Day 6 Riding the Rails to Munich

The awesomeness of the breakfast at the Hotel Garni Probst can not be overstated. Fueled up on that, we went off to see the Deutsche Bahn Museum.  The exhibits are really interesting, and they don't dance around DB's involvement in the holocaust.  The way that they handled the development of railway technology and the differences between that development between the old east and west were really fascinating.  And let's not forget the really big HO Scale railway they have.  Be sure to check the schedule for when the demonstrations are, because otherwise you'll miss out on a really cool show. After a lunch on the go in the Christmas Market (including more Feuerzangenbowle), we wandered off to Munich.  For a change we actually had something booked, our first experimental run with airbnb.com .  We stayed at a place rented out by a nice young doctor right downtown, near the hauptbahnhof and near the tollwood festival.  It's also in a little Turkey kind of neighborhood, so we ended up at a late night Kebob shop a couple of times.  We met up with some of W's co-workers and had some dinner at the Rathaus.  It wasn't quite as good as the first time we ate there, and the service we got was a little lackluster even by German standards. 

Day 5, The round about way to Bavaria

Due to scheduling restraints, and weirdness in the flights we could and could not take, the "simplest" way to get to where we were headed was to go to Nuremberg by way of Zurich.  So our friends were kind enough to drive us the hour or so to the Zurich Airport, so that we could grab a short flight over to Nuremberg. Since once again we were not sure exactly when we'd get there we had nothing booked.  We arrived and marched into the tourist office, and they were able to find us a really great room at the Hotel Garni Probst.  This was another great unexpected score for the trip.  The location is right down town, and didn't even require a long hike from the train station.  By this time we were already loaded down from a shopping trip we'd been on in the morning.  We walked down and managed to find an eirpunsch within moments.  To make matters even better, we managed to find a Feuerzangenbowle stand.  Of course, the whole point of our stop in Nuremberg was another shot at eating at the Nassauer Keller.  Our dinner was great, although a little less interesting than our last visit with Kathy and Dave.  We had a fun night out to dinner and at the market and made ourselves good and comfortable in our nice downtown location.

Day 4, My first foray into France

This day started again with an enormous spread for breakfast, and more apfelkuchen. Then we jumped in the car to go to country number three, a day trip over to Colmar France.  What should you know about Colmar.
1. It's Beautiful and well preserved, it is crawling with old Europe style.
2.  The Gluhwein (Vin Chaud if you're a local) is terrible, it's sickeningly sweet.
3.  They recover from that by being in capital of Alsace, and therefore have plenty of delicious wine to drink that has not been warmed and sweetened. 
4.  The food is delicious, we had this flat bread pizza kind of thing, that I would still go back to get tomorrow if I could. 
5. It's the orignal home of Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi 
6. I desperately want to go back, do drink wine and eat.
We had a blast in Colmar, and then returned once more to Auggen where we went out for a delicious traditional meal  I had a wurst salat, which is basically an excuse to call a julienned bratwurst a salad.  It is as you can imagine not very healthy. We then headed back to our comfortable room for a good solid night's sleep to get ready to get back on the road the next day.

Day 3 On to Frieburg

The whole family joined us for breakfast the next morning, an impressive spread of fresh breads, delicious deli meats (well, except for the obligatory liverwurst), home made preserves, and strong coffee, topped off with the most amazing fresh apple cake,)apfelkuchen)  that looked like it had just leapt off the pages of a cookbook.  After breakfast we got dropped off at the DB station in order to go off to Freiburg.  Freiburg is an awesome city, although since we were there on a Saturday, it was absolutely swamped with people.  The Frieburg Munster is really impressive, and since we got to take the English language tour we got some insight into the intricate carvings on the walls.  We found a quiet little Franciskaner Keller Restaurant, that was quite nice and provided us a nice quiet place to sit and eat and stay warm.  We wandered around town a bit more, made our way up to the Schlossberg. After a bit of wandering through the Christmas Market and generally being overwhelmed by the crowd, and grabbed a train back to Auggen to meet our hosts.  They again provided a delicious dinner and great company for us, and then dropped us back off in Badenweiler.

