A couple of Christmas markets, and a last minute trip...

Last weekend, one of the guys in the office had an Open House, so we loaded up the family truckster  with a couple from the office who live in our town and headed over there. We spent a couple of hours at their place and then went to one of the Christmas markets in their town, a few towns over from us (but still in the Frankfurt area).

Parking at the Christmas market was horrible, so we parked on the street leading up to the little castle. Halfway up the hill, we encountered a few cops, blocking off traffic so that tow trucks could come in and use cranes to lift parked cars onto flatbeds. This concerned us a little bit, since we were parked on the same street, about 6 cars down the hill. 

We sent the ladies inside, with the plan to move the car to a (more) legal spot... but before moving it, we confirmed with one of the cops what was going on. Evidently, you're not allowed to park with your wheels on the curb on that specific street. If all four wheels are on the street, your car is fine. Well, I moved the car, and made sure that all four wheels were on the street. After the Christmas market, our car was in the same place we'd left it. There were quite a few Germans who weren't able to say that. 

Tuesday, we decided to head downtown and hit the Frankfurt Christmas markets. I drove down to the wife's office, and met her there after work. She put on some warm clothes, and we caught the bus downtown. 

We walked through the main part of the Christmas market, then made our way down to Romer (the tourist area). We had some decent glühwein (isn't all gluhwein decent, by its very definition?!?!?), then caught the bus back up to the car, then drove home.

Because of my wife's tenure with her employer, she gets a bunch of leave each year - more than she's able to use, sometimes. Toward the end of the year, she has to get rid of her excess leave somehow, or she loses it - this is referred to (oddly enough) as "use or lose." She put in for every Thursday and Friday through the end of the year, to try and get rid of it.

On Tuesday evening, we were talking, trying to come up with places we could go over the weekend, and came up with a handful of towns in our area to do day trips to. I'm not sure what her thought process was, but after checking hotel prices she threw out the idea of taking a trip to a place we'd never been before.

We decided to take a long weekend in Prague. We looked at train tickets, and it'd be a bit more expensive than we were hoping, plus, it would take close to 8 hours to get there. Driving would take a little more than 6 hours.

Thursday morning, we left the house in route to Prague. We made a quick detour through Nürnberg for lunch - remember that barbecue restaurant? Had that for lunch, then got back on the road.

We eventually ended up in Prague, and checked into our hotel. We were a ways out of the middle of the city, but less than a 5 minute walk to the nearest subway station. The wife asked the receptionist about an authentic Czech restaurant, and she recommended one a few minutes away, right on the other side of the metro station. 

We got all settled in and walked over. The food was pretty good. I just had some sides; the wife had garlic soup. Looked a little like French onion soup, but the cheese was inside the bowl instead of on top. The wife had a half liter of beer (a little more than 16 ounces) for $2.06. Cheapest thing on the menu, I think. 

Friday morning, we metro'd and walked to Prague Castle. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, it's the largest ancient castle in the world. I'm not certain what its competitors are from the "ancient" standpoint, but the complex dates back to 870, and clocks in at around 70,000 square meters (750,000 square freedom units). The complex contains multiple palaces, cathedrals, and meeting halls of all types and sizes. There's also a little shopping street called "Golden Lane," where gold merchants worked and hawked their wares in the old days. In one of the shops on Golden Lane, Franz Kafka wrote one of his stories, "The Castle" while he lived there.

Interestingly enough, this tour gave us a bit of the opposite perspective of the story of the Habsburgs of Vienna; it's always said that "History is written by the victors," and the Habsburgs were winners by just about any definition - what with being monarchs in the Holy Roman Empire, and all. You know who wasn't really happy about the Habsburgs being rulers? The Czechs. While in Vienna, we got the story of the Habsburg reign as a picture of roses and sunshine, in Prague they were interlopers and outsiders. 

My readers who are history buffs (Bueller? Bueller? Bueller? Just as I thought! Nobody.) might remember something about the Thirty Years War. I remembered something about it... the name. That's all I remembered about it. Turns out, it was a big deal over here, when the Bohemians (Czechs) revolted against the Holy Roman Empire (led by the Habsburgs). One of the major events in the revolt was something called The Defenestration of Prague, where the protestant Bohemians threw three Catholic regents (two regents and one of their secretaries) out a seventh story window.

