Laura & Tim - Travel & German Life

We returned from our 2 week bike trip through Italy and France (awesome, awesome, awesome!) about a week and a half ago. When we got back, my cousin Skye and his girlfriend Jen were here visiting for a week.

The morning they left, I started downloading all our pictures of the last 3 weeks. Then I downloaded a couple movies from itunes, and watched one.

And as I was showing Tim the movie trailers of what I'd downloaded, the computer froze. Ok, let's shut-down and re-start. Started to re-start and we got a grey screen. Wierd. Waited a bit, and got a file folder picture with a big question mark in it. Uh, oh. That doesn't look good.

The hard drive crashed, and has not returned, so today I am sending it off to a data recovery company in England. However, this particular HDD has apparently had serious issues and crashed unexpectedly on most users, with only very few having data recovered. Soooo frustrating, since it was a known firmware issue/defect of this particular HDD that mac knew about. We were just unlucky, as not all macbooks had this particular HDD installed.

Fingers crossed that some data can be recovered... if it can't be, we've lost all our pictures from the last 4 years, amongst other things. While we're sad and a bit mad about it, it's truly not the worst thing that can happen in the world. I know that. Just sucks.

So, I dont have any pictures for you of our fabulous bike trip, where tim was an absolute rock star and we visited some of the most beautiful places... You should have seen him going up alp d'huez!!

If you ever have the chance, consider visiting Lake Como in Italy, and/or Juan les Pins in the South of France. We loved the Cote d'Azur coast of France so much, we're thinking of going there for a full week next summer. We should have picture capabilities back up and running by then. ha, ha.

** If you don't currently do so, back-up your hard drives! Esp. if you keep pictures/important documents on them **

xoxo,
L&T

Last weekend, Tim planned a training ride to the Dolomites. If you didn't already know this, we are in serious training mode for Tim's big cycling ride in June. I use 'we' loosely, although it certainly involves both of us. But in truth, this post is for cyclists who will appreciate the feet of climbing, or nature lovers that want to know about the Dolomites. And it's all about Tim. But it's his birthday week, so that's as it should be!

The Dolomites are... spectacular. Seriously, amazing.

They are completely different than the Cascades or Alps (which are also different from each other). The Dolomites are dramatically rocky, with vertical, sheer rock face peaks...
If you are a cyclist, and enjoy climbing, the Dolomites will have a lot to offer you. You can stay in one town, and do multiple day trips without ever climbing the same pass twice. Tim was a lucky duck, and had a support vehicle following him, so we didn't start in the same spot twice. We started early saturday morning from Brixon, and ended our day in San Vigilio di Marebbe where we spent the night (we highly recommend Hotel Olympia). We left San Vigilio around 10am Sunday, and ended our day at the top of Groednerjoch.

During the ride, Tim's loving wife (me, me!) follows him along his route, offering additional water, food, and changes of clothes. Why might he need a change of clothes? See below.

We start our days in sunny valleys, riding past castle ruins...
...and climb to snow blanketed mountain passes. Brrr!Can you spot tim?
I must say that Tim rode through snow and hail on day 2, to finish the ride. Good job, sweetie!

He feels ready for his big June ride, but there might be one more fun, training weekend in store for us. I love visiting these new, small little towns in the mountains. But we'll have to wait and see how the weather is. We had beautiful, sunny days the last 1.5 weeks, and now it's returned to cold, rain which is supposed to last through mid-next week (or so they say).

Click here for more pictures of our weekend in the Dolomites.

Hope everyone is enjoying their May!


For any cyclists out there (chria), interested in knowing what passes Tim rode or to plan a similar weekend of riding in the Dolomites:

• First day, Passo delle Erbe (Wuerzjoch) 2004m, which is a really nice climb (5% avg gradient and 30km in length), and Passo Furcia (Furkel Sattel) 1737m (8.1% ave gradient and 9.1km in length). Day 1 covered 90km and 3178hm (10,427 feet of climbing).
• Second day, a bigger monster - Passo Valparola 2168m, Passo Falzarego 2117m, Passo Giau 2236m, Colle Santa Lucia 1461m, Passo Campolongo 1875m, and Groednerjoch (2137) - 6 passes. Day 2 covered 113km and 3498hm (11,476 feet of climbing).
• San Vigilio di Marebbe is also called St. Vigil in Enneberg.
• May rides can be tricky as some of the pass roads close at 3pm, due to avalanche hazards. We couldn't pass over Groednerjoch due to the other side being closed at 5pm, and had to circle back.
• We heard of a bike race called the "Dolomiti Stars", which any cyclist can join. It's a stage of the Giro that occurs the day or so before the real race. Since spectators are already along the route, they cheer you on as if you're a rider in the Giro. The chalk is on the street, the team banners are up, it may be the closest experience many of us get to feel like we're professional riders! It sounds awesome.

