Well, it's been a while since we've posted anything.  That's because our lives are either extremely boring, or too busy.  Yes to both.

Anyway, we just returned from Germany after having a great time visiting with Daniel and Rachel.  We arrived in Berlin after getting maybe 15 minutes sleep on the way over.  We then tried to stay up until a normal bedtime.  We mostly made it.  We had mostly adjusted to the time within a couple days (although Anne used the jet lag excuse for quite a few days after that ).  Some of the best pictures from our trip are in the photo album on the right.

The next day we went around Berlin looking at a couple sites, a Holocaust memorial, a church, stuff like that.  The next day we took off on a 9 hour train ride to Innsbruck.  That was pretty nice.  We had a cabin that we shared off and on with two other people.  Traveling by train is much nicer than traveling by plane. 

We made it to Innsbruck that night, but our hotel never got our reservation.  Thank goodness Dan is pretty good at German now.  They carted us off to another hotel (which we think was nicer).  We had hoped to walk back to the train station after getting to the hotel to get something to eat, but the new hotel was too far away.  So we convinced the restaurant on the first floor of the hotel to let us order a meal (even though it was almost 10PM).  Somewhat of a mistake.  Expensive.  But very good.  And the best Pilsner I've ever had.

The next day we boarded a bus towards a small town above Innsbruck, looking for a place to hike.  We found it in Igls.  About a 10km hike across hills, through forests, across a field full of blackberries being pollinated (I've never heard so many bees before, kinda creepy), more forest and fields.  Very cool.  It would have been nice to spend a few more days there, beautiful place.  That evening we walked around the old city of Innsbruck, had some great pizza, and more of that wonderful beer.  Afterwards Anne got hungry for some dessert and back we went. 

The next day we traveled to Munich.  That hotel wasn't quite as nice, but the free breakfast was wonderful (it had scrambled eggs and AMERICAN coffee).  We saw a few sites, but in general we felt there were too many people in Munich for our taste.  Next we traveled to Fussen.

In Fussen was Neuschwanstein.  The fairy castle that was the inspiration for the Disney castle.  Rainy, drizzly day.  The clouds were pretty cool as the mist wrapped around the castles, but it was a little bit yicky.  I wish we had more time to hike around there, since there were quite a few trails.

Well, we'll leave it at that for now.  Maybe I'll get back to describing the rest of the trip later.  Or not.  We'll see.  Suffice it to say that Dan and Rachel are great hosts, and we had a wonderful time.  Thank you.