So Long, Farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, Goodbye

Well, this is it. We’ve come to the last day of our trip. We’ve been back in Geneva since last night, and we enjoyed a sunny, beautiful day here in the city today. We had a great long lunch with Lynn. After lunch, we strolled over to a park by Lynn’s office, and saw a piece of the Berlin wall that is displayed in the park. That was an unexpected, exciting last famous-sight viewing excursion!

Lynn then gave us a tour of her office (a cute, cute little house that’s been converted into office space) and met a lot of a lot of Lynn’s co-workers. I couldn’t have asked for a better last-day for our trip.

We will miss Lynn and Loki a ton. Thanks for being such great hosts, L&L. We adore you and will miss you. Looking forward to seeing you in the States soon!

Welcome to your Fairy Tale Day. That'll be 20-Euro, please.

We arrived in Fussen late Wednesday morning and wandered out of the train station (which we’d gotten to by bus because the train tracks near Fussen were being worked on). Fussen is *really* small and our hotel had been advertised as being a couple blocks from the train station, so though we had no actual address for the place we were confident that it would not be hard to find.

That might’ve been true had it been an actual hotel.

We wandered down the street and did see a sign for our hotel next to a bakery, so we figured we were close and we just needed to wander that block until we found the door for the hotel reception. But, subsequent searching around the block yielded no hotel doors. Luckily at this point we happened across the TI (Tourist Info) office, so we ducked inside to ask directions.

As it turns out, the bakery with the sign WAS the reception desk for our hotel, as the rooms were located in the floors above the bakery. Breakfast was included, so we figured that our morning munchies would at least be good. When we asked the gal manning the bakery how we check into the hotel she promptly picked up her cordless phone, dialed a number, said something quickly in German, and then told us to wait 5 minutes.

5 minutes passed. No more indication about where we were to go. 10 minutes passed. I got bored and started reading the German tabloids and fashion mags. Though I only know a total of about 5 words of German, I did, in the next 3 minutes, learn a lot about how to achieve my perfect bikini body for the summer. Shortly, after I’d consumed the first magazine, a strapping young German guy (no lederhosen, though – sorry, ladies), popped into the bakery and told us to follow him to our room.

He didn’t have any garb identifying him as hotel staff, but he knew Rolf’s name (though, to be fair, it could’ve just been an educated guess on his part. This is Germany, after all), so we felt it wise to follow him. He led us around the corner, showed us a key used for the external door and then led us up two flights to our room. He then showed us a key for our room door, gave us both keys, took money for the room and instructed us to leave the keys in the room when our stay ended the next day. And then, without any further formalities, he was off again, as quickly as he came.

Since our sole purpose for being in Fussen was to see the famous castles of Mad King Ludwig II (including Neuschwanstein, upon which Walt Disney modeled his Sleeping Beauty castle), we quickly dropped off our bags and headed back to the train/bus station to find the bus that would take us the Castles.

Once there, we found a lady waiting at the bus stop also, so Rolf asked -in his excellent German - where we should wait for the bus. Unfortunately, the German words for ‘bus ticket’ and ‘postcard’ are apparently very close, and it would seem that her German listing skills are not as well-honed as Rolf’s German speaking skills, so we took a short detour through the post office, only to end up back at the same bus stop 5 minutes later to catch the tour bus. (At which point we also had to spend a couple minutes commiserating with Bus Stop Lady about the poor postcard selection at the post office, since we’d returned without any postcards.)

The bus heading up to the Castles arrived quickly – but not as quickly, unfortunately, as another bus arriving in town dumped about 50 additional tourists who would be sharing our bus up to the ticket booth at the castles. Oh well, the super-rich, formerly-royal Wittelsbach family (who still owns one of the castles) has to make a living, too, right?

When we arrived at the castle ticket area, we soon realized that they have this whole tourist thing down to a science. First you wait in line and purchase tickets to the two castles, which are each marked with a tour time. Then, you find your way up to the first castle on foot and wait in the courtyard/gift show until your appointed tour time. Finally, you pass your ticket through a barcode reader that then unlocks the turnstile to the castle if your tour time has been posted on big electronic boards at the entrance. It’s all self-driven and involves very little human contact. Very German.

The first castle was Ludwig’s mustard-yellow boyhood home Hohenschwangau. Like most of the other royal living quarters we had seen, the place was lavishly decorated and adorned with super fancy gifts that rich people seem to give to one another to remind everyone how insanely rich they are.

