Last Winter In Germany

Unfortunately, our time in Germany is coming to an end. It's been a roller-coaster of emotions the past 3 years, but we're excited to be moving on as well. The one thing we've agreed that we're strangely going to miss the most: Christmas Markets.

December 2015 marked our last time for Christmas Markets. In 2013, when we were first exposed to Christmas markets, we were pretty ambivalent about them. However, they quickly became the most enjoyable part of Germany's long, dark and kind of miserable winters. To elaborate, Frankfurt averages 1500 hours of sunshine a year (about 125 days) with only 100-200 hours occurring during the winter months. What sun does appear is only visible between the hours of approximately 10 AM to 4 PM. I feel like we live in Alaska without the snow.

Anyway, Christmas Markets are pretty popular because they are just about the only thing to do during that time of year. Most a pretty similar as far as what they sell. It's mostly Christmas decor and some handmade items. Our local market has a honig markt (honey store) which sells all sorts of interesting things made out of local honey and beeswax. It's probably Greg's favorite place.

The best part of the markets is the food and gluhwine. That is what we will definitely miss the most.

Also, we were lucky enough this year that Greg's sister and brother-in-law came to visit during the winter months and were also able to enjoy the markets. Greg had a lot of fun planning things for them to do together so he could show them his favorite parts of Germany. It was nice to have visitors. Other than Greg's childhood friend who was living in Israel, we didn't get any other visitors while in Germany!

Over Christmas, we took another trip down to Garmisch with the intention of snowboarding. Unfortunately, the whether was unseasonably warm this year and there wasn't much snow on the On mountains. So, instead of snowboarding, we decided to spend our time hiking and site-seeing.

On our way, we stopped at Neuschwanstein Castle. Most people know this as the basis of Cinderella's Castle at Disneyworld.  It is one of the most popular tourist destinations in Germany. Most times of the year, you can take a shuttle or a carriage ride up and down to it, but we had to walk in the unseasonable heat because the castle was technically closed for the day. My opinion on Neuschwanstein? Unimpressed.

Neuschwanstein was built by King Ludwig who may or may not have been insane depending on which version of the story you hear. When King Ludwig came to power, he commissioned an insane amount of very expensive castles and palaces for himself, most of which he never actually lived in. Neuschwanstein's construction began in the 1860s and was never really finished. The project was expensive and over-the-top and a lot of corners were cut during production. The end result looks very beautiful from far away, but much less impressive close up. Actually, it looks like a poorly built sand castle when you're standing next to it. Only a handful of rooms on the inside are finished and King Ludwig only lived there for about 11 days. We didn't go inside the castle because we had heard from others that that tour was unimpressive for the price. There are much cooler castles in the Rhine Valley where we live. If you're particularly interested in the history of King Ludwig, his actual home was closer to Munich and apparently provides more background on his life and alleged insanity.

The next day in Garmisch, we went to the top of the Zugspitze to walk around and hang out. It was Christmas Day and everything in Garmisch was mostly closed, but the ski resort was obviously open. We didn't snowboard because there hadn't been snow in several weeks, but we did enjoy getting to walk around the peak which we hadn't done the last time we visited. It was much more relaxing that our usual snowboarding trips.

The next day, we got up early to beat the crowds to Partnachklamm, a gorge not far from our hotel. We were lucky we got there so early because there was no one around as we walked through. Partnachklamm is a very beautiful walk next to a river running between two mountains. It was cool and icy and the water was light blue like glacier runoff. There were these unusual fields filled with ice crystals which stuck up in all directions from the ground and rocks. I'm certainly no expert, but I assumed it was because of the unusually warm weather combined with the cool, damp gorge air.

We had a fun and surprisingly relaxing trip, and were sad to return home. Luckily, we already had another trip planned to London two weeks after we returned!

*Note: I realize most of these pictures are not of Christmas markets or winter. Since we had such a late start to winter, we got some great pictures of the vineyards near our home changing colors which I thought would be more fun to share.*