Why I Love Homeschooling:

Fabulous field trips!

For instance, we just returned from Garmisch, Germany! My husband had a work conference in Garmisch, so we tagged along for the week. We drove through Croatia and Slovenia, through the mountains of Austria, then through the farmlands of southern Germany until we arrived in Garmisch. Garmisch is nestled in a valley beneath the tallest mountain in Germany, which is named Zugspitze, and towers above at 2,964 meters. Garmisch-Partenkirchen hosted the 1936 winter Olympics. Many people go there on holiday and it is a real skiing hot-spot in winter. We have even made plans to go back in the winter and ski there!

While my husband was busy with the conference, the kids and I ventured out into the cozy little town. There is an army base located there, so of course, we wanted to check that out. It was a small base, but it had all the necessary stuff. We strapped Clara into the stroller and walked around, breathing cool mountain air, and stepping on freshly fallen orange leaves. Autumn was just beginning to make its grand appearance, but it was warm enough that week that we never needed a jacket. I love the crisp, cool days of this time of the year!



I was mesmerized by the paintings adorning so many of the buildings and homes in Garmisch. The colors were incredible and the scenes were many times biblical ones. Sometimes a whole wall was taken up this way. I had never seen anything like it. Red flowers bloomed happily in window boxes, where the four-paned windows had painted gables. Cows grazed on the mountain grass with their cowbells jingling around their necks. Even though the population was roughly 25,000, it seemed like a small town, where we could easily drive around with a simple map. In fact, our boys took turns navigating and taking us to places of interest.




One morning we rode up the mountain in 2 passenger ski lift cars and hiked our way back down, winding our way to Partnachklamm Gorge. It was exciting to see the boys understand the meaning of the word "gorge." The gorge was beautiful with its narrow mountain walls, raging river below, and sometimes little waterfalls which fell from the heights above us. Sometimes we stooped over to get through short and dark passageways. Clara was with Dad in our Baby Bjorn front carrier the whole time, which she loves.

We ate at Gasthof Fraundorfer on the last night of the conference. This was a true cultural experience! Nearly everyone, except us, guzzled beer from their enormous beer glasses. I ordered the Bavarian specialty of smoked pork chops, mashed potatoes, and saurkraut. I have always enjoyed the tartness of saurkraut on a Reuben sandwich, but I sure couldn't eat the whole pile of it they heaped on my plate that night. It was good, but way more kraut than I needed! The chops were tender and tasty, and the mashed potatoes had a little mysterious topping of some kind (flavored, buttery bread crumbs??) which made them quite good. While we dined, we were treated to the music of an accordian player, and later on the traditional leg slapping-dancing of two young German gents who were stationed right beside our table. My legs hurt after watching how hard they slapped themselves and the bottoms of their shoes to put on a show for all of us tourists. Whew-eee!



I'm off to bed now... More to write about this trip later though!