Visit from Dave

At the end of May, our friend Dave came to visit us and see some of Europe for about 2 weeks.  We had met Dave the previous summer on a backpacking trip to the Adirondacks with Nick, Kelly, and Joel.  Nick and Dave were friends at Calvin and we quickly got to know Dave on that trip because we rode together to New York and spent two hours at the Canada/US border waiting to get through.  Needless to say, we were all a bit loopy after being stopped in the car for so long and quickly became friends.

Dave started his trip by flying to Zurich and spending a few days in Luzern before taking the train and ferry to us.  Much of the time that Dave was by us, he spent riding Brian's bike to different places to see things.  Most of it I had already seen, so I let him explore them on his own.  We did take two longer and farther trips with Dave on the weekends when Brian had off.  We went to Cinque Terre, Italy the first weekend and to Salzburg, Austria the second weekend.  We had a lot of fun on these longer trips, but also enjoyed the time we had while at our house.

We went out for dinner one night in Tettnang and thoroughly enjoyed the great German food we got!

We also enjoyed our share of German ice cream.  :)  The first night we even walked in a drizzle to get ice cream just before the stores closed.  We also had some at home, it was that good!

Our next several blogs will be about our longer trips with Dave, so stay tuned for more adventures.  I will also put the pictures onto our Share site so that you can see all our pictures instead of only a few.  Enjoy!

Grilling and Hiking

The weekend after we went to Copenhagen, we were actually at home!  This hadn't happened for quite a while, so it was nice to do things with people who live around here that we hadn't done anything with for a while.  There was some new expats here from Detroit that I had never met, so we did things with them and Gus and Lindsay.  Brian knew Sandeep and Nidhi from Detroit and it was nice to finally put faces with these names.  They are originally from India, but worked and lived in Detroit for MTU and had recently moved to Aiken, SC where MTU has a new plant.  They are here for about 6 months and then will move back to Aiken.

On Friday night, we had a grill night.  We had all sorts of different kinds of foods including s'mores!  I had been wanting these, but there are no graham crackers here.  Since Brian had gotten home from Mankato that morning, he had brought some graham crackers and we were able to have s'mores!  It was fun to spend some time with friends.

On Saturday, Gus went with some friends to do the klettersteig that him and Brian had started with their friends previously.  Since Brian was pretty jetlagged after his quick trip to the States, he decided not to do that and hang out with the rest of us who were planning to do not quite so strenuous activities.  We started the morning by heading to the floh markt to find some deals on things.  We then headed to the Dornbirn area to do some hiking.  There is a canyon with bridges through it that you can hike on, but when we got there, we discovered that there had been a massive avalanche and most of the trail was closed.  I'm glad we weren't in there when the avalanche happened because there were rocks covering everything!

Instead, we walked on some other paths through little towns and along a stream.  It was quite warm and I had never zipped my new pants into shorts, so I finally did that.  Lindsay thought it was pretty funny that I was zipping my pants off and here's the picture Brian took of us.

The boys also had to show us how strong they were.

We could walk partway to the canyon along some bridges on the edges of rocks and over the stream, so here's a picture of the others.  This was a first hike for Sandeep and Nidhi, so we had to take lots of pictures of them.  :)

While walking through one of the little towns, there were some pretty cute sheep, so we asked the owners if we could look at the sheep.  I think they thought we were pretty funny because we were so excited about the sheep, but I'm glad we got to see them!

After the hike, we headed into Bregenz for some dinner at a Mexican restaurant that Sandeep and Nidhi had been to.  It was the first time that Brian and I had eaten Mexican in Germany and it was actually very good!  A great end to the day!

Self-Cut Flowers

One thing that I love about Germany is the self-cut fields of flowers.  We drive past one every Sunday on our way to and from church, but we have never actually stopped.  I love seeing the flowers and the possibility of cutting some to bring home, but it wasn't until several Sundays ago that we actually stopped!  Lindsay and I were pretty excited to have some gladiolas for our houses.

