Garmisch Was Legendary Part I

As a young boy I always enjoyed when we went on family vacations but I never had the full appreciation for a vacation. You see, kids simply expect things; it's who they are and will forever be. When I was younger I didn't hope and pray for a vacation I simply asked when it was going to be because as I previously stated, I expected it. I always had fun on vacation when I was a child but never did I realize the planning that went into a vacation and the fun that was had by my parents. The difference in the fun-o-meter had by parents and children is about as striking as the amount of weight gained by Daniel-San Larusso from The Karate Kid 1 to The Karate Kid 3. Now would be a good time to say that yesterday Celia and I returned from our first family vacation to the Edelweiss Lodge and Resort which is located in Garmisch.

This vacation was booked a few months ago, while I was still in Iraq, because there is very rarely any vacancy and it was the best way to ensure we were guaranteed a spot. Even better about going there was that the first two nights of our stay our room was almost 50% off and a large portion of our meals were comp'd, it was part of a post deployment special the resort had going. Prior to arriving Celia and I had discussed if we should take the train or drive. The train was appealing because it meant we would not have to do any driving and would not have to make frequent stops to accommodate the kids. In the end we decided to drive because the price of a train ticket far exceeded the amount of money we would have spent on gas. I got our car loaded up the night prior so all we had to do was wake up and walk out the door. We began driving early in the morning to combat the 6 hour trip (8 hours with kids) the best we could. For the first few hours everything we saw was very similar to our view from Baumholder but that all changed once we had to exit the Autobahn.

There was some construction being done to the road that Helen (our Navigon GPS) was not aware of. We updated our maps prior to leaving and she let us know 200 km out of virtually every minor construction site but she somehow missed the construction that forced us off the Autobahn. So here we are in the heart of Germany with so many fluent English speaking residents capable of pointing us in the right direction, we weren't sure what to do. We gave Helen the benefit of the doubt that maybe she would find and alternate route, but she kept bringing us back to the Autobahn. Once we exhausted all possible options, Helen being all possible options, we stopped in a small German town to get gas and hope to get some guidance. While Celia went inside and got a small piece of paper that told us what small towns to follow that would get us to Garmisch I pumped our gas. Mind you we still had a quarter tank of gas but fuel is so expensive on the German economy that the price to fill up was 84 Euro. 84 EURO!!!!! Yes, I felt it was necessary to repeat myself, capitalize Euro and leave 5 exclamation points because the price is that outrageous. Now keep in mind that the exchange rate for that day was 1 Euro = $0.69; the price in dollars was about $120 to get ¾ of a tank of gas. Fortunately for us we stopped at an Esso station where we had an Esso card with a prepaid balance, and were charged the price per gallon that we would pay back in Baumholder, $2.95. That's the first time ever I thought gas that high was cheap.

Once we began following the piece of paper Celia was given at the gas station Helen quickly saw what we were doing and rejoined the party and guided us the rest of the way. Once we were about 45 minutes to an hour away from Garmisch we began to see exactly what we were driving to. We came over a hill and off in the distance we could see the mountains and continued to move straight towards them. Before we knew it we were driving through the mountains and it was one of the most beautiful things I've seen. In some areas there would be a lake engulfed by mountains and when I wasn't sightseeing we were twisting and turning down the mountains. My initial thought was that I wish I could have the words to describe everything I saw. Celia and I talked about how amazing everything looked but truth be told there were no words or phrase profound enough of capturing all the eye see's to properly serve justice. I didn't want to miss the slightest bit as I drove along hearing U2 sing "It's a beautiful day, don't let it get away" and as lame as that is, and trust me it is lame, it seemed to be the most fitting way of putting everything I was seeing.

We checked into our hotel about 5:00 p.m. and just relaxed for the rest of the day. Celia and I put the kids down for bed and stayed outside of our hotel on the small deck our room had. The view outside of our room was so breathtaking you could easily spend your entire night sipping your drink of choice in complete silence and wake up the next morning with absolutely no remorse. Does anybody remember in the movie Forrest Gump when Jenny is on her death bed and Forrest is talking to her about the many adventures of his life? At one point he begins describing the mountains when he was running for 3 years and told Jenny "I didn't know where earth stopped and heaven began." That is what the view outside our hotel looked like that evening as Celia and I shared a bottle of wine. We were completely captivated and marveling God's creation that the night slipped us by. Celia and I didn't sit in complete silence though, as we were sipping our drink we were talking about our kids as we so often do and the movies that they watch. That talk got me thinking and spawned a tangent of epic proportions.

Jadon is to the age where he watches nothing but Disney movies. Recently I did some shopping on Amazon and EBAY and broadened Jadon's movie selection to include the likes of Toy Story, Bolt, Monster's Inc., and Cars just to name a few. Well as Celia and I were talking I interrupted her and made sure I had her complete attention. How many people have seen Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid, and Aladdin? Most likely everybody reading this has seen at least one of those movies. Did anybody ever notice there was an unspoken connection in all three movies? All are love stories involving women this we know, but how many of those women had mothers? Not a single one of them? My question is this, where did mom go? How come Mom is nowhere to be seen or never spoken of? In Aladdin no queen in the palace, in Mermaid there is no queen of the water, and in Beauty and the Beast there is not a word of who Crazy Old Maurice scared out of Bell's life. You know what I think happened? Well with Crazy Old Maurice it's quite evident why Bell doesn't have a mother isn't it. She threw in her cards, she cut her losses, and she accepted that never seeing her daughter was a worthy sacrifice to never spend another day with Maurice. However with the other two the only thing I can think of is a replication of King Henry by sending the wife on a long, permanent vacation for not delivering a son. Princess Jasmine's daddy had Jaffar take care of the mom Tony Soprano style like the when Tony found out that Adrianna was working with the Feds. I haven't come up with a theory for the Little Mermaid yet but I think it would involve Ursula and a double cross somehow but I don't have a strong enough gut feeling to go ahead with it. Seriously though, where's the mom in these Disney features? I'm sure if I thought about it longer I could think of another example.

Getting back on track, as Celia and I watched the sun set overlooking the mountains we noticed there was a family just across the way from us that had their blinds open. They had three children that we could see for sure, possibly more. Of the children we saw all were over the age of 4 but under the age of 10. Presumably the parents enjoyed the fact they could deliver such a fun vacation for their children because that is the real joy of vacation for me, seeing my children happy. You rack your brain for hours of ways to please your kids. I know I do it because once I see that smile on their face all the money I spent, the hours I spent thinking, and the hours I spent traveling would be redone in a heartbeat, just to see a smile on their face and to hear them laugh. The laughter is one of the most beautiful parts of being a parent and giving that laughter to your children on vacation is what makes a vacation memorable to a parent. That is what I was referring to above when I spoke of the fun-o-meter when parents and kids are compared to in regards to vacation. The other part of vacation for parents is the romance aspect, am I right? Oh yeah! Parents want to stay in a nice hotel with pleasurable accommodations and as a father planning the trip you do your damndest to ensure the wife is happy and wooed, because if the wife's happy then daddy's happy. Well I'm sure that the dad across the way from my room was/is no different than I in that he wanted to give his kids a good time but also hoped for a little romance from the misses. I was thinking that exact thought when I turned to Celia and said, "There room is exactly like ours. They have three kids in that room with two beds. There is no way they're having sex on this vacation. Now I know what my parents went through every time we went on vacation."

There will be at least one more part to our vacation, maybe two. Keep checking back for updates and I hope you enjoyed.