Christmas in Tannheim, Austria.

We celebrated Christmas (and our third annual honeymoon) in a private house in the small town of Tannheim, Austria.  While Mr. Meena and I love to travel to new cities and have new experiences, our idea of a real vacation is to go somewhere that no one can bother us and focus on staying in and relaxing.

 

Aw yeah.  It’s verboten to bother me.

(You can check out the listing for this house on Homeway.)

We try to take at least one secluded vacation each year and we usually end up in the mountains – but going to the Austrian Alps was quite an upgrade from the hills of Tennessee that we usually flock to.  Thanks to Germany’s generous allotment of vacation days we were able to stay here for seven full days (usually we can only manage four or five) even though Mr. Meena had already taken off for two additional weeks throughout the end of the year.  It’s incredible.  I don’t know how we will ever be able to adapt to ten days of vacation again (come on, America).

Mr. Meena picked up our rental car Saturday morning and used it to buy some heavy grocery items so we didn’t have to carry them home for once (oh, how I miss my car).  This was especially important because the grocery stores in Germany are closed on Christmas, the day after Christmas, and the day after that (Sunday) – so we wouldn’t have any food upon our return unless we planned ahead and stockpiled.  Have I mentioned that I really miss American convenience?  We packed up our belongings and our bird and left for Austria.  We made it less than 30 km before things started going wrong.  A low air pressure alarm went off on one of the front tires so we stopped to refill it.  We made it back on the road only to have the same alarm go off again.  At this point we realized there had to be something wrong with the tire – and we can’t leave the country for isolated paradise with a faulty rental car.  After some tense deliberations with Europcar (because nearly all of the locations had closed at noon on Saturday) we managed to find a place in Ulm (I really thought the German on the phone was saying ‘um’) that had an automatic available – it was pretty much a miracle.  It delayed our trip by an hour but we had a reliable car and actually got a significant upgrade at no additional cost.

 

 

Mr. Meena was deliriously happy about getting to drive this.

Later we stopped a rest station and I observed a typical German feat of impatience.  There was a line of women, about seven deep, waiting to use the women’s rest room.  More women approached, clearly German women that are incapable of waiting in any sort of line, ever, and began skirting the line to the women’s bathroom to use the lineless men’s bathroom in droves.  Mr. Meena exited the men’s bathroom looking more than a little confused at suddenly being surrounded by women.

We still managed to arrive in Tannheim within the designated window set by the home owners.  It was one of the strangest check-in’s I’ve ever experienced; there was a man waiting in the house for us to arrive.  He spoke German to us at length despite acknowledging that we didn’t speak German (this phenomenon happens often and I still don’t understand why people do this) and gave us the English copy of the rules before promising to return at 10am the following Saturday.

We thought our stressful day of travel was nearly over – but we were wrong.  We didn’t have any food on a Saturday evening and all the stores in Germany and Austria are closed on Sundays.  So we went to the only grocery store in town and arrived at 6:05pm (a clear consequence of our rental car layover in Ulm) to find that the store closed five minutes prior.

I’m really not sure when these people actually buy groceries.  Most stores are barely open outside of normal working hours.

Because we couldn’t use our phones in Austria we had to drive back to Germany (only about ten miles away) to search for a store that was open.  We ended up taking this harrowing route in the dark.

 

 

This is what happens when you’re forced to drive around in the Alps attempting to find a grocery store.

Once again, we arrived at a grocery store minutes after closing.  The latest we’ve seen any store stay open in Germany is 8pm and that hour was quickly approaching.  We finally found an Aldi, bought way too much food, and went back up the scary mountain road.  It was an exhausting travel day.

But the next morning we woke up, on our 2^nd wedding anniversary, and I had this lovely view from the front window as Mr. Meena prepared to start a fire.

 

 

On Monday we walked the three kilometers up to Lake Vilsalpsee and enjoyed the foggy mountain views.

 

 

There were two great things about visiting the lake on that day.  The first was that the cold and foggy weather deterred most of the wandering souls; we were pretty much alone to enjoy the tranquility of the scene.  The second was that the lake was mostly frozen – but the temperatures were still mild enough that it had been lightly raining.  So this resulted in a layer of ice across the lake that was covered with rain water.  When the drops hit the lake it didn’t look frozen because they were hitting the standing water.  But when you sent a rock skidding across the surface it sent water everywhere and made the coolest sounds.  We must have spent an hour walking around and gleefully throwing rocks like children.  It was my favorite part of our whole trip.

 

 

Here you can see the icy lake top.

We even found some snow-ice on the way back, which was the closest we got to a white Christmas.

 

 

On Wednesday we visited the nearby Neuschwanstein Castle – and I was reminded why we usually avoid anything touristy.  It was so unpleasant to be around tourists that we cut our visit short in order to become recluses again.

 

 

The day before we left I braved an icy path to see an underwhelming waterfall.  It was in a beautiful valley, though.

 

 

And along the way I noticed an area that resembled the tattoo I got earlier this year.

 

 

Mr. Meena was brave (or crazy?) enough to try out the ski lift on Christmas – I wasn’t so assured of its safety.  He had to traverse this to get there.

 

 

But now we know what Tannheim looks like from the mountain top.

 

 

He also encountered some courageous people that went gliding that day.

 

 

So we only went out to explore for three out of our seven days, and we were quite happy with that.  It was nice to relax in a house since we have been living in a hotel for a few months.  There were many things about being in a house that I enjoyed: having a bathtub, a fireplace, a full size refrigerator, and enough space to move away from your spouse if you’re irritating each other (it’s inevitable).

When living in Germany gets hard, I often think about the fact that we will (probably) be home at this time next year.  It was especially difficult when we had to use grocery bags in place of stockings for Christmas – because we already have stockings in storage in America (they’re hanging out with all our other belongings) and there’s no reason to buy duplicates that we’d just have to pay to ship home.  I’m getting an unsolicited feel for minimalism, here.  After we opened our stockings grocery bags I started daydreaming again about how we would (probably – it’s always probably) be home for Christmas next year.  And then I remembered that there is no home to speak of.  We were living in company housing before we left, our possessions are stored in a warehouse while we are gone, and we have no designated space that we are planning to return to.  So I’m dreaming of being home; but that home is just a fuzzy thought hovering somewhere near Charlotte, NC.  It’s just an abstract idea at this point, still comforting – but not specific.

I never thought I’d be ending 2015 living in hotel and dreaming of a home that doesn’t actually exist yet.  It’s a great reminder that we definitely don’t control our future and that life will take us unexpected (but mostly wonderful) places.  Happy New Year’s Eve, my friends.