The connection is back! Hooray! It actually came back sometime over the weekend, but we were out all day yesterday and I didn't have a chance to update.

The picture above is a shot I took of the Kampenwand (that is the mountain with the big rocks at the top) where we went hiking yesterday. It's in Aschau, Germany, which is just a short train ride away from Munich (about an hour and a half by local trains). We've been having beautiful spring weather lately so we thought a hike would be a fun way to spend Sunday afternoon. It turned out to be a very snowy way to spend the afternoon.

We took a cablecar to the top of the mountain and walked back down. The snow was pretty deep -- up to the middle of my thigh in some places. I got very, very wet. It took us about four hours to walk back down the mountain. We stopped for lunch at an Alm along the way (a restaurant up in the mountains, reachable only by foot or snowmobile at this time of year).

Anyway, the pictures turned out nice. I'll try to post them in the next few days, along with the others I've taken recently.

We had a fun visit with Kathryn last week. On the weekend we took her to the Augustiner Keller, a big antique market in Munich, and the Neue Pinakothek museum. On Monday she and I went to Salzburg for an adventure that included the castle, both of Mozart's houses, the Cafe Sacher, and an Austrian man who insisted on buying us dinner. The whole time Kathryn was here, people assumed she was German (because, hey, she looks German) and were surprised when she only spoke English. Tuesday Kathryn and I did some shopping for Memory games and other souvenirs, and since she left on Wednesday I have been busy breaking in my first pair of Birkenstocks. Now we are looking forward to some more friends who are arriving this weekend. The visit season has begun, and I am glad!