Austria
June 17 - July 14, 2009
June 17 - Ottawa to Westendorf
We managed to pack everything and were ready early enough that we even had time to clean out the fridge (it's so much easier to do when the fridge is this empty!). Murielle drove us to the airport where we met up with Oma and checked in. The kids were quite excited, and Christopher was especially happy watching all the planes. Sam made a couple of friends... there were tons of kids on the flight. It turned out the Ottawa-Frankfurt flight was pretty full. We were worried that the kids (especially Christopher) would give us troubles, but they were excellent. Sam shared the window seat with poppa (we're not sure which one of them was more excited about the take-offs and landings!). And Christopher enjoyed watching the silent cartoons and sitting with momma and oma. The meal was actually half-way decent and both kids fell asleep quite quickly. In fact, our kids ended up being heaven compared to the family in front of us... the adults were all fussy and demanding and the kids of all ages spoiled, loud and forever running about.
Upon arrival in Frankfurt, we ended up exiting the plane onto the tarmack via stairs and taking a bus transfer to the terminal. Rubby had been eyeing a cache at gate A42 but as we sat on the bus it was still approximately 2km away. But that's just how huge Frankfurt airport was... never even leaving our terminal, we ended up boarding our next flight just 350 m away from it. Unfortunately the 1.5 hour layover was just barely enough time to get to our next flight and people were already boarding while we were still getting our boarding passes. Oh well, maybe on the way back!
On the flight from Frankfurt to Munich we all ended up with separate seats but by switching around, Oma and Sammy got seats in the back while the rest of us managed to get 2 seats further in the front. The flight was ridiculously short... as the pilot apologized for not getting drinks served to everyone before starting the descent, we wondered that they hadn't figured this out before. *grin*
Once in Munich we were lucky as our bags were the first to come out. We quickly bought tickets for the S-bahn (long distance subway) to take us to the Ostbahnhof to catch the train to Woergl where Hansi and Annemarie were waiting to pick us up by car. It just seemed like the trip was never going to end!
Uri had cooked us some gulash to eat and afterwards we headed over to our hotel for a nap. Then we took another little walk through town and over to Uri's again before heading to bed.
Cool 'cloud' formations.
Landing in Frankfurt Germany.
Welcome to Frankfurt!
The Frankfurt airport is a little bigger than Ottawa...
so many planes for Christopher to point out!
Our airplane.
There were moving sidewalks within the airport but we were still almost running on them to make our connection.
Arrival at the Munich airport... hey, where is everybody?!
Apparently Rubby was impressed... this ended up being a joke over our entire vacation as Rubby took it upon himself to document bathrooms in Europe. For more, see our "Eurinals" page. [link coming soon]
The S-bahn was just as empty as the airport.
Killing time at the Ostbahnhof waiting for the train. Lots of interesting billboards and signs.
Samantha attempting to take a cat nap on one of our bags.
In the car on the way to Westendorf the kids finally got hit by the tireds.
Samantha liked all the little daisies in Uri's lawn.
A beautiful day. Up on the mountain we see the new lift station and the paragliders.
a butterfly in Uri's garden.
One of the house's on Uri's street exhibits some strange tastes...
'tacky' is the word that comes to mind!
A lot of houses have gotten solar panels installed on the roofs... mostly for water heating.
Christopher got a present as a reward for being so good on the trip...
he immediatly gets comfy to read the Bellybutton book.
The car ports by the hotel.
Our hotel is the "Sport Pension".
In town Samantha is excited to see the Alpinolino man again.
Samantha with her bag of goodies from Uri.