To give you some indicator of the lengths that the royal family went to in order to make their lives livable, I would like to point out that the king’s bedroom had small crystals in the ceiling that could be lit with torches from above. At night, these would appear like stars so that the king could rest his royal peepers under the night sky. It’s a rough life, folks.

We blitzed through the first castle and hiked up the path to Neuschwanstein. If Hohenschwangau was a “6” on the “crazy extravagance” scale, then Neuschwanstein turns the dial up to 11. Every (completed – the castle was still under construction when Ludwig died) room had incredibly ornate décor, floor to ceiling.

Ludwig had what could charitably be called a “minor Wagner fetish” and had nearly every room painted with scenes from Wagner’s operas. Gold gilding was used in abundance (now I know why gold is a rare metal – all these crazy kings running around gilding everything) and one room was inexplicably turned into Ludwig’s very own bat cave (though he called it a “grotto”).

Eventually our tour came to an end as we passed through not one but two separate gift stores on our way to the exit. Afterwards we took a short hike up to a gigantic waterfall with boards that flexed to a distressing degree. We’d been eating a lot of food on this trip, so I was a little concerned about the structural integrity, but everything held up long enough for us to take some marvelous photos of the view.

Back down into the valley, a quick stop to pick up another bag (we are accumulating objects at an alarming rate), and back on board the bus to Fussen. Most everything was closed at this point so we just hit a local restaurant for sausage and strudel before hitting the sack. Next up: ultra-exciting travel day!

Munich - They dun got beer and brats here!

We arrived in Munich about 8pm on Sunday and easily found our hotel, located only a few blocks from the train station (Thanks, Rick Steves!) On that first evening, we didn’t have time for much other than grabbing some dinner, so we headed out to Munich’s famous Marianplatz central square. We figured if there was any place that would have good eats at 9pm, it’d be Marianplatz. We were not disappointed. We found a traditional beer hall, ordered some sausage, sauerkraut and beer and ate until we were stuffed. That Bavarian cuisine is good stick-to-your ribs food, y’all.

Monday morning, we got up and headed down to the breakfast room in our hotel – which is cuter than cute, filled with flowered wallpaper and curtains and with all kinds of little cherub imagery everywhere. The food is good and eating at the hotel gives us a quick start to the day.

So, after finishing our morning meal, we were off to the EurAide (no not a refreshing citrus drink, but a helpful info service) desk at the train station, which sells all kinds of good sightseeing tours, multiday transportation passes and the like. We picked up a one-day pass for the hop-on-hop-off bus that hits all the major touristy areas and a 3-day partner metro pass and then headed out to catch the next tour bus. Unfortunately, we weren’t really aware of where the bus left from, so we spent a good chunk of time wandering back an forth across the HUGE Munich main train station until we spotted the exit facing the department store that is the meeting place for the busses.

There were 4 busses lined up, so we hopped on the next available bus making the “big” loop of the Munich sights and headed off to Nymphenburg Palace, the summer palace used by Germany’s royalty – back when Germany had royalty, of course. Nymphenburg Palace is huge, as one would expect a palace to be – and is an understated grayish color on the outside. But, for those who need their fill of gold-leafing on their palace visit, fear not: the inside has more than enough gold-encrusted doorframes, chandeliers and priceless works of art to satisfy any tourist that might be going through a bad case of Versailles-withdrawal.

The palace was built as gift from the King of Germany to the Queen after she finally delivered the male heir to the throne that was stipulated in her contract (after 10+ years of trying). Being the Italian-born princess that she was, the palace has a very romantic, renaissance-y kind of feel to it. Very pretty – though the subsequent king liked his ladies, so there are multiple halls full of portraits of women that he thought were beautiful. Kinda like Barker’s Beauties, but slightly more tasteful. Only slightly, though. After touring the palace, we hopped back on
the bus for the rest of the city tour.

The next stop was Munich’s Olympic park, site of the 1972 Summer Games – made infamous by the kidnapping and killing of members of the Israeli team. The park and many athletic facilities are still in use today, a fact, which, as the tour guide pointed out to us, allowed the German government to pay off the cost of the facilities in record time (5 years). It had been raining all day, and we’d been looking for a nice umbrella that would double as a nice souvenir. We found one at the Olympic park, which was handy, since it continued to rain on us as we walked through the grounds of the park.

We hopped back on the bus when it came back around an hour later, and stayed on through the rest of the tour until it returned us to the main train station.

