We had the perfect plan! I sat back with my vending machine beer as my Dad and I circled the map with our destination in near sight. We highlighted all the popular highways that would lead us out of Germany and into Switzerland. Out final destination, the Matterhorn.

This trip would mark the last full day of our Germany journey. We had to return to Munich the same night to prepare for our morning flight. We had about 7 hours of highway driving ahead of us and incredible Swiss Alps scenery.

We were making better time than expected, thanks to the autobahn with no speed limit and our German rental car…awesome! We started winding through the Swiss Alps with roads thinner than an average sidewalk. According to the map we were still on major highways, and on track to our final destination. We highway took us to a small ski town with one road entering and exiting the town. We follow the road to pass the town when we ended up in a skiing parking lot. We asked the old man in the bright vest directing traffic if we were still on the right track. By the way, my Dad and I don’t speak Germany. He spoke in words that left us clueless so I pointed to our destination on the map… he laughed…loud.

My Dad watched a car cruise past us continuing on the steep road, so we follow him. The sky was blue, the sun was shinning and we were still on our path. My Dad and I were too busy enjoying the scenery we hardly noticed the lack of any other travelers and the empty road. We thought, “what a perfect last day!”

And just about then we began to squint at what looked the of a road. We thought surely this highway could not be closed. We slowly rolled towards a massive wall of snow blocking our ‘major highway’. That was it. The road ended. The highway vanished under blankets of snow. And there we were. The two American tourists who didn’t consider winter road closures.

So we parked our car and enjoyed the stunning scenery and laughed, just like the old man directing parking. We realized we had an adventure that could not have been planned, and that is why we had the best last day ever.

Thanks Dad for making my dream of seeing that ‘poster castle’ come true, I had a blast! Grüss gott.

~Karina