Wo kann man hier wandern? Überall!

            At long last, a close friend (whom I have not seen in more than two years) and I were again united … in Europe of all places! My friend Paige, who transferred away from University of Richmond after 1^st semester freshman year, came to visit me in Konstanz! She stayed with me; luckily, I managed to get my hands on an extra mattress floating around Europahaus so we didn’t have to share my tiny twin-sized bed for four nights).



Paige and Me!



            Midway through her visit, we decided we needed to go hiking in the Alps. Sunday morning, we put on our hiking clothes, packed a backpack full of water, notebooks, cameras, and snacks, and strolled on over to the Bahnhof (train station). When I asked them if we could buy a ticket to any train station in the Alps the ticket booth employees looked at me as through I was insane, “Sie moetchen HEUTE gehen!?” They asked me. I told them that we did indeed want to go that same day. They sent us to Switzerland and told us to ask there. So, our adventure began. Luckily, the Swiss didn’t find the request as strange and quickly booked us tickets to the small mountain town of Heiden. When we arrived, the town was encompassed in a cloud.

As the cloud abandoned the streets.

           Worried that it would be this way the whole day, and not knowing where we were going to hike or anything, I found it all very amusing and just cracked up for awhile. Fortunately, within 5 minutes of us arriving to the town, the fog lifted and the day turned sunny and beautiful.

A funny, friendly gnome we ran into.

            After trotting about the tiny town for a bit, I finally asked a man working in his yard where a good path was. Naturally there happened to be one right across from his driveway, and our hike commenced.

The beginning of the path.

And facing the other way.

            It was simply gorgeous. This section of the Alps was/is quaint and humble; beautiful, but not in a bragging way.

            It reminded me immediately of The Sound of Music. Of course, I had to cheesily sing the tune.

            We stumbled upon many houses, herds of cattle, horses, and flower patches on our trek.

            And at the end, we stopped at a nice bakery in town for a treat and then, a little restaurant by the station for tea.

Paige is pooped out on the train after the long day. A pleasant pooped out, though.

At the end of this successful day, we went to the movies in Konstanz to watch The King’s Speech. I recommend this movie highly. We watched it in English with German subtitles (Paige doesn’t speak German). I found the translation interesting, in a rhetoric and linguistic type of way. The subtitles were obviously not word for word, or even phrase for phrase. They instead sometimes said something in an entirely different way, resulting in a similar meaning. Language and expressions are so interesting.