Thanksgiving with Mom and Dad... and then some

I will confess, I was quite excited to write about my parent's trip and share it with everyone. Their visit went well, we saw a lot, learned new things, and had an all around good time. At the same time I've been putting off writing about their trip because I've been sad since they left and I just haven't felt up to it. Add in a six day work week, Christmas, traveling for Christmas, and then more work... well, it's a bit delayed. Oh well, better late than never.

Mom and Dad arrived the day before Thanksgiving. They were tired, but no worse for wear, and excited to be here. The first day (as is usually for our guests) was focused only on keeping them awake. After dropping things off at the house and giving them a tour of our new house (since they have only seen it in pictures), we went to base to kill some time. We went shopping, which I have to say is a pretty silly thing. We were about to go to some bigger cities with huge Christmas markets, and our BX is small. While the BX does have stuff, it doesn't have a ton of stuff, certainly nothing that exciting. They have better selection in the states. We were shopping to kill time. We also had lunch, and then went around base - our base (like a lot of Air Force bases) has "decorative" airplanes on the base... so we wandered around those. The reason we spent so much time on base was I had made surprise appointments for my parents to get massages. I thought it would be nice after a long flight (and sleeping/sitting in weird positions/angles). I think they were surprised - delightfully so. After our time on base we met Josh at home after he got off work and went out to dinner. Then it was back home to prepare to leave in the morning.

In the morning everyone got up and moving early. From our house it is suppose to be a six hour drive to Berlin, but I figured with traffic, weather, and stops it would be closer to eight hours. I was right - it took us closer to nine hours. My car is a VW Jetta - not small by European standards, and certainly big enough for the two of us. My poor car was stuffed to the gills with luggage and people. I didn't think we could fit anything more in the car (but I proved myself wrong after a week of Christmas shopping). Josh drove and my dad sat up front with him. I was content to sit in the backseat and read a book (an entire book at that), while my mom alternated reading and napping. For me it was a great nine hour drive. When we got to Berlin I was glad Josh was driving, because we drove through a majority of the city to get to our hotel. We drove past the Brandenburg Gate, which was lit up for the evening. It was beautiful to see as a passenger in the car, but since we were in a part of town which was busy and had heavy traffic I'm sure it was stressful for Josh.

I had made dinner reservations for us at the Berlin TV Tower for 6:45, and I thought us leaving the house at 8:30 would give us plenty of time to get to Berlin, get checked into the hotel, change clothes, and then make our way to the TV Tower. As it was, to get from one side of Berlin to the other took about an hour and a half. We checked into our hotel and had about five minutes to quickly change. Josh changed and went down to the front desk to figure out how to get to the TV Tower via tram (there was a tram stop right in front of the hotel). I had envisioned I would have a touch more time to get ready...  We rushed to the tram stop, got on the wrong tram going in the wrong way... then finally got on the right tram, but then couldn't figure out how to buy a ticket out of the machine. There are ticket machines on the trams, but they only take coins. We didn't have enough coins for all of us. I stressed about us not having tickets for the whole ride to the TV Tower, thinking we would certainly get caught. After our dinner, I'd had enough wine I didn't care about tram tickets. As it turned out, we never actually bought tram tickets. I know, we are horrible people. But. No one else seemed to be purchasing tickets... and no one ever checked or asked for tickets. Eh well.

Dinner was fabulous. After all the stress to get there, we made it only a few minutes late and still had our reservation. The TV Tower was a neat experience. It was dark out, the city was lit up, and it was a clear night. We had a great view of the city while we ate. Berlin is suppose to have around 35 Christmas markets. From our table we could easily see about 8 of them, and they were beautiful from our viewpoint. The food was delicious, and the wine flowed freely. I read plenty of bad reviews of the TV Tower restaurant, mainly complaining about the price of the food. It was more expensive than some restaurants, but you are paying for the novelty/ambiance. I thought it made for a great Thanksgiving dinner.

