A little bit of history...

Not too much is happening around here at the moment, we're just getting used to living on our own again. Jer has been doing very well since her parents left for the MTC in Provo. I'm curious to see if that will continue once they are on a plane to Kenya. The day her parents left we both took the day off and just spent the day together. It was really nice to just do some chores and have lunch together, just a relaxing kind of day. Really didn't help with our attitude about working! Neither of us enjoy getting up at 5 am, especially when it means it's time to get ready to go to work.

I've been doing an indoor volleyball league, which has been a lot of fun, and Jer has started to play indoor soccer. Other than that we don't have too much going on during the week except for work and my church calling. I'm an advisor to the priest quorum. I have some great guys in there which makes it nice. Anyway, since there is not too much to update on right now I figured I could back up and go through some our experiences this past year. I think I want to start with our trip to Germany and Austria, which was in April of 2007.

This trip was fairly spontaneous. One of Jer's sisters has traveled out to Austria before and happened to hear about an airline deal. The flight was new, a direct shot from Denver to Munich, and the price ended up being half of what it would normally cost to go there. It took a whole two seconds for us to decide we were going, and another 2 seconds for us to decide that Jer should quit her job so she could go. I'm not sure which part she was most excited about, quitting her crappy job or flying to Germany. My money is still on quitting.

We booked the flight and I began planning all the rest of trip. For those that know us, this probably isn't much of a surprise. Jer hates to plan things and I can tend to go a little nuts if I don't have some idea of what is going on. Our wedding is a good example of that, but that's a story for another day. So we figured out when we would be leaving for Germany and how many days we wanted to be there. We decided to go to Austria for a few days and then spend the rest of the time in Munich.

When April arrived, we hopped on a plane and eventually made it over to Austria. Needless to say, after being on plane for that long we were not that excited to sit on a train for the next 3 hours. Jer slept, but I couldn't because I was so worried we'd miss our stop. Neither of us speak German, so at the beginning we were a little nervous about getting around. At one point we were wandering around the train station in Austria trying to ask someone where our next train was. Didn't help that it had a different name than we expected. But we made it just in time and got to the stop where we were going to walk to our Bed and Breakfast. Up a huge hill.

We made it to the B&B, and found another group outside waiting to get in. The owner wasn't there and nobody could find any keys to get in so we sat around waiting for the people that ran the place to show up. Hence the excited looks on our faces in the picture of us sitting outside the B&B. The people finally showed, then pointed out that the keys were right next to the door. Nice. We all went in and were shown to our rooms, and for some reason the group of guys got the room with the big bed while we got the one with separate beds. Go figure.

We spent the rest of that day and some of the next in bed sleeping, because by this time we were exhausted. After we got up we decided to go walking around the area. We ended up in Salzburg, which is like walking from Bountiful into Salt Lake. Wasn't too bad though, if you can tell from some of the pictures. We walked along a nice pathway that had a park, this was near some of the Mozart sights you can visit. Jer saw the little zip line and had to ride. And make me ride it. I bet you can see the enthusiasm on my face if you look really hard at that picture. Look real hard.

After the park we headed back to the main part of the city, where the big train station was, and got some more Coke. We learned to live of our Turkey Jerky, Swedish Fish and Coke while we were in Austria, since neither of us tend to be very adventurous in eating new things. If you ever go to either Munich or Salzburg, there is plenty of good food right at the main train stations! We did that almost every night in Munich, it was great.

As we walked around Salzburg we noticed a poster for a soccer game, and decided that would be something really fun to do. We jumped on the train and tried our best to figure out where we needed to go for the game. We got the right stop for the train, and had we been there on our own we would have been completely lost! Turns out we had to walk around a little before you can see the stadium from the train station. Luckily we had a group of fans to follow, so we did our best to blend in with the crowd. It was nice that everyone we had to deal with spoke English so we were able to get tickets, and they were great seats! It was a lot of fun to be there. Part of the fun is that our seats were with the crazy fans for the home team. In the pictures you can see there was one guy up on a stand with a megaphone and all game he just screamed at the fans, telling them what to cheer.

After the game we realized that there is no law against peeing in public. I think I counted 4 different guys just letting it go as we walked back to the train. One guy was about 10 feet away from a cop in riot gear. Awesome. We hopped on the train and headed back to our little town, then went to our room for the night. The next day we had a tour scheduled and then we were taking the train back to Munich.

Apparently there was this big movie made in Austria, some of you may have seen it. The Sound of Music, ever heard of it? Well, I have but have never had any desire to watch it. Don't worry though, I have now been on a Sound of Music tour through Austria. The best part being when we were travelling up to the lake district (beautiful country, some of the pictures are in the slide show) and they played the soundtrack to the movie. Some people sang along. Before the tour started they had asked if anyone on the bus had not seen the movie, had I raised my hand I would have been the only one on the bus that hasn't. Still haven't actually.

It really was a lot of fun, we loved seeing the country and having other people around us that spoke English and not German. At the end of the tour we got to walk through a great little town right by a lake and had lunch at this outdoor cafe. They had some weird type of food there, but we managed to get something to eat. We had a sandwich and then some desert, apple strudel. Highly recommended! We are in love with the ice cream over in Germany and Austria. I have no clue what they put in that stuff but we couldn't get enough. Every chance from that point on in our travels we would look for a place to get ice cream. I'm drooling on the keyboard as I write about it.

So, that is pretty much our trip to Austria. Jer may have a few things to add after she reads this, but I think I got most of it in there. Next time I have nothing to talk about I'll try to post something about Munich.