Europe Trip: Day 8 (Interlaken, Bern, and Basel)

Eric's one hope for this day of our trip was to row on a boat in Interlaken. We headed out on a scenic drive and saw some beautiful sites.

We went to another gorge, which was cool. It was amazing to think of the engineering involved to build the pathways in the gorge, especially considering that they were started in the late 19th century. Those German engineers know what's what.

We reached Interlaken, and we were immediately excited by how pretty it was and how perfect the lake was.

But then the boat rental place was closed. And there were no other places to rent rowboats. We could have done paddleboats, but why would anyone want to ride on a paddleboat? Or, more accurately, why would anyone want to paddle a paddleboat?

So we picnicked in town looking out at the Jungfrau (the big famous mountain). We had considered doing activities at the mountain that day, and had we known that the rowboat would not come to fruition, that is what we would have done. Ah, hindsight.

We went on our way and saw more beautiful scenery.

We stopped by the Bern Temple. We knew ahead of time that it would be closed for cleaning, but it has some family significance for Eric's family, so we wanted to at least go visit the outside. (Eric's paternal grandfather served a mission in Switzerland; his paternal grandmother has Swiss ancestry; and his maternal grandmother sang at the Swiss Temple dedication in 1955.)

We popped into Basel on our way to France. We decided our favorite historic towns are the ones on rivers. Other than grabbing a bite to eat, we didn't do much there, which is too bad.

And the on we went to France!

All in all, Switzerland was not our favorite. The different currency (they still use the franc), the high cost of everything, and the one activity Eric really wanted to do not panning out made us all pretty ambivalent about Switzerland.

Europe Trip: Day 7 (Lofer, Innsbruck, and Lucerne)

Our Lofer AirBNB was probably our best one. The town itself was gorgeous, and we could have spent a whole day there. (I included a pic of the house where we stayed so you can see how pretty the area is).

After stopping by a grocery store and grabbing some breakfast, we went on a nearby hike.

Then we checked out a cool cave. We didn't get very many good pictures there because it's hard to get good pictures in a cave, but it was really cool. I would love to tell you the name of this cave, but I have no recollection of that.

We also went to this really cool gorge.

The water was freezing, and my feet hurt by the time I got out of the water after waiting for Eric to get a good picture.

We popped into Innsbruck, Austria. We were literally there for about an hour. As far as towns go, it was a lot like other European towns. We took a few pictures, but our camera settings were off, so our Innsbruck pictures are all blurry. We went to a church, and it was cool.

As we drove along to Switzerland our GPS took us through Lichtenstein, which was not the route Eric had planned out. He was annoyed, but Andrew and I were overjoyed to add another country to our list. We were in Lichtenstein for a less than 10 minutes.

We also went to Lucerne, and in hindsight we were sad we had stopped in Innsbruck at all because we would have rather used that time in Lucerne. (Again, camera settings were off, so the pics are not stellar.)

We saw the famous statue honoring the Swiss Guard soldiers who were killed in the French Revolution. It really was beautiful, and the park that houses it was lovely.

We watched about two minutes of a World Cup game while we were walking the streets. It was neat to be in Europe during the World Cup since the Europeans (by and large) care so much about it. This game was Spain verses Iran (I think!).

We needed to hurry to get to our AirBNB that night since it was the one night where we were actually staying in the same home as our hosts (as opposed to a vacant apartment). We didn't want to arrive too late, or else we would have spent more time in Lucerne.

Europe Trip: Day 6 (Hallstatt and Lofer)

Without a doubt, our most beautiful day in Europe was spent in Hallstatt, Austria. It's just stunningly gorgeous, and it's one of the places that I'd love to visit again one day.

I loved wandering around the Catholic cemetery. Plus it had a cat.

We also went into the Catholic church, and of course it was lovely. I really loved admiring the art depicting the stations of the cross in all the churches. It took me a while to figure out why every church had the same stories depicted, and finally one of them had them numbered, and it clicked.

The Lutheran church was not as ornate as the Catholic. I had read most of Eric Metaxas's Martin Luther before our trip (and finished it after), so I have a special place in my heart for the great reformer. When we first popped into the church, Eric's parents were behind us a ways. I mentioned to Eric that I wanted to sing a hymn to more fully appreciate the acoustics of the church. When other tourists had cleared out and we had the space to ourselves, we began singing "Abide With Me," which is one of our go-to hymns because Eric knows the bass part really well. We stopped singing when more visitors came in because we didn't want to make a spectacle of ourselves.

We wound our way back to Eric's parents, and then re-entered the chapel. In that second entry we paid more attention to the painting above the altar and realized it was Jesus on the road to Emmaus, which is what "Abide With Me" is all about. I asked Gordon to translate the words over the altar, and he said they effectively meant "Jesus Christ yesterday and today and the same in eternity. Lord stay with us."

We also enjoyed views of the lake and the mountains and the town. The mountains rise straight up out of the lake.

Eric basically belongs on boats.

After our boat ride, we rode the funicular to the top of a mountain. You can see the rails of the funicular in the below picture.

The views were amazing.

After Hallstatt we parted ways with Eric's parents and headed to our AirBNB in Lofer, Austria. Eric had hoped to visit Berchtesgaden, but we didn't have enough time. We saw a little lake on our way to Austria, and went for a walk. We saw teensy tiny frogs and a magnificently fat beaver. And we got ice cream.

Europe Trip: Day 5 (Salzburg)

We spent that Monday in Salzburg. We saw the main sites, including some of the places where The Sound of Music was filmed. Although I liked Salzburg, there were other cities I enjoyed more on the trip, so my memories of Salzburg are already a bit fuzzy.

