It's 3 am as I type this.  We got in around 10 pm last night and went straight to bed.  25 hours of travel to get home and neither of us slept so we were pretty exhausted.  Should help the jet lag.  Not complaining because 5 hours of sleep the first night should be pretty good.  The next three days until work week should be a haze of napping and getting things back together after having being gone so long.

Later.

Posting from a coffee shop in downtown Munich.  The San Francisco Coffee Company actually as strange as that may sound. Sneaking in a post whilst Heidi grabs us some beverages.  The Internet still proves to be elusive whilst traveling at hotels we've stayed at and I've ended up paying 19 Euro for a 1 month connection to T-Mobil.  The hour by hour and minute by minute charges just seem to be price gouging.

The coaching by horse and carriage for two days was a great way to see the country-side and the highlight of our trip.  I have many pictures and video to share.

We're doing Munich for 3 nights and two days.  Yesterday we did the Oktoberfest tents!  What a blast.  Today was our first day of bad weather.  It's been raining all day so we spent the afternoon in the Deutsches Museum, basically the equivalent of the Smithsonian.

Tomorrow we take the train back to Vienna and fly out Thursday morning.

Later!

We've arrived at the hotel "Forsthaus am See", forest house at the lake, tonight in Feldafing, Germany, about 45 min southwest of Munich.  Tomorrow Andreas picks us up for the Coaching trip and so this is the reason we are here as this is close to his stables.  It's quite the vacation area for well-to-do Munich citizens though.  Many million dollar mansions along the lake.  It reminds me of Lake Geneva, WI, the spot of rich Chicagoans to vacation.  Although I think the lake here is just a little deeper, and the view of the mountains (not sure which ones they are) on the horizon is quite spectacular.  My guess is we are headed in that direction tomorrow.  Should be interesting.

What I've gleaned in 1/2 day:

• There's a path that appears to go around the lake used by pedestrians and bikes.  Larger than the Lake Geneva one.
• The vegetation is much more like back in WI/IL than OR.  Less pine and more deciduous.  I can imagine when the leaves change here in a few weeks it will be beautiful.  This is in contrast to Baden-Baden, north of the Black Forest, which was more like OR, with many pine and they also grow Pinot Noir grapes for wine as well there.
• You gotta be rich to live here.
• Looks like you could create some nice singletrack for MTBing. :)
• More use of German.  The woman who picked us up at the trainstation, Bahnhof, English wasn't very good and we rely more on our German as we approach the less tourist area.  I had to order most everything today and communicate in German but don't let that scare you off.  Most know enough English to get by.  Partly I'm fueling my own desire to speak another language since I feel ignorant that I only know one.
• Cool tempuratures.  Jackets at night.  Jeans and long-sleeves during the day.  The driver said she hasn't seen the lake frozen in years though so probably quite temperate like Oregon and UN-like the Midwest.

I am feeling lazy so just wanted to let you know we are alive and well here and enjoying the city of Rothenburg.  Today is our last full day here and we'll be doing abit of shopping.  We plan to pickup a nice Black Forest cuckoo clock as a reminder of the trip.  Also a stop at the famous German Christmas store, Kathe Wohlfart, of which there are shops all over Europe.  I guess this town is their company headquarters.

I'll leave you with two shots taken yesterday.  The first is apparently a world famous part of this town where the old inner castle wall meets the newer outer castle wall.

The second is of a more humorous note.  A "Packer Backer".  Here in Germany.  I guess I shouldn't be surprised.  Wisconsin and Germany are fairly well linked and my old home territory.  So for your enjoyment is a Green Bay Packers fan sporting is hat... (and perhaps even a Harley-Davidson t-shirt although I'm not sure - try zooming in and see what you think).  I don't think he saw me taking his photo.

Later.

We are in Rothenburg now.  We are here for 4 nights.  As I type it is the 2nd night, just after 10 pm (although to post this may take awhile to type...).

What a beautiful city.  Rothenburg is an old medieval town surrounded by a castle wall.  We decided to spend a few extra days here to just relax.  It can be a pain to pack the bags every other day to go off to a new town, and basically waste some of your day traveling, and we would rather just enjoy the stay awhile.

The hotel we are staying at, the Kosterstuble, is beyond words.  Just take a look. 

We finally found some WiFi.  It's at the hotel, free and not great but better than paying 8 Euro for 1 hour.  Everytime I tried an upload a batch of photo's to flickr they bounce so I'm left to only loading up a few at a time for the blog posts.  I'll have to wait to get home to upload them all.

We went on this very fun Night Watchman's Tour the first night where we learned all about the town from a unique perspective.  The guy giving the tour has been doing it for 15 years or something.  He dressed the part, dressed in a cloaked robe with halberd in one hand and candlelit lantern in the other.  He gave the tour in English, albeit German accent, and interspersed it with some very funny commentary.  He even has a DVD if your interested, including some clips on the web if your interested in hearing his voice, maybe we'll pick up a copy while we are here.

The food at our hotel is good and we had a nice dinner the first night here outside.  Afterwards we went to this cool, Lord of the Rings, Hobbit-like place for drinks.  I'm enjoying this drink called Radler.  It's a mixture of beer and lemonade.

Today we did more exploring.  Up to the top of the 200 foot tower in the center of town.  We did the full 1.5 mile hike around the town on the castle wall, which is where I took the photo at the top of the post.  Also toured the Town Vaults and saw some dungeons, armor, etc.  Went through a couple of old churches and looked at things that were built, made or constructed bake in the 1400-1500s.  This stuff is old and it gives you an appreciation for what people were able to achieve so long ago.

I have to say that even though the Euro is stronger than the dollar, some things seem substantially cheaper here.  4 drinks at the bar and our bill is only 12-14 Euro.  I can get two scoops of ice cream in a sugar cone for 1 Euro.  And that's what we've been doing alot of.  Stopping at a small cafe.  Heidi has coffee and I have hot chocolate or tea along with a baked good (and there's so many baked goods here). 

We've had beautiful weather since we've been here.  Tonight was the first time it has rained and it only did so for about an hour after dinner.  We retired early tonight to just do some reading and more relaxing.

Tomorrow we need to do some laundry.  Then Heidi's going to get a manicure.  I on the other hand am going to see the best museum in the world of torture devices.  It's called the Medieval Crime Museum or Kriminalmuseum.  Also take a look at a craftsman museum by going through a house built in 1270.  That's old.

I'll leave you with this photo of the fountain in Market Platz. 

In medieval times the fountain provided water to the populace.  Notice the the pipes coming from the mouths of the faces on all four sides.  You'd move the metal rail you see so that the water would go into your bucket.  Also if you look at the yellow building on the right, you'll see what looks like a board sticking out almost at the top.  It's the old pulley used to haul grain, salt, etc, to the top of the building.  Every building here has these relics.  They stored about a years worth of dried goods here to keep it out of the rain, the roads used to be muddy and filthy (yes both animal and human waste) and for use in times of defense when the castle was under siege.

Danke schon!