Bavaria Day 5, bumming around Munich

On our last day in town, If we did nothing else, we only wanted to do one thing for sure, and that was catch the glockenspiel. We slept in, did a little shopping at the Aldi, and then made our way down to the Marienplatz. We got there pretty early, so we had time to wander around the victualien markt. Picture the best farmers market you've ever been to with an amazing assortment of local and imported vegetables and fresh fish, cheeses and meats and all kinds of interesting stuff. We wandered back into Marienplatz just in time to grab watch the show and catch up with Dave. We grabbed some lunch at the Nordsee and then were ready to go hit the museum circuit. My original plan was to hit alte pinakotek and the the Deutsches Museum, but alas, I hadn't noticed that alte pinakotek is closed on Mondays. Good thing too, because we spent 4 hours in the Deutsches Museum and saw less than a quarter of it in any meaningful detail. The good news is most of it has descriptions of things in English and German. If I were you, I'd avoid the mining section unless you are fluent, because it is a really really really long section with very little translation. After the museum we stopped back in Marienplatz to do some shopping at the very insane Kaufhof. I'm not sure if it was the time we were there or what, but it was absolutely crazy busy, and the heat must have been turned up to 70 degrees. It made it hard to buy anything despite the fact they had much of the stuff we were looking for. It didn't help that I was lugging around a giant box full of Weihnachtspyramide. I had fallen in love with them on my first visit and had been pricing them out the entire trip, and had finally found the best prices from among the 3 seperate markets that I'd visited. After loading up on some more chocolate, we grabbed a train back to the hotel. I'm not sure how I always end up traveling during rush hour carrying a giant box, but I manage to do it about every other trip. We met back up with Dave and Kathy and wandered out to grab some dinner. Today was the big day to visit the Hofbrau. We had a wonderful dinner there and enjoyed the delicious beer (some of us a little too much) and then wandered back to the hotel. The flights on W's employer turned into garbage, so we ended up taking the mid day flight the next morning on a partner airline. I didn't love ther business class seat, it got almost flat, but was still at an angle that made you feel like you were constantly sliding out of it. They did give us a really cool lindt advent calender (mine wasn't quite this fancy, but close) that I enjoyed every day since then. Their entertainment was cool, and I even got to see the Knut the polar bear movie. It is definitely worth watching. Best part of the flight: the house gin is Bombay Saffire. The rest of the pictures are here, Enjoy!

Bavarian Winter Wonderland

Bavaria Day 4, Riding the Rails to Nurnberg

Another Early morning on our 4th day found us once agian on the DB headed for Nurnberg. Word association always leads me to Nurnberg trials, but it's reputed to have a really fabulous Christmas market, and we intended to go find out for sure. The Train drops you off a short distance from the Alstadt, and we took a brisk walk through town, trying to make it in time to see Nurnberg's Glockenspiel. We were bombarded with candy shops and Gluhwein and Nurnberger sausages and Lieb Kuchen along the way, and made it just in time to stare up into the huge clock tower to see it's slightly dissapointing clockworks. But it's one of the things you're supposed to do when you're there, and we were happy to oblige. The Christmas Market itself was a lot of fun, and we even found an official Christmas Market Beer.



Even more interesting were the sister city stalls, with some representatives from Atlanta. They had oreos, a jack daniels punch, and little bulldogs and yellow jackets to sell. ( you can assume I did not buy, or go talk football). We were headed off to see the Kaiserburg when we got distracted by by the beauty of St Sebalduskirche. We stopped in to take a gander and while there realized there was an english walking tour that we really should consider. Unfortunately at this point my trusty camera started to misbehave, and I started to imagine life with a new camera. While we were waiting for the walking tour of Nurnberg to start I tried changing the battery, which reset the camera date and made the order of my pictures wacky, but did lead to the camera actually functioning properly again. I wasn't sure whether or not to be dissapointed by that.
The tour Makes stops at a museum, a delicious looking friedp potato stand at the market,the Kaiserburg, a leper colony turned student dorm and the Albrecht Dürer haus. Along the tour we saw a really great looking bakery that W and I stopped into grabbed a coffee and dessert and ended up sitting at a table right next to some other people on the tour who had the same idea. We met back up with Dave and Kathy, and decided to take a tour of the Frauenkirche, which promised an overhead view of the christmas market. Unfortunately the tour was in German only, but we tolerated it for the Balcony trip payoff. We were not dissapointed by the views.

