd heard. He simply told me he was terrified before too (he now had 2 kids under 10) and then it was like when they were born he was given strength from God inside him that allowed him to be a dad. He said somehow, you find strength and he was sincere it was pretty cool. SO although no kids are anywhere on the way, me and that guy had a great connection :)

After church we went to Dauchau, I believe the oldest concentration camp. It was a strange experience being on those grounds, knowing how many people had been killed in such brutal conditions. It reminded us lots of the camps we saw in Phnom Penh from the genocide in the 1970s. The next morning we caught a bus to Vienna, Austria and it took some time to figure out the city. It's a super old city with lots of history and seeing palaces and churches from 100s of year ago was pretty cool. First we used our good ol' Rick Steves Europe Travel book from Charlotte Orr to give us a walking tour of the city and pointing out the highlights. The best part was simply people watching. Their is a unique culture there maybe originating from their rich and wealthy roots filled with royalty, music, and arts. People just gave a vibe of classiness. Needless to say, I didn't fit it well and that was pretty hilarious to us! We climbed up the 363 stairs of the Stephenplatz cathedral before wandering through the many walking streets towards the palace. Many buskers lined the sides with a variety of techniques; opera singers, musicians, and those funny 'I-painted-my-clothes-and-whole-body-including-my-face-and-now-I'm-standing-here-not-moving-all-day-which-is-totally-a-talent-so-give-me-money' guys. We ended up at the Sissy Palace where we went through the Sissy Museum and read lots about the former royalty and history of WWI. The next morning we went to Schonbrunn Palace and had tea with the queen. Ok not really but that's what it feels like I should be saying since writing "we went to the _______ palace," so many times this blog. Around back they had an unbelievably large gardens area and a castle type thing way behind and up the hill. We ended up spending most of our time there in the hedge mazes which was awesome. Also, we couldn't help but notice how perfectly they had cut the lawns and the cool lawnmowers they were using, and how much it all would have cost. I guess we have our roots as a lawncare company (please tell me you caught that pun) to thank... embarrassing to be in the midst of this incredible palace and our first thoughts were 'wow look at that grass and that edge.'

From Vienna we took the train (no buses in Austria) to Salzburg and were able to see some of the beautiful countryside of the Austrian Alps. Salzburg ended up being one of the nicest cities we'd visited in spite of its main attractions being 2 things I have almost no interest in: Sound of Music, and Mozart. To this point I have avoided any and all opportunities to see that movie. However being in Salzburg and going on a Sound of Music bicycle tour (in which I was the only one who had not seen the movie- I felt like Smalls when the rest of his Sandlot buddies found out he didn't know who Babe Ruth was... "I thought it was some lady... You mean that wimpy dear!?") made it tough to continue my proud trend. So after our tour where were the abby the couple got married, the house used in the film, the concert hall, and multiple other sights, I caved and watched the movie with Milessa. And 20 other young adults (boys and girls) who all sat in the hostel common room watching Sound of Music, where this hostel played the movie every single night of the year! Salzburg was also home to a beautiful fortress up on the top of a cliffy mountain that helped them fight off enemies for 1000 years as well as Mozarts birthplace and house he grew up in. One of the days in Salzburg was very rainy so we stayed indoors and only ventured outside to the city centre which was full of beautiful old buildings for a few hours in the afternoon.

The next day we made a round trip on a train to Werfen, a quaint little town between a couple mountains. As soon as we stepped off the train and walked over a bridge overtop of a stream and saw the mountains and open space in the background, it felt like a breath of fresh air for the both of us! It was here we realized how much more we love being outside and in the outdoors in country-sides and smaller villages than the many big cities we'd spent time in the last 10 days. Suddenly we both felt so much happier and it was a little odd. Anyways we came here so we could see the worlds largest ice caves inside one of the mountains. On the way we saw another fortress up on a hill (weird how it becomes totally normal). We hiked partway up the mountain and taking a bus and cable-cars the other portions. About 1800m up, we came to the cave mouth, where a cave filled with ice was discovered about 100 years ago. It dives into the mountain 42 km, with some ice as thick as 25m, the largest 'room' being 40m x 40m x 75m tall. There was massive stalactites and stalagmites made purely of ice. It all formed because in the ~3 summer months water seeps through cracks above cave, gets inside, where it drips until the ~9 winter months when freezing cold air blows in through the openings and keeps it colder than -10 Celsius for most of the year. That was a very fun 1 hour walking tour 1 km into the cave.

  We stayed in Salzburg again that night before heading to Innsbruck. Our hostel was way outside city centre so it took forever to make it there later in the evening. The next day we hiked up a mountain outside of Innsbruck, which a very similar vibe to Banff. This mountain I believe was about 1900m high so 2.5 hours up was a lot of work! We were rewarded with amazing views of the surrounding mountains and exhausted legs, before making the 2 hour descent. We forgot to mention we walked 2 hours to the base of the mountain, and then also from the base to our hostel. In total, we hiked around 9 hours that day! I so wish we had a pedometer it was unreal. So because of our great accomplishment of taking 5 millions steps, we decided we deserved to take the bus to the train station where we'd make our way back to Fussen, in the south of Germany!


bakery is the only thing open in Germany on sundays, too bad right?

our church of Christ in munich!

largest roof in the world! like I said, roof is stretching the truth a little

Tent Hostel




View from the top of the Catedral

Sound of Music Bike Tour



Mozarts Birthplace and the house he was raised in

veranda from the movie! Not in its original place because people kept braking in. One 80 year old lady even was dancing in it, slipped and broke her leg! k that sounded like I was being funny about it, I kinda wasn't

 

The Abbey

The part we hiked up to the ice caves

to the ice caves

The opening to the cave, Justin was nice and carried my bag for the last part

 

Innsbruck

spider web with water drops. excting.