deutschland

So, I'm in Germany. It's been a ton of fun, spending Christmas with a wonderful family, skiing in the Alps, ice skating on ponds. You know, the regular winter stuff. It's been quite a change from the beautiful Mediterranean clime of Southern Spain, but I'm glad to be reminded of what real winter weather is like again.

The countryside has been a winter wonderland for the most part. I took a train from the Northern-Central part of Germany (Kassel) to Ulm in the Southwest. The landscape was covered in a thick frost that almost looked like snow. Although we haven't had any flakes fall since I've been here, the temperature has been below freezing and the existing white stuff hasn't gone yet.


The Alps were covered and the skiing conditions were perfect. We spent a good portion of the day working our way across a resort nestled in the lower mountains that lay at the beginning of the range in Germany. We even crossed over a mountain to ski into an Austrian valley at one point.

That night, we stayed in a cottage with friends of German #2's family. These people cared for her and her brother while their parents worked as they were growing up, and taught them to ski. The cottage was situated at the bottom of a snow-covered valley and we had to ski in from the road because there was no driveway. The whole house was heated by wood stoves and furnaces and was as hot as an oven compared to the frozen world outside. We cooked a small dinner on an old-fashioned wood-burning stove and ate in the light of a propane lamp (the cottage has no electricity). I turned in early, after nearly falling asleep in the toasty kitchen. My bed was cozy in the cool bedroom. I had heavy, down-filled blankets to keep me warm after the day of outdoor fun.

Before heading home, we decided to ski-climb the hill behind the cottage and ski back down in the deep snow. As I'd never done either of those things, I provided a bit of comic relief to the event. But it was so much fun, and I should have a video pending to post. Remember dune-diving? Yeah, it went a little like that.

Now I've been dropped off at the home of German #1. I realized he has not yet made it into this blog. He's a friends I met at the Farm in MA and he left a year ago already. By the time I started this blog, he'd been gone. So far, we've made good time ticking off to-do's from our list, seeing some ancient Roman ruins nearby, ice skating and eating warm apple strudel with vanilla sauce, and hanging out with his friends. I met a very fun young woman who is American because of her parents, but has lived in Germany nearly her whole life. Strangely enough, she identifies more strongly with her American citizenship.

More details will come of my time in the small village outside of Stuttgart in the coming days. Right now, there has just been too much to catch up on and we're planning on seeing Heidelberg today. Ciao for now!