There is a box that you pay for the flowers in per stem and they even provide you with knives for cutting the flowers.

Lindsay and I then went on the search for the best flowers through a pretty muddy field.  It was definitely worth it though!

And here is the final product in my Delft vase a few days after picking so that more of the blooms could come out!

Harry Potter!

Ever since the newest (and last) Harry Potter movie came out on July 15, I have wanted to watch it.  I didn't think it was possible to see it before going to the US, but that changed last week!  I decided to check out the local movie theater to see if they happened to be showing it in English since it is such a popular movie.  Much to my surprise, they were!  There were 3 showings left, so we called up Gus and Lindsay (since Lindsay wanted to see it too) to see if they wanted to go to the Friday night showing with us.  We were able to reserve tickets and were very excited!

None of us had ever seen a movie in Germany, so it was quite an exciting experience for us.  We went to Gus and Lindsay's for dinner and Lindsay made all American food for us - chicken fingers and fries.  It was very yummy and made us feel like we were back at home.  We then had some of my funfetti cake that I had made for my birthday before heading to the theater.

The movie theater was very much like any movie theater in America and when we walked in, it smelled right because they were making buttered popcorn.  We got our tickets (which were assigned seats!) and bought a bucket of popcorn.  The concession stand was pretty normal except for a display of gummys!  I was very excited, so I got my picture taken by it.

They would only allow us into the theater a certain amount of time before the movie and we were too early, so we headed outside to get a bit of fresh air before sitting down for the movie.  We posed for a quick picture with our popcorn and tickets before we left though!

When we got back inside, we could go into the theater and they gave us the 3-D glasses to watch the movie.  They were not very attractive and I had to hold them up most of the movie because they didn't really stay on with my normal glasses. 

The movie was excellent!!  The previews were in German which was interesting, but we could actually understand most of it because they were speaking High German which is much easier to understand than the dialect where we live.  The movie was all in English with the original voices, so it seemed like we were sitting in America for a few hours.  :)

After the movie we headed back to Gus and Lindsay's for more cake.  It definitely had been a wonderful night!

Happy Birthday to ME!

As you can guess (or already know), today is my birthday!  It has been a wonderful weekend even though the weather has been pretty nasty. 

Friday night, we went with Gus and Lindsay to see the latest (and last) Harry Potter movie.  We discovered that the movie theater in town was showing it in English, so we had to take advantage of it.  It was a fun night of American-ness.  Lindsay made chicken fingers and fries for dinner and then we headed to the movie theater which was surprisingly "American" (except for the large gummy dispensers - yum!).  None of us had seen a movie here, so that was exciting, but the fact that it was Harry Potter was even more exciting.  After the movie we headed back to the Pizzuto's for some more of the cake that I had made earlier in the day.

On Saturday, my actual birthday, the weather started out really nasty and our day started out pretty slow since we didn't wake up until 10 since we had been out so late the night before.  We then ran to the bank and the pet store.  In the afternoon, we went to the Therme which is a pool/sauna thing that is pretty fun to go to.  For dinner, we went to a barbecue for the Bible school nearby since I had helped clean during their recent construction project.  That got done much earlier than expected, so we ended up back at Gus and Lindsay's for more cake and a movie.  Since we were finally having the cake on my birthday, we had to get a picture so that all of you could join in on the celebration.  :)  Here it is!

Thanks for all your birthday wishes via e-mail, snail mail, and Facebook.  It is great to know that so many people are thinking of me even when I am far away!

Copenhagen

The weekend of May 14, we made a quick trip to Copenhagen to visit some friends.  Our friend Holger is a German who interned with MTU, but was studying in Copenhagen for the last year.  We had wanted to visit him and his girlfriend while they were there, but had never made the time to do it.  We finally made the time before their time there was up and we were able to visit from a Saturday to Monday.