We were then ready to wander off and find a little dinner, and we stumbled upon the best find in town. Inside a door that seems too short for people and down a steep flight of stone steps is the most charming little restaurant perhaps in all of Bavaria. If you're in Nurnberg, you absolutely must visit Nassauer Keller. It would have been a great restaurant for the atmosphere alone, but then the food arrives. We found it quite accidently and were greatly rewarded for bravely climbing down the stairs. After dinner, we once again climbed on the train and made our way back to munich.
We climbed right into bed anxiously awaiting sleeping in a little the next day and just bumming around Munich. And here's this picture, for no other reason than I love churches at night.

Bavaria Day 3 Living out Fairy Tale Dreams

On our third day we rose early again and made our way over to the train station to make the 2 and a half hour ride from Munich to Fussen. We found some good seats on the train and settled in for the trip. We'd brought along some coffee, and packed our standard German breakfast for the ride. We even met a nice young couple to talk to, she was doing an internship at the Hofbrau (Jealous!!!!).
We were on our way to see to of Germany's most famous castles, Schloss Neuschwanstein and Schloss Hohenschwangau. We were working from the Lonely Planet Bavaria and the Black Forest Guide, and it walks you through the process pretty well. Get off the train, catch the bus to Schwangau, walk to the ticket booth buy your tickets to both castles, and enjoy. The tickets you buy are for a specific time, so we got ourselves a little cushion and stopped in for a little lunch at the Hotel Mueller nearby . We then marched up the hill to Hohenschangau and took some pictures, and then went in for our tour. Unfortunately they don't allow pictures inside, because the furnishings and decorations are as fancy as you might expect of monarchal spending gone wild. Especially impressive are the wedding gifts given to the castle's inhabitants, they are truly the answer to what do you give the couple who has everything. After the first tour, we wandered down and got in line for the horse drawn carriage ride to Neuschwanstein. We were afraid the timing would be a little tight, but the carriage ride only takes about to minutes, and it is a long way up hill for tired tourists. The best Karmic retribution of the day came when we watched people who were in line behind us practically run us over running up to the front seat of the carriage so they could sit in what they thought were the best seats, and they probably were nice seats, until the horses took a little bathroom break about half way through the journey. The finished parts of Neuchwanstein are absolutely amazing (it was never completed due to Ludwig's mysterious death during construction), and our tour group (70 strong) was big enough that lots of people were snapping pictures while the guide wasn't looking but I chose to take the rule abiding position and just enjoy the sights for myself. After the tour we had a drink at the cafe and sat down to watch the little movie about the life of Ludwig II. Unfortunately for us the power went out right when it was getting good, and it was closing time so we'll just be left to wonder. By the time we were done, the carriages had stopped running so we took the walk downhill on our own. That did give us time to shoot some pictures on the way down. We then made our way back to the bus stop where we had to wait for what seemed like forever on a night that was getting to be quite cold.We grabbed a bite to eat in Fussen at a restaurant not really worth mentioning and then made the train ride all the way back to Munich, there was some heavy napping along the way, and when we arrived back in munich we decided to try one of the many Kebab shops nearby. The food there was tasty, and just enough to fill us up for sleepy time. After this day we really could live happily ever after.

Bavaria, Day 2 Remembering a dark time for humanity

On our first day we'd paid a visit to the Aldi to buy some bread and some meat and cheese, so we could start day 2 with a delicious German breakfast. We were up early, and headed for Dachau to visit the concentration camp. The S-bahn ride takes about 25 minutes, and then you catch a bus out to the concentration camp. For such a serious activity, the bus was filled with english speaking tourists.

