Lindau, Germany
September 30th – October 6th, 2015
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| The Hauptbanhof |
We had about an 8 hour flight before landing in Zurich. You have no idea how crappy our airlines are
until you fly internationally. In the
span of our 8 hour flight, we had: free
movies, free headsets, TWO meals (a dinner and a breakfast), free wine with
dinner, free coffee after dinner, a hot towel before landing, and a piece of Swiss
chocolate before we departed the plane.
Remember this antidote for when I describe our return flight home.
Once we arrived in Zurich on Thursday, we had a couple of hours before
our train took off to Lindau. We got our
luggage and just rested until it was time to get on the train. The train ride was about 3 hours to
Lindau. We were staying on the island
portion of Lindau, so once we arrived we just walked with our luggage to our
Guesthouse (the entire island is only ½ mile wide). The girl at the front desk, Gabrielle, was
very nice and helpful. She gave us some
maps and explained a few things to us.
Once we got settled into our room, we crashed for a few hours. We were really out of it that first day
because of the time change. We did
manage to get up, shower, walk around for a bit and get dinner at the
restaurant that was connected to our guesthouse.
Because Saturday all of the stores were going to be closed because of a
holiday and I would be running all Sunday, we took time on Friday to walk
around the entire island and see the sights.
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| Outside the Hauptbanhof (train station) |
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| Our Gasthof in Lindau |
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| Our wacky little room |
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| Farmer's market outside of our Gasthof |
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| The old courthouse |
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| My favorite clothing brand that we don't have here! :( |
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| Streetscape |
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| Inside the Catholic church of the Lovely Lady |
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| Statue in front of the old courthouse |
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| Entrance to the harbor |
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| 42 km!!! |
Saturday, we took the train over to Bregenz, Austria. That was where my race packet pick-up was and
where the race would ultimately finish.
At my packet pick-up location, they had the basic kind of things that
other races normally have. They called it a “Health Symposium”. They had different booths where people were
selling clothes, shoes, socks and other running apparel. And they had a free spaghetti dinner for all
the runners.
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| Someone could not figure out how to lighten up my picture!! |
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| The finish line |
Once we were done there, we
decided to tour this animal sanctuary at the top of the mountain in
Bregenz. We took a cable car up the
mountain to the sanctuary. There were a
lot of different trails to walk, animals to look at, and places to look out
over Lake Constance (Bodensee). We spent
an hour or so up there and then headed back to Lindau for the evening.
Sunday was race day!! And
although we had had perfectly cool and clear weather since we had arrived; it
was freezing, windy and raining the morning of the race. Gary and I got ready and jogged down to the
starting line. All runners were supposed
to be lined up by 10:45am. It was so
cold and freezing that pretty much everyone was huddling inside any open
building that morning. At the last
minute, we ran outside and I got into position for the race. Since you line up by time, I just went to
line up with the 9-10 minute runners. But,
nothing makes you feel more inadequate then noticing that the next group after
yours is the walkers. L
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| I'm hardly freezing at all!! |
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| Super excited to run 26 miles! |
I said by to Gary and told him I would see him in about 5 hours! I took off and followed the pack of runners
around Lindau and then onto the main road towards Bregenz. It was about 7 miles from Lindau to Bregenz
and during this entire time it rained and was freezing. Most of the runners were European. I had looked at the race number sheet to see
how many americans were signed up. It
seemed like there maybe were around a 100 or so. That being said, I have to say that the
Europeans seem to be a lot less timid about peeing in public! As I was running that first leg of the race,
a lot of people have to stop and pee…probably because of nerves. The guys would literally step off the bike
path and pee right there! They wouldn’t
even bother to hide at all! In Bregenz,
the 10Kers and ½ marathoners split from the marathoners. I got a little confused at that point as to
which way I was supposed to go…since some people were splitting off to go to
the bathroom and others were running to catch up with their loved ones. All I could do was run, not think, but I did
manage to take the correct path for the marathoners!