We flew from Zurich to Copenhagen with a stop in Amsterdam, so we spent a good part of the day on Saturday flying.  When we arrived, Holger and Zilla met us with the train at the airport and we took the train back to Zilla's apartment where we would be staying for the weekend.  Holger made us a wonderful German meal (I know, we were in Denmark!) and then we went for a walk before it got dark to see a bit of the area near where Zilla lives.  There was a beautiful church, a large park, and a castle-turned-military-school quite close to where she lives. 

One thing that we had to get used to while we were there was the amount of sunlight they had during a day.  It was only mid-May so we were not used to it staying light until 10pm and we definitely weren't used to it getting light in the morning by 5am!  We were able to stay out pretty late in the evening and still take decent pictures which was quite nice.  The 5am sunlight was not appreciated though because I always woke up several hours before our alarm was supposed to go off and had a hard time falling asleep again because it was so bright.

Since Holger and Zilla were finishing up their school year, on Saturday we headed to Kornborg Castle just the 2 of us.  Zilla told us how to take the train there and where we needed to walk to get to the castle.  This castle is known as Shakespeare's Hamlet castle because it is believed to be the setting for that play.  It was a beautiful castle and we were able to go into lots of different parts of it including an underground area that was used as a prison.  One famous piece of Danish lore is kept in the basement here.  It is a statue of Holger the Dane.  Legend has it that Holger helped defeat the Swedish and then sat down in this spot.  Holger the Dane will rise up again when Denmark is in trouble and needs protection from their enemies.

After checking out the small town near the castle, we took the train back into Copenhagen and met Holger and Zilla in the town.  They showed us some of the major sights of Copenhagen including the Queen's house, the opera house, the Parliament building, the little mermaid statue, Tivoli amusement park, and the main shopping street. 

Tivoli Amusement Park - the oldest amusement park in the world

Copenhagen Opera House - you have to take a boat to it

the Queen's house - there are 4 identical buildings in the square so you never know where the Queen is

Little Mermaid statue - the most famous thing in Copenhagen is actually pretty small and insignificant

After walking around most of town, we headed to a buffet-style restaurant for dinner.  It was great food, free refills on drinks (!), and filled us up since we could get as much as we wanted!  We then headed back to the apartment for the night.  

On Monday morning, we met Holger in the center of town again and saw a few more things.  My favorite was probably a store we went to that is the Danish equivalent of a dollar store.  Everything was very cheap, but very cute.  I ended up getting a wallet and some black licorice tea for my mom.  After seeing a few more things, we met up with Zilla for "lunch".  We went to famous cake restaurant to get some cake to celebrate our nephew Trent's birthday.  It was such good cake and a perfect way to end our trip to Copenhagen.

We then headed back to the airport for our flight back to Zurich.  We flew through Amsterdam again and arrived in Zurich about 11pm.  Brian ended up spending the night in the airport because he had an early morning flight to Mankato, Minnesota the next morning and it wasn't worth driving home to turn around and drive right back.  He was in MN until Friday for a very quick work trip.

Arlberg Klettersteig

Klettersteig is made up of 2 German words put together - like most German words. The first "Klettern" in German means climbing. The second word "Steig" means steep track. The easiest way to explain it is to say it is a cross between rock climbing and hiking. Some of the easier Klettersteig  routes are not much more than a really difficult hike. The hardest ones are almost straight up rock climbing. If you are familiar with rock climbing you know that each route is rated with a standard. The same is true with Klettersteig. The route Joel and I did is possibly the hardest one in the Alps. I didn't know this until the day before and by then we were all pumped about going so of course there was no stopping.


To give you an idea of what it is and what is needed I will try to explain. First you must have the proper equipment otherwise you are just playing games with your life (as some Germans put it). It starts with a harness - one very similar to a rock climbing harness. Meaning there is a part that goes around your waist and legs. The other part (not sure what it is called) is a like 2 ropes tied to the center of your harness. It is also recommended to wear a helmet in the event of falling rocks. Good foot wear is also needed and in some cases cramp-ons and an ice ax in the event of snow.