I've become an addicted blog reader, vs. a poster. It happened so quickly, and hours seem to pass in the blink of an eye. However, the weather is turning nice (finally), so I'm hoping to be outside more in the coming months and not in-front of a computer. We can hope, right? We'll see how hard it is to kick this blog addiction.

What, you ask, have I delayed in posting most recently? BERLIN!

Before our trip, there seemed to be two camps people fell into with regard to Berlin. The first one being the "what are you going to do in Berlin?" camp. The second were the ones who have visited and tell you how cool the city is. Since we can now check Berlin off our list of places we've visited, we fall eagerly into the second camp.

In addition to the history, Berlin is a big city with much to offer. Great neighborhoods to explore, big parks, good shopping (esp compared to munich), diversity of people, and lots of food options. I read about their nightlife too, but we weren't up for that this time around. Given how much there was to see and do, there were also plenty of Starbucks in Berlin to keep us going!

We technically had 3 days there, and that's plenty for a first time excursion. If you love it, go back. We took the free Sandman's New Berlin walking tour, and can highly recommend it. From the tour, we saw checkpoint charlie (a replica), hitlers bunker where he killed himself (you just stand above it), east vs. west berlin, the wall, former SS buildings, Brandenburg gate, Holocaust memorial, museum island, and a few other things. It was a great intro tour to the city.

We also spent an entire day shopping, stopping for breaks and sights along the Ku'Damm shopping street (Kurfürstendamm). Our hotel/pension was only a couple blocks away, so it was very convenient! I highly recommend staying near Ku'Damm in Charlottenburg, for location.


Click here, to see more pictures from our trip to Berlin. Overall, Berlin wouldn't make our top 5 cities of Europe list (unfortunately, or fortunately, it's a VERY competitive list!). But it was a great city, no doubt! If you're in the area, it's definitely worth stopping by.

Our recommendations for visiting Berlin:
- Sandman's New Berlin free walking tour
- Our Hotel: Pension Peters
- Vegetarian Restaurant: Seerose

Happy travels!

Daily, tim is sequestered in the office mapping out his June Dolomite and trans-alp rides... It's so cute. Seriously. He's giddy when he comes out and starts to talk about a days ride he was able to map and plot on gps. It's contagious too, because with the sunny weather we've been given this weekend, I can't wait to be back out in the world, being active and feeling that rush of fun!


Language lesson for the day: Dolomites = Dolomiti, in Italian. Ahhh, I like when they're so similar!
We also changed our clocks today for daylight savings time. So, for all our friends/family back home on the west-side yo, we're back to 9 hours ahead of you. Holla back.

Spring is here, which means we all turned our clocks forward 1 hour. Scratch that, YOU (in the states) turned your clocks forward.

For reasons I don't understand, and don't care to look up, we wont be changing our clocks in Germany until March 30th. So from now until then, we have an 8 hour difference between us, as opposed to the usual 9 hours I'm used to.

Do you know why we have different days to change our clocks? Feel free to educate me by leaving a comment.

In other news, I've become a blog addict the last couple weeks. It happened fast, and without warning. After reading waayyyy too many blogs and realizing why I like to go back to some and not others, I have to apologize to you!

Who wants to read only about our vacations?? I started the blog to yes, show our family and friends back home what we're up to in Germany, but also to tell of german life. What happened to the german life? Um, I'm pretty sure I lost that part of the blog sometime around our christmas trip to Lanzarote last year. Sorry!

If you are (miraculously) still hanging with me and reading this blog, I'm determined to rekindle that side of our postings. I hope you'll check back soon, as I promise to be good. Well, better.

And as an act of good faith, I went out on a walk today in Sauerlach to take a picture of one of our first, beautiful, warm spring days:

xoxo,
L