Upward Over The Mountain

The weather in the central parts of Europe is definitely far away from the climate along the sea that has been my typical surrounding. It's cold, dark, and damp. I like it far more. I came to Austria to stay with a friend that I met while traveling through Portugal. His name is Gerald, and he is a good dude. His home is situated on a farm on the border to Austria and Germany. His family produces milk on the farm, but the economic side of the situation is rather disheartening. The milk market is monopolized in Austria. Laws are made in which all milk produced by small farmers must be sent to the factory to be bottled and packaged. The milk is then sold for around 1.40 euro, but the farmers are only given 30 cents per liter. Sadly, someone is making a huge profit from this.

The area around the farm is an ideal setting to take in for a burned out suburbanite such as me. While there, we visited many of the small towns in the region of Bavaria. We saw numerous castles, lakes, and cottages. It was everything that can be pictured when holding an image of Germany. The only downside is that it is extremely expensive to live here. One must pay everywhere to simply park the car, drive roads, or use restrooms. Pretty harsh when one is attempting to live out of the box such as myself. We did, however, come across a village by the name of Fucking.

On Wednesday, we took a drive into Munich. First, we stopped to pick up Luke who is a good friend from Pitzer. We play baseball together, and have developed a great companionship throughout the college years. The timing was perfect to venture together to the airport later in the day in order to witness the resurrection of Nino's trip in Europe. He had no idea Luke was with us until he was approached by a hunch-backed stranger with a German accent asking for the tourist office. Priceless. It's a pleasure to spend time with both of them here in Europe.

The next day, we traveled to the Alps. The mountains were perfect. They were so high and mighty. It was almost overwhelming. We went on a hike into an ice cave that is located over a mile high in the mountain. It was a warm day, so I was dressed accordingly for the weather. Sadly, it didn't quite sink in that I would be going into an ICE CAVE! and I stubbornly insisted on solely bringing my t-shirt. That was soon to bite me in the ass when I entered into the tangible version of hell frozen over in Austria. The temperature was somewhere slightly above freezing, and I wondered through the dark barrel with nothing but a sweatshopped piece of cotton. The rest of the visitors found me to be quite the spectacle. I didn't mind too much though because I was able to hold an old-fashioned lantern.