Kristall Palm Beach Resort!! (check it out at http://www.palm-beach.de/)
Eric had heard that the Army Rec Center was offering a trip to Kristall Palm on this past Sunday, but the trip was canceled because so few people signed up, and so we decided to go by ourselves. Eric drove the hour on the Autobahn (our first time!) and it was well worth the trip. It pretty much was just an indoor water park, complete with wave pool, indoor & outdoor hot-tubs, water slides, restaurants, saunas, etc etc. It was sooo much fun! I'm pretty sure we just laughed the whole day.
We were a little overwhelmed at first: not knowing they had co-ed locker rooms, not knowing where to change, not knowing how to lock the changing room door, not knowing how to leave the changing room, not knowing how to use lockers, not knowing how to get out of locker room. I'm sure we looked ridiculous. We ended up just finding other people wearing bathing suits and following them to the right doors, haha.
The place had so much to offer, and I'm certain we didn't even experience everything that was there. At least 3,000 people were swarming the place; sleeping under heat lamps, floating on inner tubes, and lounging in all sorts of different mineral pools. We saw our fair share of men wearing speedos (Eric, sporting board shorts, was the minority), almost all of which had nowhere near the body type necessary to pull off that small of attire.
Eric and I started off in the wave pool, and I don't think I've seen Eric that excited in quite a like time. He was jumping up and down along with all of the other kids. And kids were everywhere. Besides parents of toddlers, we were definitely the oldest patrons there. We then wandered into different pools and waded around outside and inside. The ceiling of the main area was a big glass dome, making the whole place heat up like a greenhouse. It felt so good!
Soon we found a group of kids (haha we sound so creepy) carrying inner tubes and followed them up a few flights of metal stairs to the top of a ride. We thought we were in for a "lazy river" type of situation, but were verryyyy wrong. No lifeguards, or anyone for that matter, were monitoring the ride, so groups of kids were all going at once. And not everybody had tubes. And it was anything but "lazy". It was by far the craziest tube ride I've ever been on. I felt pretty bad however, because around every turn I was taking out handfuls of little children at a time. I guess I couldn't feel too bad though, because seconds later a 200lb man (E Clark) would come tumbling down and cause such big tidal waves that I was certain kids were drowning under my feet. At one point, after my tube and I crashed into the wall/a child, one boy turned to me and yelled (surprisingly in English) "LOOK OUT!!!!! HE'S COMING!!!!". That "he", my husband, then came down the slide, yelling like a gorilla, while the tiny children and I could only watch in horror and try to get out of the way. Needless to say we only went down twice before we felt too guilty to go down again. I was just exhausted from laughing so hard, and we were both all banged up (I think our bodies were too long for the little tubes and narrow slide).
We only stayed another hour or so after that, after eating some cheese pizza poolside. Eric cruised back onto the Autobahn and we laughed back on our silly day. Upon entering Eschenbach, we realized the Eis Cafe (ice cream shop) was open for the season, and had no choice but to order a treat to cool down with in our little Bavarian town.
Below: Eric with his banana split and me with my chocolate-hazelnut soda! Sooo good!
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