Home away from home

I love seeing new places when I travel, but I also tend to keep coming back to the same places and people that I fell in love with the first time around. Places that I feel comfortable, at home. Gästehaus Kolp in the village of St Jakob is one of those places. Each apartment comes with mountain views and the most wonderful hosts. 

Morning coffee with a view towards Petteneu

Darmstädter Hütte immer wieder gerne!

Our second day was forcasted to be sunny, so we walked into town and used our St Anton Sommerkarten to go up the gondola towards the Valluga peak. It was still a little cold and cloudy at the top of the first gondola, so we decided to go up the other side of the valley on the Rendelbahn and hike around for a bit... after buying hats to keep us warm on top of the mountain! 

Rainy day hike (St Anton)

From Vienna, we took the train up the Inn valley to where one of its tributaries ends at the Arlberg Pass. There are a series of villages there that are relatively quiet in the summer (a few thousand inhabitants) but bustle with skiers as soon as the snow starts falling. We were too early in the season for snow, so the precipitation that fell on us left us a little soggy! Regardless, we headed up a beautiful valley to Konstanzer Hütte

Ducking out of the rain in a covered bridge

Wieder in Wien

There are some lovely cities in Europe. Prague is romantic, Amsterdam is egalitarian with wild tourists, and Vienna is elegant. I miss it. Turns out, there was a way to get on a train in the Czech, give ourselves a couple hours' "layover" between trains in Vienna. So, we walked from the beautiful new Hauptbahnhof (main train station) into the city center. 

Fountain at the Oper (Opera house)

Science and Industry

Ostrava was not a significant town for the first thousand years of its history. In the 1800’s, coal deposits were discovered in the area and heavy industry boomed. One of the old steel mills near downtown was rebuilt over the past 5 years into a center for science and industry. We went up the Bolt tower on top of the old blast furnace and then into one of the coolest science centers we've ever visited.

Crashing a Czech Wedding

The pretense for our trip was a friend's wedding. That wedding took place in the middle of our trip in Ostrava. Lucie and Ales picked us up in the morning and took us to a cafe that looked like there Ostrava Mafia was meeting. Half a dozen friends of the bride and groom sat around a coffee table, wearing suits and dresses with yellow accents (their parents names the original group the “waps”). They had gathered to discuss ”the Plan.”

Brno

The day that it started raining in Baden-Würtemberg, we jumped on the train and headed to the Czech Republic. After a train ride, frantically running around rainy Nuremberg trying to find our bus, a double-decker ride to Prague, and a helpful Czech conductor (with cousins in the US) putting us in the correct train, we were relieved to see our friends waiting for us at the train station in Brno. Lucie and Ales whisked our hungry selves off to one of the good local eats in downtown Brno. Pilsner Urquell, fried cheese, stuffed peppers, knedliky, and excellent company brought us back to wakefulness.

Stuttgart

I visited Stuttgart three years ago at about the same time of year. This time around we waited until the last day of our stay to go into the city because the Wine Festival started that day. While we did eventually spend a wonderful evening in the city center eating Maultaschen and chatting friends of our host, we had an entire afternoon to explore the city before everyone was off work.

Über Ulm

In German there is a "Zungenbrecher" (tongue-breaker) about a city in Baden-Würtemberg, Ulm. It goes like so: In Ulm, um Ulm, und um Ulm herum. Try saying that 5x fast! "It doesn't flow as well in English, "in Ulm, about Ulm and all around Ulm." On our third full day in Germany, we added a preposition; we went Über Ulm. The thing that the city is most famous for is its church tower, the tallest in the world (aside from the yet incomplete Sagrada Familia). On the recommendation of a friend's friend, we headed over to hike to the top.

Castles and churches in Esslingen

Monday was a holiday for us, but the rest of the world was back to work. Anne rode her bike to the office that morning so that we could use her car to go to Esslingen, a town only 20 minutes away by car but an hour away by train. Still unsure of what all the road signs meant, we jumped into the kiwi and went on an adventure.

Löwenstein

We spent our first full day in Germany with friends in the wine region around Stuttgart. Bea, who visited us with Anne in April, is from a town called Löwenstein. Most of her family still lives there and operates a wonderful winery.

Amsterdam Layover

Sometimes, when I'm planning a trip, I mess things up a little. This time around, it was booking our flights to and from Stuttgart out of Amsterdam. I accidentally booked it twice, and the flights I had to keep had a ~8 hour layover in the middle on the way there. It made for a long day of travel... But then again, we got to spend part of a day in Amsterdam!