♫ I'll Dance with You in Vienna ♫

♫ I'll be wearing a river's disguise..., ...oh my love. Oh my love... take this waltz, take this waltz, it's yours now, it's all that there is ♫ (Leonard Cohen)

4:50 PM Vienna

Oh Vienna. The most grand and beautiful city, filled with gardens, music, apfelstrudel, coffee, and dudes on the street dressed up as Mozart selling you concert tickets for "half price". We arrived two days ago on a train from Salzburg and we're actually staying at the same branch of youth hostel that we stayed with in Munich (Wombats - they're in Berlin, Budapest, Munich and Vienna - we highly recommend them!). We have our own room and bathroom this time, so it doesn't feel any different than a hotel. It's very warm here (highs of about 80) compared to how the rest of our trip has been and there is no AC in the majority of places to stay on a budget. This hostel is really nice, though, because it has big windows that we can open and they even put a floor fan in the room.

We are awestruck with Vienna - we think that each city we've seen had just gotten progressively more beautiful. Chicago is so beautiful because they really do a good job with the landscaping, the flowers, the gardens in and around Millennium Park and so on. Vienna is similar, but every building is just how you would expect a grand European building to look and the rose gardens (Volksgartin) near the city center are just unbelievable! I've never seen so many roses in my life! When you walked along the path, the breeze just wafts their sweet scent towards you. Naturally, we're both allergic to something in the air here, but it hasn't been too bad since leaving Salzburg.

Take this Waltz :) The very first thing we see when we step out of the train station... is a group of people waltzing... under a large purple cow.

Beautiful roses in Volksgartin!

Awesome treble clef garden leading up to the huge statue of Mozart

Just so you can see the size of these bushes!

Andy prancing around the garden :P

The city hall shows its pride! Along with the rest of the city (buses, various buildings, all sporting the rainbow for pride week this week)

There's always something happening in Vienna - just in our two and a half days of being here, we've seen a Turkish protest/rally in a main square, a huge vegan festival with tons of vegan foods to buy, a festival all about riding bikes and so on. This city really feels so alive - or at least more so than the other cities. When we first got here, I commented on their gay culture and how there are rainbow flags everywhere and how there seemed to be a large gay population (think Miami beach, Europe style... and with no beach...). Vienna is known for its gay tolerance, but I think I noticed it more so right now because gay pride week starts tomorrow! We're just missing it! I expect a lot of people traveled into the city for that. 

Last night a man dressed in old Mozart-like clothing sold us some concert tickets. Tourists fall for this crap all the time - you see the prices to the opera being like $100+ euros and this friendly fellow comes along and it like for 30 euros you can see a show in the theater that Mozart performed in! The show was pretty decent, actually, we recognized a lot of the tunes. It was held in this tiny little theater, and music was performed by 5 violinists, a cello player, flutist, and pianist. There was one opera singer and two ballet dancers. It certainly wasn't top notch but it wasn't bad either. All the performers were so young, I thought maybe they were still students. Anyway, if you're in Vienna, and don't think you can afford the opera - you probably can. They don't advertise this well (for obvious reasons) but you can buy standing tickets for as little as 3 euros. You can also get seated tickets the day of the show for really good deals (if there are any left, but you could get lucky). Lastly the nosebleeds go for about 20-40 euros and honestly... that's close to what we paid for this dinky little show... I would rather have a nosebleed seat at the real Vienna Opera House. All well... live and travel and learn ;) I know all this because we dropped by the opera house today in hopes of a guided tour. Unfortunately they weren't running them today because they were using it all day for an opera of sorts :( I got some shots of right inside the doors though, it's beautiful!

Our little theater for our show! Lol...

Yesterday we followed our map and did a little history walk that took us to all the main sites. Their city hall (see above with the rainbow flag) looks like a giant gothic cathedral and their gothic cathedrals look like gothic cathedrals! Along the way, we stumbled into an old book store owned by this nice woman who just seems to sit in stacks of books and smoke. Nevertheless, after 45 minutes of sifting through the piles, Andy found a history book that he's excited to read on the plane home - and being me and having lost my ipod in Munich - I bought the new Dan Brown novel :P

The bookstore! It was called Shakespeare and Co

This is Cordon Bleu mit Schweinefleish (Pork Cordon Bleu) - it looks like schnizle, tastes like cordon bleu... just... so... good. No wonder I think I may even have GAINED weight in Europe. Oops ;)

Today we went to Naschmarkt which is a large market (still nothing like La Boqueria in Barcelona) which is maybe half cafes and places to eat, and half fresh foods, herbs/spices, exotic teas and so on. I wanted to get Andrew some tea, but our German is so bad, that when I say exotic... I think these teas had some pretty weird stuff in them so I didn't risk it :P We ate at "Asia Time" because we had had quite a lot of local food, and we haven't had Chinese or any East Asian food in ages. Andy got sushi, sushimi, tempura salmon and rice all in one plate for 12 euros. The quality wasn't as high as we thought Japanese should be (my chicken was kinda funky), but I guess that's how they keep the price down. I tried my very first sushi roll. I've always had this hypothesis that I didn't like sushi (without ever trying) and today my hypothesis was confirmed. To me, it tasted like I had that nasty fish market smell in my mouth. Andy's had a lot of sushi and thought the one I was trying tasted pretty good - I guess I just don't like it! Ick. 

