I love a good family road trip – the packed car, the audio books, the long conversations, the music, the wide open road, the avalanche of backseat snacks, the coffee stops and obligatory midnight McDonald’s sundaes.

Our family has had some great American road trips. Once we pulled an all-nighter to drive from California to Oklahoma, arriving at my parents’ house just in time for Easter morning. Then there was the spontaneous weekend trip to Utah that took us through Vegas, the Hover Dam and to the unexpected beauty of Zion National Park.

One summer we drove to Seattle, stopping near Shasta, California at a motel consisting entirely of train cars, a dream for our little boy who loved and still loves trains. Then a few summers later we left the safety of American highways and ventured into the rough, wild deserts and coastal towns of Baja California on a trip to Cabo San Lucas. It was that first international family trip that opened our hearts to the wild adventure of exploring Mexico and the rest of the world.

So when we left Malmö, headed south towards the snowy Alps and the prospect of a few days skiing, I was looking forward to the road trip as much as the destination. And I was not disappointed.

When leaving Sweden and heading to Germany, unless you are in an airplane, the first thing you have to do is either cross a couple of expensive bridges into Denmark and then Germany, or take a ferry. As it turns out, the ferry from Malmö to Lübeck, Germany is significantly cheaper than the sum of European gas prices and exorbitant bridge tolls.

And so we started our road trip by driving our Swedish car onto a ferry.

Drive aboard the ferry

Winter wind makes this cruise an indoor affair save a few quick obligatory photos for mom’s blog.

Goodbye, Malmö, for now.

The ferry, which was mostly occupied by truck drivers and a handful of families leaving Sweden for the “sport’s break,” an annual February week-long school holiday universally seen as a great week for skiing; contained a cafeteria, bar and lounge with children’s toys and a TV, a very small swimming pool, and oddly enough, a very Swedish sauna.

It is a bit unnerving to walk into a public restroom, open the cedar-lined door in the back of the restroom area, and see a completely naked woman stretched out on the sauna step, “Hej, hej.” I shut the door too quickly, forgetting my polite, “hej, hej,” in return. To be fair, we were still in Swedish waters.

Sightseeing in Hamburg, Germany

We spent our first night in Lübeck, and our first day exploring that historic port city and then, further down the road, Hamburg. Both places were fascinating, brimming with untold stories and historical connections; but as the nature of road trips are brief breaks with more miles to travel before resting, we moved on too quickly, leaving most of these interesting cities untouched.

Welcome to our castle.

Our second night was in Eisenach, city of Martin Luther fame; and we ate our first proper German meal in a German restaurant and spent the next day hiking up to the Castle Wartburg to explore all of the history there.

Kip examines the door of Luther’s study where the great Reformer translated the New Testament into German.

Life inside the castle walls looks like Disneyland.

Castle doves (photo credit River Haynes)

In 1817 German students gathered here in what become the beginnings of German unification.

 

That night we made it as far as the Bavarian alps, quite randomly staying in a delightful family-run bed and breakfast in Obermmergau, a village dominated by its nearly 400-year-long tradition of Passion play performances. The host proudly displayed generational pictures of her family costumed in Biblical garb, including pictures of her son as Jesus, her grandchild as baby Jesus and her husband both as an old man in recent color and a child in black and white.

A neighborhood of family run hotels in Obermmergau, Germany

Our host’s hospitality was beyond charming, and to add to the delight she told us that our breakfast cheese came from a local monastery that also made beer. So of course, we had to go there too. The little village monastery turned out to be the famous Ettal Abbey, a Benedictine monastery established in the 14th century.

Ettal Abbey

Frescoes under the church dome

Wall plaque cites Bonhoeffer’s time at Ettal

As a little historical note for my fellow Dietrich Bonhoeffer devotees, the German pastor spent time here in the winter of 1940-41 where he worked on his book Ethics. Several members of the Ettal community were also involved in the conspiracy against Hitler.

 

Up next, skiing in Austria…