Today’s adventures began at the cheese factory in Ettal, Germany.
Ettal is a little town just a few kilometers from Oberammergau. We were hoping for a tour of
the factory, but unfortunately those are only available in German. Instead, we
sat in the restaurant area and watched a video on the making of cheese, milk
and butter. Of course after watching, we had to sample some of the wares! We
tried three kinds of cheese, butter and two different cheesecakes. All were
delicious. The cheeses were all pretty mild – a definite change from what we’ve
tasted in Italy.
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| Yummy cheese, Grommit! |
Our next stop was the Ettal Monastery. We didn’t see any of
the Benedictine Monks that run things there, but we spent some time in their
beautiful basilica. Particularly impressive were the acoustics inside. While
standing directly under the dome, one tap of a foot echoed 8 different times!
We were tempted to sing something to really try it out, but weren’t sure other
passersby would appreciate our musical efforts…
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| Ettal Monastery nestled against the Alps |
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| Check out those pipes! |
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| Looking up from the sweet spot for sound |
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| Rosa posing in the chapel |
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| Gorgeous chandelier |
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| The Net's view of the outside |
From the monastery, we made our way to the sledding hill!
Last night, we used a road that wasn’t particularly steep, but twisted around
and really was terrific sledding –just right for us in our non-winter winter
clothes and with our novice skill level. Today we opted to try the piece of
mountain that we’d seen the German children using. The boys did pretty well,
turfing it only a couple of times. The Net is a natural and came flying down
the hill at breakneck speeds again and again. I’m not sure he could ever get
enough. Deep Thinker had a couple of crashes, but figured out how to steer his
sled and could get more mileage out of one run down the hill than we thought
was possible. Rosa loved it for the first half
hour, sliding on the front of the little wooden sled with The Linguist. Poor Songbird turfed and rolled
the first two times and claims her career in sledding is now over. Pianogurl
was ready to go after the first shovelful of snow she collected in her jeans,
but rallied and stuck it out to the bitter end (in spite of her chilly end!),
and I think she had a good time. I ended up going home early with the two
younger girls, while the serious sledders stuck it out for another hour or so.
Dinner was at a little sport’s bar that serves hamburgers
and the best fries I’ve ever eaten! The owners are retired military from the Netherlands, so
we sampled some of their authentic food, as well. There was a noodle/meat roll
that was breaded and fried that I could’ve eaten more of. Why the excitement
over hamburgers? Well, we can’t get them in Ferrara (unless it’s at McDonald’s – which we
don’t really classify as hamburger). They do have Hard Rock Cafes in some of
the bigger cities like Venice, Florence
and Rome, but in small-town Ferrara, most of the restaurants serve
Italian food and that’s that. We figured we’d better get one while we had the
chance!
Walking back we enjoyed all of the window displays in the
downtown area. Oberammergau
is known for woodcarving and some of what we saw was pretty incredible. A whole
nativity scene carved into half of a walnut was one of the things we had to
stop and exclaim over. We were also really impressed by the wizard riding a
broom that had been carved out of the end of a matchstick!
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| Walnut Nativity Scene |
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| Witch on a matchstick! |
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