July 9th to July 16th
Back to Germany, and we couldn't be more excited. Germany is an amazing country with a wealth of diverse and impressive cities and towns. The people are great and unlike the French and even the Italians, they are very service oriented and hold no resentment towards visitors. When you are struggling to explain what you want, rather than get frustrated that you don't speak their language, they play charades right along with you until everyone is clear what you are looking for. It's pretty awesome and a characteristic that is totally underpublicized in the States.
Munich
Munich is awesome. There is a great mix of classic, historic German Bavarian culture along with new, inventive architecture. The city is very young with a hip, diverse crowd. Among all the cities that we visited, Munich also had the best parks, with the Hofgarten, a beautiful manicured garden, and the Englischgarten, a great sprawling forested park, both intimately located wihin close proximity of the downtown sites and businesses. Totally awesome. We ran through the Englischgarten, so no pictures of that, but here is a pic from the Hofgarten, with the Theatinerkirche in the distance.
It was great and we even came across an old man playing a violin to Mozart accompaniment while we wandered through Hofgarten. The first night, we also came across the Augustiner Brauhaus, which would turn out to be one of our favorites.
We actually lucked out and our hotel wasn't located directly in the red light district, but was instead located close to the main shopping and dining stretch of Munich (see above - blue awning behind me is patio of Augustiner). It was just a short walk to the Neue Rathaus (City Hall), which was incredible.
After walking around a bit, we headed back to the Augustiner Brauhaus and ate a surprisingly great meal and accidentally ordered two enormous 1 liter beers.
Each mug was as big as Whitney's head....
...but she dutifully took down the whole thing, even if she needed two hands to lift it.
Perhaps feeling a little guilty about our night of drinking, the next morning, on our first full day in Munich we took a tour to Dachau to visit the first Nazi concentration camp. It actually served as the model for all concentration camps and the Nazis allege that it was never actually a death camp, although the evidence that the gas chamber was used there is rather unclear. Either way, it was a very sobering experience and amazing to see what horrors man is capable of.
We tried to lighten the mood by going to the Hofbrauhaus that night for dinner and beers, but we just couldn't get comfortable among all the tourists. Hofbrauhaus was a relatively neat place over all, but it felt a little too Disneyland-ish, even if it actually is the real thing.
The next day, we really tried to keep things light, and stuck with the Disneyland theme. We went to see the Neuschwanstein Castle of Mad King Ludwig II in the Bavarian Alps, which truly served as the model for the Cinderella Castle for Disneyworld.
Obviously very touristy, but it was a very fun day, especially having seen it so many times on travel shows, and raised our spirits following the previous day. One of the highlights was the tour of Hohschwengau Castle, where Ludwig grew up.
It is just a short distance down the mountain from Neuschwanstein and the interiors were incredible. This picture is taken from inside Neuschwanstein and shows Hohschwengau just a short distance away towards the lake (to the left of the column).
The lake was also amazing.
The Alps are just amazing, whether in Italy, France, Switzerland, Austria or Germany. So cool. Also cool was the view you get when you climb around the back of the castle and cross Marienbrucke (Mary's Bridge).
After a few Konig Ludwig Weiss beers, we headed back to the city.
We got back to town in good spirits and checked out the AlterHof, which was built in 1253 and was the home of the ruling Wittelsbach dynasty until 1574. One of the notable features of AlterHof is the Monkey Tower, where according to legend, a court monkey abducted young Ludwig IV, the future emperor of Germany, and climbed to the top of the tower with the boy before returning him safely to ground level. Below is the monkey tower.
For dinner, we ended up at our favorite spot again, the Augustiner Brauhaus, for a few final Bavarian beers and pretzels.
Munich, I missed you the minute I left you...and I miss you and your wonderful beers and pretzels to this day.
For more photos of Munich, click here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/mchamberlain22/MunichGermany
Salzburg
We considered hiking to Hitler's Eagles Nest in Berchetsgaden, not far from Munich, and spending a night there. But instead, we skipped it and trained the short hour and a half to Salzburg, Austria, the birthplace of Mozart. Salzburg is a beautiful little city and although we arrived late in the afternoon while it was raining, we immediately fell for the place, and its many beautiful churches.
Mozart's presence is heavily felt here, and nearly every church and concert hall showcases classical music on a regular basis. While we were in Salzburg, we attended mass in the Salzburg Cathedral, where Mozart was the organist for two years, during the time he lived in Salzburg before the Hapsburgs whisked him off to Vienna. We also ate dinner in a classic Baroque hall that included 4 short concerts by a small orchestra and two singers.
It was super-touristy, but also a lot of fun. We stayed at a great little hotel in Salzburg called The Golden Ente (duck) that was housed in a building constructed in the 14th century.
It was located on one of the many cute little streets (Goldgasse - awesome) running through the old town. The townspeople keep the town looking very historic by requiring all of the retail to have the cute little overhanging metal signs, whether the store is Zara or McDonalds.
Kinda cheesy, but the town pulls it off and it looks pretty great. Walking throughout the town, there were many cool spots to come across, including St. Peter's Cemetery, which was the prettiest cemetery we'd ever seen.
Each gravesite, has its own little area for planting flowers, and many of the gravesites are actually memorials to more than one member of the same family. Salzburg is really small, however, so for lunch one day, we ventured across the Salzach River to eat at a rooftop bar, which had a great view back over Salzburg.
You can see the Hohensalzburg Castle, which was built in 1077 and never defeated. Here, you can see the castle from within Salzburg, sharing the picture with a huge ball that I climbed up on for this picture.
That's not actually me - just a weird, clothed and painted statue, which are somehow popular in Europe. While across the river after the lunch mentioned above, we visited the Mirabel Gardens, which were beautiful.