Tempura salmon? Pretty damn good :P

I feel like this entire post is about food... because tonight we went to dinner with Dr. Pop and her husband, Andre, in the Museum Quarter. I'm kicking myself because I forgot the name of the place already, but it was extremely hard to find and very delicious! We had a really good time talking with them about their travels and experiences in Europe, as well as what growing up in Communist Romania was like. They are very interesting people - our dinner was fantastic :) 

I'm sad tonight because I'm procrastinating packing up all our things and getting ready to get up at 5 AM to leave for the states :( I'm on the fence about checking a bag... because we're not positive we need to (actually we're pretty sure we could get away without checking) but we're worried about getting to the airport and having difficulties. Polish Air is so annoying with weight restrictions on carry ons. Also, I got Mom a souvenir that could possibly raise suspicions in security and I don't want to have to toss it :P The guy who sold it to me recommended that we check it. (Don't worry Mom, you'll love it, if it makes it home!) I managed to fly with it to Switzerland, but I expect security to get into the states is tougher. 

We've had such an adventure that's it's hard to want to go home, you don't want the adventure to end. I hope that who ever reads this blog gets inspired to pursue their own adventures! Traveling really isn't very hard, yes the initial plane ticket is very expensive, but if you can afford that, the rest of Europe is very affordable for almost anyone. I'll post again when I'm back in the states (I want to keep this blog/url for future adventures!) but until than, So Long, Farewell, Auf Wiedersehend, Good bye.

Confidence in Confidence Alone

10:00 PM Salzburg

In the past three weeks there's been a lot of, Paris is my favorite city.... no Lucerne is favorite city... no Munich is my favorite city... but seriously, Salzburg is my favorite city! We got in yesterday afternoon on a very crowded train - since the flooding, the train schedules are all out of whack and even though there is normally a train to Salzburg every hour, there were only two or three total yesterday. I accidentally left my ipod in the hostel :( but thank goodness they found it and are shipping it back home in the states.

1:30 PM Salzburg/Vienna (I got lazy last night and decided to just drink wine and go to bed)

For the first time since Barcelona, we have actually felt hot! The weather is so nice, but we definitely are having a little bit of luck after our period of nothing but rain (still holding onto our umbrellas, though!). In Salzburg we stayed at a budget hotel just a 15-20 minute walk from the old city. The receptionist was so friendly and quick to chat with us about our travels. Apparently when she was in India, the receptionist sold them a broken air conditioner! He knew fully that the AC didn’t work, and asked them if they would like to buy it anyway. Moral of the story is don’t buy “AC” in India :P We went to dinner at this nice Italian place called L’Osteria. Andy ordered something called “spaghetti marinara” … you’d think that was just spaghetti and red sauce, right? Well it was a total seafood dish! It came out and was literally staring at him – two large prawns with eyes still intact (just like in Malaysia!) were on top and the rest of the sauce had mini octopus, squid, and other unidentified sea creatures in it. It was pretty funny actually… good thing he likes seafood because I don’t think he realized what he had ordered.  We saw a couple pizzas go by our table and swore that we were coming back the next day for the pizza! The Italian food is so authentic here – tastes just like it does in Italy, combined with super speedy and friendly Austrian servers. Best of both worlds! So far the Austrains have been the friendliest out of all the locals we have met.

Mozart, even though being known for living in Vienna, was born in Salzburg, and besides the Sound of Music, it’s the main thing the town boasts about. You can buy chocolates, liquor and other various items with Mozart’s head printed on it in just about every shop. I’m assuming it’ll be similar in Vienna as well. Some of the more expensive things you can do in Salzburg generally involve classical concerts that come with dinner or a Sound of Music musical show. We saved a bit of money with the Sound of Music bike tour – it still wasn’t cheap, but it sounded a lot more fun than the more expensive bus tour. I’ve been watching the Sound of Music since I was really young, and it’s always been one of my favorite movies growing up (that’s actually kind of an understatement, I’m obsessed with it). So even though the bike tour was 26€ a person, there wasn’t really an option, I had to do it! The good thing about it was that Andy got a lot out of it as well, despite its cheesiness, the Salzburg landscapes are gorgeous and our guide provided quite a bit of history as well as just telling us “the von Trapp kids were here in this scene”.

Our budget hotel didn’t come with breakfast but you could purchase it for 10€ each. We bought it for the first morning because our bike tour was at 9:30 and this was the easiest way for us to get coffee and food and still make it on time! Our hostel breakfast in Munich was 3.60€ each and the only difference was that the hotel one had scrambled eggs… lol, all well. What can you do? Those 6€ scrambled eggs were pretty good, actually ;) When I say “budget hotel”, I don’t mean that it wasn’t nice. It was very clean and the room was reasonably spacious but had a nice big bathroom. The budget comes into play when we realized this place has no air conditioning. Austria is quite warm! We were totally fine, but we figure it would be on the miserable side come July and August.

