Wanderings in Germany/Austria: Part III

Monday night we stayed in a hotel in downtown Innsbruck to recoup and take some time to see the city and the nearby castle, Schloss Ambras. Tuesday evening we did some grocery shopping (an experience I always love in new places) and procured the fixings for a dinner of lentil soup, salad and bread, which we threw together at Leila and Harry’s for a final hurrah before heading back to Germany. Another of Aaron’s Austrian friends, Tommy, showed up for dinner, and we had a blast eating (as always), drinking and babbling.

Wednesday, we caught a train back to Mainz which was supposed to get us into town by 6:46 p.m., but stopped on the tracks for an hour, throwing our connections to the wind and getting us into Mainz for a late dinner at 9:30 p.m.! We ate at a converted church in Mainz with my brother, Paul (who's working in Germany for four months), then grabbed some beers at a local bar. And then it was Thursday, the day that Sam made her flight to Fez, Morocco. By the way, Sam arrived safely in Morocco and has actually begun seeing clients at Al Akhawayn (hopefully she will add a post sometime soon here to describe her experiences)!

So, while Sam was being indoctrinated in her (our) new home, Paul and I decided to spend the weekend driving up the Rhine for wine and castles. The first night we slept in the tower of a castle high above the town of Bacharach on the Rhine. The evening consisted of an awesome dinner and then several glasses of wine at the Kulinarische Sommernacht festival. Ninety percent of the people at this festival had Paul and I by 50 years, but the band still felt obliged to cover American 80's songs. Their rendition of Long Train Runnin' by the Doobie Brothers was stirring. The wine was delicious and helped make the treacherous 20 minute uphill walk in the dark woods to the castle an invigorating experience. At one point, completely blind and knowing that we were no longer on the trail, I had the brilliant idea of using Paul's lighter to help us find the right path. Step aside, Indiana Jones.

Day two we drove past multiple castles (burgs), wandered through Burg Rheinfels and stayed the night in a fortress above the town of Koblenz, where the Rhine and Mosel river join. Another steep walk downhill and a 45 minute walk into town, tasty Indian food for dinner and tasty weiss beers for dessert, then we managed to catch a bus back to the trail head and meander through another patch of dark woods (sans lighter) to the fortress.

And FINALLY ... Paul and I made our way past the Loreley cliffs back to Mainz on Sunday and hung out downtown for the evening. Mainz is a pretty kick-ass town with old, narrow cobblestone streets, lots of beautiful old architecture, and a fantastic waterfront (the Rhine) filled with people, bars, restaurants and even a brilliant waterfront beach bar with sand, volleyball, tables, beer, food, coffee (yay!) and cocktails.

And Monday I flew back to Portland.

THE END

PS: Take a look at the pictures by using the "Germany/Austria Wanderings" link in the PICTURE LINKS to the right.

Wanderings in Germany/Austria: Part II

Our trek in the Austrian Alps is an experience that is very hard to describe … it was one of the more amazing things I’ve done. The scenery was astounding, the hike was exhilarating and the mountain huts ruled. We essentially walked most of the day, then ended up at a hut, had delicious food and excellent beer, then crashed for the night. The weather wasn’t stellar, but we DID have a full day (our longest walking day) of great weather.

The first day involved a 4000 foot climb from Neustift to the Starkenburger Hut in the drizzling rain and fog. The visibility was poor, and we couldn’t see the hut above us for some time, making it difficult to guess when the climb would end. Then at some point the fog cleared for a minute, and we could see the hut on a ledge overhead. Pretty surreal. We arrived just in time for dinner and sat with two hikers (Elmar and Alex) who were funny as hell, great fun to chat with and who we ended up hanging out with for the next two days. Alex is from Belaruse (lives in Minsk), and Elmar is originally from Innsbruck, met Alex in Minsk and now lives in Budapest.

One excellent aspect of the first foggy day was that the scenery around was pretty much obscured, making the next morning (which was perfectly clear) absolutely spectacular. It was amazing to finally see the peaks towering around us and to see just HOW FAR the valley was below us! The second day involved a 15 km walk across some pretty sketchy terrain to the Franz Senn Hut, a walk that was filled with gigantic views and beautiful landscapes, but that also ravaged Sam’s knees. We left at 9:30 a.m. and reached the Franz Senn Hut at 7:30 p.m., once again just in time for dinner. Elmar and Alex ran ahead and asked the hut warden to save some food for us. These two had intended to walk to the valley from an alm (small hut along the walk that serves small meals and beverages) midway along the walk, but Sam and I cajoled them into continuing on to Franz Senn. Sound familiar Brooke/Jer, Jim/Pam?

