Stranger in a Strange Land: Pedaling Away...

Hallo! :) I hope you all had a wonderful weekend. Brian and I took advantage of the nice weather, and spent ours participating in some outdoor activities... yay! :)

On Friday we went to Lindau with our friend, Sarah, and met up with a group of Expats in the area. It was nice getting to know some fellow English speakers, and we also met a couple of Americans while we were there as well. :) Most of the people have been living in Germany for over ten years, but there were a few that have only lived here about the same amount of time as Brian and I have. So, it was nice chatting with them because we have a lot in common, what with trying to adjust to a different culture and all. :) It was interesting to see their view on what it's like adjusting to life in a different country. The group meets once a month, so hopefully we'll get the opportunity to meet up with them again.

We received a call on Saturday morning from our friend, Eva... She wanted us to meet her and Dominik downtown so that we could go for a pedal boat ride out on the lake. Being that the weather was gorgeous, we decided to take her up on the offer. :) And, we were quite happy that we did! It was in the 70's, the sun was shining, and the view of the mountains was spectacular! We spent some time sitting in the middle of the lake, and soaking up the sun, in our Ferrari themed pedal boat (Dominik was really excited about the prospect of getting the Ferrari pedal boat! :)). Afterwards, we returned to land, and had a light lunch at one of the cafes along the waterfront. It was such a nice, relaxing Saturday... Brian and I then spent the majority of Saturday evening planning our upcoming vacation to Italy and Croatia, and we made some pretty good progress... yay! :)

Brian convinced me to go for a bike ride with him on Sunday... Let's just say that it was more than just a "bike ride"! He wanted to go to Gehrenburg to see the view from the top of the mountain, and I reluctantly agreed to go. The ride went rather smoothly at the beginning... The weather was warm, we were riding through the cutest little villages, the scenery was gorgeous, and I was really enjoying myself. That is, until we went the wrong way and came to a dead end in the middle of a huge field full of dandelions and tall grass. Well, instead of turning around and going back to the correct road, Brian thought that we should just cut through the field and and then take the road on the opposite side of the field... Great! So, we proceeded to ride through the field of dandelions. Now, Brian has been biking for many years, so he's pretty good at doing things of this nature, so he took off and hauled across the field. I, on the other hand, am not an avid biker (I just recently started riding a bike again when we came over to Germany... Before that, the last time I rode a bike on a frequent basis was in college!)... So, I was somewhat reluctant to ride across this huge field... However, being that Brian was half way across the field by that time, I decided I'd try it... Well, I got about 3/4 of the way across before I hit a mound of dirt and flew off my bike... Lovely! I then had to walk the rest of the way, and that was the point where my nice relaxing bike ride, turned into way more work than I had anticipated! :) From that point, we rode a little ways on the dirt road until we reached the part of the bike ride that Brian was most looking forward to and the part that I was dreading... the base of the mountain, which we had to ride up... ugh!! We spent the next couple of hours riding up hill, through gravel... Oh joy! Brian was loving every minute of it, while I was daydreaming of laying on a warm, tropical beach and drinking a margarita! :) It was a pretty tough ride, and I was quite happy when we finally reached the top. At which point, we realized that we weren't where we thought we were supposed to be... Oh boy! So, we rode around in circles for what seemed like ages, until we finally found Gehrenburg Tower. From there, we walked up about 10 flights of stairs to get to the top of the tower... My legs were definitely burning by that point! :) But, the view from the top was gorgeous, and it was definitely worth the trip! :)

We headed back down the mountain shortly after that... Part of the downhill bike trail was considered a "mountain bike trail" (narrow trails, steep hills, lots of roots to avoid, etc...), so Brian gave me a quick lesson on mountain biking techniques. Now, Brian loves to mountain bike, and he really wanted to take advantage of the trails... And, me being a beginner, I knew that I was going to go much slower than him and I felt bad for holding him back, so I told him to go on ahead and I would meet him at the bottom... yikes!! He then took off like a bat out of hell, and I was left behind, trying to go as slow as possible, all the while holding onto my brakes for dear life and trying to remember all that Brian had taught me to do! :) I managed to make it down without harming myself... yay! :) And, go figure, by the time I got to the bottom, I was disappointed that the trail wasn't longer because I had finally started to get the hang of things! :) At that point, we had been biking for about 4 hours, so we decided to call it a day and head home... However, our ride home took longer than we expected considering we got lost about 5 different times and had to turn back around... Fun, fun! :) Overall, it was an exhausting day, but I would definitely do it again! :)

I'm now off to meet up with my friend, Alex, and we're heading to Meersburg for the afternoon. I hope you're having a great Tuesday! Miss you much!