Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Exciting Excursions and Encouraging Experiences in Eastern Europe

As promised, another update! We're going to try and cram in a lot of information, which means a lot of pictures. After Switzerland, we traveled over to Munich. Since we extended our stay in Gimmelwald we ended up with only one night in Munich, and it was raining on us the entire time. So unfortunately we weren’t able to get a good taste of Germany (besides a couple of pretzels…which were delicious).  From Munich we ventured over to Hallstatt, Austria. Hallstatt is a little village that you have to get to via ferry. The ferry ride provided a great view of Hallstatt and mountains in the background.

Our first glimpse at Hallstatt
Beautiful town
Coming into the harbor
The valley behind our bed and breakfast
Haus Lidy, the bed and breakfast we stayed at
Quaint houses with a lot of beautiful flowers

Great looking place to stay, right? However scenic it may have been, our stay here was one of our lower points on the trip. We stayed at a bed and breakfast, and I don’t really know what else to say other than it was just a strange experience. It wasn’t like something weird happened, we just never really felt comfortable while we were there. The owner, an older woman, spoke next-to-no English and didn’t really try to communicate with us on what to expect for our stay. So it left us to pretty much stay in our room for our entire stay, as it rained on us the whole time.  Mix in the fact that we were coming right off of the high point of our trip (Switzerland) and we were ready to leave Hallstatt. 

Next, we moved across Austria to Vienna. We had got in contact with another missionary couple while we stayed at the Hinton’s. Nate and Bethany Johnson have been in Vienna for less than a year, so like the Hinton’s, they are getting settled into the foreign mission field as well. They were such a huge blessing to us for our three day stay! They had such a lovely apartment and made us feel right at home. They made sure we got a good taste of Austria by making us delicious food and mapping out a good site-seeing course for the two of us. The Johnson’s did a great job at brightening up our Austrian experience. For more information on the work they’re doing, check out their blog, http://nandbjohnson.blogspot.gr/  

This is Schönbrunn Palace, a former imperial summer residence in Vienna. It was spectacular!
The grounds and fountain behind Schönbrunn

Trying some classic apfelstrudel
On the hill behind Schönbrunn
This is St. Stephen's cathedral. It was an impressive site right out of the metro
More of St. Stephen's
The Rathaus, or city hall

Unfortunately, we didn't get any pictures of or with the Johnsons, but this was Milka, the dog they were babysitting
 As I type this out I realize I need to go off on a tangent, so just bear with me – How good is God? Here we are worn out and downtrodden and God gives us a place to stay. And not just any place to stay, but a great place with fellow believers, who didn’t even know we existed a week and a half before they opened up their home to two strangers. And the week that we stayed with the Johnson’s was their week off of rigorous language school. It would have been so easy for them to politely decline our request, but they showed us true selflessness. I can’t say enough good things about this great couple, and I can’t thank them enough for showing us just how good God truly is.

After leaving the Johnson’s we decided to take a jam-packed travel day to explore more of Eastern Europe. We took a train over to Bratislava, Slovakia and explored the town for a few hours. Since we were basically only staying long enough to walk around the city, we decided to save a few euros and carry our backpacks with us instead of putting them in lockers at the train station. Hmm, not sure we were thinking very clearly on that one. When you only have a small day-pack with you, sure go ahead and take it to hike for a few hours. But when you’re packed down like this:
Doesn't he look happy? I had the blessing of only having to carry my own backpack...what a good husband
 Maybe you should re-think your options. We successfully made ourselves twice as tired and sore after hiking three hours and climbing up to a castle on the edge of the city. However sore and tired we may have been, Bratislava was still a really nice place to see. We found that we were able to see everything there that we really cared to see with those few hours that we were there. Once we were done, we got on a train to Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic. Prague wasn’t originally in our plans, but we’re glad we added it. I think this was when the wears and tears of travel first hit us. We still saw all of the tourist locations that we wanted to see, but we had a harder time actually getting around in the morning to go and see them. Tiredness or not, Prague was such a great city, with history everywhere and a culture all its own.

Lots of interesting buildings in Bratislava
An old church where they used to do coronation
On top of the spire is a golden replica of the coronation crown
A government building...that's all we knew about it.
Bratislava Castle
View of the river from the castle
This is a museum in Prague. It's at the head of Wenceslas Square, and it was one of the first buildings we saw in Prague
A church in Prague
On a bridge over the Vltava River. The Prague Castle is up on a hill in the background
So many swans!
Naturally, Dani wanted to touch them...no such luck.
Since Czech uses a different currency and we were only there for two days, we didn't exchange any. But the coffee machine in our hostel only took Czech coins and Tyler wanted coffee, so...we went fountain diving. Someone's wish isn't going to come true!

After Prague, we had another long travel day to get to Croatia. We stayed at a hostel in Croatia’s capital, Zagreb, for two nights. Croatia was a stop that we were really excited about. The main reason for that was Plitvice Lakes National Park. This place was absolutely spectacular! Dani has wanted to see it for a long time, ever since she happened to see a picture of it online back in high school. It did not disappoint. It just never ended! Crystal clear, teal-blue water, pools and waterfalls everywhere. Like so:
First glimpse!





The "trails" through the park consisted of a lot of rickety boardwalks actually across the pools. It was really cool.









Our last look at the park from above before we caught a bus back to Zagreb
From Croatia, we had an eight hour train excursion to take us to Italy. Our route went through the beautiful landscape of Slovenia, so it made the long travel day well worth it. Here are some pictures from the train:

Ain't she a cutie?






I’ll leave you there for now and tell you all about our Italian experience hopefully soon. Thanks for reading and thanks for keeping up with our trip. Please keep the thoughts and prayers coming our way. Love you guys!

1 comment:

  1. PLITVICE LAKES NATIONAL PARK!!!!!
    I'm so glad you guys got to see it. The pictures look amazing and it's definitely been added to my bucket list. Keep up the wonderful posts. I'm so glad you guys are enjoying your trip. God is soooo good and I'm so glad you guys have seen such great examples of His goodness during your trip!
    -Sarah Ehlman

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