Garmish-Partenkirchen (cool mountains)

So it got to be Saturday morning so we took the train to the town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen.  They had the winter olympics there back in the day.  It is know as the German gateway to the Alps.  Sounded cool to us.  It's a tiny town with the Alps as the main attraction.  We arrived and took this train below over to the foot of the mountain.  From there we transferred to the 'Cog Wheel Train.'  It has wheels with teeth so it can climb steep hills (like the alps).  Suddenly we disappear into a mountain and come out 25 minutes later at the top (almost).

 Amazing no?  It was April, and people were skiing here.  It was 30 degrees C (86F) at the bottom of the mountain but 4 (39) at the top, and windy.  From there we took a short ride in the cable car to the very top. You can see below how the train had to just pop out of the ground at the facility because there is no other access to it.  We enjoyed excellent food at the restaurant there.

From the very top we took a good look around.  Here is the Austrian side - mountains as far as you could see.  Can you imagine?! Hannibal took elephants through here!  

And here is a look at the German side.  The Eibsee (lake) is below. 

 Here is our picture with the gold star marking the highest point in Germany at 2900 odd meters.

Back at the bottom, at the Eibsee, it was hot again so we posed. 

Easter Weekend - part 2 of 2

Wow, 3 weeks late - here comes Graz.  The faithful mall internet has failed me.  I wondered if I had been blocked for using it too much, but here it is again!

Sunday morning was the most beautiful Easter morning I have ever had.  Taking the train from Vienna to Graz goes directly through the Alps.  I like that a lot (more on the Alps next week I hope!)!

I forgot what most of this is called, but there is this big rock in the middle of town that you can go up via windy path or by train (incline really).  At the top is this cool building and nice view.

Top left is “The Friendly Alien” - a design museum that looked awesome but we arrived after it closed.  So sad.  On the river is the manmade island that looks like a shell.  The open part of the shell is an amphitheater and the closed part is a cafe.  We enjoyed coffee there (I settled for hot chocolate, but Karen insisted on the weird espresso with egg yoke in it.

There is the group shot with Markus who we were visiting.

That night we all went and played pool which was fun.  I hadn't played much in a long time.  I finally started to get the hang of it again. 

The next morning we headed to a castle outside the city of which I have no pictures, but there were lots of peacocks.  The scenery was lovely.  It was the one blue sky of the trip which made it all the more terrific.  After a nice lunch we found the train and made our way home to begin another week of solving the world’s performance footwear problems at PUMA.

My parents are here this week!  Tuesday to Monday.  You’ll hear about it later.  Fun stuff planned.  Should be lovely!

Easter Weekend - part 1 of 2

This past weekend was Easter weekend for those of you who missed the memo.  At PUMA that means a 4 day weekend (Good Friday and Easter Monday).  Karen and I grabbed the chance to see two lovely cities while visiting a retired intern from days gone by.  We started off in Vienna, Austria.

We arrived Friday afternoon and checked in at the hostel.  My first experience in a dorm setting (6 people to a room).  We then made our way to the city center for a look around.  We quickly found these brilliant traffic lights. 

 Nice gardens, parliament, the city hall, and an Easter market with loads of painted eggs, some very ornate and others simple, but all real.  We split a giant apple cinnamon frosted pretzel.  We made our way to another market and tried Langos, this fried bread bigger than your face, coated in butter and garlic salt.  So delicious, and made us both feel rather bad upon finishing... We had just finished talking about our families’ heart attack histories.  I was sure I was going to have my first heart attack right there.

It seems everyone in Austria likes Mozart since he is from there.  We saw one guy dressed as Mozart with PUMA shoes.  I did take a picture, but am not bothering to post it. 

We stumbled across this cool “Explosion” on the south side of town.  I think it was supposed to be a frozen shock wave, milliseconds after some sort of bang.

After collecting ourselves at the hostel briefly we set out again to find some Sachertorte, a chocolate cake with an apricot layer in the middle and a special blend of chocolates from various manufacturers who produce chocolate solely for that purpose.  On our way we swung by the Nike store, because their shoes are absolutely amazing.  I love the new NikeFree 4.0.

After a short night’s sleep we both got up around 6 (don’t ask me why, it just happened).  Karen went for a long run, which I had to skip out on because of injury before we headed away from the city to see Castle Schönbrunn.  Absolutely HUGE building and property.  It included a labyrinth with games throughout it that included poles to climb, bells to ring with your feet, and crazy mirrors.  It made for a fun morning.

 Lunch was at a ridiculously large market.  Wiener (Viennese) Schnitzel from veal and Almdudler (served in CocaCola cups?), a drink like ice tea that tastes like Litchi.

Clock museum in the afternoon was full of fun little treasures.  Karen got in trouble for touching the clocks.

 The main event came that evening.  We had read that we could get standing room tickets at the Opera for 3€ so we lined up and got some.  “L’Eliser d’Amore”  (The Love Potion) was playing.  It had quite the shallow story line, but the opera experience was a fun one.  They have this crazy system for the standing room section that enforced by the staff.  Once you have your spot, you mark it with a scarf and then it is reserved for you.  You can’t mark it with a jacket, or a bag, only a scarf.  The guys next to us didn’t have scarves so they made the pages from the program into a scarf to draper over their spot.  Impressive.  That was the program for Vienna.  Stay tuned for the second half of the weekend in Graz in which we meet Markus and have even more fun.