I sit here finishing my innocent meal of alphabet soup and salty pretzel sticks while trying to decide what to make of a series of strange luck on our romantic weekend getaway. Either way, it doesn’t seem to have really affected us since we still had a great time and did everything we wanted to do and more!
On Thursday I found out Evgueni had planned a surprise Romantic get-away for us. How exciting! All I was told was to bring winter gear and that we’d be hiking through snow.
We started our date weekend on Friday at 18:00 at the Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof under the train schedule where we picked-up our rental car. We went around the side of the train station and found our rental: a gigantic automatic mom-mobile Mercedes. We laughed at it a bit. “Okay” we mused out loud, “at least it’s good and sturdy!” We got in and “PEEYOU!” It was clearly used as an ashtray up until now. Blech! Ironically, early in our road-trip we drove past the pine tree air freshener factory!
Evgueni drove while I controlled the climate and the music. The car had automatic everything including radio stations, so we ended-up listening to an eclectic radio mix from central Europe for our weekend theme music. We bopped to German, French and American tunes from across many genres and decades ranging from Lionel Richie to Pink. We had some great conversations too. We passed many places i.e. Stuttgart and Konstanz, identifying churches, Rathaus’s and their traditional clock towers as we headed southbound through Germany.
We arrived at our first hotel pretty late, but were lucky to find our key in the mailbox. The heat was off in our room when we arrived (which isn’t unusual in Europe) so we cranked it and got cozy. Soon after falling asleep we were awakened by our upstairs neighbour hacking-up a lung. Soon though, we determined he wasn’t coughing, but rather, chucking. I’d recently heard of loud barfers, but had never actually witnessed/heard it before. Well, lucky us. He kept us up ALL night. Evgueni called him “Chucky Yucky”. Indeed. We hightailed it out of that hotel in the morning to enjoy our day elsewhere. “Elsewhere” being across the border in Switzerland.
We enjoyed wonderful scenery around the Swiss-German border. We passed St.Gallen and stopped at Rheinfalls in Switzerland, which is the biggest waterfall in Europe. It’s not huge like Niagara Falls but has a huge volume of water hurtling over the rock edge. It was amazing to see. There is a small hike you can take around the falls with many vantage points. Sadly, when we got to the path to the observation decks, it was closed. So like good Canadians we left it at that, took the boat back to our car and headed away somewhat unsatisfied. 2 minutes into our drive away, we reached the top of a hill and saw another park entrance. We developed proper guts, parked the car using the same parking pass as before, hiked back down the trail, hopped the “no trespassing” gate and went to the observation decks. It was worth it. They are set-up over the falls so that when you stand on them, the water rushes under your feet. What a crazy feeling having all the water hurtling past your eyes and underneath you with such force!
Now satisfied, we hopped in our stinky car to Lichtenstein. It’s a truly tiny and beautiful Country in the valley of the Alps. It was pouring rain but we took the opportunity to walk around a bit huddled cozily under our umbrella, have some tasty lunch and get a stamp in our passports from the tourist office (on one of those barely-used and always overlooked passport pages nobody ever uses because it’s already “sufficiently full” with 2 crooked stamps).
Next, we crossed the border into Austria where it continued to rain. We drove along the edge of the Alps (Tirol region) exploring curvy roads and checking out castles. Eventually we headed UP where suddenly, the rain became a snowstorm! We drove through Fernpaß with the Automatic windshield wipers wiping away the fast-falling-wet-blobs-of-snow. We marveled at the drooping pine branches loaded heavily with wet, fluffy snow. Ahh, the beauty of winter! We curved around bends and marveled at the mountain views around each new turn. The autumn yellows and oranges of the deciduous trees near the bottom half; the balding trees and frost line at the mid-point of the mountains and then the top half in wet, blackened pines covered with snow. It was a dream! The sun set quickly as it does in the mountains and it was suddenly dark.