That was our Salzburg. We skipped the Sound of Music stuff and didn't really visit any of the Mozart sites, but had a great time just enjoying the ambience of the tiny little city.
For the rest of the Salzburg photos, click here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/mchamberlain22/SalzburgAustria
Vienna
Vienna is amazing! It's actually as big as Paris, London and Rome, with almost as much history (okay not compared to Rome, but come on). Vienna was home to the Hapsburg dynasty, which was essentially the wealthiest and most powerful family on the planet for 1000 years. What the Hapsburg's were able to accomplish in terms of collecting and promoting art, architecture and muisc is unbelievable and very cool to see first hand. Hapsburg is also the name chosen for Frank Drebin's nemesis in The Naked Gun, so you know that this family was big. Vienna was also the setting for the Ethan Hawke movie Before Sunrise (which you don't really recognize when you are watching the over-dialogued, pseudo-intellectual movie about Americano-Europeano stereotypes and how two surprisingly pitiful beautiful people overcome them to find (fleeting) love) which further adds to the city's mystique.
As soon as we'd arrived and booked our hotel accomodations, we plopped down at the Cafe Mozart for a little pick-me-up.
People in Europe love ice cream -- really, really, really love ice cream. It's amazing how often you walk by a sidewalk cafe and everyone is enjoying some absurd sundae or banana split. Despite this, everyone seems to be relatively healthy. Consider this fine specimine for example.
This fit gentleman was kind enough to stop in front of the tram and raise his beer hand (with beer in such hand) to make a rude gesture to the driver. He apparently was a local in our part of town, which while not great, was close enough to everything else that was great, and in addition the tram system is very efficient so we were satisfied.
In all seriousness, parks cover like 1/3 of the city, so there were plenty of beautifully manicured lawns leading up to amazing buildings throughout the city. This picture is taken in front of the History Museum (notice the nice goatee making an appearance for the first time).
There were lots of great spots throughout, including a small monument to Mozart and a horse that got out of control when it caught sight of my manly goatee.
While in Vienna, we sort of hit a wall from a sigh-seeing point of view. We even took a nap during a beautiful day, despite the fact that there were churches that needed visiting and galleries that needed viewing. We just couldn't get in the mood to see stuff for basically a whole day, but were at least able to snap out of our funk long enough to check out the Vienna Opera and eat faux-Mexican food.
I told Whitney not to wear the bib, but she thought it looked cool. In hindsight...nope, still not cool. Sorry babe.
Speaking of food, we were sort of over heavy Swiss/German/Austrian food at this point, so when we came across a huge outdoor food court set up as part of a film festival in front of the Rathaus, we were totally stoked.
We actually ate two meals there, one night eating Greek food and another night some Japanese tepanyake. The food was great and the setting couldn't have been cooler, as they were serving low-priced Austrian beer and wine in nice glasses, with cool lighting and the movies were generally symphony orchestras. Super cool, like us.
After our day of anti-sighseeing, we stepped it up the next day, checking out Hofburg Palace and Treasury, which were incredible.
The amazing thing to think about is that the Hapsburgs were powerful from the time of Constantine until the first World War, without virtually no interruptions. During this time, they were richer than anyone else, and more interested in art and antiquities than anyone else. What they were able to amass is staggering and in no area more so, than that of Christian artifacts. The number of important holy relics that there were able to acquire and that are on display is really crazy. Given that we were reading that book "Map of Bones" about the golden reliquary in Kolner Dom that held the bones of the Three Magi, our interest in these relics was already piqued, but these were incredible regardless. The Treasury not only contained a number of thorns from Christ's crown of thorns, but it also had on display the nail that held Christ's right hand to the Cross and most incredible of all, the Holy Lance, which was used to pierce Christ's side.
Are you kidding me?? How is this stuff not in Rome at the Vatican?? I'll tell you how -- the Hapsburgs were arguably richer and more powerful than the church. They received the Holy Lance from Constantine himself and the Vatican does not dispute its authenticity. It's crazy that it's in Vienna, which many tourists don't even go to. Anyway, definitely worth a stop for this alone - plus, the artifacts are marked so poorly, most people just walk right past them.
We also attended a ballet in the State Theatre, as Whitney contined here quest to class me up.
Instead, it sort of backfired as 1/2 of the ballet was an African dance performed by topless white women with short haircuts and weird outfits. I think the dancing was probably fine, but the nudity seemed so out of place and over the top (I would have never expected to be protesting nudity either), that it was just very distracting. I don't think we were being prudish either. It really just seemed like an attempt to shock gone bad. In any case, the theater was nice and it did buy me some time before my next forced attendance at a dance recital.
Well on the day we were to take the train to Budapest, we got all packed up and headed to the train station...only it was the wrong train station. Argh. Totally Matt's fault. No question. Bummer. We made lemonade, however, by dropping our bags at the correct train station and taking a tram out to the Schonbrunn Palace, the summer residence of the Hapsburg's.
The palace was awesome and the gardens were outstanding, especially due to the fact that we dined like Hapsburgs that day, taking lunch in the garden.
Okay, maybe the Hapsburgs never made sandwiches and drank tall-boy beer cans in the gardens, but whatever. It was nice for us redneck Hapsburgs. We took a quick tour of the rest of the gardens before grabbing our train to Budapest.
These gardens definitely compare with Versailles and the gardens of the Russian palaces in scope, if not absolute grandeur. All in all, Vienna was pretty cool. It didn't really have the "busy" vibe found in other big European cities, but we couldn't tell if that was a good thing (they're just very laidback) or a bad thing (not much is going on). Either way, we enjoyed it and thing it should be added to the list of cities to visit in Europe.
For all the Vienna pics, click here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/mchamberlain22/ViennaAustria
Next stop Budapest!!!