As I made my way through Bregenz, it started to get sunny and it
stopped raining. But now, it was windy
as all hell and we were running right into the wind! I was about ½ way through the race when I saw
the front runners already coming back!
Ugh. Leaving the city of Bregenz,
we weaved our way through these little quaint towns on our way to
Switzerland. The wind was blowing so
hard I wanted to die! I think I swore
every step of the way until we were finally turned around and had the wind at
our backs.
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| Running thru Switzerland |
At one point, they had a lot of signs posted as encouragement for the
runners. Most of them were in German,
but a handful were in English. There was
one sign that said “Stay Hard”. I was
dying inside! At this point I was
somewhere like 30ish kilometers in to the race and I could not think for the
life of me what they had actually meant to say.
Finally, it dawned on me that they meant “Stay Strong”. I wish I had taken a picture of that sign,
but at that point, every time I stopped, it became more and more painful (achy)
to start up again…so I tried not to stop and just keep moving, even if it was
at a snail’s pace.
During the run, there were ‘nutrition points’ pretty much every 5
kilometers. I thought it was funny
because they had so many different drinks available. They had water, Gatorade, tea, and pop. Actually, having a coke mid-race was pretty
much the most awesome feeling in the world when your entire body feels like
it’s dying! They also had banana and
orange pieces. They also had sponges
soaking in water….I wasn’t sure if these were to drink from or squeeze over
your head. Lastly, while running a race,
I am used to grabbing a drink and then just tossing the cup anyway along the
side of the road. This is how it was in
Germany and Austria. However, at all the
nutrition points in Switzerland, no one was tossing their cups. I kept
wondering…where in the heck are all the cups??
Then I saw that they had garbage bags neatly placed at the end of the
water tables and all the runners were stopping and placing their cups in the
bags. Or they had a person standing
there collecting the cups as you ran by.
Of course, I didn’t realize this until I had chucked a few cups along
the road. I was the only person to
litter in Switzerland! Overall thought,
it was perfectly organized and they had everything to meet my needs while
running! It was such a nice race to
run!
Also, I may have been hallucinating….but I’m almost positive that I saw
beer steins at the last nutrition point!
I cannot confirm that though!
Haha.
I was about 3.5 hours into the run and I realized that I did not have
that much farther to go. I really
thought that I could finish it in another 30 minutes. However, those few kilometers just about
killed me. I was so sore and tired and
had to stop and walk quite a bit. Even 1
kilometer seemed like a million miles long.
Those few miles really took a lot longer than I had thought. But, once I finally reached the city of
Bregenz again, I hit my final little burst of energy. The last couple of kilometers were not bad
and I had enough energy to run them completely and not walk! Gary captured me entering the stadium where
we finished, but I didn’t hear him. I do
remember him yelling as I crossed the finish line. I made it in about 4 hours and 39 minutes.
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| I finished! |
For our dinners, we didn’t want to be those tourists that kept going
back to the same restaurant over and over again, so we would always wander
around the island looking for a different place to eat. However, it seemed like every place we found
would be crazy expensive or the food didn’t sound good or the place would be
closed. So, we actually did end up eating at the place that was attached to our
guest house like 3 times! But, one of the days, we found this Irish restaurant
that seemed good and we decided to eat there.
It was small and busy, and looked like a traditional Irish pub. Unfortunately, we were really
disappointed. The food took forever, our
waitress never checked on us, we asked for our bill several times and she never
brought it. Finally, we were just going
to walk out and we found her so we could pay.
The crazy thing was that after we arrived it started to get pretty busy
and there were not that many tables available.
But, we noticed that if you were a small group at a large table, then other
patrons would ask if they could share your table with you….to complete
strangers! We were just getting ready to walk out and this group of 3 or 4
people comes in and asks if they mind if they sit with us. We were ok with it because we had just decided
to get up and walk out, but it really seems like it would be weird to sit and
have dinner with strangers. Needless to say, after that we gave up trying
different places and just went back to our guest house restaurant.