There is a cable about 1/2 to 1 inch in diameter that is run along the peak of the mountain and about every 20 to 40 feet there is a post in the rock holding the cable up (or away from the rock). You clip into this cable and when you come to one of the posts you move one of your ropes to the other side of the post then you move the other rope. The reason you move one at a time is for obvious reasons...you want to always be connected to the cable at all times in the event you lose your footing and fall. Your harness will keep you on the mountain rather than falling 20 to several hundred feet. The rest is fairly easy...you hike/climb/crawl your way up the mountain. The only thing that will hold you back/slow you down is one or more of the following: your physical energy/fitness level, getting scared because of the height, or the awesome views at the top.


Joel and I went with Gus and 2 of his old roommates from college and a German coworker. We started the day at 4am to drive about 2 hrs to where we left the car. We stared off the day with an Italian Espresso made in an old Italian Espresso maker (I have one now too). We then had to hike (normal hike) up to where the Klettersteig started. It was about a 2 hr hike. From there we started the Klettersteig. We all had a good time in the end, but we all had difficulties at some point. We originally had plans to do the entire hike but we had to bail out about 1/2 to 2/3 of the way because the cable was missing and it was too dangerous to continue. We took an exit point built into the hike and walked back to the car. The walk back was not what we expected as it took us much longer (about 4 hrs) and we were all tired at that point.


I hope to be able to go back sometime this summer and finish the Arlberg Klettersteig at some point. Gus has already gone back and finished it. He said that it was a good thing we stopped where we did that day because it got much harder and it would have been much further than we thought.

From right to left Matt, Louis, Sebastian, Joel, Me (Gus taking the pic)

2680 Meters up (+8790 feet or + 1.6 miles)

Visit from Joel

At the beginning of May, Brian's friend Joel came to visit us for a long weekend.  He was in the midst of a European trip and had already been to Paris.  After he left us, he headed to Amsterdam and London before heading back to home in Boston.  It was great to have him stop by us for a few days so that we could have a familiar face with us again. 

Joel arrived on Thursday evening by train and he spent Friday during the day exploring Friedrichshafen by himself.  On Friday evening, we headed to Ueberlingen for a cave tour.  There are hidden caves in Ueberlingen that were dug out during WWII by prisoners from Dachau and were meant to be used by the big companies in Friedrichshafen (MTU being one of them) to continue their production of war materials since Friedrichshafen was being heavily bombed and production could not continue there.  These caves were still in the process of being blown out when the French entered Ueberlingen and discovered the caves.  The caves were blown out during the day, but the debris was dumped into the lake at night to avoid notice from the Allied forces.  There is now a campground on the large piece of land that was made from this debris.

We thought the tour of the cave was supposed to be in English, so a lot of our friends from church had joined us.  Unfortunately, we found out that the tour would be in German.  We had two people with us that knew German and English though, so they were able to translate things for us into English.  We did not get all the information, but we did get the highlights of the tour.  The caves were quite large!  They definitely could have built an airplane in there!

We all had to wear hard hats in the caves and the guide called the police to let them know how many people entered the cave to make sure that everyone came out at the end.  Here's Joel and Brian in their hard hats.

After the tour, we headed to a friend's house for a pizza oven party.  Brian had helped these friends build a pizza oven about a month before this and we were invited over to try it out again.  Some of our friends also had friends of theirs from the States, so it was definitely a wide variety of people at the party.

On Saturday, Joel and Brian joined Gus and two of his friends and one German to do the Arlberg Klettersteig.  I don't really know all the details of this day except that Joel and Brian both came home absolutely beat!  I'll have Brian post a blog about the Klettersteig in the near future because he will do a much better job explaining it.

Also on Saturday, my sister's friends Justin and Shawnna who had visited earlier in the year came back for a couple of nights.  They had a few nights between places they were visiting and I invited them to stay at our place so that they didn't have to pay for another place to stay.  They were pretty low key while they were here, but they had just come off a week of sightseeing in Turkey and needed a few days to veg.