We got there just a touch too late to see the documentary movie in english, which I suspect probably contains the most sobering images. We spent the 2 Euro on the self directed audio guide and bundled up tight to walk around the groounds. I'd been to the Holocaust museum in St. Petersberg Fl, and one of the things I remembered most about that experience was they actually wanted you to reach out and touch the railcar they have on display because it adds an extra sense to your experience. As much as was physically possible I reached out and tried to touch the items on display. In the warmth of a St. Pete summer day, it's hard to imagine the stark coldness of a winter day in a concentration camp at Dachau. From the creaky opening of the wrought iron gate, to the harshness of the cement walls, there are not enough adjectives to describe the misery that must have been felt here. Hardest of all to imagine was the roll call on the wide open parade ground. The prisoner uniform didn't look nearly warm enough to make survival possible on this windsept open field where prisoners were forced to stand at attention rain or shine to be counted. The inscription on the gate says work will set you free, a propaganda play since Dachau was supoosed to be a re-education camp not a death camp or source of civilian labor. As you walk through the museum, you can't help but feel nauseated by the way people were denied their humanity for no apparent reason other than their place of birth or disagreement with Nazi ideals, not that any reason is ever good enough to treat any other human being like anything less than fully human. The tour includes a thorough museum, a reconstucted baracks where regular prisoners stayed and the original isolation cells. The Long dark hallway of the isolation cells still gives me a chill to relive, I can't imagine a worse place to live in constant fear. The final piece of our tour was the cremation/gas chamber area where what looked like a shower turned into death. The numbness you feel here is almost unbearable. We finally made our way back out tot the front gate, and took the bus back to the train station, ready to eat and ready to start enjoying the trip again. We just sort of started walking through downtown looking for a restauarant and discovered a cozy little place called Gasthaus Drei Rosen

It's off the beaten tourist path, but does have an english menu and the most wonderful Bavarian food. W had a ribeye with herbed butter that I'd still like to go back and get 3 more of, and I had the Allgäuer Käsetopf, Schweinelendchen auf Käsespätzle mit Rahmschwammerlund gemischtem Salat, Which is a pork chop seved over a pot of cheesy german noodles with a mixed green salad that was absolutely amazing. Have yourself a Lowenbau Dunkel (Dark) while you're here, and it will easily wash away some of your sadness. From there we had a few minutes to try to walk up the hill to get to Schloss Dachau before it closed. We didn't make it in time, but the Hofgarten behind it was still open, so we stopped to take some pictures and then spent some quality time at the Dachau Kristkindlemarkt and enjoyed a Gluhwein and watched some little angels parade in to open up the market. We grabbed the bus back to the train station and made our way back to Munich from there. After a brief respite at the hotel, we made our way out to the Spatenhaus for dinner. We ate more typical Bavarian fare, and snuck out with a few of the pretzels that they start you with (a to-go box is not a very common site in Germany). We arrived not really all that hungry and struggled mightily to put down a whole meal.

We then made our way to once again to the tollwood festival for a gluhwein and a dessert crepe I managed to get us a little lost on the U-bahn on the way there because there's a Theresenwiese station and a Theresenstasse station. After our gluhwein and dessert, we took the little stroll back to the hotel, we had another early morning to face the next day.

Grüß Gott Bayern

For the past couple of weeks I'd spent every spare moment sitting at a computer trying to cram as much German into my cluttered brain as was physically possible. It didn't go all that well, but for what we paid for our copy of Rosetta Stone, If I learned anything at all it would be worth it. Filled with a few German words and big dreams, we piled into a plane on Wednesday with travel buddies Dave and Kathy and made our way to Germany. W's employer has recently upgraded some of their vehicles, so we got to play with the new video games and on-demand movies that are available in Business class. You can play Tetris against another passenger, which turned out to be pretty cool or hold em against several others, but it wasn't working that well. Unfortunately for me, I was so entertained that I didn't sleep very much on the new lay flat seats and arrived nice and tired. We landed in Frankfurt, and decided we'd grab the short flight from there. On a 45 minute flight Lufthansa manages to get you a nice little meal in business class, and we were suddenly on the ground in munich. It's a 45 minute S-Bahn ride from the airport to the Hauptbanhopf (main train station), and only a short walk from there to our destination. We rested and freshened up at our hotel, The Courtyard Marriot Munich City Center. Not much of a view, and the service isn't spectacular, but it is only 2 blocks from Munich's Central train station. Plus, it's right next to a discount clothing store and an Aldi. The Kik is particularly handy if say you forgot to pack your long underwear and need something to stop your legs from freezing at night. After a little time for rest and a refreshing shower we wandered off to the train station and took the S-Bahn to Marienplatz. The Christmas market hadn't opened up yet, so we made our way to a restaurant that Tanta Rosita recommended for us. We sat down for dinner at Haxnbauer and had some really delicious roasted pork products. Kathy who had originally turned up her nose at the idea of pork knuckle but was a good sport and ordered it anyway. It was worth taking the risk. Dave had what turned out to be the best Weiner schnitzel of the trip. We enjoyed the first of many tasty beers, and had a really fabulous apple strudel for dessert. W and I dropped them back off at the hotel and made our first trip over to the Tollwood festival. On our visit last year we thought we'd just happened upon the timing of this festival, but it turns out it lasts most of December every year. We even recognized a rude crepe vendor from last year (we got our crepes elsewhere). No pictures the first day, except for the restaurant, we didn't see anything we hadn't seen on our first trip.