Next stop on our now-metro-facilitated tour of the city was back to the Marienplatz, which – in addition to having about a gazillion yummy beer halls – also has a famous clock that thrice-daily presents a show of jousting knights to the spectators in the square below. We’d heard that it’s very charming, so it was high on our list of must-sees. However, at this point we’d missed both the 11a and 12p shows and the next show wasn’t until 5p.

Instead we forged on to Munich’s next mega-tourist spot: the famous Hofbrauhaus beer hall, which sells lager and wursts en masse to just about every tourist who sets foot in Munich (I think it’s actually required that you go). Think Senor Frogs, Bavarian style, and you’ve got Hofbrauhaus. The food was good, the beer was even better and it was as a really fun time.

Of course, they make all their real income by seducing you into buying 5 tee-shirts, 3 beer steins and a couple more beer glasses emblazoned with their logo. I think Rolf and I can fill about ½ a suitcase with all the swag that we picked up there; it all goes the good cause of brewing more beer though, I’m sure. So, we can at least feel good about that.

That was it for us the first day in Munich. Laden down by our 1.5 liters of beer, assorted wursts, and a ginormous pretzel we decided to do the next most logical thing and sleep off our heady excess.

We awoke the next morning ready for some more Euro-culture. Once again embarking upon Munich’s transit system we headed to the assorted Pinakotheks to see what we could see. Despite how it may sound, Pinakothek is not a Mayan folk hero. It is instead a painting gallery. There are three such galleries (which are sub-titled “old”, “new” and “modern”) located in close proximity to one another along with a fourth nearby building which houses what I like to call “art which requires chemical enhancement”.

The “new” works museum was closed and so we started off with the “old” gallery. The building did not feel cluttered despite the large number of works and expansive rooms . There were many artists represented, though the bulk of the famous work was done by Rubens. Rubens work can best be described as “fleshy” (well, it’s probably best described as “Rubensesque”, but “fleshy” is a good second-best .) Nevertheless, it was all very cool and very impressive, in contrast to...

The “modern” works museum located just across the street was less of a museum and more of a collection of random household objects. It was like of like a Volkswagen dealership and an Ikea engaged in an illicit love triangle with a starving artist and this museum was the malformed byproduct of their unholy union.

The three main bodies of work were cars, chairs, and scribbled sketches of naked women in upside-down crucifix poses. There was also the dark room of floating body parts and a random cartoon with very graphic anatomy, but the less said about those the better. The cars were neat, the chairs were… um… chairs, and other bits were disturbing. I’m not sure what I was supposed to get out of any of it, other than a strong desire to sit in a chair while driving a car to rescue a woman from a pagan ritual. It was all very confusing.

There was one more museum to visit, and the outside of the building prepared people for what was to come. The walls of the building were not the usual dull-gray but were instead brightly hued cylinders of random colors. I’m sure it was symbolic of something, probably the struggle of the working class or how man and nature have grown apart. Or maybe they just got a really great deal on leftover paint at Home Depot. One can never really be sure.

The art inside the gallery was interesting, at least (particularly in contrast to staring at 40 different styles of chairs, all of which look remarkably similar. I’m still not convinced that we didn’t somehow wander into a furniture store.) There were paintings of giant splotches of color which I am told described a naval battle, giant poop sculptures, and a giant tissue box complete with giant price tag.

I actually enjoyed this museum quite a bit. The sheer randomness of the works amused me. Unlike other museums, where one can pretty accurately predict that the next room will contain eighteen depictions of the life of Jesus, one is never quite sure if the next room will contain an homage to the planet Krypton, an entire wall display of different types of pills, or a tower made out of Madonna statues (the Mother-of-Jesus kind, not the Material Girl kind).

There was yet one more museum that we had our sights set on, the Deutsches Museum (“DM” for short). We arrived around 4:15 or so and sadly discovered that the DM would be closing at 5:00. As we debated whether or not we should enter, the girl behind the counter decided that she had experienced enough waffling and told us that we could do in for free “but at 5:00 we kick you out.”

You’ve got to love the Germans. They say it like it is. Not “we will ask you to leave” or “the museum will close at 5 and you should extrapolate our actions from there” but straight-up “we will kick your ass out, with force if necessary (please make it necessary, we get bored)”.

We thanked the nice ticket lady, assured her that ejection would not be necessary, and headed into the exhibits. The DM is kind of like the Smithsonian. It’s a science-y museum with a lot of hands-on stuff covering a wide range of subjects from geology and electricity to nautical science and space exploration.

After three weeks of not being allowed to touch anything, it was great to be able to push buttons and twist dials. I marveled at the very first U-boat ever, raced through the airplane section, and played with the oil-clutch demonstration for perhaps an inappropriately long time.

