Bavarian Alps with the Russian Backend Engineer

Post date: Jun 09, 2019 4:37:9 PM

The alps! The glorious alps! I love this view, I love this part of the world, I love this snow.

And I love the friends who live in the alps, and allowed me to come visit many times to take in this site. But, devastatingly, the Welshs are moving back to the US this summer so this was my last visit to them, although invariably not my last trip to this gorgeous vista.

But on this trip I brought two friends with me. Dmitry is a colleague (sometimes referred to as the Russian Backend Engineer) and a friend. We hit it off over questions about the kinesis stream at work and have been friends ever since. His girlfriend Jackie is an american, from Chicago, and this is her first time living abroad. They both have a fantastic sense of adventure, and when I asked: “Do you want to come down to the alps with me this weekend?” both said “yes, of course” immediately.

But Jackie is from the VERY flat midwest and so when we were waiting for the cog train to take us up the mountain, I stopped mid-sentence to show her the mountains that had been revealed from behind the clouds. Her response: “WOW, OH MY GOD, WOW” which was well worth the trip.

When we reached the top, it was more exclamations about how she had never seen anything like this, and how wonderful it looked. So to celebrate her new achievement unlocked, we got a drink.

It’s the german way.

You’ll recall this church, which I hiked up to when Jordan, Jessica and I were here in the summer a few years ago. It looks better in winter (everything does).

Nope. I never get tired of this view. To take a moment to reflect: I learned how to snowboard here when I was a kid. I learned how to ski the year before. I came here to escape the hard transition into life in Halle. I brought Jordan here, to help he see the world outside of the US.

Haven’t gotten tired of coming down here yet. It seems unlikely that I will.

Dmitry’s lunch looked so very German I had to include it in this blog post, even though I wasn’t around to eat it.

Instead Jackie and I took the train with the Welsh’s to Munich for the afternoon. We wandered around and ate and hung out. Honestly, the only photo I got from the trip to Munich was this church. So… there’s that.

But on the way home we visited one of the most iconic german landmarks: Neuschwanstein castle. This had been on my to-do list since moving to Germany, and we decided to get up early and hit it up on the way home.

It feels SUPER obvious to point out that it was stunning. It was. It’s the inspiration for Cinderalla’s castle at Disneyland. But it was built by Mad King Ludwig (the 2nd?) who built it because he was Trump-level delusional. He was tired of having to do all the boring things normally associated with being a king (reading documents and listening to people’s problems, UGH!) and wanted to make the kingship great again. You know, like they had it in the middle ages. But, he died under mysterious circumstances after only using the castle for 116 days (and after a decade of serious construction). So his dream was never realized.

Under his direction and obsession with the past, the interior of the castle is a hodge podge of different eras. But the all kind of look like they make sense together, and you get this “well, he couldn’t have been THAT crazy” vibe.

Until you hit the “grotto”. He designed a room that had an atrium attached and looked like the grotto from on of Wagner’s famous operas. So you set out of the romantic period and into a grotto and think: “yeah, this guy was nuts. I see it now”.

There are no photos on the tour, so I limited myself to a few photos of the views from the windows and doors. Which looked on the majestic mountains and were generally stunning.

And has become my habit as of late, I considered what I would do if I lived here. What would my life be, and what would it be like. Yes, I know this is entirely a fantasy (you should see me in Paris, sizing up million dollar apartments like I could ever afford them).

But like a good traveling companion, Dmitry got into the right mindset. He took it a little far, but I think given the nature of the place, drag princess could be a good role for him.