Europe Tour Day 1-2 - Savona, Italy

We spent the first week of our vacation in Italy.  (See our Week 1 Itinerary Map here)  On Saturday March 15, we had a long but beautiful drive through Austria, Switzerland, and Northern Italy.  About half-way through, we stopped in Como, Italy to see the gorgeous Lake Como area.

 

We stayed in Varazze, Italy Saturday and Sunday nights, which is on the cost of the Mediterranean Sea. We stayed at Soggiorno Sole, a very pink hotel with shared bathrooms and no credit cards accepted but a good breakfast.

On Sunday morning we attended church at the Savona branch, where I spent 8 months of my mission.  We would have been on time, but it took more than 20 minutes to inch our way out of the super-tight parking spot at the hotel.  It was so fun to see the Savona branch again.  There were so many faces I remembered (and even some names) and several of them remembered me as well even though it has been 13 years.

(In the room that serves a the chapel, sort of Left to Right but not identifying everyone: Michele Pelle, ?, Valentina Pelle, Sister Pelle, Me, Brother and Sister Mont'Alto, (back - The DiMilatos, Angelo Asturi), Antonio Pelle)


The family I knew best when I served in Savona was the Pelle family.  Brother Pelle was the branch president.  They invited us over for lunch and it was fun just visiting with them and relaxing at their home. Austin even had a blast playing with their toy monster truck. Brother Pelle is now serving as second counselor in the stake presidency there, so we were fortunate to visit on a week he was at home.

This was a photo that Brother Pelle had of us from way back when I served there.

After eating lunch with them we just walked around Savona a little.  The photos below are from, and of, the Priamar Fortress.

After seeing the castle, we walked through the town a little too before returning to our hotel in Varazze (which is 20 or so minutes away).

Visiting The Werdenfelser Land - South Upper Bavaria

This last weekend we decided to visit Zugspitz, the highest of the Wetterstein Mountains (a section of the Alps) and the highest peak in Germany at 9,718 ft. There are cable cars that go to the top of this peak, and there is a ski area near the top of the mountain.

Our drive to the peak took us about an hour longer than we expected since the two lane road to the mountain was jammed with skiers. At least this gave us some time to admire the Ehrenberg Castle ruins that we saw up on a small mountain/large hill along the way. If we'd had the time, I would have loved to explore the ruins. There are apparently well maintained trails going to them. I was fascinated by these ruins, so I looked up some information on them when we got home. Apparently, the Ehrenberg Castle was started sometime in the 12th century. For over 200 years after its complete abandonment at the end of the 18th century, it remained a remote unvisited ruin, but in 1992 it was made into a visitor's attraction with some attempts at reconstructing parts of it (thus the roofs on the circular towers that don't quite fit in with the rest of the ruin).

There are actually four castle ruins in this same area. You can see the ruins of the Schloßkopf, which was the most recent building dating from the very beginning of the 1700s, in the picture below on the hill above the Ehrenberg ruins. Again, attempts have been made recently at reconstructing it in part.

 

On the ride up

Finally we reached the cable car to the Zugspitz after about three hours riding in the car. We were actually in Austria at that point since we had decided to ride up to the top from that side of the border. We got our tickets, which were very pricey costing us 75€ for two of us (Austin was young enough that he was free). Then we boarded the large cable car and enjoyed the scenic ride up the mountain.

The top was beautiful. Luckily, it was a pretty clear day (otherwise we wouldn't have bothered going to the top to start with). It is said that you can see over 400 peaks in four different countries from the top, however we didn't count. It was also very cold at -10°C (14°F), and it was pretty windy too, which made it feel even colder. We really enjoyed the great view, but I think I would have enjoyed it a bit more if I hadn't been freezing cold.

We couldn't really get to the actual tip-top of the mountain peak, which you can see behind us in the picture below. There was a path too it, but it didn't look very accessible (or safe) given the icy snow, the steep climb, and the stiff chilly wind. I doubt it was even open, and certainly no one was using it!

Austin took a ride on the wooden mountain goat at the top. We actually saw some real mountain goats on the ridges as we rode back down the mountain too, though unfortunately we weren't able to get any pictures of them.

After getting down from Zugspitz, we ate the lunches we had packed and headed to the Partnach Gorge (Parnachklamm). The gorge is 2,303 ft long (702 meters) and up to 260 ft (80 meters) deep. During the 18th century, locals would transport fire wood on timber rafts on the water through the gorge from the Reintal valley to town of Partenkirchen below, which was a dangerous process. The gorge was designated as a national monument in 1912 and the area was developed with a trail for visitors. We paid a small entrance fee of 2.50€ per adult visitor.