The bike tour met in Mirabelleplatz which is a palace and garden where parts of the movie were shot (think Doe a Deer and that whole scene there they are standing on the steps and the aerial shot where they’re skipping around the fountain). The tour first took us around the city to the square where the Nazis marched in (in the movie still) and there was a large Nazi flag flown on one of the buildings. Apparently, some of the citizens were not aware of the filming in the 60’s and thought that the Nazis were coming back to Austria when they saw the flag! 

This is the fountain Maria splashes the water at while singing "I have Confidence"!

Remember this building from the movie? It has a large Nazi flag on it while the Nazis march in

In the Abbey where the children come to see Maria

The hills are alive!

The film crew had to go through a whole lot of trouble getting various permits and other permissions to film in the places they did. We biked by the oldest bakery in Salzburg and Christopher Plumber is reported to have eaten here so many times that the crew joked about having to make the captain’s costume a little bigger! Next to the bakery is the catacombs that were the inspiration for the fleeing scene at the end of the movie when they are hiding from the Nazis. The city of Salzburg did not allow them to shoot the scene here out of respect for the dead so they recreated it in LA. It looks quite different than the one in LA so I wonder how the scene would have been different if they were given permission to use it…

The gates in the catacombs that were an inspiration for the ones in the movie

Nonnburg Abbey is the abbey were Maria was trying to be a nun and it’s up quite a steep mountain. Most of us walked our bikes, as it was so steep, and we got to see the gates that the children went up to looking for Maria. While we were climbing, our tour guide played “Climb Every Mountain” from the movie. I couldn’t help but laugh because that was the scene I was mostly likely to fast forward through when I was younger, but I totally enjoyed it on this tour. The abbey is still being used so unfortunately we didn’t get to see the actual courtyard where the nuns were singing. Too bad. Same thing for the opera house – we only saw the outside and the stair case they shot from, but we didn’t get to see the actual stage where the family sang at the festival.  There was a very steep descent down the mountain from the abbey and I could really tell how much the brakes on my bike had been used! I got quite the hand work-out while trying not to skid on any crooked cobble stones. In our group, we had a handful of funny Chinese tourists and one of them was really not good at riding a bike. Riding next to her was terrifying because you never knew when she was just going to fall over! I say that this group was “funny” mainly because of the way they were documenting the tour. For example, they all had super fancy cameras and kept taking pictures of each other doing hilarious things, like the guy would get down on the knees and make the woman ride her bike slowly towards him while he filmed her… (we weren’t even going anywhere, we had stopped so the guide could tell us about a certain site and they would just do things like that constantly).

Our tour guide was a 22 year old Ecuadorian guy who had travelled to Salzburg for downhill mountain biking and decided to stay after falling in love with it. He liked making us do hilarious poses from the movie and was always playing various songs from the soundtrack for us as we biked. We biked about 15 minutes out of town to the lake where we could see the palace used for the back of the von Trapp house (the front and the back are actually two different shooting locations) and he had us take a group picture pretending to fall in the lake as Maria and the children fell out of the canoe! This palace is actually now used by Harvard University for some summer program and they even shoot 4^th of July fireworks over this lake… typical, discrete Americanism :P This area was so beautiful and the meadows along the way all had pretty little wild red roses growing with the grass. 

Unfortunately, Andy was horrifically allergic to something in the air and even though I had him take an Allegra D that morning, it was no use. I felt bad as he wasn’t able to enjoy the rest of the bike tour as much because he’s miserably allergic to Austria! (After the tour we bought him some Benedryl, but even that has had minimal effectiveness.)

Next we rode down this beautiful country-like roads and neighborhoods to the location of the front of the von Trapp mansion and the tour guide convinced me to make that skipping video swinging his bag as Maria does when travelling to the house for the first time. I went out all out (check facebook for the video) and everyone thought it was so hilarious that the funny Chinese tourists made me do it AGAIN for their camera… of course. Lol. I certainly enjoyed doing the little heel click that Maria does as well (I’ve seen that movie a stupid amount of times… you have no idea) and the only thing that would have made it better is if I had had a guitar case in my other hand ;) We also saw the famous gazebo where Leisle  dances around with Ralph and the Captain proposes to Maria. This scene was actually shot in LA and the gazebo in Salzburg is a replica built for the city after the movie was successful as a way to say thanks. The gazebo is locked shut because some American was dancing around in it singing “I am 63 going on 64” and slipped off a bench that she leapt on and broke her hip. Being American, she sued the city of Salzburg and now no one can go in the gazebo. After wondering a bit over the past few weeks why Americans tend to have the reputation they do… that gave us a lot of insight… what a horrible thing to do.

Hurray! I'm actually here!!

Just biking along... and dangerously taking pictures :P This is what the country roads looked like!!

The last stop on the tour was back to the Mirabelle Gardens where we saw the tunnel that the children race in on their bikes, the steps and the fountain. Andy’s allergies were so bad at this point that he was practically incapacitated. In our tour group there were actually three dudes named Andy. It was pretty funny – turns out, the Andy from Canada was having awful allergies as well. There is definitely something unusual in the air here.  He is currently passed out next to me on the train in a Benedryl coma :(

This is the fountain the children skip around

The tunnel where they race their bikes!

