Germany

When I travel, I want to experience it ALL. I want to see how the locals live, taste authentic local cuisine and get out of the touristy places to see the things they don't usually see. I even want to experience the local hospitals apparently. But you can't just waltz into a hospital and ask for a tour, you have to be injured. So in the spirit of really experiencing Germany in EVERY way possible, I broke my elbow so we could get an up close and personal look at a German emergency room.
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This is the lovely trail (at the base of the German Alps) that we were biking down when I flew over the handle bars of my bike, landing on my wrists, and breaking my elbow?!? Dani was singing at the top of her lungs and I simply had to video tape her....while riding. All was well until J swallowed a bug and pulled over. I turned to say something to her and when I looked back, Dani had slowed and I was right on her. To avoid crashing into her, I slammed on my front brake (a big no no apparently). The front wheel locked and sent me gracefully flying through the air (just ask J, she saw my gracefulness as she was attempting to hack up the bug she just swallowed). The crash ejected the memory card on our camera and erased the video. So I basically sacrificed by body for nothing. It would have totally been worth it if we had the video footage. But without the footage....totally NOT worth it.

There were wood piles everywhere!!

We rented bikes for an afternoon ride.

I think I want to be buried here.

Oberammergau is famous for its "Lüftlmalerei," or frescoes, of traditional Bavarian themes, fairy tales, religious scenes or architectural trompe-l'œil found on many homes and buildings. 

The painting on the homes was absolutely beautiful. Many depicted religious scenes.

One of the churches in Oberammergau. The nice thing about these churches compared to most of the other we saw in Europe is that they actually get used!! This is a very religious town where every 10 years they do "the Passion Play".

(From Wikipedia) The Oberammergau Passion Play was first performed in 1634 and is the result of a vow made by the inhabitants of the village that if God spared them from the effects of the bubonic plague then sweeping the region they would perform a passion play every ten years. The play is now performed in years ending with a zero, as well as in 1934 which was the 300th anniversary and 1984 which was the 350th anniversary (though the 1940 performance was cancelled because of the intervention of the Second World War). It involves over 2000 actors, singers, instrumentalists and technicians, all residents of the village. I think we should go see the Passion Play in 2020!

The girls bought these traditional Bavarian dresses with some of their spending money from Grandparents. They were SOOOO excited.

We saw these traditional Cuckoo clocks all over Europe but ended up getting a very cool one in Oberammergau as our family souvenir.

Every day we found a grocery store and bought food for either lunch or dinner. We would assemble the food on our hotel table and feed all 12 of us for a fraction of the cost of eating out. It was really fun shopping at the grocery stores in the different countries. Germany had the BEST grocery store cookies.

We LOVED Germany!!