When deciding what to do after our Italian tour, we remembered that our friend from Colorado moved to Lenggries, Germany (about an hour south of Munich) with his family. They generously offered their home to us, so we decided to have ourselves a small town, German experience. Here’s a glimpse of our week there!
Day 1 – German Sport Class. On average, 12 kiddos and their parents attend what we think of as PE on steroids, once a week. After a casual warm-up of running sprints, we played a very interesting form of dodgeball mixed with basketball. You try to throw a stability ball into a box to score a point while the other team tries to throw medicine balls at the stability ball to keep it from getting in the box. Now, one might think this sounds fun, but Lindsay’s eyes were wide the whole time waiting for an injury – her background is in recreation and this is nothing like the games that are allowed in the US. It was organized chaos at it’s finest.
Day 2 – We took a walk around the town. Our friend pointed out some great shops, bakeries, and restaurants and even taught us how to order a few things in German since no one really speaks English in Lenggries. From there, we headed to the kids school where we helped teach English. We told the story of the Christmas tree and had the students answer questions in English. When the kids got home from school, they proceeded to make us puzzles out of paper and they put on a play for us as well! So fun!
Day 3 – We drove up to the Bad Tölz Christmas market, a German tradition! We loved seeing a smaller, less touristy version of the Christmas markets. So charming and fun!
Day 4 – Our friends left Germany to go back to Colorado for Christmas. We borrowed their bikes and rode around town until we found a snow covered bike path the on Isar river. Not easy to maneuver without snow tires. We made the best of it and found a beautiful spot by the river and set up our Madera hammock for some R&R.
Day 5 – We spent Christmas day inside cooking, relaxing, and working. In the evening, Lenggries had a fire pit and Glühwein for the town, so we decided to check it out. It’s not a German Christmas without the Glühwein!
Day 6 – We took the train up to Munich for the day to explore. We found the big Munich Christmas market, which is definitely a site to see! After the market, we hopped over to the ice skating rink and had a delicious bratwurst and bier! After that, the rain came, so we decided to see the new Star Wars movie at Mathäser, which luckily had the English version! *Note – the Munich train station has inexpensive luggage lockers, so you don’t have to lug bags around in between trains.
*A final note – the train to Lenggries from Munich splits into two separate trains. Make sure you get on the right one, otherwise you’ll be headed to several other small towns that don’t speak English. If you speak German, you’ll be fine. We, however, do not speak German, so this gave us slight anxiety on our way. Thankfully, we picked the right train car!
Germany is magical this time of year and full of yummy food! We hope you get to visit one day! We can’t wait to go back and see more! Prost!
Enjoy the ride,
Justin and Lindsay
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