The beautiful Mirabelle Gardens

The tour ended around 2 and we grabbed something to eat at an outdoor bbq (by bbq I mean wurst and steak, obviously) and being horribly sick of German beer, I had my first Steigl Radler…. Basically a Leiny summer shandy but even sweeter! Yum :) Back to the hotel to shower and relax (our bodies are NOT what they were 3 weeks ago) and I actually ended up completely passing out until 6 pm. Back to the Italian place for those pizzas!! So delicious! After that, we wrapped up our time in Salzburg by running into a little marching band playing some recognizable tunes (we argued over whether The Saints go Marching In is an American tune or not… we still haven’t looked it up to find out :P but the band played it!). They were a lot of fun, I thought they looked like marching band alumni because their costumes were all customized, and some had cut their pants into fringes and such.

We checked out this morning and packed up all our stuff for the second to last time – it’s really getting old and the bags are only getting heavier. We’re on the train to Vienna right now, where we’ll stay for 3 nights before heading back to the states. Our adventure is coming to a close :( I told Andy how I feel sad after every vacation no matter how ready I am to be home, I just always feel sad when the adventure ends. The good news is that I still have two and a half days in Austria and we still have a lot of money left! We’ve done SO well! Can’t wait to get some decent souvenirs in Vienna!

Off the Beaten Path

12:20 AM Munich

Today was probably our favorite day in Europe! Or at least it was very high on the charts. After breakfast, we took the noon train to Fussen and hopped on a bus up to the Neuschwanstein Castle. Neuschwanstein is a popular day trip from Munich and there were a few bus tours to choose from – naturally we decided we were saving money and doing it on our own. This was definitely a good decision for us because we had extra travel days on our rail passes and Fussen is a two-hour journey from Munich. If you’re in Munich and you don’t have a rail pass, make sure you buy the combined ticket (available at where ever you’re staying, most likely – our hostel was selling them) for about 26€, otherwise you’ll pay way over double that between train tickets, bus tickets, and the castle tour. However, since we had a rail pass, we just paid 4.20€ for a two-way bus ticket and 12 for the castle tour. The guided tour of the castle is required in order to enter it… they don’t let you just roam around the rooms.

Neuschwanstein belongs to Ludwig II, King of Bavaria, and is a pretty new castle – built in the late 19^th century. Ludwig had a taste for palaces and mysteriously died (reported to have drowned in less than 5 feet of water… later found with bullets in his back) before the castle was completed… likely due to angry tax payers. The palace was opened to the public soon after, although all the grandeur that was in the plans was never completed. For example, there is a throne room with solid Carrera marble steps, but no actual throne. The views from all the windows were just majestic but the inside of the castle itself was pretty ugly. Ludwig was inspired by midevil castles and attempted to recreate what one would look like. Every square inch of the wall space is covered in various frescos that generally tell a story. The chandeliers are all metal with super tacky, fake gem stones (tinted glass) all over them, as well. Really the only thing beautiful about this palace was the architecture itself, and its location in the mountains. We weren’t allowed to take pictures inside… but I’m sure you’ll agree with me about how gorgeous the surrounding area is :) Here are some pictures of the trip!

I really like this one because Andy looks mesmerized by the landscape and you can see our train cars ahead of us

Typical lunch :P (6.20€ ... bargain!)

Hike up to the top!

The walk from where the bus drops you off up to the castle is about 30 minutes up a pretty steep road (you could hire a horse drawn carriage, if you like, or rent bikes). We walked up, admiring the dense forests, and had about 30 minutes to hang out and take pictures before our tour started. We noticed a bridge over a waterfall a good distance away, and of course I decided I HAD to stand on it before we went back down. 

Andy and the Castle!

Breathtaking views of the countryside 

Outside the entrance

Standing outside the castle gates - this is your view of the bridge, Marienbruke (Mary's Bridge) and the gorgeous waterfall below it

This would be the view the King had when we woke up in the morning!! Amazing! We also had amazing weather... finally!

Another shot from the King's tower

Our tour guide was pretty monotone, and although his voice was lively, he sounded as though he was an audio recording. One too many tours through the castle, I think! The tour only lasts about 30 minutes but I’d still say it was worth the 12€ to see the inside of the palace. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to live there… I bet those views never get old.

The bridge gives you a fantastic look out onto the castle and the mountains. I took so many pictures up here… I don’t think I could have photographed that castle any more… it was just such a cool view! I’m not really very good at describing scenes too well… my vocabulary is terrible… I’ll just say, it was beautiful. You should go! It is a pretty old bridge, though, and some of the wooden floor boards moved a bit when you stepped on them and Andy was pretty uncomfortable :P After a brief conversation about yield stresses on bridges and who comes up here to evaluate the bridge strength and its wear over time… it was time to head back down the mountain to pick up some souvenirs and catch our 6pm train back to Munich.

View of the castle from Marienbruke! SO worth the extra 15-20 minutes of walking!

