The Friendly Faces at Audi

What time is it? 

Why can't I get any sleep? 

What is keeping me up?

Oh wait! That's right.

We're headed to Ingolstadt in the morning...

When does our train leave?

obviously not soon enough...

Can we just leave now?

Maybe I'll just go ahead and they can catch up.

Is it time yet?

. : . : .

It's 6am! I'm awake. Let's go!

We have a 6:50 train to catch...

to Ingolstadt

We board our train.

Ticket...check.

Camera...check.

Excitement...

double check! Maybe a little too much.

Commence the longest forty minutes in history...

. : . : . : .

Finally, arrival...

in Ingolstadt

What's that off in the distance?

*double take

*triple take

That's what I thought.

My eyes do not deceive me.

Trains full of Audis...

Somebody get me on that train.

We take a bus...

and arrive in a new, yet somehow familiar place.

I exit the bus and walk... wait... race to what I see.

My feet aren't even hitting the ground. 

I'm effortlessly floating, gliding.

I am greeted and welcomed by these beautiful faces. 

Friends I have been longing to see.

I am home.

Panoramic Vision

There were so many beautiful scenes on our excursion to Germany. I tried to capture them all and was somewhat successful, I think. 

This is Salzburg.

Salzburg was a beautiful city. It was large, but was very quiet. I was expecting to see a lot more people because this is an important city for the composer Mozart and it's where the "hills are alive." I'm excited to come back here near the end of my stay with our entire group. 

View from Neuschwanstein Castle.

This was one of my favorite places. It was away from everything else. A place in it's own secret corner of the world. Surrounded with great mountains and valleys. This is definitely a change of pace from where we were going in the next few days.

This is Frankfurt.

Huge city. Fast paced. Large, sky scraping buildings that were literally touching the clouds that day. There was so much to see and definitely not enough time to do it all. 

This is Berlin.

I was able to walk on the outside of the dome of the Berlinerdom and have a 360 degree view of all of Berlin. It was a fabulous day and my favorite of the big cities we visited. I can't exactly put my finger on why I liked it so much (probably because of the Berlin Philharmonic concert), but it just felt really good to be there. It was clean, bright and beautiful.

Spring Break

This year marked the first time I have had a Spring Break in 9 years. I still can't figure out why BYU doesn't give us a Spring Break because it is the greatest thing ever. Here's just a little glimpse into what I did for Spring Break in Germany.

--Also, you can expect my blog to shift focuses from Vienna to Germany for the next little while. I did so much and it will take a lot of posts to cover.--

The first place in which we (Paige, Teancum and I) arrived was Salzburg. Technically, still in Austria, but not Vienna. We spent the evening there exploring a beautiful castle at the top of a hill. It was a perfect way to spend our Sunday evening and a great beginning to my Spring Break. 

View from the castle

The castle

In the morning, we made our journey to München (Munich). We explored the Deutches Museum, which was massively huge and spent the remainder of the evening wandering, exploring and finding whatever München had to offer.

View from top of Deutches Museum

Church at sunset

The next morning, we got up early and caught a train to Neuschwanstein Castle. There was another amazing castle in addition to the main attraction. The Neuschwanstein Castle is famous because it was used as a model for what we know as the Disney Castle. It was an amazing site to behold. The other castle was Hohenschwangau Castle.

Hohenschwangau Castle

Neuschwanstein Castle

We spend nearly the entire day up at those castles. The scenery was absolutely beautiful and it was really nice to see gigantic mountains in the background.

The next day, we headed to Ingolstadt. I was so excited. If you want to know how excited I was, just ask Paige or Teancum. I may have been a little too excited for this part of the trip. We went to Ingolstadt to see the Audi Factory and Museum. I love cars, especially Audis. The museum and tour of the production factory completely made my day. You'll definitely see a post about this.

At the Audi campus

The glorious museum

Our trip then took us to Frankfurt. This place was enormous, compared to where we had been. We went to the Frankfurt Temple and had a lovely time there with other members of the Church. We saw some amazing old church buildings, an airport protest and the city climbing into the clouds.

Must be in Europe. Graffiti. 

Clouds touching the tops of buildings

To top off the trip, we made our way to Berlin. All I can say is heaven on earth. I loved this city the most. It even beats out Ingolstadt, and that is a tough thing to do. This city had the X-factor for me. That was the Berlin Philharmonic. I saw them perform. It was beyond amazing.

Part of Berlin from atop a church

Beautiful night scene