1. At the top of Zugspitze our 4th (last day) when God opened up the sky for us to see all of the Alp in the beautiful sun! (dont be fooled though, just because it is sunny does NOT mean it was warm)2. One of the MANY MANY shots I have of Davids snow filled beard. This is day 2 of skiing when it was like 30 or 40 feet of visibility when we were skiing, and in some parts skiing in powder up to over my knees deep!
3. Our cute little humble family owned hotel. We were the very last room on the left on the 2nd floor.
4. Us on our first day of skiing/snowboarding on Zugspitze.
5. Davids beard had collected little ice beads on his little individual strands of hair! I just about laughed my way down the mountain rolling after I saw this! They were perfect little round beads!


...........PART TWO of our vacation.
Well I think I left off in my last blog with us getting on the train heading down to Rome. But before I do I have to take a few seconds and talk about the food in Germany. Every meal for the 12 days of our vacation we just ATE and ATE and ATE! I think our 2 most used phrases on our vacation were "I CANT wait to eat!" and "I CANT wait to go to bed!". Our hotel in Garmisch had a good breakfast (not anywhere as good as the hotel in Italy, but ill get to that later). So we ate ALOT at breakfast knowing that we would need all the energy we could get knowing we would be skiing for the rest of the day. So then came lunch. Lunch was of course way over due no matter what time we ate it seemed like after skiing our brains out all morning. And of course lots of meat and sausages in Germany. They also had more pasta than i was expecting. But my favorite dish in Germany was their soup! REALLY REALLY good soup there! And there is nothing better than chowing down on something HOT after being out in the snow all day. So I ate a lot of soups for lunch and dinner while David ate more of the meats and sausages. Davids favorite dish was this potatoes and meat skillet dinner. It had like 3 different types and flavors of sausages fried up in this garlic butter together with some pork and cow steaks and bacon and then potatoes thrown in. Of course the whole thing was swimming in a VERY good amount of grease but it was pretty darn good if i may say so!
OK back to the story. Day 4 of our trip was waking up to the sun, going up to the top of Zugspitze and taking the tram to the top view point and seeing all the beauty! We didnt go skiing our last day in Germany because we didnt have a hotel to go back to and get showered and packed again since we checked out of our hotel at 11. So we found some lockers at the train station big enough for all of our bags and went on exploring more around the town before getting on the train at 6. We left Garmisch and went to Munich, Germany where we caught our train to Rome. I slept fine on the train in our room, but David didn’t do so well. All night I was thinking about what it was going to look like waking up and looking out into Italy, after being in Alaska for the last year and especially the last 2 days where it was nothing but snow. It was just as I pictured it. You know how when you see movies of Italy it just seems gold there? I don’t know how to explain it, but I just imagined the air and the sun and the earth just to look gold. And when I did wake up and pulled up the blinds in our room that’s EXACTLY what I saw! It was so pretty!!!! Pretty rolling hills, farm houses surrounded by olive and grape vineyards (not sure which). And every half mile or so you would see some sort of old ancient building somehow still standing after all of these hundreds of years! It was so neat to see these old structures still standing, covered in vines and moss. It was colder in Italy than what I thought it was going to be, but it was still warmer than anything we’ve been used to since Sept. It was around 50 or so the whole time, but it was a crispy chilly 50. We arrived in Rome around 9 and had some time to kill until we caught our next train to Napoli (Naples). We didn’t have enough time in between to go see any sights in Rome, plus we had no idea where we were in comparison to anything else in that city so we didn’t wanna get too far and not be able to make our way back in time for our train. We arrived in Napoli around noon and caught what they call the Circumvesuviana train to Sorrento. It was a train that took you out of town and around Mt. Vesuviana (Vesuvius). BOY was that something! While waiting for our train we got time to witness how the normal loading and unloading of one of those city trains work. It only remains stopped for less than a minute, just long enough for the doors to open and close again pretty much. IT IS NOTHING like how America runs things. There are no ‘lines to get on’, there is no ‘stepping to the side’ until all the people are off, and then the people who want on file-in in a nice orderly fashion. Picture this….. Really think hard back to your last war action packed movie. Ok………… It is minutes until the beginning of a battle. There is a huge valley or field where on opposite sides the good guys and bad guys stand. Both sides are standing firm, waiting for their commander to finish his inspiring and motivating speech and to give the signal of throwing up his sword and saying something like “CHARGE!” or “FOR THE KING AND FOR FREEDOM!” and then it starts. Slow motion takes over the scene and both sides are tearing forwards towards each other. With their war cries, matching their mean hard tough faces they howl and yell for a more intimidating look. They are coming closer and closer to meeting. They begin to see the faces of individual men, and pick out the one they want to fight first. And then it happens. The camera is set at ground level, and the slow motion is shut off just as they reach inches away from meeting. Horses and men and arrows, and swords, and axes and clubs meet in one huge collision. Only the toughest, quickest, hardest, most cunning make it out alive. Its either you or them. No time for hesitation. No time to think, just time to move. One faltering foot step and you join the rest of the lifeless mess on the battlefield. …………………AND THIS IS WHAT IT LOOKED LIKE!!! ……………Ok I might have exaggerated a little bit, BUT I promise it was close to being exactly like this! There are no-polite moves to the side, waiting for the moms with children to get on first, helping that little old lady with the cane down the first step, a gentleman standing up to give the ladies his seat. NONE of that. Just everyone going at the exact same time. So with witnessing a few in action we knew just what to do if we wanted to make it out alive. ………………………….. TO BE CONTINUED…………………………………

T*W*N*A*E
6. Weren’t hamburgers invented in Germany? We didn’t see one on any menu while we were there!
7. Open alcohol containers are allowed on government trains.
8. Dogs can pretty much go anywhere unless it is posted.
9. There were a lot of stray cats and dogs in Italy.
10. If you order ‘cheese bread’ in Europe you aren’t getting hot oven toasted cheese melting deliciousness. You get a plain slice of bread with a few slices of old cheese ontop.
11. People DO NOT respect lines.