Finally a picture together! So glad we asked someone, this was worth it :)

This is a non-zoomed shot straight down. Andy was so unhappy with me for making him do this... I love this picture though :P

Completely worth spending an entire day on this trip

Andy wanted off that bridge as soon as we were done :P 

One our way down, we reached a point where there where two signs pointing to the town… one pointed to a gravel path and said 30 minutes, and the other pointed to the road we came up on and said 40 minutes. So we’re like, wow, a short cut. You can see where this is going right? Because what’s a Europe trip without any questionable short cuts… After heading down the gravel road for a bit, we hit a fork and there’s no sign about which way to go and this path is obscure and isn’t on my freebie map I grabbed from the ticket office. Having a general idea of where the town was, we picked the right fork because it seemed more direct. Part way down we run into two Germans heading up the trail and they comment about how it’s muddy up ahead and I wasn’t wearing the right shoes. We figure, one patch of mud… we can handle that. All of a sudden, the gravel road ends and it’s just a mud trail through the woods on a steep, downward incline! I’m in a dress and sandals and Andy’s in shorts and flip flops… excellent. We’re at a point where if we turn around, we’ll probably miss our train, although we’ve pretty much already accepted missing it, at this point. I tip toe on tree roots and rocks, trying so hard not to slip because a fall on this mud would have been disastrous (remember how much it had been raining?? Lots of mud…). On the plus side, all the rain that created this awful, muddy pathway, also made the waterfalls and creeks a lot more fast and prominent. It really was a beautiful hike – my parents would have loved it. Appropriate hiking wear is necessary, though! After our treacherous, 30 minute mud path adventure, the trail spits us out right onto the road. The path is so small that people on the road probably were wondering why these two random people just popped out of the thick of the woods.

Bit of a wrong turn??!!

The road! Finally! Andy has a few pics of this path on his phone... I don't have many because I was concentrating so hard on not falling to my muddy end. He found it mainly entertaining and spent some time capturing me looking horrified... watch facebook more pictures :P

We had 25 minutes to get to our train, at this point, so we had already given up. We still needed to ride the bus back to the station (we didn’t even know how often they came) and Andy wanted to buy this sweet beer stein they were selling at a souvenir shop. We got his stein and ended up having to wait another 25 minutes for the bus… by the time we got to the train station we barely had any time before the 7pm train back to Munich. We didn’t want to take this train because it wasn’t direct and took an extra 30 minutes. The schedule on the computer didn’t even tell you what station to connect through, either. We found out by asking around when we were already on the train.

We got back to Munich well after dark – maybe 9:30 – and got a late dinner. Neither of us felt much like drinking or socializing tonight… or even sitting in the lounge on the wifi. I’ll have to post this tomorrow morning (the rooms don’t have internet, just the lobby and atrium… there was a ton of people down there too, we didn’t feel like dealing with it tonight). Two of our roommates just got back and are making a serious racket. I just don’t understand people who let doors slam… ever… not just at night when you know people are relaxing/sleeping… just ever. But anyway, today was an amazing day. Too bad no crazy velociraptor geese… I guess they don’t like flying that high.

Raptor Zebra Geese

1:04 AM Munich

I really do apologize about the delay in blog postings – Munich is like one big party and I feel really lucky to be a part of it. We’ve met a handful of new friends and I really hope you do all forgive me for spending time getting to know them instead of blogging :P We’ve generally been staying in the hostel bar in the evening because it’s the best bang for our buck (or euro) and it’s where we really feel free to mingle with people from all over the world (but mainly the United States and Australia). We met a married couple, two years older than us, from the Salt Lake City area and now living in San Diego. We’ve really been enjoying seeing them at happy hour at the bar, at breakfast in the morning, or sitting around with a pitcher of beer later at night. Besides them, we’ve met a good amount of Australians. Australians get about twice as many paid vacation days during the year than we get here in the states, and a lot of them use them to travel to Europe. According to our walking tour guide yesterday, the largest international presence during Oktoberfest in Munich is always the Aussies. They also are the most likely to lose their passports during the festival. Officially, the nearest Australian Embassy is in Berlin (7+ hour train ride) and it’s actually illegal for foreigners to travel anywhere without their passports. To make fix this problem for all the lost Australian passports during Oktoberfest, they actually have a temporary embassy inside the British Embassy here in Munich. Reportedly, it’s just a guy with a folding table handing out Australian passports. The Aussies are a blast though, seriously, I’ve never met one until this trip – they’re social, fun, and quick to buy the next round ;)

So today we had an awkward check out and check in, here at the hostel, because we had to switch rooms. We were enjoying the luxury of a private double room with our own bathroom… but it wasn’t available for all four nights. Rather than staying at two completely different locations, I booked the private room for two nights and an 8-person mixed dorm for the other two. In this pretty large room, there are four sets of bunk beds and one traditional shower+toilet+sink bathroom. When we booked dorm style hostels, we went for the largest room size possible (hence the 32 person one in Amsterdam) because we believed that if there were creepers, we’d be safer in larger numbers. However, I wouldn’t really recommend this method because the people in hostels generally aren’t too creepy and the more people you have in the room, the smellier it is, the louder it is, the messier it is… and in this case, the more bathroom competition you have. All hostel rooms, such as these, have a locker that you can keep your belongings locked up in (no need to sleep with your backpack!) and this one is so nice that the key card they give you at check in activates and locks your locker. Generally you have to use your own padlock. 

