Weekend 1: Camping in the Trees

Week 1 and 2 I learned that while taking initiative to get things accomplished is not necessarily a bad thing, my planner personality needs to chill out and enjoy what I'm seeing/doing.

This week, my Type A-ness took a hit when we reached Wednesday and had no idea where we were going for the weekend. No hostels booked, no train tickets purchased, and everyone else seemed to have everything finalized. So, week 3: I learned to go with the flow. 

Pinterest came to the rescue. Taylor and I had both pinned this way back:

"Tree Camping in Germany"

It was just something that looked cool, but would never really happen. Unless, of course, it's Wednesday and you have no weekend plans. At that point, tree camping is a genius idea. 

We did all the necessary research, had a broken conversation with the sweet German woman at the campsite, reserved a guide via email, and our plans were made! Slightly insane, incredibly expensive, but when the heck else in my life am I going to sleep hanging from a tree over mountains in Germany? My main rationale was, "Thousands of people have 'pinned' this, but how many of those thousands will actually do it?!" So while most of our friends took off to Paris and Berlin, we left Friday morning for Munich, after a slight delay and revision of plans courtesy of our faithful funders... 

We are experts at the train thing now, and while I do miss my big red truck quite a bit, I actually really love the public transportation scene. Plus given that I don't think my 6'4" father could fit in a single car I've seen on this continent, the F-150 might stand out just a tad. 

Anyway, we switched trains 4 times for this leg of the trip, with just one minor mishap where we got off about 5 stops too soon. Once again, traveling as a pair is 1000x easier than in a big group. Get off train, check for platform number, get on train. No worrying about stragglers or anyone thinking it should be done differently and no standing in line for 20 minutes to wait on every single person to buy a ticket then a candy bar then a drink, etc. I might have a slight preference between the 2 options... 

I'm getting used to people looking at me like I'm an idiot. I feel like we look super American, so it always surprises me when people start talking to me in their native language. Ignorant, I know. But the train conductor caught me at an all time low today. He must've gone through 4 different languages before I finally understood he was asking for tickets (because what else would a train conductor want as he stands by your seat...hello, Madeline), and as he walked away I thanked him. In Spanish. Classic. And not embarrassing at all, for myself or for my faithful travel buddy. 

The longest the first day was the 5 hour train from Cologne to Munich, but we got a little homework and a little napping done before arriving in Munich around 3:15. We had booked a relatively cheap hotel so we once again learned yet another new metro system to get ourselves there and checked in. 

Our hotel was an upgrade from our originally booked hostel, and the beds were up to par with the aforementioned Montreux situation. But we forced ourselves out of them to go into the city square. We had our trusty Rick Steves audio tour, but decided to use the map to do our own thing. The downtown area was busy but we both really liked the unique Munich vibe.

Hotel Schleuse

Marienplatz ("Mary's Square")

Münchner Kindl

Frauenkirche ("Church of Our Lady") 

  

We were starving so we found a little Italian place set in the gardens of the Residenz and stopped there for dinner. There was even some ballroom dancing going on in the gardens, so that was some great entertainment before getting some Haagen-Dazs (the new debate: German or American company?) and heading back to our hotel to rest up for camping.

We checked out at 7am Saturday morning and took a free bus to the free train. Shout out to the great taxpayers of Munich for free transportation. 

Our trip to Pfronten was only an hour and a half or so, and we were met at the train station by the owner of the ropes course, Thomas. We drove a couple minutes to the ropes course and he got us all settled in and introduced us to the staff. 

This town immediately reminded me so much of Telluride. It's in a beautiful valley, for one, but the people are similar too. Everyone is just so relaxed. I literally had to ask if he wanted me to pay, and we spent a lot of the day just waiting to be told what to do because they're just so laid back. Our fee for the evening included everything- ropes course, archery, hiking, food, etc. 

We decided to take the short hike near the base hut first. We took too many pictures of the exact same thing, but it's just hard to not want to capture this incredible beauty.

We ate our lunch at the top of the mountain then made our way back down. 

Next was the ropes course. Disclaimer: heights, with the exception of ski lifts, for whatever reason, are probably my biggest fear. So this was a big step for me.

Proud moments. We spent 2 hours doing several of the courses they offer, then took off our harnesses to meet our guide, Stefan Guggemoos. He was about as German as "Guggemoos" would suggest and as attractive as "Stefan" sounds. Good thing we hadn't showered in 14 hours. 

He took us out to show us the archery options and walked away glad to not have been hit by an arrow from one of us. I have a lovely bruise where the string whipped forward and hit my double-jointed arm, a bruise on my knee where I gracefully ate it while following Stefan to the very first target, and thus a slightly wounded pride. It was somewhere around the 4th target that we had to stop and wonder, "Who the heck are we..." Archery and ropes courses in the middle of some random German town with tree sleeping at the end of the day. What.