We arrived at our chalet hotel in time for dinner. We stepped out of our smelly car into deliciously crisp winter air that filled our lungs with freshness and pine firewood burning smell that warmed us quickly. After taking some deliciously deep lungfuls of air we headed into our chalet. Our room was huge and had a great wooden table with surrounding benches. I immediately wished we had cards and a bunch of friends and family to play with. We relaxed for an hour surfing TV channels, settling on Snooker. Before this, neither of us was ever in the mood to watch a game, but it seemed the perfect thing that evening. We then went to the hotel restaurant for our 20:00 reservation. I had Red deer and Evgueni had the Roe deer. The difference is that I had the mature dear and E had the young buck. The food was delicious. But sadly, and unbeknownst to me, I was soon to be reminded why I eat steaks infrequently. We headed back to our room to relax after our delicious dining marathon. By 23:30 I was passing out, still stuffed to the gills. I awoke at 5:30am to a strong disturbance rumbling through my stomach making it’s way into my small intestine and then continuing to my large intestine… Suffice to say, I have not quite recovered from my 2007 amoeba and am perpetually sensitive to rich foods and large quantities of red meat. By about 5:37am I wanted that “get well again shower”. So I took it. It was a nice, steaming hot shower, after which, I felt much better. I crawled back into bed and slept until our alarm at 8:45.
Somehow, in those few hours since my steaming shower the hot water had run out! I called reception. They announced that the oil had run out and taken the hot water with it. Evgueni and I took turns splashing through the cold water to waken us from our slumber. Thank goodness for my early-morning shower! We peeked out the window for a spectacular hint at what gorgeous scenery awaited us today. We went for breakfast and then checked out to enjoy our day. As we walked out, we saw the oil truck (and its promise of hot showers) roll into the driveway. We climbed in the car to discover that we’d accidently left the sunroof open overnight and that it had basically cured the ashtray stink!
By now, I’d figured out my new bathroom schedule. I had about 2 hours between given pit stops by which to enjoy our Sunday. And by golly we did! (Gotta love that expression!) We did a daytime drive of Fernpaß and loved it again. This time we were able to see Blind Lake. It was beautiful! It’s a green lake tucked between the mountains and surrounded by trees and chalets. What a spectacular view!
Not far away was the Neuschwanstein Castle. The Disney Castle is modeled after it. It is pretty magnificent! We hiked up to the top of the mountain it is situated on (really, it’s a gradual slope, but in my condition, it was like hiking…). We decided to tour around the exterior this time since the snowyscape was so beautiful. At one of the tourist booths, we saw photos of the inside and have decided we are definitely going back to do the tour of the interior. Maybe at Christmas? It took us a couple of hours to look around the site and to take in the scenery. We got to the entrance to the Marienbrücke (bridge) and it was closed. We hesitated. I took the opportunity to find a toilet… after which we took one more look at the fenced-off avalanche-warning entrance, remembered our previous rebellion against fences and trespassing signs, and proceeded to climb around the fence. Evgueni is convinced that the sign was there only because the path hadn’t been cleaned of snow. He was probably right! We walked along the path past a couple of other closed gates and then arrived at Marienbrücke. It is a bridge wedged in a gorge. It was built around 1881 and remains pretty sturdy. Usually I don’t put myself out on a limb like this, but I’d already spilled my guts a couple of time that day, so really, I had nothing to loose. I walked straight out to the middle of it. It was beautiful. After what felt like 20 minutes on the bridge (probably about 5) I started getting wobbly knees and vertigo. I went back to “solid” ground and breathed deeply. It really was a spectacular view of the castle and of the waterfall through the deep gorge beneath. We got some photos (naturally) and I will post a link soon.
After the bridge we hiked back down to our car along a sloppy path happily dodging snow blobs that fell sporadically from trees onto our heads.
We then drove home in our not-so-stinky car, stopping every few hours to “stretch our legs”. We got home, had a light dinner cozied-up to each other under a down blanket and watched a funny movie.
It was a wonderful weekend and although I’ve detailed the annoyances, they really seemed more like characters in our great weekend and seemed quite minute compared to the wonderful scenery, smells and fun that we had.
- http://goeurope.about.com/od/rhinefallsrheinfall/ig/Rhine-Falls-Pictures/
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liechtenstein
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fern_Pass
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuschwanstein
