Foppa!!!

Hello everybody,

Well we’ve completed 1 year and some in our new land. With the World Cup and heading to the Swiss Alps, L and I have been quite busy.

This weekend was spent in Flims, Switzerland, where we celebrated the 4th of July with German, Swiss, and British friends, they even played the Star Spangled Banner for us, how thoughtful…not.   (Just in case you think I forgot, Happy Birthday Barbie Jr.)

In other news, it’s official my back is kaput.  Had an x-ray done yesterday and they found, what they think to be, a flat like a pancake L5 in my Lumbar region…well no wonder my leg goes wonky when I sit down.  Next week I’ll be going in for an MRI and my doctor said something about injections into my lower back, but we’d have to wait for the results to be sure.  I’m glad I found out what it was, because now I know what  steps to take towards healing.

 

Below you will see pictures of our short vacation. Where we stayed in a log cabin near Flims/Foppa.

 

Flims

    

We trekked from the bottom of the mountain range to our site for about 45 minutes.  Foppa happens to sit at the edge of a sky lift so I have to say that the walk up to the place was difficult.  Foppa is located at an elevation of 1420 meters or 4,658.79265 feet.  With the highest point starting at 3200m.  On Sunday morning a group of us hiked down from about 3000m to our cabin which took us about three hours.

 

Her’s a view of the trail leading up to the log cabin and below is a picture of the log cabin, which can hold about 30 people.

 

 

Below is the view from our window we arrived Friday afternoon and set up for the evening, where later we had fondue the Swiss style.  It was quite good.  I thought I had taken pictures, but for some reason my camera said, NO. So sorry.

 

 

The following morning I walked around our site breathing the fresh mountain air, not because I wanted to, but because it can be hard to breathe at this elevation. 

 

 

 

 

 

Here we were headed into town to check out the Lag la Cresta.

 

Lag la Cresta

 

 

 

 

 

Sunday morning heading up to 2600m and then hiking up to 3000m or 10,498.6877 feet for our hike back down to the cabin.

 

Here we go.

 

 

The little doggy at my feet was awesome. He climbed right into the lift car and sat right next to me and then waited calmly as we ascended.  Then when we landed, he jumped and ran into the snow.

 

 

 

Into the clouds.

 

 

 

Can everyone see L.

 

At this point the hike was fine, then it started to rain and it made walking on shale and slate harder and slippery.

 

 

The pictures lack a little depth, but let me assure you we were far up the mountain.

 

 

This picture was taken several minutes before the rain and as you can see, it was quite steep and then add water to the equation for a little drama.

 

Calm and quiet at 2200 meters or 7,217.84777 feet.

 

My last picture before the rain.

 

 

Flowers in the Mountains of Flims

 

Wild Orchids

 

Tisle or something like it.

 

 

 

 

And our descent back to mortal land. 

 

 

You know these two.

That’s all folks, keep checking I will be adding some video.

hugs and kisses,

M&L

Let there be rock…lots of rocks

Hello everybody,

Here are some pictures of L ‘hanging’ with her coworkers on a ROCK CLIMBING EXHIBITION.  Talk about team building.  Germans and their fanciness.

 

 

 

Can everyone see L’s little feety hanging from the ledge in the background.

     

Man, talk about TOUGH!!!

 

    

OK that’s all for now folks,

love,

M&L

Barbarians, Traders and Euro Domination

Hello everybody,

Hope all is well with everyone and that all of you enjoyed a great May and are excited for a sunny June. 

Here in Bayern we’re experiencing the worst spring ever, according to the locals anyway.  And I can report, it has been rather damp the last few weeks with sunshine peeking through the clouds reminding us of what we are missing. 

L has returned from her Taiwan/China trip and she will be heading to London without me this weekend for a girls weekend extravaganza…sort of.  She’s visiting her J.E.T. buddies from back in the living in Japan days.  

But we have been keeping busy and fighting of boredom with two new games we bought, both in German.

 

As you can see, the game is keeping us quite busy.  We pulled out our English/German dictionary and are learning new words every time we play the game.  I say ‘game’ in singular form because we haven’t actually started playing RISIKO.  The RISK manual will require us to have a German vocabulary of at least 5th grade we’re still stuck in 2nd grade, or at least I am.

Die Siedler von Catan: Das Kartenspiel, Also know by it’s English version name, The Settlers of Catan: The Cardgame took L and I about…with translations and then looking online for a better translation of the rule book…oh about 6 hours.  But we’ve now gotten the hang of the game and have started to dork out when we play each other.

Below are pictures of the games,  both games are for two players which L and I found at our local game store.

Of course I can’t wait to learn how to play the Euro version of RISK, although it looks suspiciously like Germany is against all of Europe, just kidding.  The rules look complicated and will probably take me a while to figure out how to play this two person version of RISK.  The English version is called, RISK: Balance of Power.  Just in case you happen to see the game in the stores.  I do like the German title of RISIKO: DAS DUELL.

    

that’s all for now folks. until next time.

miss ya,

M&L