My Body is Now 60% Beer Instead of Water, OR, Our Trip Through Bavaria!

There are probably a few other titles I could have thought of, but as my body readjusts to non-beer beverages and jet lag, I have found that my wit has also diminished.  Probably a good idea to just keep drinking then. 

Janet, John, Dave, Jen and I in Schruns, Austria

For those who did not know, I was given the opportunity to join my boss, John, his wife, Janet, and a coworker, Dave, on a trip to Europe for a business trip.  Jen was invited to come as well so even though it meant leaving the little guy for 8 days we thought there was no way we could not pass up this opportunity. The trip was mainly to attend the sales meeting for Gantner Instruments, one of our principals and a very good one at that.  They are located in Schruns, Austria.  We were also going to visit a few other principals that were in the region.  Sensormate near Winterthur, Switzerland and Sensortechnics, just outside Munich, Germany. 
I like to take pictures, and I take a lot of pictures.  Even when the subject matter isn't that interesting, you put a few beers in me and if I have a camera, you can be pretty sure you will be seeing dots from the flash for a few days.  So you can imagine, that when I was surrounded by the beauty of Switzerland, Austria and Germany, 850+ pictures was not a surprising final tally.  That was after just a quick edit of the blurry pics, out of frame shots and just easily identifiable bad shots.  So to make life easy, I will break it up by days of the trip and maybe even throw in a few slideshows so that you aren't scanning through a few hundred pictures of the same mountain.  I am not kidding, I was so amazed at the beauty of the mountains that I just kept taking the same picture over and over and over and over. 

Day 1
Jen and I left Indianapolis on Tuesday the 29th around 2:30 to catch our connecting flight to Zurich in Washington DC.  Dave was going to meet us in DC and he would be on the same flight.  John and Janet would arrive shortly after us in Zurich.  Since our cell phones would not work in Europe, we would be without easy communication for the entire trip. 

Plenty of room

John had purchased a couple of world phones but we kept those for emergencies.  There were no problems with the flight, we arrived in Zurich about a half hour early, so about 7:30am.  Yep, an overnight flight.  I don't think any of us really got any sleep so when we landed in Zurich we felt like crap.  Plus, as we were walking to get our luggage, Dave and I both realized that we had no way of getting in touch with John.  Luckily, nature called and we stopped at the baggage carousel to clean up a little.  While Dave and Jen took their turns in the bathroom cleaning up, I waited by the bags and John and Janet came wandering around the corner.  So no issues there.  Our first meeting was about 10am near Winterthur, a small town outside of Zurich.  John had rented a car, it turned out to be a Toyota wagon of some sort.  He also got a GPS. I don't know how we ever survived without one of these.  We squeezed in the car and piled in the luggage and John began working the GPS. Our trip was pretty fast and scenic, but we were really all pretty tired so there wasn't much conversation.  Though John did tell us about these little shacks that everyone has in the country side.  They are basically gardens since there is no room in the city.  There is a picture of it later, it does look like a shanty town and the fact that they are not filled with meth addicts and homeless is a testament to the country and people.  Anyway, Janet and Jen were to be entertained by Bruno's, from Sensormate, wife when we arrived.  They decided not to follow us inside and instead tried to take a nap in the car.  When Theresa showed up, John took her out to the car and Jen and Janet were passed out.  John had to tap on the window and shock them awake. Theresa was very sweet and even bought Oz a little wooden cow.  He loves the little fella and puts him in weird places to surprise us.  I opened up the fridge today and found him on one of the shelves.  We had lunch at this very old building, which I believe was once manor built around the 1800s.  Beautifully restored, we had a great lunch and I enjoyed a beer and so did Dave.  Which might have contributed to the bathroom incident.  Now remember, no sleep, so we were not at our sharpest.  Apparently it started with Dave who went to the bathroom at the restaurant.  He came back sat down and said that there was someone in the bathroom and it was locked.  Janet and Jen then left to go to the bathroom and came back after a short while as well.  They both said the bathroom was locked and that someone was in it.  Theresa had been earlier and had not had a problem.  So finally, they could not wait any longer and all three decided to try again.  So all three left for the bathroom.  A short while later Dave came back around the corner with an embarrassed look on his face.  He sat down and of course I had to ask what was so funny.  He simply replied that apparently you had to push the door open and they had been trying to pull the entire time.  Then Jen and Janet came back, they were laughing hysterically and they sat down knowing that all three of them could not figure out these crazy Swiss bathroom doors that had you push instead of pull. 
From Winterthur we headed out and over to Schruns via Liechtenstein.   A tiny little landlocked country that speaks German and is probably about 5 miles wide.  We would have not even noticed it if we had not decided to stop and get a beer.  Little did we know that stopping for beer to refuel would be a common theme throughout our trip.  After leaving Liechtenstein, we jumped back in the car and headed to Schruns. 
And now a video break, please enjoy.  These pics are at a much lower resolution that what I took them at, it would be just too big of a resource hog to load them all at full resolution.  If you want a better look at one let me know and I can send it to you or post it at a higher resolution.