Thursday, May 3, 2018

6. Schwarzwald: Look out Winter Olympics 2022



Corey, Mitchell and I headed to Cologne to pick up our rental car for the weekend. We got on a bus to get to the Cologne airport bus and Corey told me which stop to get off at. We got to our stop and I was in between the two doors and an older lady was trying to get on so I turned around and went towards the other door. The door closed right as I got to it, so I frantically pressed the stop button but the bus started moving and I watched Corey and Mitchell as the bus pulled away. I got off at the next stop and made it back to where the boys were waiting for me and we headed to the airport.  When we got to the airport we had to pay a deposit for our rental car but it was 700 and my credit was already maxed on my card, they told us they couldn’t put the amount on a debit card but we tried he tried both of my debit cards and thank god the last one he tried, the card I almost didn’t even bring to Germany or to the weekend with us worked! So we have the car now, a cute little Opel everything is going good except now we can’t get out of the parking garage. I put the hazards on and we are sitting in the exit lane looking for a ticket that will let us out. Mitchell tries to speak with the guy on the intercom, but it we still couldn’t find the card. Finally we called our man Andy at the rental desk and he came down with the paper. We headed back to Bonn and picked up Nicky and IBK. All of a sudden, on our way out of Bonn the car won’t accelerate above 25, I had to pull over and put my hazards on again, this is twice in the past hour. We finally figured out what button got pushed and fixed the problem and took off!
Driving on the autobahn was really fun but also a little bit terrifying. There are stretches of road with no speed limits and cars, usually Audis and bmws, in the far left lane are going 200 km/hr. I got up to 180 km/hr. I think IBK thought we were going to die. Nicky is the best shotgun rider, she had a great playlist going and we basically sang the whole way there. 
We woke up Saturday morning to an amazing surprise, Corey and Mitchell came bursting in our room and told us it had snowed overnight!! That was the largest snowfall I have seen since I was in Chicago as a kid. We grabbed breakfast from a bakery and then went to catch a bus to the train to go to our hike! Our bus driver pulled over we saw a Mercedes that was stuck in the snow, our driver got out to help and we did too. After we pushed the car free we were off again. But eventually we came to a stop again. This time instead of a little car, a bus was stranded. We waited (I should mention we are the only people on the bus and our driver was amazing) while the bus driver helped the other driver maneuver the bus out.  We finally made it to the train and went to hike the waterfalls near Triberg, they were gorgeous and the whole place looked magical. We spent all day wandering along the trails and cross country skiing trails. We did what you would expect a group of students from Texas who have hardly ever seen snow would do. We had snowball fights, built forts and made snow angels. It was a great day. We had dinner in Triberg and tried to thaw out before we went back to our Airbnb for the night.
The next day we got up and Mitchell and Corey dug the car out of the parking lot and Mitchell helped guide me out. I have never driven in that much snow, snow so it was nice to have Mitchell along. We drove a little farther north and went cross country skiing. It was so fun. I have never skied before and they had two ruts cut into the snow to act like guides. Our second run down the hill I accidentally got one foot stuck in the guide and started going faster and faster, I couldn’t pizza to stop and soon I passed up everyone and ended up in a giant pile in the snow. I believe the term is “yard sale” when you wipe out so hard your gear is spear all down the mountain, well my skies came flying off but it was a blast. I never quite mastered stopping so anytime I had to stop I just braced myself and wiped out into snow banks. I really like cross country skiing and I think I got pretty good, by the end we were zipping down some decent sized hills. We skied all afternoon and then popped back on the autobahn to go home. This trip was one of my favorite weekend trips. It had its fair share of misadventures, but that just makes the memories better.

No comments:

Post a Comment