Day three we decided to stay at the Franz Senn Hut for another night to allow Sam's knees to recover a bit, to chill and drink coffee(s) and to do some of the nearby day hikes. Day hike number one was with Alex and Elmar in the morning to Hell's Throat, a point where water flowing from a nearby glacier shoots through and down a rock cliff. Pretty damn cool. There was a technical climbing route (to be done with harness and carabiners) that went right through the Devil's Throat, and it took Elmar's excellent translation of a nearby sign in German which said that it was forbidden to go through the route without safety equipment to stay me from trying to climb through. Mid-day, Elmar and Alex took off for the valley, Sam took a nap and read her book and I did a day hike to a lake up the mountain a little bit called the Rinnensee. Pretty foggy walk and it started pouring as I walked back, so I arrived at the hut dripping wet. One beautiful aspect of the mountain huts is that they typically have a well-ventilated trockenraum, or drying room, to hang all of your stuff to dry over night.

The bedding in these huts deserves some mention. The huts are by no means primitive, but they aren't luxury hotels either. A bed was about 20 euro ($27). On day 1, Sam and I thought it would be nice to grab a private room, so we payed a little extra for a double room. Our double room consisted of a narrow aisle and two double beds. The other bed was eventually occupied by two older men, one of whom snored quite nicely. Soooo, in actuality, there was no such thing as a private room ... it was simply possible to reduce the number of people with which you needed to sleep. In the Franz Senn Hut, we decided to save our money and sleep in the dorm. The dorm consisted of "boxes" which are sleeping compartments in the top floor of the hut. Each box CAN sleep six people, and initially Sam and I were assigned to a box with four other people already occupying each side. When we came to bed, we moved to a box that only had two other people (Elmar and Alex), and it was an excellent night of sleep. The following night, we moved to a two person box, which is perpendicular to the other boxes and essentially is meant to make use of extra room in the dorm. This was the most private night of sleep and was heavenly.

Monday came with prospects of rain, and Sam and I had to ponder the short walk we had planned over a pass to the Neue Regensburger Hut. In the end, the onset of rain and Sam's screaming knees convinced us (though I moped petulantly for a bit) to head down to the valley and back to Innsbruck. The hike down from Franz Senn was a little steep, but pretty straight forward. At the valley, we found that the next bus to Neustift would come some 5 hours later and a taxi would be 25 euro, so we decided to walk the five miles or so to the town of Milders and then catch a bus from there to Innsbruck. The walk was wet and got a bit long, but the scenery was gorgeous.

Thus began the final phase of our wanderings, covered in Part III.

Wanderings in Germany/Austria: Part I

Our wanderings in Germany and Austria were exceptionally cool. As mentioned in the previous post, Sam and I had bought tickets to Germany as a sort of graduation gift to ourselves with the dual purpose of visiting my brother in Mainz, Germany, and spending several days trekking from hut to hut in the Austrian Alps. Not a lot of planning ended up happening due to the sudden notice of our move to Morocco, but everything still went very smoothly.

We landed in Frankfurt at 11:00 a.m. on a Tuesday, headed west to Mainz to my brother’s apartment (he was in Sweden at the time), dumped a bit of Moroccan-bound gear in a corner there, showered, then made our best efforts to get all the way to Innsbruck, Austria (6 hour train ride) by that evening. This was not terribly realistic since we had no idea where we would stay that night and would end up in Innsbruck around 1:00 a.m. with train connections and such. From past European small town experience, we guessed that local inns would not be thrilled to answer their doors at 1:00 a.m., so we modified our plans. We hopped off the train in Munich at 9:30 or so, hunted down a room near the train station and spent the rest of the evening in the Augustiner Keller beer garden. Beautiful.

The next day we made the rest of the journey to Innsbruck and called some Austrian friends of my friend Aaron (from OSU) who he had met in London some years earlier and suggested we meet. Leila and Harry and their two year old Vincent were awesome people to spend some time with and were incredibly hospitable!! My suggestion that Sam and I were going to grab a hotel in downtown Innsbruck for the first night was met with a hearty “Why the hell would you do that?” … Harry picked us up at the train station, we left our backpacks at their place and went back down to Innsbruck to wander for a while. We got back to their place around 11:30 or so and drank sage tea and talked until very late, then spent the entire next day hanging out with them in Natters, a small village outside of Innsbruck.

So, Leila and Harry: Leila worked with Aaron in an outdoors store in London for a year or so, then went to film school there. She’s now a full time mom and also does film work with her squeeze, Harry. Harry was a professional snowboarder and is now making his own extreme sports films. (Sam and I watched a film produced by North Face in which Harry and this other guy did a first descent of this giant mountain with a huge ice cliff in the middle that they had to rappel down. Nuts!). While we were visiting, Harry found out that he got a job coaching the Canadian snowboarding team in British Columbia. So, there is a fantastic chance that we’ll get to see these two again when we’re back in Portland. Thanks SO MUCH for the hospitality Leila and Harry!

On Friday, Sam and I headed to Neustift about twenty minutes south of Natters in the Stubai Valley and began four days of walking in the Austrian Alps ... covered in the next posting.

