Switzerland to America to Belgium

No blog updates doesn't mean no adventures! The last few months have been full of new places, old friends, new friends, loving family and excitement!

Zurich, Switzerland 
In April, we drove four hours down to Zurich, Switzerland and spent the weekend with a good friend of ours from college. After her busy work week we were able to steal her away and do some sight seeing around the town. We hiked church towers, payed way too much for beers and brats, sat on the lake while we fed the swans, had the most expensive (but tastiest!) whiskey drink I've ever experienced from the Old Crow and played chess with pieces half of our body size.

U.S.A

Two weeks later we began our adventure to the States! We went for one of my best friends weddings but were fortunate enough to make a big trip out of it. We started in Frankfurt and flew 10 hours to Atlanta. From there we flew another 4 hours to Arizona to spend the week with my family. 

Our first week in Phoenix and Tucson were perfect. We did some pool days, enjoyed breweries while getting down on some American food, celebrated old-man-Taylor's 29th birthday and most importantly got to see so much of my family INCLUDING my 99 year old sassy great-grandmother.

After our week in Arizona was up we continued our journey to Utah.

The next two weeks were spent catching up with our close friends and spending time with Taylor's whole family. All his siblings were together and even recreated an old family photo that brought me to tears from laughter. 

We spent our time in Salt Lake City, Park City and even made a trip to Grand Junction, CO to see some of our favorite people, Emma and Frank! We did a fun drive around Colorado National Park and then ventured into Fruita where we did wine and whiskey tastings!

Our last weekend in Utah was spent celebrating Danielle and Dakotas wedding up at Deer Valley! I couldn't have imagined a more fun, beautiful, perfect wedding! The Utah soccer girls danced the night away to the dueling pianos while making rounds at the bar... just like old times. Can we do that again soon, please?!

Brugge/Ostend, Belgium
After our trip to the States we settled down for about a week before making our next move.

Taylor spent the weekend playing on the Baumholder soccer team in Wiesbaden. He had a great time getting the cob webs out of his keeper gloves and getting out on the field!

While Taylor was playing soccer I made my way to Belgium. My friend Amanda (who visited us last October) was back in Europe! Between her Paris-London-work-trip and Ireland-Wedding-bridesmaid-duty she booked a flight to Brussels so we could meet!

I drove three hours to the Brussels airport early in the morning and picked her up. From there we headed to Ostende which is on the Belgium coast and stayed there for a few days. We wandered around Ostende for the first two days, hitting up restaurants, walking along the beach, sitting on rocks  by the ocean, and of course drinking Maes beer!

Our third day was spent seeing the town of Bruges. We took a 20 minute train ride in and walked around the cute medieval, canal-filled, cobble-stoned town for the day. I also finally had my first Belgian Waffle! 

Switzerland + Berlin

I have finally had some time to sit down after all of our recent travels and write/show you all what we have been up to!

Switzerland

Mid-October we had our first visitor! One of my best friends was able to sneak away from her crazy-California-Netflix-superstar life and travel to Germany! Her trip was divided into two parts, Switzerland and Berlin. Taylor was also able to sneak away from his busy work schedule and join us!

When Amanda told me she wanted to go to Switzerland I was beyond thrilled and I can successfully cross that off my giant European bucket list. I did some research on places to visit and stay and decided to pick a location in the middle so we could have easy access to more cities and also drive through a bigger chunk of the country. I found this place "Charming hut direct on the slopes" and immediately fell in love. For the location, price and view (oh my gosh, the view!) I knew I wouldn't find anything better.

The hut we stayed in was located in Diemtigen, about 20 minutes up a mountain from Interlaken. The drive from Baumholder was about five hours, including stopping at the border and filling up gas on the German side and also purchasing a Vignette (road tax) sticker that is required for driving in Switzerland.

