Germany Pt 1 in Travel Book

I’ve been meaning to write about my trip and just haven’t had the right mindset to do it. Fell into quite a little funk after getting home from the trip, but I’ve pulled myself out of it and am feeling happier. And I do want to write about this trip before it all fades from memory. So here goes.

DAY 1 - FRIDAY - THE LONG TRIP
Flying standby is always an adventure. It’s an amazing opportunity to take trips you might not have been able to afford for free, OR for very cheap. BUT you have to be ready for major changes at any moment. I knew this very well from the last time I flew standby from Ireland to Newark, NJ and spent a total of 48+ hours in airplanes and airports. This time, the plan was for Rebekka and Matt (and their kids, age 3 & 5) to fly over to Germany on Thursday the 21st and I would fly out the next day from Cleveland to Frankfurt and then take a train to meet up with them in Winterberg. Well, the night before I was supposed to leave, I was packing everything up and got a phone call from Bek.

Me: “Heyyyy.... so you’re obviously not on a plane to Germany right now…”
Bek: “Ughhh yeah, so here’s the thing…“

She proceeded to let me know that the plans were changing. I was not super surprised, but I was a little disappointed. It was going to be my first time. Going solo in a foreign country and I was kinda excited about trying to navigate my way to Winterberg. But oh well. Not a big deal.

Also, turns out her husband suddenly can’t go on the trip. Something happened with his company and he decided to stay home. This was good and bad. It gave us more girl time, but also put all of the responsibility of taking care of the kids on us. I knew I would probably have to help out with the kids here and there, but with Matthew there, I figured he could have watched the kids once or twice so Rebekka and I could go out and have adult time. I would have gladly returned the favor. Anyway, this meant NO FREE ADULT TIME. :’(

I thought to myself: OH WELL. YOU’RE GOING TO GERMANY. SUCK IT UP.

So, the next morning I had to wake up WAY earlier than I was expecting to (3:00 AM to be exact) to catch a flight from Cleveland to Houston so I could meet up with Bek. From there we flew to San Fransico and from San Fran to Frankfurt.

The kids did surprisingly well on the planes. By the end, they were starting to get a bit antsy and cranky, but for traveling so long I was very impressed with how well they did. She’s trained her little travelers well.

DAY 2 - SATURDAY - JET LAG IS A BITCH
I have a hard time sleeping in airplanes unless I am beyond exhausted and my body just shuts down lol. So I read a lot, watched a thousand movies and tried to force myself to sleep but got very little actual rest. We finally arrived in Frankfurt at about 11 am the next day (thank you timezones) but to us, it felt like 5 am and I had now been mostly awake for over 24 hours. We had some trouble getting the rental car that Bek had booked online because of the fact that we had to switch our flights or something. And then they were trying to say we did not pay for insurance when we did. I’m not really sure what the whole problem was because I was trying to manage her kids who were now running around like wild hooligans and getting shushes and dirty looks from the German attendants at the Sixt kiosk. Not that I blamed them. They were being obnoxious and distracting, no matter how hard I tried to settle them. Rebekka and I were exhausted and about ready to cry. I eventually took the kids to walk around the airport so they weren’t driving everyone batshit. Finally about… I don’t know an hour or so later Bek and the attendant got the situation sorted and we finally got our keys.

It was a struggle to get all of our luggage into the small rental, but somehow we managed and we were singing hallelujah as we finally hit the German road!

Rebekka did great driving on what we didn’t realize at the time was the autobahn. When we noticed people flying past us, we figured that’s what it must be. Rebekka kicked the speed up and had a little fun. For a small part of the drive, we were like… “Well, this looks just like Ohio.” But once we got out of the Frankfurt area, the temperature started to drop and things started to get more and more gorgeous. Germany in the fall, you guys. So beautiful. Especially with castles just popping up everywhere.

Whenever we weren’t on the autobahn we were driving on country roads that went through a million small little towns that look like they’re straight from a storybook. The charm of these towns gave us a second wind and we ended up stopping in one to take a few pictures and stretch our legs.