On Sunday, Brian and I took Joel to the Hohentwiel Fortress.  Brian had not been to the fortress yet, so it was fun to see him enjoy himself there.  I had been there, so I didn't take a lot of pictures while we were there.  In the evening we headed to church, but we were quite late because of the crazy amount of traffic getting there.

Brian took Monday off, so we were able to go several places with Joel.  We first headed to Neuschwanstein to see the castle.  This was the first time that Brian had seen the castle without fog covering it, so it was fun to watch him see the difference between the first time that we went there. 

From Neuschwanstein, we headed to Munich.  We walked around the old part of town and had dinner and beer at the Hofbrauhaus.  This is the biggest beer garden/restaurant in Munich.  They had great food and the boys enjoyed their 1 liter beers!

On Monday night, Joel left and took an overnight train to Amsterdam.  It was great to have him here for a little while!

Italy with the Campbells - Rome to FN

On Saturday, we decided to drive back from Rome all the way to Friedrichshafen.  We knew it would be a long ride, but we wanted to have Sunday to rest and do nothing before our last day of sightseeing on Monday before Ben and Laura left.  The whole trip took us about 12 hours with the few stops that we made and we were very glad to be out of the car once the day was over!

We took a different route home than we had taken to Venice and it was absolutely gorgeous!  We drove through northern Italy and then through southern Switzerland and the San Bernardino pass.  There are several lakes along the way and you drive through a beautiful valley with huge mountains surrounding you.  We stopped at one rest area to take a few pictures and this was our view.

I took lots of pictures of the mountains and you can find this on our share site (ponsteinpictures.shutterfly.com).

After driving through this valley, we stayed in Switzerland, but drove along the border of Liechtenstein.  Since we were so close, we decided we had to add a fifth country to our trip and stop in Liechtenstein.  We were just going to stop by a sign that said Liechtenstein, but then we discovered that there was a McDonald's close by and we had to eat there!  Brian and I have now eaten at McDonald's in Germany, Italy, Liechtenstein, Spain, Denmark, England, US, and Canada.  We still have to get Switzerland and Austria, but we don't think that will be a problem since we seem to go to one of those countries most weekends.

You'll notice that Brian is pointing at the Liechtenstein flag and we have the McDonald's sign in the background.  It definitely was the best view that we've ever had from a McDonald's!

Saturday Hiking

Saturday Beth and I along with the Pizzuto's went hiking to the Kreuzberg. It started with a 10km hike to the valley of the MT. The girls hiked around the area while the guys did some Klettern (rock climbing).
This is the hike in. You will notice our elevation gain was over 1080meters. The girls did some additional climbing bringing them to a height of 2122meters - which was higher than the boys. The Garmin site converted this all for you to units you can relate to.

The video below is the same rock climb that Gus and Brian did. We climbed a ridge that was very narrow as you will see in the video.

Italy with the Campbells - Rome Day 2

Our second day in Rome was packed full of big tourist sites...the Colosseum, the Roman Forum, the Pantheon, Piazza Navona, Trevi Fountain, and the Spanish Steps.

We started with the Colosseum which was quite impressive!  It was much bigger than I thought it would be.  I think that we were most impressed with the underground section where people and animals were kept for the fights.  There were so many different hallways for them to go through and get up onto the stage.

Brian and Ben had to have a "fight" while they were in the Colosseum.  I'm not sure who won!

We then headed across the street to the Roman Forum which is a large area of ruins from around the time of Paul.  It was interesting to see so many ruins in one place and to think that Paul could have walked where we were walking. 

We then headed to the Pantheon which is a church with a domed roof.  The roof is made out of concrete and has lasted hundreds of years.  There is an occulus (a big hole) in the center of the roof and the sunlight was shining through when we were there.  I wondered what happens when it rains, but saw drains in the floor to take care of the extra water.

We walked next to Piazza Navona which is a big square with several statues in it.  There also were a lot of artists selling their hand-drawn pictures there and we enjoyed watching them work.

