Spring Break 2024: Prologue

All right, Meeples, here's the deal: having decided to pull off Japan (still don't believe it)

during our February break, all of a sudden, Spring Break 2024 was wide open. Two weeks at the end of March, and Suz and I put together the plan: rent a car

and make sure we take in more of Germany, this country we will have called home for more than two years. Okay, sure, we had done a fair job of it already: Hamburg and Rostock, Leipzig and Nuremberg, even Munich way down south, and a number of places in between, but still it felt like we hadn't gone at Germany with any real focus. "You lived in Germany," I imagine someone asking us, "how was it?" And then each of the five of us respond, "Well, Tokyo was cool," or something like that.

Like, gag me with a spoon!... But before we load up the EV and take you with us, let me frame this adventure properly. Take a look at this:

This is the game board of Ticket to Ride Germany. (If you have not yet played Ticket to Ride, well, you need to get with it.) We have been playing T-to-R Germany, this particular edition of the board game, for years, even before we moved here (--the Williams, no doubt, prompting us to do so). But, now, we decided to play it in real life, collecting "Meeples", and finishing "Routes," trying for the highest score possible, while also checking out some awesome German castles.

We, of course, started in Berlin and then drove all the way to Koblenz.

From there (and nearby Trier) we went to Luxembourg (--yes, I know, not Germany),

and then ventured south to Strasbourg (--not Germany either, but at least it's on the game board--sheesh, you guys are a tough audience--you're like a classroom of 8th-graders.).

Then we hit the Black Forest on our way down to Konstanz.

From there, another castle--of the fantasy king,

and then we hit Garmisch-Partenkirchen (which we are letting Lindau on the game board represent).

The long haul home begins there, Lindau to Berlin (something like 15 points, I'm thinking), with a night and day in Dresden.

It was a trip, indeed, and in the following post, I will start each section of our travels with a picture of that portion of the game board we covered. After all is said and done, we'll tally our points, and, in the "Epilogue", see how we did in our real-life Ticket to Ride game.

Are you ready? Let's go.