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Schwangau, Germany: How Many Castles Does a King Need?
On this day, we got to meet our friend Curtis. It felt like another little taste of home. Curtis was good friends with our son, Levi, in high school. He was at our house almost as much as Levi was, so he became one of our “adopted” sons. Two years ago, he relocated to Germany…
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Medieval Memmingen
Our train broke today, so now we’ve experienced everything. We were supposed to take a train from Salzburg, Austria to Ulm, Germany and then transfer to a train to Memmengen. But the train stopped at Munich and said it was having difficulties and would “terminate” at Munich. Thank goodness for the Google Maps and Eurail…
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Salzburg: Classical and Country
We traveled to Salzburg on these days and were greeted with a constant, gray, dreary rain. We toughed it out anyway and explored the Salzburg Museum, Mirabel Gardens, and the home in which Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born. Like Einstein, Mozart’s genius made his life really difficult. He was born in 1756 to musical parents.…
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Interlaken & Bern, Switzerland: Back to Civilization
Still on our high from Zermatt but sad to say goodbye to Jason and Savanna, we headed to our next “home” in Bern, the capital of Switzerland. We had heard that Interlaken was a beautiful city too, nestled between two mountain lakes, so we decided to make a stop there to have a look around. …
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Zermatt, Switzerland and the Matterhorn
Little did we know when we woke up in Zurich what an adventure we would be on! We live in the mountains, right by Rocky Mountain National Park, so we thought we would feel, in a way, like we were home again. We had purchased Eurail passes for the summer, which gave us access to…
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Zurich, Switzerland: Messing Around in Boats
One of my favorite books as a child was Wind in the Willows. In that story, Mr. Toad talked about how much he loved “messing around in boats.” That’s our family, 100%. In fact, that is why when Bill was ready for a career change and wanted to purchase a business, he chose Expedia CruiseShipCenters.…
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Budapest, Hungary – Something to Cry About
We arrived in Budapest, Hungary on this sweltering day. We had slept… sort of… on an overnight train, wearing the clothes we had on the day before, so I’m sure we were a sight to see….and smell. We met our tour guide, Julia, who expertly opened the world of Budapest and the history book of…
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Warsaw, Poland: Under the Crazy Star
We took some pictures of “Old Town” Warsaw, but in fact, there is no old town in Warsaw. It is all rebuilt from pictures of the town before World War II. In 1939, Warsaw was a free city with of 1.3 million people. In 1943, 900,000 people lived there, and many of those no longer…
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Krakow, Poland: Trail of Sorrow
On September 1st, 1939, Germany invaded Poland. It only took 35 days for domination. Once German occupied Poland, it was decided that Poles, unlike Jews, would be allowed to live if they were able to work. However, any Polls who had fought against the Germans and any Poles living in nice neighborhoods that German families…
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Prague to Warsaw: Murder on the Midnight Express
This was a day we would never repeat, but in some sick way, when it was over, we were glad we had experienced it. We started the day with one more wander around Prague, seeing some of the out-of-the-way places we had missed previously, including a chilling memorial to the victims of communism. We found…
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