The drive was easy and beautiful until we got to the mountain our hut was on. Then it was just beautiful. Beautifully scary. The road turned into a one-laner with outlets every so often to let the oncoming car pass you. The curves were so sharp that you prayed hoping that nobody would come swooping around them. The hills were steep enough that you thought the car was going to fall off and then just roll forever. Thankfully Taylor was brave enough to white-knuckle the steering wheel and get us all up safely!

I won't even go into detail about how amazing this place was because I have pictures that almost do it justice. When we arrived we made some lunch and just sat outside soaking up the sun and enjoying the view. Oh! That is another reason why this hut was a good deal. It had a full kitchen so we were able to bring a cooler full of sandwich meats, stuff for dinner one night, and other items so we didn't have to eat on the expensive economy for every meal.

The next day we went to Interlaken to wander around and see more of the area. Unfortunately, it was super cloudy and rainy which blocked the view of the mountains. Though, the drive was still pretty with the huge lake and fall leaves hanging over us.

The town was small and seemed pretty dead but I am assuming the weather had something to do with that. Normally, there are hang gliders and skydivers surrounding the sky! We grabbed some lunch and walked around the shops and of course grabbed some of that famous Swiss chocolate and cheese at a bakery before heading back!

The drive up the mountain this time was a lot easier since we knew what to expect. Go slow, watch for cars, eyes on the road, watch for cows... Wait, what? About half way up our drive we saw in the distance a cattle herder with about 10 cows following behind him on the pavement. There wasn't an outlet for us to pull over in so we had to back up until we found an open driveway. The cows eventually passed and the rear cow herder nodded his head to say thank you as if this was completely normal.

The following day was sunny so we decided to stick around the hut and do some exploring and hiking.

After our adventure we wanted to grab some lunch at the restaurant just down the hill from our cabin. The little-old-lady owner didn't speak a word of English and we clearly don't speak Swiss-German so that was an interesting (and fun!) conversation. She told us the kitchen didn't open until 5pm so we had some beer and sat out on the restaurant porch. We took a menu home with us so we could translate it to English and order appropriately.

At 5pm we arrived back to the restaurant and the owner had 3 place settings reserved just for us. We got some wine and ordered our food of choice, all getting something different. I got the best schnitzel of my short European life, and Taylor and Amanda got some cow. We were all in meat heaven.

In the middle of our dinner the owner came to our table and said something in German but pointing out the window to the sky. When we looked out the sunset was 20 different shades of yellows and oranges. We loved the hospitality and kindness of this place!

The next morning we headed back to Baumholder but here is a little GoPro video of our adventure!


swiss from jen caldwell on Vimeo.

Berlin

We rested in Baumholder for about an hour before we had to take off to Frankfurt that afternoon to pick up one of Amanda's good friends from the airport. The next morning we all took off in the Subaru to Berlin!

My friend and soccer teammate from college, Amanda, is living in Berlin and owns Berlin Luxury. She completely hooked us up with the coolest apartment/hotel room for our stay and we couldn't have been more lucky and thankful! The apartment was located in a perfect area next to the Berlin Zoo, the metro station and plenty of restaurants and shopping! We hadn't seen each other since college so it was incredibly fun to catch up.

California Amanda also has a friend/teammate from college living in Berlin. She was extremely nice and helpful and took us to some great restaurants, bars and other site seeing must-sees during our stay.

Here is our Berlin adventure in a nutshell!

The next day was more wandering and eating! Eat & drink, eat & drink, I am not complaining! That evening we met up with my teammate Amanda and she took us to a great Israeli/Middle Eastern restaurant. I tried my first octopus along with other interesting foods. We finished the night at another restaurant with chocolate crepes for dessert. I am not a sweet tooth girl but I will gladly eat chocolate crepes every single day of my life.

Our Berlin trip unfortunately came to a close and I took Amanda to the airport the next morning. We kept saying the entire week, "Who would have thought 10 years ago that we would be meeting up in Europe to hang out?!" I was so happy to see one of my longest best friends and thankful to be doing it in another part of the world experiencing new fun!