The next morning we got up and got ready for the day. I had booked a walking tour for us that morning. I purposely booked the longest of the possible tours, but didn't realize it would take our whole day. Not that this was a bad thing, quite the opposite. Our walking tour was wonderful. We met our guide, Jonathan, and fellow tourists. We were a group of seven people, so it was an intimate setting. Jonathan was Jewish, and throughout the day it was interesting to hear his interpretation or slant on things. Our tour took us around the great majority of the city - the Berlin Dom, Checkpoint Charlie, the remainder of the Berlin Wall, the Brandenburg Gate, the Jewish Memorial, and a lot of East Berlin. To say we learned a lot is an understatement. I had a wonderful history teacher in high school who taught me well, but I feel as if I learned more on this tour than I did in all of high school. When I think about the time of the tour and how much we learned, the price per person was a bargain.

The only downfall of the day was it was COLD, and it was raining. We were able to take breaks during the tour, so we would stop to warm up and get coffee, but it was still bone-chilling. We walked (or in my case, marched. I was cold and hungry) to the Hofbrau Haus for dinner. The food was amazing, as was the beer, and we even had a polka band in lederhosen to entertain us as we ate. How German. After dinner we wandered through a Christmas market and did some shopping. Mom and I both found some special things for ourselves and as presents for others.

I had purposely left Saturday open for us to do what we wanted. We decided to go back to different areas we had seen on our walking tour to have a chance to spend more time or see things in better detail. Along the way we found multiple Christmas markets and did plenty of wandering/shopping. It was another cold day, so we also had multiple stops to have coffee and warm up. Although we'd had no plans, it was a lot of fun despite the cold.

For Sunday I had booked a tour for Sachsenhausen concentration camp. I am glad I chose to see this with a tour, because we had a tour guide who met us in Berlin, took us to the train station, got us on the right train to the right town, then led us from the train station to the camp. It was another cold, rainy, windy day - probably the coldest day on our whole trip. We had all bundled up for this tour, but it was still cold. Then again, it's really hard to complain that you are cold when you're visiting a concentration camp where the prisoners had little to no clothes, were starving, and most likely were much colder than I was. It was interesting to compare this camp to Dachau - although you can't really compare it - it's like comparing apples to oranges. They are both concentration camps, but beyond that there is no real comparison. What I found most interesting about the camp was when it was preserved (or when preservation began) it was a part of East Germany and under Soviet control. I guess it was just interesting to see what they chose to save, and what was destroyed. For example, at Dachau the crematoria was preserved. At Sachsenhausen the crematoria was destroyed, but the foundation of the building was saved and a half roof/structure thing was build over the foundation. I was a bit confused by this design/logic. There was a mortuary at Sachsenhausen, which wasn't present at Dachau, which was where "mandatory" autopsies were conducted as well as medical experimentation. This was one area where I absolutely had the creeps and didn't want to spend any more time than necessary in there. Another interesting thing our tour guide pointed out was the memorials in the camp. Instead of memorials honoring victims or showing remembrance, ti was memorials which showed the Communists rising up to defeat the Nazis. Granted, there was an entire area of Sachsenhausen which was a Soviet camp for prisoners of war... but. I still found it interesting. Haunting, sick, horrible, humbling... and interesting.

On Monday we packed up our goodies and headed to Dresden. We left early in the morning as we were not sure if we would encounter traffic or weather problems. We made it to Dresden faster than I thought we would. In fact, we were ridiculously early to check in at our hotel, but we were able to get checked in early. We dumped off our stuff, and then made our way down to the Old Town. I wanted to visit Dresden after I saw some pictures online of it. Rick Steves recommends it as a place to visit - he has some recommendations of things to do, but he mainly stresses wandering around and enjoying the sites. We spend much of our day walking through the Old Town. Dresden is beautiful! The architecture is like nothing I have seen in Germany. Dresden has many Christmas markets, which we walked through and did some shopping. I had made a reservation for us to go see the old Green Vault, which was something Rick Steves recommended. It holds some of the old "crown jewels" of Saxony. After visiting the richness of Neuschwanstein Castle and Linderhof Palace, I didn't necessarily feel the Green Vault was anything spectacular. Interesting, and lots to look at, but I guess I've seen a lot of sparkly treasures in the last few years. My mom really enjoyed her visit though, so take my opinion with a giant grain of salt. After our time in the Green Vault we found some dinner - more beer and schnitzel, the theme of the trip (a delicious theme).

