Well, not quite yet, anyway. But it wouldn’t hurt to pick up some lederhosen anyway. So versatile!

Our first day in Germany was one of the best days we have had on this trip. We ended up renting a house in Bischofswiesen which is very close to Berchtesgaden in the Bavarian Alps near the Austrian border. We got there around 10PM on the first night. We were welcomed by the elderly German man who owns the house that the apartment is attached to. He had insisted that we call him when we got there so he could pick us up, but we took a cab not wanting to inconvenience him. When we arrived he showed us every tiny detail of the apartment including how to turn on the television, but he was the nicest man. He kept running back and forth from the apartment to the house to grab something else for us—a map, some tea, a bus schedule.

Because it was incredibly dark when we got in the night before, we had no clue what we would find when we woke up in the morning, so we were pleasantly surprised to find mountains all around us when we walked outside. What I absolutely loved about the area was that we could walk everywhere. There were actual walking paths between all of the towns with painted signs hung on quaint wooden posts pointing the way to the town you wanted to get to. That first day we walked into Berchtesgaden and found that they were having a Sunday market. Fabulous. There were bands playing traditional music, people dressed in their finest lederhosen (not wearing it ironically, either), biergartens full of people, bratwurst and schnitzel as far as the eye could see. Not only that, but it was a perfectly sunny day and the town was framed on all sides by mountains whose sides were blanketed in trees displaying their brilliant fall colors and whose tops were dusted in just enough snow to be dazzling. The atmosphere was so congenial, so wholesome, that we didn’t even mind the crowds. Adam went so far as to say that he didn’t even mind the children. We walked around drinking in the sights and feeling totally content with life. Both of us had permanent smiles that day.

We walked into a shop looking for some meat and cheese to go with the bread and olive oil that we bought. The woman in the shop, who of course spoke perfect English, took us into the back and gave us samples of different cheeses and then picked out some meat that would complement it. When I asked about apple schnapps, she took us back into the other room and gave us each a taste of the apple schnapps and the apple liqueur that they had on hand. It was wonderfully warming to the tummy. We walked through more of the countryside and found everything to be, well, perfect. It was like walking through a pop-up book. I started to wonder if the German government takes over your house if you don’t keep it totally tidy and picturesque with overflowing flower baskets hanging out of every window. Another thing that was beautiful was that the cows there wear bells. They actually wear cow bells. Fantastic.

We went back to our little apartment that night overflowing with delight that we had picked such a lovely spot to stay for a week. We celebrated with our bread, meat, and cheese and tried some German wine. Every day is a good day when you’re traveling the world and not going to work, but some of those days are particularly outstanding. This was one of them.