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!