alright all you worker-bees... today you can envy us no more as we rose this morning with the sun, we were both awake and ready to go by 6- yes, both of us. georg, christine's brother, was taking us on a hike. bruce knows georg pretty well from when he was over here 6 years ago
and they had previously hiked together the staggering heuberg which we can see from our town. well, georg is a baker. today was his day off. on a normal day, our friend wakes up sometime between 3 and 3:30 in the morning for work... naturally, he has to bake all of the breads for the customers that begin coming in at 6. so, 6 to him is nothing... we pretended it was also nothing to us and were ready when he pulled up to the almröserl at about 6:15. off we went. we were not quite sure where he was taking us after he explained that heuberg is closed for hiking due to wood working that is taking place near and around the summit. i took this to mean some type of forestry work, lumbering, or preservation instead of "wood working" like we know it where people are building chairs and cuckoo clocks... but i could surely be wrong. anyway, were didn't go to heuberg and georg continued to drives us into austria to the giant kranzhorn. kranzhorn is next to heuberg and is actually a bit higher with a splendid peak of its own at 1366 m.
we began hiking right before 7. bruce and georg did most of the talking and i was pleased that i understood about 95% of what was being said. at least, i thought, because i understood what was going on, i was actually part of the experience and not just a bystander, even if i didn't say very much. i talked here and there... but i enjoyed listening. we hiked and reached the top sometime maybe 8:15ish (about the time i'm usually getting up). the view was incredible... better (according to bruce and georg) than the view from heuberg.
we were across the river from flintsbach and it was really cool to look back at the mountains behind it (the same mountains with riesenkopf and maiwand). we had a birds eye view of everything including hohe asten which was really cool to finally see where it was in relation to all of the other mountains and to finally understand the lay of the land for all of the places to which we'd previously hiked. also, we could seen brünnstein (for which bruce is famous for hiking in flip-flops), all of the towns from rosenheim to kufstein, and even the alps in the distance as far away at italy. it was incredible. at the top, there were two crosses- one was austrian, one was bayerisch. there was also a stone between the crosses that acts as a border marker between the two countries as the mountain summit is actually split between the two. pretty cool... we had conquered the kranzhorn. we walked to the little chapel that is also at the top, wrote our names in the book, and headed down.
we got back to the car around, 9:30?... i'm not sure, but still pretty early. georg wanted to take us into oberaudorf to show us basti schweinsteiger's footprints in bronze in the town square. he is there local superstar soccer player (for those of you who don't know who he is... and, now that i think of it, if you didn't know who he is, how are we friends enough that you're reading this blog?). it was like that street in hollywood where the stars put in their hand prints... but basti is a stud and naturally used his feet. he was one of two people with sidewalk squares, but i don't remember who the other one was.
now, to rodelbahn. christine had mentioned rodelbahn to us a few weeks ago but we were not super interested as we weren't quite sure what is was. well, georg invited us as well and we couldn't turn it down twice especially after he teased us about being afraid of it. so we went rodelbahning... or however you would say it. rodelbahn takes place at the local ski slopes where they offer both summer and winter rodelbahn tracks. i won't explain much, but basically, you sit in a little cart where you can control only the breaks, and you go from the top of the mountain to the bottom on this aluminum track. here is the exact rodelbahn experience from oberaudorf... have fun! pretty sweet, huh?
we survived, we wiped out, and georg dropped us off a little after 11. we were still tired from yesterday's hike with hana/pavel and probably still from our weekend in freiburg, so bruce and i took a little nap. about an hour later or so, we woke up hungry, rode to penny markt, bought lunch (more lox), came home and ate on our balcony. lean.
bruce then had to take care of some logistics with resignation stuff for winter park and i again, after reading some bunte magazine articles (which is like german us weekly), fell asleep. once bruce finished, we decided to try and play some tennis...
i was awful. i was tired and had no energy. bruce seemed to have a bit more, but neither of us did particularly well and i just couldn't get into it. we played some pretty crappy tennis to a 6-2, 6-4 victory for bruce... but i promised him that after a good night's rest, i'd play my guts out tomorrow. he was pleased. we finally have no plans tomorrow. we can sleep, eat, swim, read, and play whenever we want. i'll be ready.
lastly, the schweinshaxe. as i, your humble author, could never leave you without talking about our food, i'll re-introduce the delicious pork knucle. ok, so if you remember, way back when during the "week of the hives", my beautiful little wife ordered a man meal of schweinshaxe after we'd hiked the bichlersee. i was so jealous. well tuesday nights are the one night of the week when our family falkenstein serves this gourmet man-meal. we've missed it every time so far (one week coming before the meat was ready, another week coming too late). i wasn't going to miss it tonight. bruce a
nd christine had decided to go out together tonight, just the two of them, which left me free to myself. he took the train to oberaudorf. he was going to play some piano at the church, go get pizza, and whatnot... i was going to schweinshaxe the heck out of my dinner. i got there about 6:30 and it was super crowded with almost every table filled or reserved. crap... there is no way they'll have any left. i sat at the high table, in the sun, and waited anxiously for the kellnerin to come to my table. she came, asked me for my drink order, i ordered a weißbier, and at the same time asked about the beloved schwein... they still had it... "i'll take one"... not waiting as usual to order food... not me, not today. i had my knuckle with sauerkraut and my bier within about 3 minutes. it was perfect. [edit: although bruce's dinner was nowhere near as german as a schweinshaxe, one aspect should be mentioned. as she and he caught up for too long, leaving all kitchens in germany closed for business, we had to go into the larger town of kufstein in austria to get ... mcdonalds. and for those reading who have been here recently, YES, they had an ice machine. all the drinks and ice you need -- refill after refill after refill. might even beat having schweinshaxe, no?]
i'm home now- blogging, skyping, showering, and reading. oh, yeah, and waiting on bruce... but i wont wait too long, i'll have no excuse tomorrow if i'm tired on the tennis court.
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