we arrived around 7:30 and went straight to the almröserl. after we checked in, we went to the soccer fields to watch the argentina/mexico game and bruce ran into an old friend of his - patrick. he was 15 when bruce was here last time, so he's about 22 now. we drank a couple beers during the game, went back to our room and fell asleep.
june 28th
we woke up, had breakfast and started exploring. we went first to brannenburg, the village about 2 km north, about the same size as flintbach. there we visited the tourist center and asked about renting bikes. on our way back, we bought a couple things for the room: bread, müsli, gummy bears, granola bars, landjäger and shampoo. we got back in time for the netherlands/slovakia game, and after a few beers we walked to austria (a 10-minute walk), came back to our room to pick up our tennis stuff, then played tennis for an hour or so. we finished in time for the second game (brazil/chile), but the restaurant we were going to watch it at was closed (ruhetag), and so we had to walk to brannenburg (about 30 minutes away). we had italian food and spezi during the game, came back for the end of the second half, and fell asleep.
june 29th
we woke up and decided to go hiking. we went first to petersburg kirche, about an hour up the mountains to the west. once we were there, we thought we'd go a little further, so we went another hour up the mountain to hohe aston, where we had lunch and beer. on our way back down, we thought we'd try to find the cross that looks over flintsbach from the west at the top of the mountain, so we took a left turn and hiked another hour up the mountain. at the top, we didn't reach the cross, but we could see it -- so, we hiked down a ways and tried another route. here, we came across a sign that said something like, "life-threatening danger, only experienced climbers beyond this point," so we knew we were on the right path.
to get to the cross, we had to hold on to some rope while leaning backwards against a pretty steep rock face and repel down 40 feet or so. once we got there and stopped sweating, we wrote our names in the little book in the box underneath the cross. the view from the top was fantastic. after a 3-hour hike back home, we watched the paraguay/japan game from our room, grabbed something light to eat for dinner, then went back to Patrick's kneipe for the spain/portugal game. once we finished our beers at the end of the game, we made it back home and crashed.june 30th
we woke up at 11:00, having missed breakfast. bruce went down to ask for a couple bowls and some milk, and he ate müsli on the balcony while writing a couple emails. after that, we went to brannenburg to get new strings for benjamin's racket (he broke them two days earlier) and a soccer ball. on our way back, benjamin bought himself a dönner and we both pitched in to carry a crate of 20 spezi back to the room. once here, we fell back asleep for an hour or so, then decided to try out our new soccer ball. afterwards, we came back to pick up our tennis stuff, went to play for a hour or so, then came back and went to dinner. wednesday is grilling-day at the restaurant we were at, so we enjoyed good food with a 15-person german polka band as entertainment. after a couple steins of beer and 2 schnapps, we came back to start out blog.
