Wrapping Up Summer Break and Back to School

It took a little while to recover after our two weeks of family visit and travel. Cindy was back to work and the kids were enjoying some time at home. We did get a visit from our home owner's insurance company followed up by installation of these drying machines in our basement. The house is similar to what we call a duplex in Texas. There is one shared wall between us and the neighbors. It is a little better than that since there are actually two separate concrete walls with a gap in between that separates the houses. We never hear them at all. The problem is that their heating system, which is hot water based, leaked early this year. All of the water went to the lower level and some of it went into the wall and under the wood and tile floor. For the next few weeks we have to live with this setup.

 That is a thick plastic sheet sealing off the level to keep the humidity out. We have to slip through it to get to the lower level, where Cindy and I sleep.

The baseboards are off and the furniture is moved on to one side of the room. It is not ideal. Our solution? We went to Austria for the week. 

This was actually planned well in advance of the drying machines, but did land at a great time. The next door neighbors were nice enough to come empty out the water from the machines each day while we were gone. Big shock and change on this trip, we drove. I didn't like it a bit. The trains are so great, but this place is a little hard to get to.

The area is called Sankt Johann im Pongau in Austria. It was a little more than two hours drive, so not too bad. This is south east of Munich, we drove right by Salzburg and the Berchtesgaden area to get to it. We had reservations at the Hotel Oberforsthof near the main gondola lift at the Alpendorf Ski Area. I actually just happened to find the hotel one day. We were planning what to do for a final trip of the summer and looked at several places for one of our normal trips. It was decided at the time to have an actual relaxing vacation, get somewhere and stay.

Arrival at the hotel was great. We had a place to park in the hotel parking garage. The room was awesome. Below is the view from our huge balcony. We had a family suite with two bedrooms and the largest bathroom and shower that we have seen in Europe so far. They had a chocolate and fruit tray in our room. We were very happy.  

 More views from our balcony. 

One thing that attracted us to this hotel was a kids program every day. They had a full day of activities and entertainment for the kids while mom and dad rested or got massages. When it was all said and done the kids really only spent two mornings with the kid's club. Part of that was because I wanted to take them to do a couple of activities, it also rained almost the entire week which impacted some of the outdoor activities they had planned. I was a little disappointed the second morning when we saw them over lunch. There was a couple of planned activities they were excited about, but they instead had a birthday party for another random kid and stayed in the kids playroom all morning. They did not do the activities that were on the schedule. I never got an explanation, but it was fine.  

 This is the courtyard common area on the hotel property. They had these ponies walking around and there was another pond area that you could swim in. We moved here a year ago and kind of suffered through a hot August and September with no air conditioning. This year has been a little different. The temperatures have been so much cooler. Even though this place is in the mountains they are used to daily highs in the 80's. All week we had highs in the low 60's with rain. Personally I loved it.

 Below is the view from one of the sun decks at the hotel. 

 Part of the reason the kids did not stay at the kid's club was because they wanted to swim. This was a great indoor pool area. We spent several hours each day hanging out by the pool. David usually gets done and wants to do something else, not Katherine.

She will swim until we force her to go. One of the days I was determined to outlast her and wait until she said she was ready. David go out and we let him go back to the room. Katherine swam and swam and swam some more. She won, I finally made her get out so we could go to dinner.

Cindy was determined to relax but I had to check out a few things. I rescheduled my massage appointment and decided to head to the golf course on our first full day. The weather looked like it was going to clear a little bit and I may not get another chance.

I have not picked up a golf club since a few weeks before we moved to Germany. I was excited to get out and play in the nice cool weather. This was great, the hotel stay included the fee to play golf on this nine hole course. There was another course that was more difficult but you had to pay for that one, and you are supposed to have an established handicap. I opted to see how my game was on the free course. I had the course to myself and I had a great time. I was playing two or three balls on each hole and actually hitting it pretty well. The rain did come and go and I got pretty soaked in the end, but it was still great. I play 18 holes and headed back to the hotel.

After a little rest the weather broke again and I talked the kids into going to the golf course. This was not something that I was planning to do. We brought their clubs to Germany but I left them at home for this trip expecting that the golf course would be busy. They did have some rental clubs and we played nine more holes that day and had the course all to ourselves. Cindy came with us to hang out and we had a good time. The kids are used to Top Golf in Allen and have not really been on a real course too much.

 David started off strong and got better as we played. Katherine was struggling a little but also improved as we went.

I was really glad that all of us got outside for a little while on the golf course. The weather did cooperate and we had a nice afternoon. After golf it was back to the swimming pool.

Another great thing about this hotel was the inclusive food. We had breakfast and lunch buffets included and a five course dinner each night. The food was good for the most part. The kids had buffet selections in the evening while we had the fancy food. It was not the best food ever, but it was fun to try different things each night, stuff that I normally would not choose from a menu.

The next day we dropped the kids off at the kid's club and I headed to the Liechtensteinklamm (Liechtenstein Gorge). After our Bavarian tour at the Partnach Gorge I wanted to check this one out. Cindy declined the opportunity and opted to stay at the hotel. I left right after breakfast and it was a good thing.  