Our next stop was a very touristy place, Trevi Fountain.  This is a big fountain on the back side of a building in a place that you really don't expect to see such a large fountain.  We had some gelato while we sat and people-watched at the fountain before taking some of our own pictures.

Our last stop for the day was the Spanish Steps.  This is just what it sounds like - a whole bunch of steps!  They are called the Spanish Steps because they are near the Spanish embassy in Rome, but really have nothing to do with Spain.  We went all the way up to say we had done it.

We then headed back to the campground and decided that we would head back to FN the next day.  We had originally planned to stay another day in Rome, but we had seen everything that we wanted to.  It was a good idea though because then we would have a day to relax before a bit more sightseeing before Ben and Laura left to go back home.

Italy with the Campbells - Rome Day 1

After a rainy night at the campground, we awoke to a dry morning for our first day in Rome.  We took the campground bus to the train station and then got on a train that to us to the main station in Rome.  We then figured out the Metro and got ourselves nearer to Vatican City where we were going to spend the day.

We headed to the Vatican Museum first.  My favorite part of this was the temporary display of Faberge eggs that were on display.  The storied behind them all was fascinating as well as looking at all the tiny pieces of each one.  Never in my life did I think I would see things so delicate!

The other part of the Vatican Museum that was pretty cool was the Sistine Chapel, but we weren't allowed to talk or take pictures in there.  It was bigger than I had expected, but I was hoping that we could take some pictures in it.

After seeing the Vatican Museum, we headed to St. Peter's Square where we had lunch and people-watched for a bit.

We then went into St. Peter's Basilica and walked around it for a while.  This is definitely the biggest church we've been in so far!  I sent a postcard from the Vatican to my former boss which was interesting because Vatican City has it's own post office.  We then had to take some pictures with St. Peter's in the background.

From St. Peter's, we headed down the road to look at a few other buildings and some squares.  The thing that struck me the most was the amount of Egyptian obelisks decorating various squares throughout the city.  We took pictures of every one we saw so that we could show them to my mom's class since they study Egypt in 3rd grade. 

After a full day in Rome, we headed back to the campground by Metro, train, and bus.  We ate dinner at the campground restaurant and it was excellent!  Who knew that a campground could have such good food!  We all enjoyed our food and then took the rest of the evening to relax before heading out to another full day in Rome.

Italy with the Campbells - Venice to Rome

Now that we have no more guests in the foreseeable future, I have time to update the blog again!  Since the Campbells were here, we've had 4 groups of visitors, but I'll keep things going in order so that I don't jump around too much and forget something!

On Wednesday, after a day in Venice, we made our way to Rome by way of Florence.  The car rides were pretty uneventful and it was nice to be able to stop in Florence around lunch time.  We had to eat at McDonald's so that we could count Italy into our list of countries where we have eaten in McDonald's.  Laura had been to Florence before, so she knew what were the most impressive things to see and became our tour guide for the day.  We first went to the Duomo which is a big church with a tower in the center of town.  This church was quite impressive!

After going inside the Duomo and deciding that the line to go up in the dome was too long for the amount of time we had in Florence, we decided to check out a few more churches.  We then went to the Medici church and library.  Of course, I had to take a picture by the library sign!  This church was fun for me because I had listened to a history podcast of the Medici family and could now picture where the things had happened that were talked about in the podcast.  We then saw another church, but I don't remember which one it was.

After a quick tour of Florence, we headed the rest of the way to Rome, but by the time we arrived it was raining quite hard.  We were supposed to be camping in a tent while we were in Rome, but none of us wanted to set up the tent in the rain and then sleep on the wet ground.  Brian went to talk to the guy in charge of the campground and discovered that they have trailers that you can rent out to stay in.  We ended up getting 2 rooms each with a bathroom to stay in while we were in Rome.  It was nice to be inside out of the rain and to have our own bathrooms.  The campground was very nice complete with its own restaurant!