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.