How to Embrace Life ~ drive a stick and run in the rain

Winter finally showed up over here and it’s at full force. Here are some pictures I took walking through the park.

What a magical land!

The Palace.

Not much is happening over here. The most exciting news is that we are in the waiting game of finding out whether or not our expat contract will get extended. If it doesn’t we are headed back to Houston in May and if it does we will be Norway bound until May 2017 at the longest. It all depends on the company getting the contracts they need to continue work over here.

Will we get extended and if so for how long?!

WE DO NOT KNOW.

No it’s not bothering me at all. 😉 We should find out in the next couple weeks and I’m doing pretty well at trusting the whole thing to God. We’ve been praying a lot of “we want YOUR plan in our lives Lord” and “we need YOU to provide” prayers and now it’s His show. I will keep you guys updated on what transpires. Prayers during this time would be much appreciated!

So. Instead of obsessing over the big potential changes coming our way in a few months, I thought I’d delve back into some fun memories and share with you more of our Austria trip. I still have our trips to Stavanger, Bergen, and Trondheim to blog about too! I know I’m way behind. But I’m hoping to take advantage of the temporary calm to do some writing and bring you guys up to speed.

We left off in Salzburg. I believe it was our first night there and we were soaking up the sunshine and warmth and exploring the charming city. We found Maria’s convent on top of the hill and enjoyed some “Tex-Mex” (they tried) with creative kombucha cocktails! To read up on that go here.

The next morning we picked up our rental car from the Hertz down the road. In Europe, manual transmissions are the norm and are actually cheaper than renting an automatic.

Since Austin was the one who would be driving, I didn’t care when he reserved a stick for us. Austin had driven a manual briefly years before and now challenged himself to learn the adventurous way now. Unfortunately, there was no space in town to get the feel of the stick and figure out some things. So we hit the autobahn begging for a lesson from the school of hard knocks.

Needless to say it was hairy getting out of town.

Every car on the road become a potential wreck as we lurched along. Every red, and subsequent green light, became a hurdle to overcome. I clamped my mouth shut, gripped the door handle and prayed non-stop that we wouldn’t get hit or ourselves hit something.

Luckily I still had the presence of mind to snap some photos of beautiful Bavaria as we careened out into the country side.

Now, I don’t want in any way to throw Austin under the bus here. He taught himself manual in a very short time under extremely stressful conditions without incident. That is more than I would ever dream of attempting and I am pretty proud of him! But you have to admit babe, that first day was hilarious looking back. Us stalling out in the middle of intersections and rolling backwards going up the mountain! Horns blaring, “flipping birds” flying at us. It was terrifying in the moment but super funny now. Why is that? Thank you my love for keeping a cool head and dealing with the learning curve so well! Haha! Oh we’ve already made so many sweet memories together! I love you!

Ahem.

Back to Austria now…

Our plan was to drive into Germany and go to the Eagle’s Nest and then Berchtesgaden after.

The Eagle’s Nest itself was a bit of a let down. It was covered in tourists (like us – ha!).

But the views! Oh the views were stellar. You know my maiden name, “Schwaig”, is Austrian for “alpine herdsmen”. I feel like the Austrian Alps are in my blood. It is the perfect blend of pasture and mountain and river and sun. I know that this day we were *actually* in Germany but we could see Salzburg from the mountain. Technicalities.

The elevator ride up to the Eagle’s Nest. It was in a tunnel under ground. Cold. Creepy.

The stunning vista once we got to the top.

The Summit.

There was a restaurant up at the top and we were starting to feel peckish. But we opted not to stick around for two reasons. Since this place got so many thousands of visitors each day the elevator and bus rides were all strictly scheduled. We still had time on the clock before our bus ride, but the thought of hanging around here with all the crowds left us a bit panicked at what we would be missing during the interim. These European hours are precious!

So we took the golden elevator down and hoped we could snag a bus to take us back down the mountain before our scheduled time. Somehow we did! There was a small group of people running to their bus and the driver was waving them on and we fell right in with them and were absorbed by the crowd. Easy peasy.

Down at the parking lot we decided to head back to Berchtesgaden and see what could be found in the way of food.

At face value Berchtesgaden is an idyllic alpine village. Under the surface it was another matter. This was Hitler’s favorite “get away” spot. He entertained the top generals and dignitaries of the Second World War, impressing them with the views from the Eagle’s Nest and its fine engineering (all built with slave labor). The streets are still haunted with ghosts. It was a disturbing feeling and we did not linger long.

On our way out of town we stopped at a grocery store and got some items for a picnic! We had driven along the beautiful Salzach River on our way over here. So we retraced our tire tracks, crossing back into Austria, and found a river access point.

It felt good to dip our feet into the icy Salzach and feel the heat of the sun at the same time. There were some older ladies fully submerging themselves in the freezing water further up river. I could barely stick a toe in. I did my whole foot once for a nanosecond. I’m was pretty sure my heart would stop if I dunked my entire body.

A much looked forward to “authentic” pretzel.

We headed back to Salzburg after our picnic lunch. Driving back was a whole lot smoother than our morning trip out. 😉

That evening we strolled through town.

Notice up on the hill in the middle of the buildings you can see a wall and a lookout. It appeared to be leftover from ancient times as a way of defending the town. I started seeing them scattered all around Salzburg, stationed at high points in the hillside for good vantage. Fascinating!

We went into the old town for a little shopping. We had to find a Salzburg magnet after all! 😉

This is the horse fountain that was shown in SOM. Julie Andrews sticks her hand in and flings water out as she sings “I have confidence!”.

The Fortress overlooking the city.

As you can see by the pictures, the clouds were threatening rain but we didn’t really put that together. We walked along until we found an Indian restaurant and got a seat on the patio. We had just finished our meal when the sky let loose. It was a thunder-boomer like we get in Texas! We were a 20 minute walk away from the hotel. The waiter kindly offered us his umbrella but we wouldn’t be back this way for us to return it so we declined with thanks. Nope, the only way was through!

At our first mad dash across the street I tried to scamper daintily and save my leather sandals. That didn’t work so well. This was no wimpy shower, it was all out raindrops-falling-like-bombs out there yo!

So I gave in.

We tripped and sloshed and laughed our way back through the old town center and over the bridge and up to our hotel. The pavement was warm from the summer evening and the rain was cool but not chilling. It was one of my favorite memories from this trip.