I had to go to a conference in Garmisch but I didn't have to be there till Monday so Lisa and I left on a little road trip beginning on Saturday. We started south through Germany, turned east in Switzerland, went through Licthenstein (which is too small to take a picture of), through Austria and back up into Germany. It was very nice. This is Lisa on the shores of Lake Constance. 
The region of Switzerland that we visited is called Apenzell. This is "po-dunk" switzerland. They are famous for two things, cheese and beer. Their cheese smells like sneakers that you have waded in the creek in, put in your closet wet, and forgotten about. Then you found them, put the foot hole over your nose and mout and breathed as deeply as you could. It tastes considerably better than that. Also, the beer I believe was invented to help cope with the smell.
It's called the Golden Roof, which I don't think is really gold or it would be called "the stolen golden roof".
This guys wife has been asking for vinyl replacement windows for hundreds of years.
This place has been a guesthouse (hotel) since 1465. I think Napolean stayed here when he was scoping things out. This place has been a hotel since before America was discovered. Which means that if you were sitting in the new guesthouse when it was built eating breakfast, and you said, "hey, what do you think about the new world?", people wouldn't know what you were talking about.
We were eating a late lunch in Innsbruck and these llamas started walking by. The guy in the forground was in the mafia and the llamas went "missing" soon after this photo was taken.
This is me holding real live Bavarian cow dung. Thanks to my extensive Odom farm training, I took a whiff and exclaimed (with a mock French accent) "Bessie, circa September 24, with a hint of clover".
When you're the only house at the top of the mountain, you'd better be expecting company.
This is a church on top of the hill. The crowds are much smaller here than they are at sea level churches. They are also way more devout. They sing short songs because they are out of breath and they don't mind long sermons, because they are glad to sit down for a while. They also don't have dinner on the grounds, since everyone would have eaten their deviled eggs long before they got there.
After all that walking, we ended up somewhere more remote than where we started. That guy in the background was saying to his girlfriend, "We walked all the way up here for this!?". But it was very nice. I was nicer to Lisa than he was to his girlfriend, mostly because I had no energy left to fight.
This is a nice view of how high up we were. The air was thin because I was out of breath from walking up here. That, or I am a little out of shape.
So I was tired of hanging around in Innsbruck so Lisa says "hey, Rick Steves recommends a corkscrew drive up a mountain and a 30 minute alpine hike to a remote dairy farm". I said "cool". So we headed up the mountain. The road, while paved, was about as wide as locks creek at it's narrowest. For those of you unfamiliar with locks creek road, it is the road i grew up on, and at it's narrowest, you're losing a mirror. So this road was very narrow, straight up, no guardrails, hairpin turns and you had to pull over (perilously) to allow people to pass. I wasn't so bad since it is about like driving to the short mountain fire tower but Lisa was a little white knuckled. It was a very nice drive and I recommend it in pristine conditions.
We were driving and I was a little jealous that I couldn't sit in the passenger's seat and joyride like Lisa. So we stopped at a parking area and hiked a little in the woods and came across a nice mountain stream.
This is a great view of the Linderof. This is King Ludwig's hunting lodge. We had been to this area many times but had never been out here. It was really nice and if anyone is ever in the area (south of Munich) with us, prod us to go here, even if we fight you on it like we were going to take you to graceland or something.
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