A Run in with Reutte

Reutte has been the first city to cause us anxiety. wow! We were in this city for less than 24 hours. Do you remember the commercial for the mini? it made a comparison between the car and a small banana pepper. The basis for the comparison? Both were small, but both packed a BIG punch, so to speak.

Our time in Reutte was like a... a... a small banada pepper. It was a small stop, we were only there for 16 hours. It was a small stop, but it packed a punch. It was a painful punch, too. In a way, though, we didn't get up from it; we were picked up.

We arrived early afternoon with very little information about Reutte. `Very little` is really not bad so long as the information is reliable. Our info reported there were 50 private B&Bs in this town of 1,500. Things looked good.

There were complications. Our phone card mysteriously didn`t work in Austria (yes, it had a balance) so we couldn't call ahead to make reservations somewhere. That was onlz a monior inconvience up to this point in Austria. On top of that,it turns out that our info was highly innacurate. We walked for nearly six hours, and found 5 B and Bs. All had vaccant signs, but non let us in. We wear deoderant, I promise!

We were hungry, tired, cold and wet (did I mention it was raining?). I felt so defeated. It was getting dark and we were still towing our bags , with no place to stay. We went back to the train station, hoping to catch a train out. The last train out of the city for the night would have left us stranded in Innsbruck for over 13 hours without a train to anywhere we wanted to go.

We had no idea what we were going to do. Some of us took it better than others. We heard church bells in the distance (yes, I am aware of how corny that sounds). We followed them anyways to a littel church just outside town, and ventured inside.

As soon as we stepped in the church I (Kristen) started balling. It was so beautiful! The ceiling and walls were painted with incredible detail, and the alter was immaculate. There was literally a pool of black water forming at my feet from my tears and makeup. At first, I was crying because I was scared and frusterated, but soon it became out of relief. I somehow knew that everything would be ok. If we had to stay in the only 5 star hotel in town and not eat for a week to afford it, well that would have to do. The mass was in German, but it didnt seem to matter. I still felt comforted.

After the mass we said hello to the priest (Father Francis we learned). He (probably noticing our bags in tow, and maybe my red eyes) asked if we had anywhere to stay. When we said that we didnt, he offered us his own home! I really didnt feel like we deserved the charity. We had been so blessed this far that it just didn`t seem fair to accept the offer. He was so kind and generous, and we really had no where else to sleep. We were so incredibly thankful when he showed us the room he had to offer. We had a warm, dry place to stay and we couldnt have been happier! Father Francis insisted that we ahve breakfast with him and Maria in the morning. We are so incredibly thankful for Father Francis and Maria`s generosity. We hope that if his travels ever bring him to Canada, that we can offer the same warm welcome!




On a completely different note to the person that is STILL pretending to be Karly in the comments.

1. We already asked you once to stop, but in the chance that we were not clear enough I will ask ( a little more irritated) to STOP.

2. Do you really have nothing better to do? My advice: get a hobby.

3. There are plenty of other places that you and your fan club (which I assume is really just a one man show anyways) can converse. Find one.

4. If we have to ask you to stop again we will just disallow commments from anyone anonymous. That really isn`t fair to everyone else who actually has something worth reading.

We get excited when we see that people are actually commenting on our blog. But then when we look at the comments and they are full of "Karly" comments and "Karly" commenting from other names about how great "Karly" is, it is really annoying. REALLY ANNOYING. Thank you for STOPPING.

Sorry to all the normal people who had to read that.