I misspoke a bit ago. It wasn't called "The Defenestration of Prague." It was actually called "The Third Defenestration of Prague." You'd think, after it happening twice before, people would start to notice a pattern when negotiating with the Bohemians, and stay away from the windows.

The weather was crappy all day long - mid twenties with snow flurries. The castle was situated on top of a hill, as many good castles are. On the way out of the castle, we had to walk down a long set of stairs... and despite holding onto the handrail on my way down, I ended up falling on my butt. Not fun. Didn't bruise anything, but I ached all day from my spill, and walked pretty slowly for the rest of our time in Prague.

We followed the stairs down and caught a tram towards the Old Town area, where our dinner tour would be taking place later. We went out onto Charles Bridge, the main connection between the palace and the main town of Prague back in the old days. Until 1841, this was the only means of crossing the river between east and west Europe, which made Prague quite important in medieval times.

We took a handful of pics, then kept wandering.

We'd signed up for a food tour for that night, meeting at the entrance to the Natural History Museum. We got there a bit early, so the wife walked over to explore Wenceslas Square, named after King Wenceslas, the patron saint of the Czech Republic and the subject of the Christmas song. He ruled Bohemia (the Czech Republic) from 921 until his death in 935, or maybe his reign ended in 929. History is a bit murky on that - but we all know I'm not a historian, so... we'll just say his reign ended sometime around 1100 years ago. There was a little Christmas market there - the wife walked through it while I waited in an abandoned doorway, staying out of the flurries and momentarily resting my sore bones. For some reason, the Czech markets we went to didn't have porcelain cups for their wine. All of their hot drinks were sold in paper cups - where's the holiday spirit in that?!?!? We collected a paper cup from one of the markets anyway - just to make sure our collection was truly representative of our experiences here.

Our food tour group met on time, and we were introduced to our tour guide, Martin, and the rest of our group. It was Martin, the wife and me, a group of four (a couple celebrating their engagement, and each of their mothers), and a single lady traveling home from working in Poland.

We touched briefly on the history of Prague while we stood in front of the museum, then walked over to our first stop. Our guide was a very well traveled gentleman his late 40's, and during the day, he was a butcher. One of his friends had opened the first restaurant we visited, and this was my favorite stop on the tour, a place that specialized in meat. There, we encountered a horseradish cream sauce that I'm going to figure out how to make.

I won't belabor to individually describe all of the places we went... I'll just tell you that we made 4 stops: the meat place, a pub (with local pub dishes), a wine bar, and a dessert place and bakery. I will relate one story that Martin told us.

One of the Czech Christmas traditions is to have carp on Christmas. There are tanks all over the city where they sell live carp on street corners. Families purchase the live fish, and transport them home in the days leading up to Christmas. They bring them home and keep them in a their bathtubs, so they can swim freely until Christmas. Carp are bottom feeders, feeding on whatever they can find as they grow. Keeping them alive in fresh water in the tub is supposed to help clean them out before they make their way to the holiday table. Opinions vary on whether a few short days in a tub with (chlorinated) bathtub water is enough to clean out the fish's system. Evidently, activists have gotten involved too, and protest the tradition from both a cruelty perspective, and from an environmental perspective. 

Me? I don't currently have a carp in the bathtub, nor do I have any plans to put one there in the foreseeable future. I'm not getting involved in any of this 'bathtub carp' business any more than that. Your may, of course, run your own house however you wish though.

After a long day on Friday, we took our time getting moving on Saturday. We walked over to the shopping mall (because we seem to always stay next door to shopping malls, right?).

We metro'd over to Old Town, and hit a little Christmas market on the way. Still no porcelain cups. Walking over to Old Town, we walked through a little antique store where the wife found two steins (maybe closer to little jugs) of the same style as the ringkrug from the Garmisch-Partenkirchen entry. She took pics of them, and I predicted in my head that we'd soon be the "proud" owners of another piece of salt glazed pottery.

I should have taken the over. We ended up with both of them, but I'm getting a bit ahead of myself.

