july 19th

with grand plans to hike to riesenkopf, hike back and get hana and pavel on the road to italy by 2pm, we knew we had to get up early. hana and benjamin did just that, leaving for penny markt around 8 to pick up good hiking food. bruce was oh so happy to have found another similar late-sleeper (hana's boyfriend pavel), so they both slept while the two early birds went shopping and ate breakfast. but all that effort to get started early was wasted with the lost time trying to get our hiking backpacks together. a long 30 minutes later, we were finally on our way -- a mere hour later than we'd planned. up the mountain, hana found comfort in talking to benjamin in german (we'd been forcing her to speak english so that pavel could understand), and bruce learned a lot about programming for airplane computer chips from pavel. two-thirds the way up, we stopped at hohe asten for a beer (even though pavel and hana were in a hurry, they weren't in that big a hurry). after one, hana still had half of hers left, so we all ordered another. the german hikers around us all chuckled over the mix of czech, german and english, especially after we began getting louder (that'll happen). the remaining third of the hike was fun, and when we reached the top, the clouds covering the peak when we left had moved on, leaving pavel and hana a great view of flintsbach (and perhaps leaving benjamin and bruce their last view of flintsbach from riesenkopf). here's hana, pavel and benjamin at the top:

we didn't leave the top until after 3, so their plans of getting on the road by two were pretty much shot. an hour or so down the mountain and another 45 minutes or so packing the car, we finally said our goodbyes around 6 and they got on their way. it was absolutely wonderful to spend the week with hana, and meeting her great boyfriend was an added bonus for these last two days.

exhausted, benjamin and bruce lumbered back to our room for long showers and skype conversations with momar, christine and beth. without having eaten dinner at 8:15, we leisurely took our bikes to our buddy barolo (which we found out isn't his name -- it's giuseppe), ordered two pizzas to go (a spicy salami and a salmon/arugula/parmesan), enjoyed them while watching the moon rise over the mountain peak from hours earlier, and made our way to the room. we start at 6:15 tomorrow with georg (christine's brother) on some kind of hike (not sure yet, we'll know tomorrow), and still exhausted from today, we really should already be asleep.