The day after the race, Monday, October 5th, our plan was to
rent a car and drive along the German Alpenstrasse to see the Neuschwanstein
Schloss……the German castle that the Disney castle is built after. We got our car ok (the teeniest, littlest car
ever!) and headed out on the open road.
Gary drove while I navigated the best I could using my phone. The Alpenstrasse is just a long, winding,
2-lane road that runs through the countryside, going through all these small,
quaint German towns. They have built a
highway ‘bipass’, but we followed the old route as much as possible.
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| The little wiener car we rented |
After about an hour and a half of driving, we arrived to the town of
Schwangau, Germany. Schwangau is the
town where the castle is. We parked our
car and followed the droves of people to the ticket booth to get tickets for
the castle tours. We got there around
1pm and there was still a huge line of people waiting for tickets. I really thought that since we were there off
season (the fall), that there wouldn’t be that many people. And then we were scared that we wouldn’t even
get tickets to tour at all because there were signs saying that the ‘next
available tour’ was at 4pm. Luckily, by
the time we made it to the counter, there were still tickets available for both
castle tours.
So yeah, there are actually 2 castles in the town. The first castle was King Ludwig I’s. His castle was built on a smaller hill in the
area and was yellow-colored. When he
passed away, his son, King Ludwig II, built the fairy-tale white castle way up
on the mountain top. The story goes,
that Ludwig II was going bananas with the family’s fortune once his dad passed
away and he became king. He built places
all over Germany and Austria. The family
was mad at him for spending all of the family money, so an uncle (the next in
line to the throne), had him declared as crazy.
As soon as he was declared as crazy, Ludwig was dethroned and the uncle
became the new king. With that, the
uncle stopped all construction of the castle.
A couple of days later, Ludwig was found dead, along with the doctor
that ‘declared’ him as crazy. No one
knows exactly how he died.
So, this castle is actually not finished. The outside and foundation is all done, but
not all the rooms on the inside are done.
We toured the fairytale castle and Ludwig I’s castle. Both were just amazing! Of course, you are not allowed to take any
pictures inside. Boo! We took tons of pictures of the outside. It was insane how many people were
there. And how many people were running
around with those stupid selfie sticks!
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| King Ludwig II's castle |
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| King Ludwig I's castle |
After our tours, we headed back into the small town for dinner. After dinner, we headed back to the car to
drive home. However, we could not for
the life of us find that stupid car! It
was super dark and there were no lights in the parking lot. We probably walked around for a half an hour
before we finally figured out where the car was!
Once back in the car, we just headed home. However, as we were driving through one of
the small towns, this super bright light flashed right in front of the car practically
blinding us! We were both like, “what
was that?”. We guessed that it was
probably a speed trap and the flash was a camera taking our picture. Fast forward about a month after we get
back……sure enough, I get a ticket in the mail from Hertz! Thank goodness it was only for around 40
Euros!
The next day we had our last breakfast at the gasthof before heading to
the train station. The few times that we
have traveled, I like to bring small gifts to give to our Gasthof hosts or
anyone that may have helped us during our journey. I bring little things that are specifically
made in the US or made locally in Michigan, since I figure that not everyone
gets to travel like we do. There was
this girl at the Gasthof, Gabrielle, who worked the front desk and had been so
helpful during our stay there. I decided
that we would give her one of our little gifts.
The gift included: a Tervis tumbler with a US flag patch, an authentic
dream catcher and a card with the state of Michigan on the front. She was super excited to get it. She had never been to American and I was glad
to have been able to make her day J
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| Our breakfast every day |
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| Me and Gabrielle |
If you want to see the rest of my pictures from this portion of my trip, check out my photobucket site:
http://s1204.photobucket.com/user/amdickinson001/library/Sparkasse%20Marathon%20Europe%20Trip%201of3
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