tschüs

Our second day in Munich began as we ate our typical German breakfast of bread, cheese and salami in our room. We needed to fuel ourselves for a busy day if we were
going to see anything in Munich at all. Our first stop would be the Enlishcer Garten. Its on the list of the must sees, so being good tourists we decided we'd start our day there. In order to get there we had to pass through the Hofgarten of the Residenz, where we snapped lots of pictures and explored. Then we got to the Englisher Garten and were nearly overrun by marauding ducks. Actually they were quite friendly and turned right around when they figured out we weren't going to feed them.

We studied the map and realized we couldn't possibly explore the entire park in the time we had so we wanted to at least go find the waterfall and then head on to the Residenz. The waterfall was gorgeous, and seemed like a really great thing to have in the middle of a city. After a few minutes taking pictures and enjoying the sights and sounds at the waterfall it was time to work our way to the Residenz. We wanted to see a castle while in Germany, and this was the closest that we were going to get.

No Surfing Allowed
Originally uploaded by jrherron.

On our way out we passed the best surfing in Germany, but I thought it was a little chilly for me to jump in. Even the Wikipedia entry describes this as an unenforced sign, it just made us laugh to see this crazy man surfing out in the cold.
When we get to the Residenz we're surprised to see how reasonable a ticket was, and the price includes free use of the self guided tour. We chose to see the treasury first, and realized we were in trouble when the description of the first item in the collection lasted at least three minutes. We had to choose carefully what to listen to or we would have been there all day.
There were some really great items in the collection, but alas no flash photography. So some of my pictures are either dark or shaky or both, You have to check your backpack, and I neglected to take my tripod out before checking my bag. Coolest items include the one pictured here, and the baby's rattle that was attached to a badger claw. I can't hear badger without thinking of the addictive phenomenon that is badgerbadgerbadger.com. After reviewing all the items in the treasury it was off to tour the rooms of the Residenz. It's huge inside and serves as what the tour called a "museum of decoration". The walls and the furniture were very interesting to look at, and we tried to speed through because we still had a lot of day to go.

Antiquarium
Originally uploaded by jrherron.

Not to mention the fact we'd already walked around a lot and our German breakfast was starting to wear off. If you make your way to Munich some day the courtyard and the Antiquarium shown here are absolute must sees. They are the oldest rooms in the Residenz and are amazing to look at the detail they contain. We were starving after our two tours, so it was time to grab a pastry and a coffee at the San Francisco Coffee Company. I know it sounds ridiculous, but the coffee was quite good, and we sat at a little table outside and had a nice little rest. Our next mission was to check out the Victualmarkt, a farmers market where your average resident of munich shops for food for the next few days. We detoured to get some lunch and bumped into the Christmas market, so we wandered around downtown menu shopping for the perfect lunch. The last street we turned down before committing to a restaurant led us to the world famous Hofbrauhaus. We were pleasantly surprised to find that the prices were reasonable, and they had the red cabbage that Francie wanted to eat and the Schweinhaxen that I wanted. We pulled up at a table (you seat yourself wherever and with whomever you can and wait patiently? for someone to come wait on you. We had some giant beers and a delicious lunch and overall a pretty fabulous time. By the time we got out it was time to explore the Christmas market, enjoy some more gluhwein and take in the Glockenspiel for its 5:00 performance. We position ourselves nicely with cameras in hand, and waited. Except that for some reason the moment never came. Long after the 5:00 church bells rang the clock stood still and we had to move on. I'd been called a glockenspiel many times in life and was finally about to witness one in action, and it left me more than a little disappointed.

Sunset at the Christmas Market
Originally uploaded by jrherron.