When we finally got to our resort at Landal Winterberg, we got our keys and found our little house for the week. It was a cute little place, just the perfect size for our stay. There was no heat on when we got there so we were freezing, but once we figured out all of their strange heaters it became quite comfy. We had a nice view of the mountains from our living room. I think it was about 5 or 6pm. We had planned on taking a quick nap and then hitting up a grocery to stock up for the week, but it had started to rain and the exhaustion and jet lag kicked in hard. Luckily, we had packed a good amount of food like ramen and oatmeal, granola bars, etc… So, we ended up just lazing around our house for a few hours before going to sleep. Oh sweet sleep. I was probably going on about 36 hours or so of no sleep, so I was OUT the minute my head hit the pillow. It helped to get adjusted to the time difference and the next day we were able to wake up at a decent hour.

DAY 3 - SUNDAY -WINTERBERG & OLSBERG
We took it easy that morning. Waking up slow, eating some oatmeal and whatever snacks we brought with us, letting the kids play and watch some German cartoons. Then we headed out to check out our surroundings. We stopped at the tiniest, most adorable little play area and let the kids play while we took in the scenery. Rolling mountains and fall trees everywhere. The freshest air. So peaceful.

After a while, we walked down to the Reception area to ask about buses. Even though we had a rental car, the local buses and trains were included in with our week stay, so we wanted to take advantage of it. However, since it was Sunday, they only had one bus that picked people up at the resort and we missed that one due to our “take it easy” morning. So, we had to walk to the nearest bus stop. It was not a bad walk, and we enjoyed the exercise. We hopped the first bus that came by which took us from Winterberg to Olsberg. After figuring out the bus times, we realized we were only going to have a couple of hours in Olsberg before the last bus back to Winterberg. We arrived at the bus/train station in Olsberg and we asked the driver (who thankfully spoke English) if he could confirm the time of the next bus back to Winterberg. Turns out it was a lot less time than we’d thought and we only had about half an hour. AREN’T WE SUCH SMART NAVIGATORS. The driver told us the bus would be at the middle station at 7:15 sharp.

So, this left us zero time to do anything but walk around a little. We came across a little Imbiss (food vendor) where the smell of fries was calling to our hungry stomachs. Neither of us had any Euros on us - AREN’T WE SUCH SMART TRAVELERS - as we hadn’t been to an ATM yet, so I asked the lady working in the Imbiss if they took credit cards. She said “Nein.” and we were sad. So we walked around a little longer and delighted in the charm of the little town.

We pushed our luck a little too much with the time frame we had, but everything was so pretty and we just wanted to see more. When we started walking back to the bus, time was really ticking. Kailey was dragging her tiny little feet and whining that it was too hard to walk and she was too tired. But there was no way I could carry her and Rebekka was already carrying Ethan. I kept trying to encourage her to hurry up so we didn’t have to sleep at the bus stop all night. It was like pulling teeth. We finally made it and saw a bus sitting in the middle station. Now it was time to put my German to the test. I asked the driver if he was going to Winterberg and he said no and that there were no more buses going to Winterberg that night. We promptly started freaking out and the nice man started trying to tell me my different options (something about a bus to a different town and then taking a taxi and how it would be expensive, or having to sleep at the station) But it was so difficult to understand him. My German is not the greatest. And my nerves were going haywire. I was afraid we were really going to be stuck there all night with two little kids. There was another guy on the platform who seemed to be confused as well, and finally, a young, college age girl showed up and started talking to him. I asked her if she could help me and thank god she spoke some English. She confirmed that there was definitely one more bus to Winterberg and it would be arriving soon. HALLELUJAH. I thanked her a million times, the bus arrived on time and we made it back to Winterberg!

We still had a fairly long walk ahead of us from the bus stop back to the resort and by this time it was dark out and getting pretty chilly. And in the mountains, dark is DARK. Luckily, the road was lit by a few lamps and I used the flashlight on my phone to light the way and also to warn anyone driving by that we were there so as not to get killed. Rebekka had the genius idea to turn it into a game with the kids. We walked as far as we could before one of them started getting whiney, and then she brought out the fruit snacks and said “Ok, we’re going to have designated fruit snack stops! We’ll pick a goal and once we get to it, you’ll each get a gummy snack!”

You guys, this game was a brilliant lifesaver. The kids loved it and played along almost the whole way back. They were such troopers!

We finally made it back to our cozy little house to eat some ramen and chill. We decided we needed to better plan out our adventures for the rest of the week, so we came up with a tentative daily schedule, watched some tv and headed to bed.

[More to come in a separate entry!]

Last updated October 26, 2017