I drove to it and parked in the first parking lot closest to the entrance. It was still an uphill walk of almost a kilometer to get to the ticket area. Once through the main gate it is another two kilometer walk to get to the end, and unlike the Partnach gorge, this one you have to turn around and go back the way you came. It was pretty good overall. Due to all of the rain it was a constant mental battle to deal with being dripped on the entire time. I was cool and comfortable in my shirt and shorts, not ideal in the wet cold drippy gorge area. I was more worried about our good camera getting wet and I had nothing to protect it with. 

This was the big finale. A large waterfall area was the turn around point. The water flow along the gorge was very fast, I guess due to all of the rain. It was not as scenic as the other gorge from a couple of weeks ago but I was glad to go see it.

I was even more glad to be done once I got back to the entrance. There was a long line just to get tickets, at least a 45 minute wait. Driving out all of the parking lots were full. People were walking another two kilometers up the hill just to get to where I had been parked. Note to self, go visit the gorge early to avoid crowds and extra walking.

There was another place I wanted to take the kids the next day. In the summer on top of the mountain in the ski area they build up a family theme park known as Ghost Mountain. I convinced the kids to ride the gondola up there to check it out.

This was not so bad. The gondola went up above the ridge that you could see from the ground, then it really went up. I had no idea we were going this high. I did not pack a jacket for me and I brought a rain jacket for Katherine and a light jacket for David.

After you get off of the gondola there is a sign telling you to walk the path to get to the ghost train to take you the rest of the way up the mountain. There were several fields along the way with cows right there.

The walk to the ghost train was a lot more than I had anticipated. The hill to Neuschwanstein was nothing compared to this little stroll. David and I estimated that we walked up twice as high as we did to get to Neuschwanstein. Glad I did not drag Cindy, Meme, and Amie along on this trip. We finally made it to the "train station" and got on the Ghost "Train", which turns out to be a tractor with an open cart on the back.

We finally made it close to the top. There was not much here that we would relate to family theme park. A couple of slides in the distance, etc. It took a long time to get here and it was way past lunch time. We found a mountain top restaurant and had some Austrian schnitzel. As soon as we sat down in the restaurant the clouds rolled in, below us and above. The rain soon followed. In the end we spent 90 minutes getting to the top of this mountain for it to start raining. All of the people up there had rain gear and umbrellas, not us. The Ghost Train was coming but the platform was overflowing with people trying to get off of the mountain. After a few minutes of discussion under a canopy we decided to bypass the train and hoof it down the mountain in the rain. We were cold and soaked but the kids did great. They had fun with it and to my surprise did not complain. We left at the same time as the Ghost train was loading people. We beat it down the mountain easily and kept going down to the gondola. By the time we got into the gondola for the ride down we were ready for a hot shower, or it turned out a dip in the indoor pool. Cindy picked us up at the bottom of the gondola so we did not have to walk up the hill to the hotel. We all got in the pool for a while.

The rest of the trip was relaxing. We even discussed extending our stay for another day. In the end we made it home for the weekend as scheduled and settled back in. We now had a couple of days to prepare for the new school year.  

 David has started 6th grade which is the secondary school at BIS. He now has a schedule where he has to manage his time and materials to get from one class to another on his own. There is no more single teacher/class with lines and such. He has a complicated schedule that is spread over two weeks where he has to be in a different class room for each period of the day. Week one is different from week two, then it repeats. He has started off so great and seems to be handling himself really well so far.

Katherine has started 1st grade, which in Germany is considered school age. They had a ceremony to receive their Schultuten or school bag. It has some trinkets in it. She is doing her normal thing and making friends. There are a couple of kids in the same class as her from last year, which helps. 

This is a new development. We are getting ready for festival season in Bavaria. Cindy needed a dirndl for the Freising Volksfest that TI attends each year. The kids have several occasions to wear traditional Bavarian outfits at school each year so they got set up too. David is not so excited, but he did play along and tried on his lederhosen. You will not be seeing any pictures of me in lederhosen as I do not have any. The place did not have my size, and I was not invited to the Volksfest thing with Cindy. So now you don't even have to ask why I am not pictured. 

There, just like that I am caught up again. FYI, the drying machines have been removed and our house is back to normal. There is a water pump in the basement that had to be replaced by the owners and they are about to replace the heating system before it starts leaking like the neighbors. With the weather the way it has been we might be in for some cold temperatures this winter.

I am also coordinating from Germany a new roof, gutters, and fence repair on our house in Allen. Our tenant mentioned the hail storm a while back then told me that most of the neighbors have had roofs replaced. Sure enough the insurance adjuster was out this week and agreed that it needs to be fixed. Hopefully that will go smoothly and I think I have a good roofing guy to do the work. More updates on that later I guess.

I am not sure what is next. We have a little gap here now that school has started back up. We are now starting to overlap yearly events in the area. Last year we attended Volksfest in Freising, but we still lived in Freising at that point. I guess my point is that things are not as new any longer. It is kind of nice to actually understand what is happening a little for the first time in a while. At the same time we are coming up on owning the car for a year and I am not sure what kind of inspections or other things have to be done, so maybe I am still in the dark on that and probably many other things. Oh well, it was a nice thought.