We tired of archery pretty quickly, so we met Stefan back at the hut to learn how to climb up to our beds that night. I wish I could explain exactly how we did it, but I don't think I could ever recreate it, much less explain it in text. Suffice to say it was not by pure upper body strength as I had feared, so I made it to the top without too much struggle. Stefan, of course, can climb the x-amount of meters (I'd guess close to 30 feet) in about a quarter of the time it took us. His arms were literally bigger than my legs. It's fine. 

By this point the families that had been on the ropes course all day had started to clear out, leaving us with Stefan and Thomas for dinner. We had been told we were having barbecue, but in Germany who knows what that means. Well, meat. It means a lot and a lot of meat. Delicious meat, not sausage and brats. Thank goodness.

I'm not kidding when I say it was the best meal we've had yet. Pork, steak, garlic bread, bell peppers, and red wine. For dessert, something Thomas called "banana boats"- a banana, still in the peel, sliced down the middle with a chocolate bar in the middle then cooked in the grill. It looks nasty, but it was incredible. A new recipe to bring home to the States, for sure.

Thomas, the owner of Waldseilgarten and our chef for the evening

We got to know a little bit about Waldseilgarten (the company) from Thomas while we ate- he has been building ropes courses forever, but opened his own in 2006. He's lived in Pfronten all his life and has a wife and 3 kids, ages 5-14. He is among the first to offer tree camping, but he says other guides ask him about it all the time, so he expects competition to start popping up in the future. 

Stefan is 26, a student in Innsbruck, but grew up in Pfronten. He's studying sociology but wants to be a mountain man and work as a ski guide in Canada. Like, marry me already. 

Here's Taylor's take on Stefan:

Fortunately for us, our guide for the weekend was a greek god with a german accent. Stefan: the pinnacle of strength and beauty. Needless to say, we thoroughly enjoyed being served dinner and breakfast by a young Matthew Mcconaughey in hiking boots. A mountain man with an affinity for both reading and photography… a boy after my own heart. Unfortunately, he couldn't fit in my backpack. Auf Wiedersehen, Hercules. 

So delicious dinner. We enjoyed our last bathroom break for 12 hours and loaded up the car to drive to our campsite. We had to take a short hike from the car to the tree, then he did most of the work while we stood there and watched like idiots. We hoisted ourselves up like we had practiced around 8:45 and got settled in our sleeping bags (which are warm enough to be used for the igloo camping they do in the winter. No joke.).

Hiking to the tree

Our view from our bed

Sleeping in the trees! 

Mr. Mountain Man setting up our bed 

I don't think it would be an exaggeration to say this is the coolest thing I've ever done. We talked and ate chocolate and watched the mountains for a while. God put on a beautiful lightning show for us, which we probably enjoyed more than Stefan, who was sleeping on the ground. We fell asleep faster than either of us intended, and slept twice as long as we had any night before. It rained a little during the night, which Taylor slept right through, but I pulled the tent sides down and we stayed dry the whole time. Stefan, apparently, not so much. Oops. 

He got up before us and had breakfast waiting at this lake. Soft pretzels for breakfast. These people speak my love language: bread.

We loaded back into the car and he drove us to the train station where we got on the train and immediately found the bathroom. 36 hours without a shower does not look good on me, but it was well worth it. 

Stupid as it may sound, I had been kind of bummed to not be making a trip to Telluride this summer, but this weekend was the perfect fix. I will never get tired of simply staring at the mountains, and having amazing food, perfect weather, and my best friend as part of the package doesn't hurt either. Our random, hastily-planned weekend may turn out to be the one of the best- it certainly is the best thus far. 

Remember at the beginning of this post when I said we were experts at the train thing? Well #lawlz. One of our connections left from a different platform than it was supposed to and we sprinted to catch it, but the man wouldn't let us on. Commence frantic rescheduling of 15 different connections. We added 4 hours and €16 to our journey back to Maastricht. But, again, this weekend was about learning to go with the flow. 

As a side note, I HAVE become an expert on train station soft pretzels. In fact, they made up all 3 of my meals today, so there's that. 

At our hour long layover in Mannheim we got a little pick-me-up at McDonald's...desperate times call for desperate measures. 

We sat down outside a coffee shop in the train station and met a woman and her baby who invited  us to their church service that night. A man from their church was playing in the coffee shop, and his songs were in German, of course, but he was really good. Taylor bought his CD and we talked to Sylvia for a while about their church before we had to catch our next train. Whether it was her or her precious daughter or the music or even the McFlurry, we left the station a little more lively, which was a major plus. 

We finally made it back to Maastricht by 9:45, quite literally by some act of God. I will not post a picture of what I looked like by this point, I'll leave that up to the imagination. But it was about this time that I started to regret traveling with my roommate who can somehow always look like she just stepped off the runway while I look like a disheveled hobo tagging along behind and dragging my horrible stench with me. Not to mention my hair, which looked like I had dumped a vat of oil directly on my head. Cute stuff, people. Cute.

I squeezed in a shower before skyping with my family and my lovely GB. Perfect way to end this wonderful weekend! And she gave me a surprise that I'm not allowed to share yet... stay tuned :)