Hiking the Alps

Friday 4 – Sunday 6 December 2009

Martha’s younger sister, Magdalena, invited us over to her place in Antwort (a funny village cause the word means answer in German) near the Alps. She’s the real sporty kind, mountain climbing, biking, hiking, etc. She stays there with her boyfriend Hans.

Maggie & Hans' pad in Antwort

Germans are such hospitable people. Was raining the first day we arrived so we decided to do some swimming at the thermal pools. They had both indoor and outdoor pools where the water comes from the hot springs nearby. You can swim right in the open even though its snowing outside. There’s this icy cold pool you can enter before you jump back into the hot pool. My knee got a good bruising trying to get away from Jerry holding me in there long.

Went hiking in the snowy alps the next day! Weather was gorgeously beautiful. We’ve been lucky with the weather so far as each time we wanted to do some outdoor activity, the sun comes out. Scenery is amazingly beautiful covered in a blanket of snow. Hiked quite a fair bit to a guesthouse way on top of the hill. We crossed over into Austria without even knowing it! Had Jagertee there, some sort of stronger Gluhwein. Tiring but rewarding day.

Hiked to Austria!

Gorgeous scenery

Postcard picture

Taking a breather overlooking a spectacular view

Maggie and Hans wanted to bake some Xmas cookies the next day so they sent us out walking around the village with Hans’ handheld GPS. According to it, we did 6.3km in 1 ½ hours walking 5kmph. Nice stroll taking pictures of the German neighbourhood.

Walking around the neighbourhood

It was time to head back to the farm and Heidi was so kind to pick us from the train station. Had dinner there before going back to Raklern.