We found the gorge to be very wet, narrow, and absolutely beautiful! The steep walls and water reminded us of the slot canyons and narrows in Southern Utah. Only, because a trail had been carved into the side of the rock, we didn't have to walk through the water. The trail was actually pretty dark and sometimes went into dark tunnels. Water dripped down and off of the walls onto our heads in many spots, making Nate wish he had brought his coat with a hood. Tiny waterfalls streamed down the rocks too in some spots. I am so glad we went here. It was really fun to see and in many ways I like liked it even better than Zugspitz.

Originally, we had hoped to also visit the Linderhof Palace, but we didn't have time to make it before it closed at 4:00. While I would like to see the inside of the main palace, the gardens and garden buildings there are of particular interest to me. Unfortunately, they don't open until April, so even if we had made it there we couldn't have seen them. So, the Linderhof Palace will have to wait until we return to Europe on some other trip.

Instead, we headed to Ettal to see the Benedictine Abbey there. The abbey was originally founded 1330 but was largely destroyed in a fire and rebuilt in Baroque style under the plans of Enrico Zuccalli during the first part of the 18th century. However, Zuccalli's plans for The building's façade and towers were not completed until the early 20th century.

I was fascinated to also learn that during WWII, many of the people in Ettal were part of a conspiracy against Hitler. Theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer (who was eventually hung just 23 days before the German's surrendered for his involvement in plans to assassinate Hitler) was friends with the Abbot there and spent several months as his guest. While there, Bonhoeffer worked on his book Ethics.

Unfortunately this abbey is also know for recent scandals. In 2010, ten priests at the abbey were arrested for sadistically tormenting and sexually abusing boys at the monastery school there. Most of the abuses took place in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s.

Of course, I didn't know most of that while we were there. We were just happy the church was open so we could go inside and see its incredible interior. It was darker than ideal at that point for pictures, but it was still well worth seeing!

After seeing the abbey we walked over to a nearby hotel restaurant to eat before driving back to our apartment. We decided to order the family spread since cost wise it came out to be more economically than all of us ordering separate dishes. We were still surprised to see just how large it was! It was great though because it had plenty of items that everyone, including Austin, enjoyed.

Living in Germany

We have now been living in Germany for just over two months, and it has been quite the experience. Our time here is now nearing its end. We have posted a lot about our various sight-seeing excursions, but I thought I should post about some of the more day-to-day things we have experienced here from the things we like, we dislike, and the things that are just plain different.


Food
While German food isn't bad, it is generally not exactly anything to get super excited about either. If you like meat and potatoes though, then Germany is perfect for you, because that seems to be what they eat the most of here. We have tried various schnitzels, sausages, kartoffelknödel (potato dumplings), and schupfnudeln (potato noodles). There has been kartoffelsalat (German potato salad) and basic potatoes boiled in salt water (both of which are definitely not very exciting dishes to us). There are potato festivals and lots of other potato-related things here as well. We have also eaten spätzle, fresh pretzels, and other German breads. I actually like the spätzle in the dishes I have had with it quite well. We have also had what I think is called Fleischkäse. Its texture and taste is a lot like a hot dog, but it is sold in loafs or thick rectangular slices. I was told by a ward member here, Raphaela, that a piece of Fleischkäse sandwiched in a roll is the German version of fast food.  We also tried Flammkuchen, which actually originates from the Alsace region of France, and is like a very flat crispy pizza that is covered in something similar to cream cheese and topped with other various toppings as desired.

Desserts, such as krapfens (pastries that look a lot like filled doughnuts) tend to be more exciting. I particularly loved the apfelkücherl we had once, which were apple rings coated in batter, deep fried, and then coat in cinnomon sugar and served with vanilla ice cream. German desserts are overall less sweet than American desserts, which isn't always bad.

Of course we love the chocolate here! We have been trying to take full advantage of it, and most of the time we share a square or two of good chocolate together in the evenings. On the other hand, the hot chocolate here that we've had tends to be a lot stronger than what we are used to back home, and we don't like it as well.

Our failed Kartoffelknödel

We have also tried making some German recipes, sometimes with more success than others. For example, our schnitzel seemed to turn out alright, but our potato dumplings from scratch were a complete and utter failure. We tried the kartoffelknödel again from a mix with a great deal more success.

There are a number of things one can buy here that I haven't ever seen in the stores back home, and there are also a lot of things that I normally buy at home that are difficult to impossible to find here. One simple example is cheese. There are all sorts of cheese here available for everyday use in the stores, a number of which I really like. Gouda seems to be one of the most common cheeses, and we use it most often. However, you can't get plain cheddar cheese here. That has made some dishes turn out a bit different. Tacos with Gouda cheese just don't seem quite the same. Luckily, Raphaela took me to the store with her a couple weeks after we got here to help show me some things I could do and make. That proved to be very helpful!

