The Peak

Today was our last full day in Germany, and to finish off the trip Mrs. Paige and Myers decided to keep our last excursion a secret. For last couple of days, both of them have been insisting that we are going to another Siemens tour, but they wouldn’t tell us what we needed to wear or where we would be going. The day was finally here though, so after breakfast and morning class we promptly started walk down the mountain to the train station. To our surprise, instead of going to the train station, we turned and walked along a gravel path we hadn’t come across yet in our two weeks here. I was confused at first, but when we finally arrived at our first destination it all became clear. We were at a mountain railcar station! Myers and Mrs. Paige revealed that we were going to the top of the tallest mountain in the Brannenburg area. We rode the train for about 25 minutes up narrow tracks along the mountain’s edge, and as we ascended we could see the cliff edges that dropped for hundreds of meters below. The railcar stopped at about 1700 meters and we walked outside to a gorgeous view of the mountains. It was still not quite high enough for some of us, however, so we started hiking up the path to the peak. With every step, the view became more incredible. We hiked up stairs, over rocky paths, and through wet caves to ascend as high as possible. When we finally reached the top, we were rewarded with the most breathtaking sight of the entire trip. It seemed like we could see forever. The hills and valleys stretched for miles beneath us, dotted with trees and houses as small as ants in the distance. We spotted the truly enormous Lake Chiemsee, which some of us had visited just a week ago on our free weekend. The mountain we were on towered over the other summits nearby, and gave us a true birds eye view of the beautiful country I have come to love in the last 3 weeks. Our time here unfortunately has come to an end, but I hope I can make it back some day.