Hmm, Guess this just means I have to go back. We took in the rest of the market, visited the frauenkirche, (No pictures inside of course) and then were ready to go back to Tollwood for dinner. We grabbed some brats and some crepes and then sat down in our same tent from the night before and enjoyed a beer. It was a great finish to our day. The next morning it was off to the train, still a nice short walk from our base camp at the courtyard marriot for our 45 minute ride out to the airport. We scored sweet first class seats on our way to Washington DC. I watched one movie and crashed for the next six hours. Customs in D.C. is ridiculous, but we managed to get to the first San Francisco flight just in time. We sat in the back, In 3 of the last six seats, but at least we got home safe. It was bumpy in DC and I felt sick most of the way, but I'd survived another crazy adventure. We barted home and went straight to bed, real life was waiting for me on Tuesday morning

Guten Tag Munchen

Night Time Cathedral
Originally uploaded by jrherron.

This weeks adventure began with my alarm at 4:45 a.m. on Friday, which brought me back to an old familiar place. I jumped in the shower, grabbed my carry on bag and rushed out the door for the 5:45 bus, just like I used to do back in my first days at the MOHP. The Newspaper guy was shocked to see me so early again, it has been at least 2 years since I was on that schedule. Every working day he sells me a Chronicle for 25 cents, and even lets me borrow one on the one day a month or so when I forget to grab a quarter on the way out the door. The same guy was driving the 6:08 BART train too. He always pulls up to the station waving both hands, and sounds just like Bootsy Collins when he makes the station announcements. I crammed out a bunch of work in the morning and grabbed an 11:40 train to the airport to meet up with W and traveling bud/awesome dinner party hostess Francie. We knew there were only 2 first class seats for 3 people, but W graciously offered it to me, knowing that she'd have 3 of the roomier economy seats (trademarked name intentionally omitted) to herself. Just as I was finishing my second glass of preflight champagne, a flight attendant comes by with a new ticket for me and swiftly banishes me back to one of W's 3 magic seats. I was furious, but because someone who had actually paid for a business class seat that was broken wanted it, I had to go to the back. Francie provided us with the occasional first class ration, carting cheese, champagne, port and ice-cream back to us, and the flight attendants felt bad, and kept us equipped with beverages to ease our pain. 9 painful hours and a viewing of Transformers (again...) and Stardust later, we finally arrived in Frankfurt. We had decided that as long as the timing and the financials were right, we'd take a 3 hour train ride through the German countryside to Munich. It seemed like the perfect plan until we were faced with a 3 hour ride costing 100 euro per person, or a 5 hour ride costing 60 euro per person. We took option C, the one hour standby flight on a certain European airline that's a business partner of W's employer. Of course after we made that decision, we found out the flight was delayed. To compound the delay the had a plane change, and a crew change and once we got on the plane lots of seats were double booked including mine, so after shifting us all around we finally got under way. We finally arrived in Munich and grabbed our first German food, and then took the 45 minute train ride into downtown. After all the delays and this train ride we arrived at the downtown station a few minutes after our 5 hour train would have gotten us there. We checked into our hotel which was an extremely convenient walk from the train and made our way to the Aldi. We picked up lots of chocolate and goodies and some food to eat for breakfast, and then dumped it in our room. The front desk said we should visit the Tollwood Festival, it would be open until 10:30 and was easily walkable. They even gave us a real map and circled our starting and finishing point. It was a welcome relief from our Beijing post office incident.

Old and New
Originally uploaded by jrherron.

To get to the festival we had to walk by the Paulskirche, and it was just begging to have it's picture taken. We were hungry so I promised the girls I'd wait until we were on our way home. As we walked past the bells were ringing, and it was an amazingly powerful sight and sound. It seemed to be ringing all the way in to my bones. The festival was huge and crowded, but there was beer and food and gluhwein everywhere. Because it was a cultural festival, German food was actually the hardest to find, but find some brats we did, and then we settled in for some beers too. W's new favorite beer that we buy at the Englander in san leandro was on tap, so it was nice to drink the Franziskaner Weissbier directly from the source.

We settled for a while near some Mexican Tex mex food that included chicken wings? and a few other things that were more than a stretch at Mexican. We sat with a nice young German couple who at first pretended not to understand English but were quite helpful and fluent when I had asked W to try to interpret a sign for me, They snapped a picture for us too. After enjoying some food and drink we headed back to the hotel, I took some pictures along the way and we crashed early, it was going to be a big second day.