Be Wanderlustful: Fasching and Linderhof Palace/Oberammergau

Life is Germany is awesome! The weather is absolutely gorgeous today! I'm sitting on my porch in a camping chair with my feet propped up while writing this blog. It's snowed some recently but then there have also been warmer days in between (like today). My job is going pretty well. I worked two doubles this past week because Alpine needed help with their Kid's World nights. So Thursday and Friday I worked in IT all day then played with kids for 4.5 hours. The first night we had a pirate theme so the employees dressed up like pirates - pirate tattoos, eye patches, hats, scarves, etc. It was a lot of fun. We even had a plank for the kids to walk as they entered the main room where dinner was served. There were 35 kids the first night and about 140 kids the second night! Talk about total chaos! I was in charge of the crafts the second night, which wasn't too bad. We had a drawing competition and they had to draw their favorite thing about Germany. The good thing about working the craft section was that a bunch of kids made me pictures :) Dinner time was craziness with 140 kids needing water, ketchup, more fries, etc. and there were a few injuries...a busted lip, broken/bleeding fingernail, and a few timeouts.

Art work from the kids - yay for fridge decorations :)

Beautiful sunrise one morning! I walked out on our porch in my PJs to soak it up! :)

Same sunrise - gorgeous!

Fresh Snow!!

YAY for SNOW!! :-D

Fasching (Mardi Gras celebration) ended last week. There was a series of events leading up to Ash Wednesday. There was a big Fasching Party at Zumrassen (a pub with a large beer hall which was cleared for dancing that night), then hut-to-hut where people night sled, ski, or snowboard from each hut to hut on the mountain. I was going to sled down the mountain on hut-to-hut but ended up working all day. There were several injuries from the night - two of our employees got stitches! ouch and there were quite a few bruises the next day. It's more dangerous for sledders so I might wait til I can either ski or snowboard down! There will definitely be opportunities where it's just sledders! maybe a little safer...

Terri and I aka Zoro and Cat!

Mouse (Sabrina), Venice girl (Kari), and Zoro (Me)

I went on a group tour through the hotel the other weekend. The amazing thing is that all tours are free to employees!!! We went to Linderhof Palace and then to the town of Oberammergau. Linderhof Palace is one of King Ludwig II's castles. It was much smaller than I was expecting. It is the smallest of his three castles and the only one he got to see completely finished.

The front of the Palace

The side of the Palace

Swans! They capture four swans each year to put in the pond at the palace but apparently they never stay longer than a month. They had been there for one week when we were there!

The Passion Play is held in Oberammergau every ten years - the next one will be in 2010. It's an adorable little town. All the houses have paintings on the facade telling different stories. My favorite were the two orphanages we passed when going into town - one had the Hansel and Gretel story painted on the side, the other had the Little Red Riding Hood story painted on the side.