We love it here, in Munich. A lot of that is attributed to where we’re staying, though. I’ve really be enjoying talking to people in the bar or breakfast area about their travels and how similar yet how different we are from them. For instance, the married couple we’ve been hanging out with, is traveling for a month to celebrate his honorable discharge from the Navy. Meanwhile, other people we’ve talked to are traveling for 2-6 months, meeting friends and family members in different locations, travelling alone, on a tour bus, and just so many other circumstances. It’s crazy to hear about all the travel opportunities that people take advantage of for the sake of seeing the world. We talked to someone from DC who is planning on working on a farm in southern France that will cover her housing and food in return for the work. An Aussie that we spoke with at breakfast works on a guided tour bus that mainly caters to Aussies and New Zealanders, and while she has to work many days in a row and long hours, the paycheck is just enough to keep her afloat and travelling for 9 months out of the year. I’ve come to the conclusion that there really are very few excuses not to travel – it’s safer than your paranoid friend says it is, and there are many opportunities to do it cheaply. Andy has sworn off any country in political turmoil and basically all of Eastern Europe, but we’ve talked to a lot of people who fell in love with Prague, Greece, Istanbul, and are excited to get to Croatia, Estonia, and so many other places in Europe. Travelling is what you make it. If you go with an open mind, and take necessary precautions (do your research!), you’re likely not to have a problem visiting the places you want to see!

This evening we talked to an Aussie – and although we didn’t ask his age, he looked late 30’s at least – who saw snow for the first time in his life, a few days ago in Salzburg. He assured me that he was up in the mountains and that we shouldn’t be snowed on in Salzburg! That would just be the icing… wouldn’t it… haha. Lots of travelers (and locals, honestly) are talking about the weather and how unusually cold and wet it is this spring. It’s unfortunate luck that we’ve had so much rain, but the weather seems to be looking up from here on out, so we just keep moving forward.

10:49AM - The next morning

Yesterday we got some laundry done and walked to the English Gardens, north east of the city center. It’s really beautiful up there – I couldn’t believe how big it was. It was like the Champaign main quad on steroids. There's a really random Chinese Tower and a huge beer garden with hundred of tourists and locals sitting in the first bit of sunshine we've seen in days having a beer. We had had quite enough beer the night before so we just observed :P This might come as a shocker but I'm actually pretty sick of beer and I've only been here for three nights. It's really all about the quantity over quality and variety, and the novelty of drinking out of a liter sized stein wears off pretty quickly. Andy and I are pretty hard beer snobs and we genuinely miss the variety that American beer has to offer. Munich is home to the largest and most famous beer halls in the world and there is typically three different beers to pick from at most. The Original (tastes like Budweiser), the Weiss, and maybe a darker version of the original. I liked Belgium a little bit better for the variety, but I really just miss IPAs... lets be honest.

In this park there are a ton of birds... not just your average geese that you see in the states, but oversized duck-like birds and most interestingly, raptor zebra geese. These birds were the size of geese, had zebra stripes, and moved like they were raptors. Have a hard time picturing it? I don't blame you... So here's a few pictures.

We stood and watched them for a really long time because they didn't really behave like other birds do... they were extremely territorial, they had their young with them, and they were just constantly charging and honking at each other like evil mini velociraptors. I kept thinking about Megan and how I understand why she wants to study animal behavior... it's so fascinating! :P

I'm running out of time - we have to check on our train to Neuschwanstein Castle :) It's a beautiful day and we're really looking forward to seeing the palace that inspired Cinderella's castle. 

So Dukie, How About Another Festival?

6:00 PM Munich

It's another grey, rainy day in Bavaria (the weather swears that it'll clear up tomorrow..) and the breakfast at our hostel cost us just about 3€ and has unlimited, really awesome Europe coffee. After my tolerance has gone way down from being limited to one cup every day, two cups this morning set my day off to a jittery start. Breakfast is more of a hybrid meal here, as there is a panini maker as well as cereal and toast. Well worth the small amount of money!

This afternoon we set out for our free walking tour in the rain which meets in Marienplatz (Mary's Square) and lasts about 3 hours. This square is home to the famous Glockenspiel that chimes three times a day and has a goofy mannequin jousting... spoiler alert, the Bavarian knight always wins. Now I shall attempt to educate you as I learned more today than I have on any other day on this trip!

 Here is Frauenkirche (Church of Our Lady), a Catholic Cathedral built at the end of the 15th century. During World War II, the only part of it that remained intact were the two towers - this is because the allies needed to use those as landmarks to know where they were flying, so they didn't bomb them. Before Kristallnacht, the basement of this church housed a lot of Jewish artifacts and scriptures, preventing them from getting destroyed. After the war, the Vatican couldn't afford to rebuild this cathedral (among so many destroyed) and the Jewish community in Munich actually funded 60% of the reconstruction of Frauenkirche. As thanks, there is a small menorah painted in one of the ceiling pendants.

