Germany and Mallorca

Once again, I have been really lax about keeping up with the blog.  Things were a bit hectic this summer.  We were in Saudi for the first half of Ramadan and then we went on vacation for the second half.  We decided to go to Germany so we could visit Matt's family for a bit and then from there we planned to go to Mallorca.  First we went to Simbach to visit Matt's Dad. 

 Then a few days later we went to Garmisch to go visit Matt's Mom.

 We really didn't have any plans at all which turned out to be really nice because we just did whatever we felt like doing.  Like going for a walk and stopping for coffee.

Or going to a horrible Mexican restaurant.  (That purple stuff is a generous sprinkling of lavender.) It tasted like soap.  Nasty stuff.

 And it turned out that we were there for the annual block party on Matt's Mom's street.  There was a BBQ and lot's of beer of course!

This lady was funny.  She kept speaking to me in German.  She didn't seem to get it that I didn't understand her at all.  If she said something really funny someone usually translated it for me.

 Eventually, this being Germany, of course it started raining. Pouring actually.  But they just got out some tarps and clipped them to the sunshades and zipped on some plastic sides and it less than 5 minutes we were all dry.

And the party just carried on.  Except that we moved on to schnapps.  I think we got maybe 4 hours of sleep  and then we had to get up to go to the airport so we could fly to Mallorca Spain.

 Parts of Mallorca are very beautiful.  I can not for the life of me remember the name of this place but we paid to get in.  There was a museum there as well.

We went running along the corniche and I stopped to take a picture of this place.  I have no idea what it is.  (I'm so informative!)

So anyway, yes, parts are very beautiful. The reason we chose Mallorca, however, is because Matt's family has a studio apartment there.  The area where it is located is in Palma.  This is a bit of a party area. It is not beautiful.  It looked like this:

At night the whole thing lit up and it was a bit like being on holiday with the Inbetweeners. We had a good time but we went back to Germany a few days early.  I can no longer party like I'm in my twenties and I have no desire to anyway.  

Back in Germany we saw Matt's Dad again and then went off to his Mom's house again where this time they were having a parade.

 It lasted for about 20 minutes and then everyone followed the parade up the hill.

 Where low and behold, they were having a little "Octoberfest" in August.

Prost!

We hung out for a few more days and then we went back to Saudi.  A day and a half later I went back home to a pipe burst in our townhouse and I spent the next month and a half dealing with that.  My kitchen now looks like this:

Eventually I made it back to Saudi and then sadly, Matt got a phone call that his Dad was very sick with pneumonia.  He left that night to go back to Germany and a few days later he died. So we spent a couple more weeks in Germany for the funeral.   It was a very difficult time for Matt, but it was nice that there were so many family members around.  

Most of the time we were in Munich, but we did take a day trip to Innsbruck just before we went back to Saudi.  

And that is what happened over the Summer and half of the Fall.