We are leaving tomorrow!

Hello, everyone! By which, I mean, my mother and father and a handful of interested friends. Ben and I, whom you may know as exactly that, are going to Europe tomorrow. We are flying into Munic where we are getting picked up by some German or maybe Austrian folks. They are taking us to a town called Elmau in the Austrian Alps. I believe the story is that Ben's Grandmother named Brunie used to vacation on the slopes of this town when she was a young girl living in Germany. Ben and I mostly speculated this fact while we were in his new truck on 95 somewhere in New Jersey. It's not really a fact based in fact. But at any rate, Ben has been there many times before as a child. He has lots of fond memories that involve hiking the mountains and sitting on shut down saw mills. The pension where we are staying seconds as a saw mill and might be slightly responsible for his hobbies and profession (he's a carpenter), or perhaps all young boys given a chance will sit on the nearest piece of large machinery they can climb. He also remembers running up and down and sideways all over the slopes until stumbling upon a farm or maybe just an Austrian homestead. The women, seeing this adorable boy who, knowing Ben had the joy of the outdoors all over his face, gave him a gallon of fresh raw goats milk. He said he drank it up, relishing in something. Other wonderful stories he carries with him about this place include the local fame his sisters earned as the strawberry girl. Apparently in the mirco-feashe section of some Austrian library there is a photo of her, sitting happily in a field, with her face covered in berry juice. Awesome.

So, yes, this is the first leg of our journey. Austria. Ben tells me that when we get to the top of his favorite peak called Guttenheuter, which I would phonetically spell Gutten-whoo-ga, we can drink a beer and eat a full meal, making the Alps maybe simultaneously the most expensive and most delicious place to backpack. We are not, in fact, backpacking yet and will not start for another two weeks or so. We do, however, have backpacks! And I have a story about mine.

I purchased a backpack when I was living in Oregon in the Summer of 2008. I used it for 3 years, tore some holes into it, sewed it up with dental floss, affixed a patch that said "imagina que no haya paises," which at the time I recognized neither as incorrect grammar nor a John Lenon quote, and stored it in a dank basement over the winter where it molded. I recently walked in holding this backpack and put it on the counter and with a straight face asked for a refund. The man told me that REIs Satisfaction Guarantee was for slightly used and potentially resalable items, and my backpack would just be put in a dumpster. The manager came over, typed some numbers into the computer, looked at me and said, "If you really think that you deserve all your money back for this, then we'll do that for you." I said okay and she repeated the sentence "If you think you deserve the money back" followed by a clause about the condition of my backpack a few more times before giving me a full refund, which I immediately turned into a better pack. Thank you, REI. I will never shop at EMS again.

So, now, Ben and I have the same backpack. And let the record stand, I wanted this bag since the summer of 2008 and it is only through my guidance that he happened to purchase his. But, they match, how cute it that? Mine is the red one.