Bad Hindelang
Mom, Kris, the boys and I stayed in Bad Hindelang for 5 days. This is in the Allgäu Mountains of Germany/Austria. We were just on the German side. They are not very high, and in our area were mostly forested peaks with outcroppings of limestone. But nearby they get pretty exciting. It's a beautiful area where, especially in winter, you can find real solitude (despite what everyone says, yes it's true, even in Germany!). I've been there a few times for climbing or snowshoeing. Here is my account of a snowshoeing trip there alone last January. And here is my trip report describing a couple of days of rock climbing a year ago. Hereis a nice page on Summitpost about the range along with a map.
We rented a "Ferienwohnung" or "vacation apartment." This is very popular in Europe. This way you have a kitchen and can cook your own dinners, because eating out is expensive. You get to become a regular resident of the town for a while.
We stayed right in the center of Bad Hindelang. There was an excellent grocery store in walking distance, along with a bakery and some gift shops. Not much else! Though Mom and I had a really interesting walk through the cemetary behind the church. The gravestones were very beautiful. There seemed to be plenty of tragedies, especially one set of linked graves where three teenage boys died, probably in a car accident.
There was also an amazing greek restaurant. We had our favorite meal there, and Mom used the leftovers for days! Once we got pizza from next door, otherwise, we just let dinners come together in an ad hoc way at the last minute, with varying, but mostly good results.
Almost every night around 6 pm the cows would be driven through town from pastures on the valley floor into barns scattered around. That was very interesting! Here is Mom remarking on that:
Here was the view on our balcony:
And here was the general look of the countryside:
Mom took this picture of me and the boys playing in a cow pasture. They were very good and running but dodging cow manure:
One day we headed south to a mountain with a ski lift and a kind of sled you can ride down on tracks:
Afterwards we had an expensive but delicious lunch on the mountain. Mom got something with pfefferlingen mushrooms, and I got a steak. I don't remember what Kris got, but darn it, the poor girl doesn't usually find something she likes :-(. Elijah loves his train called "Diesel," and made me take pictures of it!
On the last day we went to another mountain summer-sled, which promised to be the longest in Germany. It was so much fun we did it twice. It was really, really, really fun! We tried to get Mom to try, but she told us how much she enjoys observing.
This was also the first time the boys rode a real ski lift, the kind they could jump out of if they went crazy. Happily they didn't go crazy :-).