The final days in Corvegas, City of 100 Lights

Ok, so I’m in charge of writing up the events of the last month or so. Pretty straight-forward. We planned like mad, met with as many friends in Corvegas as humanly possible before leaving, pawned off our cat on two friends, packed our entire place, moved everything into storage, cleaned our apartment and moved out (24 hours later than we expected, keeping with tradition), spent the night at the Zang B&B, flew to Germany, took a train to Austria, met and stayed with friends of a friend in Austria, walked in the Alps for four days, hung out with my brother back in Germany, Sam flew to Morocco, and I flew back to Portland where I’m writing this posting. But I guess a little more detail here and there could be informative … I’ll save our wanderings in Europe for the next post.

So, the two or three weeks leading up to our departure from Corvallis: Sam worked forty hours a week wrapping up things at OSU and spent her evenings getting her life in order for her new position in Morocco (while trying to have dinner with friends as many nights as possible). I worked a similar amount of time trying to think of as many details as possible about the upcoming journey(s), doing laundry, packing, planning, etc. For those unaware of our convoluted schedule, check out the calendar on the right.

One of the myriad fascinating questions we pondered was what to do with our weight- challenged, spirited, not-so-fond-of-traveling cat Bruce. Our first inclination was to bring him to Morocco – we already cruelly left him behind for six months in 2005, and he’s really fun to have around. Then we started to discover the reality of the situation:

• Bruce weighs 17 pounds and the requirements for Royal Air Maroc (one of the few carriers that flies into Morocco) is that, to be in the passenger area, the animal plus the carrying case must weigh no more than 11 pounds. This means that he would have to travel in the cargo hold. It also means we would have to buy a huge carrying case for him and lug it around an airport with all of our other baggage, all the while accompanied by the music of Bruce yowling. Also, the tale of a pet owner who put his pet in the cargo hold and arrived at the far end of the journey to find his pet dead (urban myth?) made us think pretty strongly about this option.
• Entrance requirements were unclear. Sam’s contacts told her that Morocco was lenient on bringing animals into the country. I pictured us testing this leniency by bringing our FIV-positive, overweight cat to Morocco and then having a thoroughly entertaining conversation in the airport in Fez (conducted in my lilting Arabic and/or French) about what was to happen to our cat that actually WAS NOT allowed into the country. So, I called the consulate. The person I talked with said that I simply needed to have the “normal” veterinary checkup, get this checkup document certified by the USDA, then overnight the USDA’s document to the consulate so that they could issue a certificate for the cat to enter the country. When pressed about the “normal” checkup, the official could offer no details. Hmmmm. And, there would be new entrance requirements to bring him BACK to the United States.
• Then there were the logistics of traveling with Bruce. We would be in Europe for two weeks, and originally our friend Sam Lee was going to stay at our place and watch the cat. However, this would mean that I would need to drive to Corvallis from Portland when I was back in town, put anything left in the apartment in storage, drive back to Portland and shift Bruce from house to house. Then I would need to take him on a plane to Detroit (see bullet point 1), and find somewhere for him to hang out there, potentially moving him from house to house again. Plus, he has FIV, so he can’t be around other cats. Simple.
• And finally, once in Morocco (if he was actually allowed in, bullet point 2), we would need to find someone to watch him anytime we traveled.

I’ve spent a bit of words describing this quandary, partially because it was pretty funny, but primarily to throw a hearty thank-you out to our friends Kathy and Hai Yu who were genuinely excited to take Bruce for the year we’re away. THANKS GUYS!!

Another thank you needs to be sent out to Stephen and Cynthia. Not only did they give us Yoda Choking A Chicken to be with us in our more difficult times abroad, they brought us some fantastic burritos on moving night (made even more delicious by a full day of packing and not eating) and participated in a whirlwind packing job that would have rivaled any operation conducted by Allied Van Lines. Sam and I had packed quite a bit by the Friday before departure, but we still had the kitchen to do as well as our personal packing for Morocco. The latter turned out to be pretty complicated since we needed certain things for our trip to Austria and certain things for Morocco. The former was no easy feat either, contrary to what we imagined. When Stephen and Cynthia arrived at 6:00 pm on Saturday, we still had some serious packing left (and had told our peeps in Portland that we would be there Saturday evening … sorry peeps!). But we had the truck for that evening only. And my sudden recollection that our storage barn in Corvallis closed at 8:00 pm fueled a fevered rush to load the truck, drive to the storage area (by 7:55 pm) and unload as much as we could so that no security guard would have the heart to tell us to leave. And that’s how it went down man (shit, I can still smell that newspaper). THANKS GUYS!!

Finally, thanks to Shojiwan for accepting the onerous task of receiving our mail, to Rachel for offering to drive the hour and a half to Corvallis to help us finish packing, and to Ben and Amber of the Zang B&B for putting up with us (arriving very late on Sunday), putting us up, and taking us to the airport. And thanks to all our friends and family for the enthusiasm!!