Turkey Day in Germany

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We spent Thanksgiving Day here in Mannheim (well, Weinheim actually but close enough) with our friends. There turned out to be about 15 of us for dinner so it was a really nice sized group. Originally I had planned on having Thanksgiving dinner at our apartment but our group soon outgrew our apartment so my friend Catherine volunteered to have it at her house (that's where the Weinheim part comes in) but I still made the turkey and the stuffing.

Friday, November 27th
The next day (the 27th, which is where the blog really starts) Catherine and Adam, Megan and Joel, and Matt and I all drove down to Garmisch for some skiing for the weekend. As always, I'll tell you all about our B&B...especially because this was another great find for us! Haus Lilly is owned by a woman named Frau Maria Lechner who has got to be at least 70 years old. She's so sweet, speaks very little English, and makes GREAT apple strudel! I think we paid like 25 Euros per person per night for a 3 bedroom apartment and that included breakfast...pretty cheap considering that Eidelweiss Lodge (the US Army has a base and resort right there in Garmisch) is at least $150 per night and Haus Lilly was only a few minutes up the street. It's decorated a lot like your Grandma's house with outdated curtains and such but it was warm and clean and close to what we needed so it suited us perfectly.

We ate dinner at an Australian grill...I had crocodile (which is really good, by the way!) and Matt tried kangaroo (looked like steak and apparently tasted pretty gamey). Now for all of you who are reading this going "Oh NO! How could you eat a kangaroo?" (namely my sisters) to Australians kangaroos are like deer are for us here. They run wild all over the place, run across the highway and cause terrible car accidents, and are hunted to thin out the population. Look on YouTube for videos of kangaroos running across Nascar-like racetracks...it's interesting.

Saturday, November 28th
So today we got up, ate breakfast (which included Frau Lechner's infamous apple strudel) and headed up to the slopes. We were a little worried because we hadn't seen any snow yet but on the way up to the gondola that was supposed to take us up the mountain we started seeing plenty. Turns out the Zugspitze (which is what we boarded this day) is the highest point in Germany and is also a glacier. Pretty cool huh? It being the first run of the season I was a little rusty and it took me a little time to get the hang of things again. Matt, of course, was off and running. Catherine and I, not being able to go on the harder slopes, hung out together on the easier slopes for the day. Even so, we were pretty sore by the end of the day!

After boarding and skiing (the lifts stop running by 4pm because it gets dark so early) we headed to the PX on post. This PX had all name-brand ski and snowboard stuff...Burton, Jack Wolfskin, etc. I finally got to buy the snowboard bag that I'd been wanting (you can see it here).

We ate at a great little German place for dinner tonight and I had something that I couldn't pronounce again if my life depended on it but was so good! We were all pretty tired and made an early night of it.

Sunday, November 29th
Catherine and I were both too sore to go out again for another day so we stayed off the slopes and did some shopping instead. Turns out the slopes weren't so great today anyways...the wind was really blowing and the snow whipped around more like a sandstorm and made it difficult and painful to see what was going on around you. I did find a great deal on a Marmot winter coat at the PX that I had seen the day before and was thinking about getting. It's so warm! Catherine and I were also able to find some great Christmas presents here, which was great to be able to mark some people off my list.

Frau Lechner was really wonderful and let us check out late since everyone was on the slopes for the afternoon. We took pictures with her before we left (which I also posted on TripAdvisor) and she told us that we were very nice and we should come back and bring friends 😊

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