 Apparently this tower has 8 clock faces on it... because there used to be 8 towers before the war but they weren't able to rebuild them all - so they just put all the clocks on one. Bavarians are just so... creative :P

Here's Andy by the most famous beer hall in the entire world! The original Hofbrauhaus! We went there for dinner after the tour... we'll have to go to the one in Rosemont, IL (just built...) and compare its authenticity!

 Here's Maximillionplatz and the national opera house of Germany - largest in the country and third largest in Europe. His son, Ludwig, reportedly started the Oktoberfest tradition with his wedding. A year after his huge wedding festival, the farmers wanted to celebrate and according to our tour guide said "So Dukie, how about another festival? You don't have to get married this time, that was boring" and thus Oktoberfest was born as a giant party with horse races, and agriculture show.

Lastly, I forgot exactly what this was... but it's all hectic because apparently they're setting up for the Olympic Pole Vaulting trials. Also, Hitler spoke here.

I learned SO much today that I'm having a hard time conveying it through a blog post without rambling! I guess some details will have to be saved for when I get back and talk to everyone again. After the tour, like I mentioned, Andy and I went back to Hofbrauhaus for dinner. The food was pretty good but not better than anything else we've had since getting to Germany, plus it was super hectic and full of tourists, and the server was super rude. Not to take away from it - it's the original and a classic part of Munich's history. Reportedly, back in the day, the men literally just peed under the table rather than go to an actual outhouse or bathroom. or whatever they had back then. After the night was over, the workers just flooded out the entire floor with water to clean out all the pee. As quoted from our guide - can you just imagine the smell in there... especially during asparagus season?? Gross! 

Back at the hostel, we tried to do laundry... but apparently that was EVERYONE'S idea of a good rainy day activity because all the machines were in use and there were two other dudes in there with dirty clothes bags trying the same thing we were :( Hopefully everyone gets too drunk tonight to do laundry and we'll be able to wash our nasty, nasty socks. You try walking all over Europe in constant downpour of days on end... your socks would be nasty too! 

I'll Take the Liter

10:30 AM Munich

Welcome to Germany! It's still raining! Yesterday we got up early to take the 9:15 train to Munich - the ride was supposed to be 4.5 hours but ended up taking closer to 6. Andy was able to get his pretzel loaf hot dog (I had one as well... with my morning coffee) and we began our journey to Bavaria, the original site of Oktoberfest and home to (according to the German population, at least) the finest beer in the world. Due to the massive amounts of rain, there was a lot of flooding on the tracks and we were delayed quite a bit. The train stopped for a long time in one mid-way station and the man selling snacks and drinks told us we were delayed by about an hour. Then the train started to leave the station in the wrong direction! Thinking we were heading back to Switzerland, we were worried about ever making it to Munich! Fortunately, it ended up being an alternate route... the conductor had been making announcements over the intercom, but this near-deaf, elderly woman kept yelling in German to the person next to her during these announcements. Not that it mattered... the announcements were over a low-quality intercom that you could barely understand and only in German. Not very helpful.

We spent the next hour on the train playing the "have we seen this hill before?" game to see if we were actually heading back exactly how we came. Thank goodness we weren't, and the train pulled into Munich about an hour and a half later. It's pouring rain, of course, and the previous night we had not written down the directions to get to the hostel. I think because it was SO close to the train station that we thought we just had it memorized. After wandering down the wrong street in the rain for about 10 minutes, we decided to head back to the train station and get on the Starbucks wifi. Once we figured out where we were going, we were at our hostel in about a 3 minute walk... so silly.

Our hostels keep getting better and better! We started really low in Barcelona, then Amsterdam was quite a step up, and this one is the holy grail of hostels! We have a private room here for two nights and two nights in an 8-person dorm style. Right now, I'm sitting in this really cool atrium style lounge with couches, lounge chairs and hammocks. We're having a bit of a problem with the internet but I really just think it's because SO many people are on the network. I might not be able to put up pictures for the next couple days :( Besides that, it's been wonderful here. The hostel has a bar with better drink deals than Amsterdam (we'll have to be careful!) and we've already met some really nice people. Last night we chatted with two Americans travelling from the DC area and today we had breakfast with two Australians on a coach bus type tour for youths. We have noticed that the majority of people our age travelling are either American, Australian, or British.

We had dinner at what was supposedly the oldest beer house (dating back to 1328!!) and acclaimed by locals to have the best beer in the entire world. It's called Augustiner Brau, it's only about a 10 minute walk from the hostel, and this is where Andy got a liter of "Augustiner Hell" for 6.50 euros...

Now that's a happy face :)

I'm going to keep this short because we have a walking tour at 1 and I still need to shower and get ready for it! Plus Andy wants to leave early to account for the time we'll inevitable spend lost and looking for the meeting spot... never mind that it's in the exact center of the city in the biggest plaza. I'm sure we'll still get lost! 