This is one of the more "iconic" photos with the bridge with all the locks, the big green-domed cathedral behind, and the "festung" up on top. (Apparently "festung" means fortress, or something. If I haven't mentioned already, I don't speak German.)

We went to the cathedral, and it was gorgeous, of course. I think by this time on our trip (a whopping five days in), we were already beginning to experience the law of diminishing returns. All the cathedrals are amazing, so seeing one more amazing cathedral becomes a little less amazing each time.

This cathedral is particularly beautiful because of how bright it is inside. Much of it is made with white stone, and there were several windows in the domes that allow a lot of light in. In addition to the main organ, there were four smaller organs. I would love to hear all of them playing together.

We also went up to the festung. I was not blown away by that experience, but the men loved it. The festung includes a museum devoted to this particular miltary unit through the centuries. Eric would probably love to tell you about it, but I spent much of that time looking for benches, which were scarce.

But at the end, they had one of these things, so that was awesome.

And then when we finished the museum, we had pretzels while we looked over the city.

That evening we went to a really cool dinner concert. The dinner was the best meal I had in Europe. All the music was composed by Mozart. A string quartet accompanied two singers, and they performed several pieces from various operas. It was lovely. While we waited for that to start, we popped over to the church right next door. Yet again, it was a beautiful church. But I loved the cemetery more.

That night we returned to our hotel in Germany.

Europe Trip: Day 4 (Ancestral Towns of Walldorf and Wasungen)

I just got back from a nearly 5,000 mile road trip, so I'm ready to pick up my Europe posts! (And obviously there will be posts about our road trip as well.)

On Sunday we went to church at an LDS branch in a town called Jena. The branch was a little difficult to find because it meets on the second floor of a city building. I found it, though. And I am still immensely pleased with myself for being the one to spot some LDS type-setting and know that we had arrived at the right location. (If we had stood around on the street long enough we would have seen people who we suspected to be LDS headed into the building, but we were there a bit early.) Also, mine and Eric's headsets didn't work, and I didn't want to bother anyone to get different ones, so I spent my sacrament hour looking through the German hymnal identifying which hymns corresponded with their English versions, and which had no English versions at all. Eric was better at this game than I was, but he also had studied German for a few years in school.

After that, we headed to Eric's ancestral towns (through his maternal grandmother's side). First we visited Walldorf, where Martin Heiner was born. He is Eric's fourth-great-grandfather, and we visited his town on his 200th birthday. Below is the church. The original was burned down when it was stuck by lightning a few years back, and they have been slowly rebuilding it.

We happened to arrive there just as the gardeners were coming to tend the garden, and they let us come in and look around. It has been redesigned to be eco-friendly with a huge stork-nest outside, as well as nesting places for various birds and bats. It has gorgeous stained-glass windows.

Then we headed to Wasungen, where Martin's wife, Adeldunda, was born, and where Martin and Andelgunda were married. It is a beautiful church. They were Lutheran, so their churches are not as ornate as some of the larger Catholic cathedrals. Still, it was so nice to visit this place. We were there with a local historian, and he gave us a tour of the church and the crypt).

 This would be the font where Adelgunda was baptized.

Then we toured the town of Wasungen, again with our local tour guide. (He's an archivist, and he's been instrumental in helping Eric's mom and others coordinate the research in these towns. It is an area of Germany where the record-holders are notoriously difficult to work with.)

We saw the home where Adelgunda was born and raised.

We also visited a local museum for the town. I really put my father-in-law's translation skills to the test with all my questions to the archivist. I was curious about what records were used to ascertain certain data, especially for information from the pre-1500s. We just don't have those kinds of records in America. (Insert the extreme crying emoji here.)

After the ancestral towns we headed to our hotel in Bergen, Germany.

Europe Trip: Day 3 (Prague, Freiberg, and Dresden)

At about 4 AM on Saturday some loud Germans in our hotel retired to their rooms, and woke us all up in the process. I never managed to fall back asleep. I let the guys sleep for a little while longer, and then we got up to spend a little more time in Prague before returning to Germany.

We wandered around and eventually found an open place to eat breakfast. Maybe because it was Saturday, maybe because it's Bohemia - I don't really know why - but there was not a lot happening in the historic district of Prague at 8 AM. After breakfast we found the Freud statue. Apparently people call the police for him quite regularly.

Then we popped into this little church. I don't want to pic favorites, but I did really love this one. I loved the paintings on the ceilings, and I loved the swirly carvings, and I loved the gold.

Then we drove back to Germany to attend a session at the Freiberg Temple. Eric's parents greeted us at the doors. It is a simple temple, built during the communist era of East Germany, but it is still beautiful inside.

After our session we met some of Eric's parents' friends, we ate lunch, and we all piled in their car to go to Dresden. I was exceptionally tired at this point, having been up since 4 AM and still not completely over the jet lag. I learned that after World War II some German cities opted to rebuild and maintain an old look, while others went more modern. Dresden took the old approach.

Their church in the heart of Dresden (the Dresden Frauenkirche) was destroyed in the war, and the Soviets officials wouldn't allow the Germans to rebuild it. The Soviets left the rubble in the square as a sign to the people of how terrible the Americans and British were. As soon as communism fell, the locals had the church rebuilt, using some of the bricks from the original church. President Uchtdorf spoke of this church in a talk in 2016. We just barely got to peak inside because there was a concert going on. On the left you can see the statue of Martin Luther; those Germans sure love him. (And I do too!)

We wandered over to the museums and the gardens. We got there too late to enter any of the museums, but it was still nice enjoying the architecture. (Except, let's be honest, I may have been a little grumpy from being so tired.)

Then we ate dinner and went back to Freiberg for a good night's rest.

I would really like to visit Dresden again. It is a beautiful city, and we just barely got a glimpse of it. (Which can be said of every place we visited on our trip!)