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!