Mountain hiking season is back! This is what we're here for. On Easter Monday (a Bavarian holiday), we headed to the Bavarian Alps to Walchensee (Lake Walchen), which boasts depths of 631 feet, making it one of the deepest alpine lakes in Germany. After chatting at the tourist office, we opted for a ridgeline hike up to Heimgarten and over to Herzogstand. A worker mentioned that there would most likely be some snow patches along the route, but that hikers should be fine. The first few snow patches were fun. We playfully crossed them while the sun blazed down on us. It was a contradictory experience. Every once in awhile you'd catch the telltale sight of a "posthole" where someone's leg had sunk all the way through the snow. But then we rounded a corner and encountered this view. What ensued was a perfect example of jumping off the bridge because everyone else is doing it. Stupidity. Not captured in the above shot is just how slippery this snow really was. Yet everyone ahead of us was charging ahead as if it were no big deal (reminiscent of the tourist office comment). Meanwhile, trying not to focus on my impending slide down the steep mountainside, I was paralyzed with fear for my life, feeling very much like Bambi on ice as I took one frightening step at a time. It was rough going and way more adrenaline inducing than anticipated. I'm ready to invest in some more technical gear now and I will be keeping in mind what must be a philosophy of natural selection over here. Once we made it to safer, gloriously muddy ground, we looked back on what we'd traversed. For comic relief, there were occasional rope fences for the arguably much safer sections of the trail. Could of used those on the snowfields! At the top, the views were spectacular. To our left were the sprawling flatlands and to the right, the Bavarian Alps. I'm not sure if I would have been brave enough to attempt this hike had I known how mentally challenging it would prove. Perhaps waiting for some more snow to melt would be helpful in the future... In the end, it provided the most gorgeous scenery we've seen in Germany.
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March and April recap: Matt's dad and Barb visited and we enjoyed exploring Munich further with them. Highlights included attending a Bayern soccer game and finally making it up Olympic Tower to see just how close the mountains are to the city. In mid-March we were sprinkled with one more snowfall and then bid winter "Auf Wiedersehen." Unlike in the Midwest, we've experienced a proper spring here that's lasted for months (instead of weeks, or days, like back home). At the beginning of April, the inevitable finally happened. After seven years of bike commuting, Matt had his first accident. He ran into a car that cut him off. He is a speedy biker and his body took the full blow against the hatchback. Somehow he remained on his bike and it came through unscathed. After a trip to an emergency room chosen by our taxi driver (1st taxi ride here), we discovered that he had broken his clavicle. Noooo! Thankfully, he was never in too much pain and was able to have surgery three days later. Since the accident took place on his way home from work, worker's comp should cover the expenses (or so we've been told). He's going through physical therapy now and should be back to full motion soon. Although he may need to tone down the push-ups for awhile... Thanks to an e-bay ad, I have slowly been acquiring clients who want to learn English. Their language needs range all over the place, from elementary students learning English because their families are moving abroad, to a 65-yr-old who's motivated to learn English for her life-long dream of taking a camper van around Europe, to the young woman whose business is expanding internationally, to another individual who wants to communicate more fluently with her US partner's family. There was even a 91-yr-old man who was interested in having discussions about articles from The Economist. I was out of my league with that request... I usually go to my clients' homes and it's provided a fun glimpse into their lives.
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