Another thing we have learned about preparing food here is that people don't use microwaves. We realized a few days after being here that we didn't seem to have a microwave in our apartment, even though the listing for the apartment had said one was included. When we asked about this, our landlord brought a microwave up to us and went off for awhile about how Germans never use microwaves. Only Americans use microwaves. (As usual, we couldn't understand most of what he was saying since he doesn't speak any English.) When Nate went looking for a microwave to heat up his lunch at work one day, his co-worker informed him that microwaves "make your food dead."


Shopping
Unlike back at home, there are generally not any large stores here with lots of different departments. We usually go to a couple different stores to do our grocery shopping: a basic less expensive store, and a slightly more expensive store that carries a variety of more specialized items. Many stores do not accept credit/debit cards, and people seem to use cash a lot more here than they do back home. Nearly all stores here open around 8:00 in the morning and close at 8:00 in the evening. That is not a problem in most cases, but occasionally it would be nice for us to have stores open a little later in the evenings since it would make shopping easier to get done after Nate gets home (with the car) from work. Almost everything is closed on Sundays, which is nice.

Grocery carts are kept chained together at the stores, and to get one you must insert a euro coin into a mechanism on the handle to release it. You can get your coin back out of the cart when you return your cart and chain in back in place. Grocery stores do not provide grocery bags. If you want a bag, you have to pay for it or bring your own. No one bags your groceries for you or helps you with them in any way, and you are expected to clear your groceries off the counter as quickly as possible after the checker scans them. You can then move out of the way and place your purchased items in your own bags if you so choose.

As we knew it would be, everything here is a great deal more expensive. The fact that gas is so pricey no doubt contributes to this. It costs us roughly $8.00/gallon here. I do like how the cost of tax is always included in the listed price at stores though. This makes it easier to calculate how much your total will be.


Laundry and Mold Prevention
Doing laundry here has been a real pain. I am highly looking forward to having use of our own washer and dryer when we return home. The washing machine we have here is very small, and it takes two and a half hours to wash a single load. I guess this is because it is supposed to be "energy efficient," though I can't fathom how running a washing machine for over two and a half times as long as our "energy efficient" washer at home can possibly be even more efficient. I do know that the washing machine heats up the water itself, but other than that, I am not sure what takes it so long. Whether or not these long wash cycles are energy efficient or not though, they are definitely not time efficient.

I think I spent roughly two to three hours trying to figure out how to do a batch of laundry here the first time around. Our machine is built differently from most, since it loads from the top, and then the barrel has flaps that lock closed before you can put the lid down. I wasn't sure what all the different settings on our machine were, how much laundry detergent to use, or or where to even put the laundry detergent and fabric softener in our machine. While looking all of this sort of information up, I also came across tips for drying laundry in Germany when you didn't have a drying machine (which most people don't). The number one suggestion was to lay laundry out across the radiators during the winter. This seemed like a very good suggestion...and so our real laundry troubles began.

The landlord came up the next day I did a batch of laundry to show me where to hang things up to dry outside. We got an email from them asking us to not dry things on the radiators since the landlords seem to believe this causes mold in the apartment by adding to the humidity. We also were told to open our window while doing laundry to let things air out. Since we aren't flipping the heating bill, I complied and have been regularly airing out our whole apartment since even when it has been freezing cold. Even so, we have gotten plenty of reminders about airing out the apartment. Our landlords are seriously paranoid about mold. It seems that they have windows open in their own unit nearly 24/7. Plenty of other people crack their windows here to air things out, but our landlords seem to take it to the extreme and seem to expect us to do the same.

Anyway, to make a very long story shorter, I went for about two weeks in which I couldn't do a single batch of laundry without comment or intervention from our landlords. I learned that they wanted me to drag our wet laundry downstairs and hang it up in their very open yard around back. I learned that I don't hang laundry on the drying racks right and that hanging laundry on the guard rails outside the back doors of our apartment disgraces our landlords to the neighbors. We were told that we seemed to be running our washing machine constantly and should try to do less laundry and make sure all our loads are full since water here is very expensive. (As if I would ever try to do more laundry than I had to, especially with it being so time consuming and sure to draw the ire of our landlords in some way here.) I am sure part of the problem was that there was a language barrier between us and the landlords, but I was dreading every time I had to do any laundry.

We finally bought our own drying rack and I started hanging up our clothes to dry in the apartment while leaving the window open to air things out in order to appease the landlords while keeping our laundry more private. We emailed the home company (the company who helps match rental units up with renters) and told them that we wanted to be left alone to do our own laundry as we saw fit. Things got better after that, although just recently we got another email from the landlords telling us again to hang our clothes outside so as to prevent mold in the apartment, which I refuse to do for multiple reasons at this point. If anything causes mold to develop in our apartment, it most certainly will not be a few clothes hanging out to dry. We put far more humidity into the air than drying clothes through other household activities such as cooking, showering, cleaning, doing dishes, ironing, etc.