In the end, 45 minutes was barely enough time to scratch the surface of this incredible place and as the loud-speaker “gently” reminded us: we didn’t have to go home, but we couldn’t stay there.

We’re now sitting in a Laundromat, waiting for our clothes to finish sudsing and groovin’ to the classic sounds of the Eagle’s ‘Hotel California’ and Elvis’ ‘In The Ghetto’ (no, not simultaneously. I think the Laundromat would spontaneously combust if that happened). That’s all from here. Wednesday's itinerary: on to Fussen! (“Fyu-sen”)

Stop #122 on the Official Castle-A-Day Tour: Heidelberg

After eating our complimentary breakfast and checking out of the hotel in Luxembourg on Sunday, we piled into Angel and Randy’s Mini and set off for Germany. As we drove, we were treated to beautiful, lush rolling hills and farmland as we crossed the border and made our way to Heidelberg, directed by Randy’s mostly-infallible dashboard GPS.

Once we crossed into Heidelberg, the GPS began to direct us to the preprogrammed end-point of Parking Lot 9 (affectionately known to the locals as “P9”), near the Heidelberg castle - which was our ultimate destination (though P9 would’ve been nice to visit too, I’m sure). Unfortunately, the settings seemed to be off a bit at this point, and we ended up at P7. No worries, though – we weren’t particularly partial to any one parking lot, so P7 seemed as good a choice as any. However, P7 – though it was clearly a parking structure – had no obvious way of getting the area in which one might actually park a car. Instead, it basically consisted of an entry ramp, sign pointing to parking and then an immediate exit ramp dumping us back on the road on which we’d started (in the opposite direction) - so, basically a very elaborate U-turn.

Unfazed by our bad parking karma up to this point, we headed onto the parking lot of the next descending odd number – the Germans are known for being very structured and orderly, after all – and we finally found parking nirvana in the form of P5.

With all the hard work that we’d put into parking the car, we decided that we best be eatin’ lunch before storming the castle, so we found ourselves an authentic Heidelbergian Italian restaurant and had our fill of lasagna, pesto and spaghetti. We’re working our way up the sausages and beer. You can’t just jump into these things, my friends.

Having just consumed massive amounts of carb-o-licious goodness, we then put those carbs to good use as we hiked up a very steep grade to the rocky hilltop on which the castle stood. And when we got the top, we were well-rewarded with an amazing view of the valley below and beautiful old stone castle to explore. We stopped at the entrance to the castle grounds to rent four English audio guides and headed up to the first terrace, which sits just outside the castle-proper and offers a stunning panorama of the surrounding landscape. From there we meandered over to ticket booth and bought the tickets that would allow us to cross the dry moat via a big medieval drawbridge into the heart of the castle.

Once inside the castle, we walked around and saw the usual castle stuff – large, fortified stone walls, deep wells, a big central square – and the not-so-usual GIGANTIC wine barrel (the size of our entire living room) that was, according to the tour, kept full via a constant supply from the local townspeople. There was also a cool old castle tower that has split diagonally in half at one point, with the outside half falling artistically into the adjacent moat. To accompany this portion of the tour, they had a quote describing the beauty of scene from…who else: Mark Twain, of course! Yup good ol’ Marky-Mark-of-the-Days-of-Yore apparently crossed the Atlantic at one point to see the glory that was the Heidelberg Castle. Who knew?!?! (Answer: apparently the people who put together the audio tour knew. Try to keep up, people.)

Beyond the photo-fantabulous tower, we then entered the terrace garden on the outside of the castle, took a gander at a nice naked-man fountain (in Europe, it scandalous when the statues have clothes ON) and then headed out to another terrace with yet another breathtaking view of the surrounding land.

At this point, we’d seen what there was to see of the castle, so we headed down to the town of Heidelberg, where Angel added to her Starbuck-mugs-of-the-world collection with the official Heidelberg issue and then we grabbed some coffee and Coke across the street because Starbucks was too crowded for us all to sit there. (You’d think that, as Seattleites, we’d get some sort of trump card that would allow us to bump someone out of a filled seat at any Starbucks anywhere in the world. But, it turns out that’s just a ‘Get Into Jail Free’ card. Now we know…).

Once we’d finished our drinks, Randy and Angel were kind enough to drop us at the train station as they started on their way back home to Stuttgart. It was great to see them we hope that we will have the opportunity to meet up with them again soon somewhere in the world. Thanks for a great couple days, Angel and Randy!
Next stop: Munich!