Week 4: Sickness, ER, and Garmisch

What a week!! This week has definitely been the most eventful. I hadn't been feeling well since Heidelberg, sore throat, runny nose, nasty cough. The weather has gotten colder here too, usually between 40 and 55 degrees F. It's been pretty rainy too. I wasn't feeling well at all Monday or Tuesday, and the rest of the week for that matter. But Tuesday at work there was an altercation between two boys. I went to one of them to make sure he was ok. He was in the middle of a dodge ball game. I put my hands on his shoulders so he knew I was coming up behind him. Then another kid had thrown a ball and he jumped up to get it. He jumped right into my chin, which made me clamp my teeth together really hard. I was in utter shock, immediately started crying, and couldn't move my jaw for about 20 minutes (the kid had a nice knot on his head, if that tells you how hard we hit). All of the kids were in the gym and saw me. They were asking me if I was OK, but I couldn't talk at all. Our project coordinator was there observing me, and her and the other workers decided I needed to go to the emergency room. I really didn't want to go. I was trying to move it to show them I didn't need to go either, but it just made it hurt worse. So, we spent 4 hours in the ER. They took an X-Ray, and thought it was fractured, so he took a CT scan to get a better look. Turns out it wasn't fractured, thank goodness. He gave me some meds and said it'll be sore for a few days. Well, 5 days later, it's feeling much much much better, but I still don't have full movement back in it. For a couple days it hurt to put my teeth together, and  I still can't open it very wide. But there is a lot more movement now then a couple days ago. Now if I could just get rid of this nasty cough...I've had it about a week, probably going to go to the doctor Monday or Tuesday.

What we were suppose to see. . .

. . . What we actually saw

So about our weekend trip! Because I wasn't feeling well, I didn't want to go somewhere all weekend, but didn't want to stay home and waste a weekend. One of my roommates hurt her finger pretty bad this week too from a kid, so we decided our injured selves would just go on a day trip. We settled on a day trip to Garmisch, about 4 hours south from us. We've heard it is absolutely gorgeous, and we wanted to go hiking, so we thought we'd check it out. Well we should have known from the beginning that it wasn't going to be a great day....haha! We called a cab to take us to the train station, and it took forever, so when we got there we were in a rush. We got our ticket and ran to the train. Well, somewhere along the way, I lost our train ticket. I went to go look for it, and the train started moving. So we had to buy another, more expensive one on the train. What a waste of money!! We got to Garmisch, and it was a little cloudy, but we wanted to go up to the AlpspiX viewing platform, which is 3,300 feet above ground. We planned on hiking, but then were told it would take 3 and a half hours just to go up. Maybe another day. . . . so we took the cable car. The Alpspitze peak stands at 2628 meters, or 8621 feet and the Zugspitze, the tallest point in Germany, the mountain right next to it, stands at 10,000 feet.

We got to the top, and stood in a cloud, literally. We paid 22 Euro to stand in a cloud.It wasn't even scary walking onto the AlpspiX because you couldn't see anything.This is the picture of the viewing platform. As you can tell, there is nothing to see. . . It was a big bummer to have this place hyped up so much and to see nothing, but you can't help the weather. It'll definitely be a place I'd want to come back to, maybe in the summer. Here is the website of the mountains, things to do, and pictures of what we were suppose to see: http://www.zugspitze.de/en/summer/index.htm

At the top looking down. That building to the left is a restaurant

On the ride down-picture of the town of Garmisch.

On the way home, the train was a bit slow, behind by 15 minutes. We missed our connection to Ansbach, so we had to go into Munich to catch a different train. There were hundreds of people there in their lederhosen outfits to celebrate the first day of Oktoberfest!!! There were also tons of cops there....haha! It was fun to see. We'll be traveling to Oktoberfest in the next week or two. Can't wait. Until then, I have to get over this cold!!