As a side note, the owner of the Sound of Music bike tour company just responded confirming my reservation, and signed the email "so long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, good bye" ... and I started gushing. I've never been so excited for a guided tour in my entire life. 

Zeughauskeller

5:25 PM Zurich

As expected, it rained all day! Fortunately we got out early enough that it hadn't really set into the constant stream falling from the sky. When we left this morning it was just misting and we got on the train and had morning coffee at the train station. Andy likes to order everything in German and most often, the merchants continue to speak to us in German (offering us pastries or any other additional options with our coffee) and we have to go through the embarrassing procedure of telling them we literally only knew how to say "two coffees please". Sometimes I wonder if they would prefer us to just order in English so they wouldn't have to say the same stuff to us twice.

We headed straight for Grossmunster - the large, Romanesque, Protestant church. The inside is pretty, but once you've seen these types of churches all over Europe, you're kind of numb to their grandeur. We did, however, pay CHF 4.00 each to climb the towers. Lots of stairs again today! Here are some views from the top.

Here I am with the other tower in the background, basically the railing that you see around it is what we're standing in.

I did a bit of railing climbing for this shot. I'm so short it was a little hard to see over!

So we did all that before we had anything to eat - as we wander around the narrow, cobble stone alleys looking for a restaurant that has an average price of 25 bucks instead of 35 per entree, we realize that we're fighting a losing battle. Switzerland is just so... expensive... and we're starting to get quite wet at this point, so we set out in search of a bratwurst stand with at least an awning. At least there we can get a sausage lunch for the price of a burger and fries at Chili's. On our way we encountered Zeughauskeller... and they serve beer fresh from the keg... and their entrees are averaging about CHF 20! Perfect. For the first time in Europe, we had to wait for a table. This place was huge!! The building is about 500 years old and used to serve as an armory or a garrison. In 1926, they converted it to a restaurant and brewery (I learned all this from the place mat, btw... which was in German! So I hope I have my facts straight!) and it seems to be a hub for both tourists and locals. It's so popular that they seat some tables picnic style and we were actually seated at a 6-person table with a group of four: two middle aged couples.

We think that the people here are either filthy rich or just budget a large percentage of their salary for eating out. We've eaten out twice in Zurich now and have observed groups ordering bottles of wine (CHF 40+), multiple bottles of that $5 water, expensive entrees like fondue, side salads (CHF 10+), coffee, dessert... the whole nine yards. Meanwhile Andy and I get one drink and one thing to eat, each. If I'm lucky, he lets me have dessert :) But since we had dessert yesterday, today I got one beer with my meal and that was it :P We speculate that most of the tables around us - lets say a party of four - rack up a $200+ tab... and these are just your average restaurants! Imagine just trying to go to Chili's or Ruby Tuesday with your family of four and the bill was $200+... welcome to Switzerland ;)

A lot of people here ARE rich though. The cost of living here is huge, and every car driving around this city is a luxury car or close. The cheapest cars we see around here are brand new Volkswagons - today I observed a woman stall her Mercedes SUV twice. Pathetic. But along these same lines... check THIS out

I was stunned when I saw this. For those of you who don't know... this is a Tesla Roadster... fully electric and starting price of $109,000 (as per wiki, of course, where else would I get my facts?). They run on lithium ion batteries and supposed get about 250 miles on a single charge. Andy says that the future models are supposed to be able to go from New York to LA on one charge. So why is one just chillin in the Zurich rain??!! That's what I want to know.

Anyway, I'm way off topic. Back to our lunch. Andy got a sausage combo on a skewer and I got a giant pork and beef sausage. Both came with potato salad. I really need to just give up on potato salad... I keep trying to like it and I never do :P This one would have been delicious if I liked mustard. The sausage was fantastic though! Oh, forgot to mention the beer... amazing! I had the Amber and Andy had the House Lager. Both super flavorful. A couple, about our age, at the table over from us ordered an entire pitcher of the amber (these are huge pitchers too... maybe four pints total?) AND the woman ordered a glass of a darker one to try. I wanted to become friends with this couple... "oh hi. I see you have a pitcher... and my glass is empty :)"

Sausage and beer! Delicious!

The old town portion of Zurich has a lot of really expensive boutiques, and unlike Barcelona, they're all actually open! I saw Dolce and Gabanna, Jimmy Choo, Tiffany and Co, Prada and Gucci to name a few. I almost lost Andy when I stalled at the Jimmy Choo window! It's really too bad the weather is so lousy, we tried to make the best of it and I still feel like I got to see a lot of the city :)

Just happy to be traveling :) Rain or shine!

On our way back to the hotel, we stopped at the train station for a McDonald's Toblerone McFlurry - yummy! Can't get those at home! In our defense... you can't get Oreo anything here! For all your curious minds... a big mac meal is CHF 11.50 here... in perspective, a meal for four at McDonalds will probably cost as much as a meal for four at Chili's or Applebees at home. 

We leave on a 4.5 hour train ride to Munich tomorrow morning at 9:15. Andy wants more of those darn pretzel loaf hot dogs before we go, I sure hope they open their stands for breakfast! He also promised me I can have more than one beer in Germany ;)