Garbage
The first thing I noticed about garbage here was the everyone's garbage can was relatively small. I didn't realize just how small they were though until I went to throw a bag away and found that the bottom of the inside of the can was only about 1/2 to 2/3rds of the way down. I think our regular kitchen garbage can holds about as much as a single outside garbage can here. Furthermore, as far as I can tell, the garbage collection is only done every other week. There are three apartment units in this building (the landlord's and two others), and there are just two of these trash cans.

The bottom of the inside falls where the indentation is

Soon after moving into the apartment we were informed we couldn't throw anything in the trash can that wasn't also in a bag, and that we needed to sort all our trash in to various recycling groups. The recycle here luckily accepts a lot more items than our recycling system does back home or else I don't think we would have anywhere to put all the trash. We have a number of different bags around our apartment for different recyclable items, and after they are full we place them outside where our landlord gathers them and drops them off somewhere that they are supposed to go.


Getting Around 
We have been very blessed to have a rental car provided to us by Nate's company, so we haven't had to rely on public transportation much. Our car has a manual transmission, which took some time to get used to even though we both know how to drive a stick-shift. Driving around here still makes me a bit nervous though. The roads are much narrower. I know lots of people love roundabouts but I am really not a huge fan of them, especially the multi-lane roundabouts they have here at some more major intersections or the confusing roundabouts with about eight different entrances/exits.

I have also noticed that people here tend to drive with their horns. Many people don't hesitate to honk at you, even at times when it is obvious that there is nothing you can do about a situation and the honking isn't going to help.

As previously mentioned, gas is quite expensive here. So is parking when you go to the large cities. It often ranges from 1.50 - 3.00 €/hour.

A lot of people smoke here. Whenever we walk around outside in the cities we see lots of smokers and smell a lot of smoke. What drives me even more crazy though are the inappropriate pictures that I see out in full view of everyone and everything. We especially tend to see these risque and pornographic pictures while driving around the large cities, but I have also seen them when I least expect it while walking through stores. For example, while visiting a friend from church in Donauwörth, we walked into a Müller store and came across a large card prominently displayed with a picture of a provocative fully naked woman on it. That was just after my friend had finished explaining that all the school children go there after school to get things before they go home, and indeed while we were there the store filled up with children who were just getting out of school. Especially after coming from conservative Utah, I am not accustomed to dealing with such things, and with definitely not miss them when we return home. Apparently people here are generally much more accepting of such things. For example, one of Nate's co-workers told him about a movie at work that he thought was the best movie of the year. Nate looked it up on kids-in-mind.com and found it had the worst ratings possible in almost every category.

Of course, walking around the big cities is still be fantastic, as we have detailed in previous posts. Austin and I have also enjoyed a number of walks closer to home, especially as the weather has warmed up recently. We discovered a lake not too far from our apartment that is obviously popular for fishing and has trails going all around its perimeter. We haven't gone there often, because the dirt trails get very muddy whenever it rains. We have gone when we can though, and we went there on a family walk today.

I love this picture of Austin being confused by Nate's expression, which he made expressly for dramatic effect:

Austin doesn't walk fast, but Raphaela kindly lent us a portable stroller to use while we were here. We use it all the time and have been very grateful for it! Speaking of strollers, we find it interesting that people here bundle up their babies and young children in very small sleeping bags in their strollers when they go out.


Sleeping
One of the things that has actually been the quite annoying for us here is the way beds are set up. From what we have seen, Germans don't seem to believe in sheets, or at least not the kind that you put over you. Every bed we have seen and slept in has only a heavy blanket on top. Actually, beds for couples have two: one for each person. While the bed in our apartment is just a double bed, most beds for couples we've seen actually are two twin beds made up separately and just pushed together. We find these arrangements, particularly the blanket arrangement, very awkward and uncomfortable. Not only do we prefer being under the same blanket when we sleep, it is also annoying if you are too hot or too cold. You can have your heavy blanket on, off, or partway on, but there aren't many other options for adjusting the blankets.

Beds at our hotel in Salzburg: perfect example of the norm here

Weather
The weather here has been surprisingly mild during our visit. Based on what we looked up before we came, we expected the weather to be very similar to what it was at our home in Utah. However, this has been the mildest winter here that they have had here for a long time. It has been cold, but not as cold or snowy as we thought it would be. We certainly aren't complaining about that. The cold here feels especially cold to me because the humid air seems to cut through my clothes and seep into my skin. Right now the weather is here is gorgeous though. It is definitely spring, and this last week I have started to see trees that are starting to flower and gardens that are starting to be filled with flowers.