Took a train an hour east to the Chiemsee / Chiemgau area, where we met up with Chris’s uncle Andreas to be escorted on a whirlwind tour of the area. After lunch with Andreas and his wife, Monika, we headed off. 
We passed through the tiny town of Mietenkam (where Chris had spent time as a teenager) and the slightly larger town of Grassau on our way into the Alps, on the hunt for snow. Andreas said we must have a “real winter” and he wasn’t going to take no for an answer.
Alas, wherever we went we found just steady rain that had washed away any remaining snow, and so we headed deeper and deeper into the Alps. Reit im Winkl, Ruhpolding, past Salzburg and into the Austrian Alps … finally in Obertauern we got past (above?!) the rain and into heavy snow … three feet of it! 
We trudged through the ski town to a favorite restaurant of Andreas’s where we had a traditional fare — a soup with dumpling and meatball, and a pastry dish called Kaisersomething.
Then we headed back down out of the Alps and into Salzburg to explore the city there a bit. More Christkindlmarkts and impossibly old architecture, 
and finally we stumbled completely randomly on … a Krampus/Perchten parade! This is an ancient Alpine tradition that occurs around St. Nicholas day and is a way to punish bad children and ward off evil. Sharon had resigned herself to missing the Munich event, but there was one happening in Salzburg that we completely lucked into! 
Sharon took a zillion photos and is still beside herself! Exhausted and thrilled, Andreas then took us to get some gluhwein from a nearby restaurant that had been first established in 803 (not 1803, 803).
A quick drive back on the Autobahn in Andreas’s Phaeton and a short tour of Traunstein where Andreas’s electronics company, Municom, is based and we were back on the train to Munich and soon back in bed.