The next morning we went back to the Old Town to do some more walking and shopping. We had a later morning snack of cake and coffee at a beautiful cafe next to the opera house. After our snack we joined a walking tour we had seen advertised the night before. Like the other tours we took on this trip, we learned a lot from our guide. Prior to our trip the only thing I knew about Dresden was it had been bombed heavily at the end of World War II. I benefited from the tour and learned about the beautiful architecture we'd been admiring. There is a VW factory in Dresden which provides tours, and we were planning to take a tour of the factory, but we couldn't get straight answers if the factory would be open or would have a tour that day. Instead we had an early night at the hotel preparing for our departure.

We left in the morning to head to Edelweiss in Garmish. The drive was suppose to take about five hours, and we were covering a large distance. I thought it would be a nice idea to pick a place to stop for a bit - a halfway point to get out of the car, tour around. I looked on Google maps and presented my idea and some possible stops to my parents. They picked Regensberg. Regensberg is a town which is a stop on many German river cruises, and the pictures I had seen online looked pretty. It made a good half-way stop for us. We got to Regensberg around 11 and found a parking spot. We found a city map, and then did our own abridged tour of the town. There is a beautiful cathedral and an old gated stone bridge. Regensberg reminded me of many of the medieval towns in Germany (though we've seen more of the pretty ones). We had lunch at the Christmas market - Mom and I had a bratwurst which came on a roll with horseradish, mustard, and a sweet pickle. It may sound gross to some, but believe me, it was delicious. Josh and dad had wild boar bratwursts - ugh, no thank you. I tried a bite and wasn't impressed. Regensberg made for a nice two hour break on our drive. We made it to Edelweiss at the end of what was a beautiful sunny day in Garmish. We got settled in, enjoyed some dinner, and then relaxed in the hot tub.

The next morning we woke up to beautiful, sunny skies. The snowy German alps made an amazing background. We decided to go to Oberammergau to do some shopping. I was hoping there was going to be a Christmas market in Oberammergau - I had this vision in my head of a cute, quaint little market to find some treasures. Instead, there was no market. But that didn't matter, we had a great afternoon shopping. After two and a half years in Germany, Josh and I broke down and bought a cuckoo clock. We have talked about getting one for a long time, but haven't pulled the trigger, so to speak. I don't have a reason why we waited... however, we found one we love.

That evening we took a horse-drawn carriage ride through the town of Garmish. It was dark out when we left Edelweiss, and many areas were lit up for the evening with Christmas lights. Our carriage driver told us about this history of Garmish. I never realized the town, which is small, is bigger than I thought. It was a fun experience.

The next day Josh and my dad decided to give skiing a try. Unfortunately, the entire area was socked in with fog. We could hardly see out the windows. I wasn't sure if they would be able to ski, or if the hill would even be open. It turns out the ski hill was open, but they had a difficult time skiing with the fog - they could hardly see in front of them and frequently got lost. Mom and I spent the day walking around Garmish and shopping. We went back to the hotel and spent our afternoon enjoying the view (or lack thereof with the fog) and reading in rocking chairs. We enjoyed our day, and despite the fog, I believe the boys enjoyed theirs. At least my dad can check skiing the Zugspitz off of his bucket list.

The next morning we left Garmish. We broke up our drive home by stopping at an airplane museum which we've driven past many times before. We thought it would be something my dad would enjoy. I think he enjoyed it... and it gave us some time to walk around and stretch during our drive. After we got home we had a lot of unpacking and sorting to do. The last few days of my parents' trip were spent at our house relaxing, spending time together, and organizing/packing up all of my parents' treasures. My mom wanted to spend time with her grand-kitties. It was such a wonderful time to have them here. We were able to do and see so much while still having a chance to relax and spend some quality time together. I think our trip was a huge success.