GERMANY! Oberammergau and Fussen

Dec 3-4, 2015

Thursday/Friday

United Airlines/Munich

We found out in November that Arthur would be making a business trip to Germany the first week of December.  Well, I decided that I'd better go with him to keep him company, so we made arrangements for my sister Emma to come watch the kids for us for 10 days, booked my flight and frantically prepared to go on our first trip to Europe! (It was my first stamp in my passport!  Super exciting for me).

Arthur had meetings four of the days, but we got to explore a lot together in the days before and after the meetings.  We left on Thursday morning and arrived on Friday morning in Munich.  After we got an international sim card for my phone, some Euro, and our rental car, we drove south toward Fussen.  On our way, we stopped and explored the charming village of Oberamergau and had lunch there.  I would love to return to Oberamergau in 2020 when they put on the Passion Play which only takes place once every 10 years and has been a tradition in that town for over 400 years!

Everywhere we drove, there were beautiful green meadows, broken up by woods and villages.  Each village had a church with an onion top steeple that is so charming.  I loved it. The architecture inspired Disney's Fantasyland at Disneyland.  It looks like it came right out of a story book.

That night we arrived in Fussen, where we stayed in the Hotel Hirsch, which was founded in the early 1900's.  Made my little history heart happy.  We wandered around the town square that evening and into the Christmas market.  We also ran into this scary parade of school children dressed in raggedy orange robes and masks.  They carried cow bells and sticks other noise makers and I think maybe they were scaring away the evil spirits?  So that was kind of special.  (I got video but no pictures of them.) 

By the end of that day, (after having gotten just a little bit of bad sleep on the plane the night before,) we were dead tired!  I lost track of how many times I fell asleep during dinner.  I remember Arthur "waking me up" from some very extended blinks during dinner.  I just could NOT keep my eyes open anymore!  So as soon as we paid for dinner, we walked back to the hotel and crashed!