So... we made our way to the Old Town, and I managed to keep my wife from visiting any more antique stores on the way. We missed the hourly chiming of the clock, so when we got to the old town, we looked around for some way to spend some time inside, and found an art museum, displaying the works of Andy Warhol, Salvador Dali, and Alfonse Mucha. I've only heard of two of these guys, but evidently Mucha was a famous illustrator and graphic artist. I might or might not have seen some of his stuff before, but I did recognize at least the style of some of his work. Warhol's work was (of course) quite recognizable, and Dali was just an odd fellow. 

We went back out afterward and wandered around the town square for a while, taking in the biggest Christmas market (that we saw, at least) in Prague. Same general goods that are usually on sale in Christmas markets. Still no porcelain cups though.

We walked over to the end of the square with the astronomical clock in it. I had seen pictures and videos of it, but I personally found it a bit underwhelming. Other attractions such as this are huge, and seem larger than life, dominating the area where they're installed. This was just a couple of dials mounted on the side of a building. For as large as the dials were, I would expect that they would be mounted quite a bit higher. 

The Glockenspiel in Munich is massive, and high up on the building. When it chimes, the entire square fills with people to watch the story that it shows. 

The astronomical clock in Prague isn't much smaller (dimension-wise) than the Glockenspiel, but there's no real performance or show that goes along with it (that we saw, at least). Two windows open above it, a few bells ring, and some figurines pass in front of the windows. Then, the windows close. Disappointed? Don't be. I just gave you the full experience, and you didn't have to stand in the cold.

We got something to eat at a local restaurant, and while we were eating, the wife was researching the mugs, because of course she was. We left the restaurant and headed back over to the metro station, stopping (of course) to buy those two damned mug things. Should have taken the over. We hit the little Christmas market again before taking the metro back to the hotel. 

Sunday morning, we took our time getting all packed up and hit the road. We stopped in Nürnberg to check out the Christmas markets. There were a couple of markets there, we walked through most of the old town, sampling glühwein at a few booths, and buying a couple of Christmassy things we couldn't possibly do without.

We drove back home afterwards, ending our most recent trip.

Here is the latest pic of the Christmas mug collection (including the paper Czech cup):

In retrospect, it's quite interesting to find ourselves in the position where we could talk on Tuesday about our weekend plans, and find ourselves in Prague for four days, out of nowhere. We'll remember this trip, as well as keeping in mind the flexibility that we're enjoying now. Just so all of you know... there's nothing that we did this weekend where we couldn't have added a couple more people to our trip - if you come visit us, we very well could find ourselves taking a trip like this, so make your plans now!

Pictures!!!

Due to an increasingly vocal minority of my readers (y'all know who you are!), I have selected a random assortment of pictures to share. I'll make sure that our designated photographer (my darling wife) adds to this collection occasionally... by taking her phone and choosing some more photos.

Without any further ado, please look immediately under the "Blog Archive" on the right side of your screen, for the link titled "Random Germany Pics." Yes, I (of all people) am aware that some of these pics were taken in France, The Netherlands, or Austria... if that bugs you, start your own blog!

I was not around for some of these pics (notably the ones related to The Sound of Music), so I won't have any additional information on them, but I'm working on going through and commenting on the ones I'm certain about.

As always, if you've got any questions, please let one of us know!

Big trip.... WARNING - long post ahead

Boy, oh boy, do I have a treat for y'all! Grab a drink, and venture onward for a novella of an entry.

I figured out a new way to keep track of what we do on our trips... I bought a little notebook, and update it each night with all the things we did. That way, the fun stuff won't fall through the cracks any more.

Anyway, once my wife had gotten the job here in Frankfurt, she saw an ad online for a 5 night deal at one of the resorts we visited during our last tour, so she booked it for my birthday before we even moved over here. Additionally, she had some vacation saved up, so she took a few days before and after our reservation, and we decided to make a real vacation out of it.

We left on Friday, the 11th, and drove to Nuremburg. I had seen an ad for a barbecue restaurant there (Boogie's BBQ), and we drove straight there. The barbecue wasn't bad... the best brisket I've had while in Europe, but honestly, there aren't many places over here that serve brisket. I guess being from BBQ country, I'm spoiled. We went and checked into the hotel, then wandered around the tourist areas of Nuremburg. It's a pretty cute town, one we'll go back to visit again. The Christmas markets weren't set up yet - I expect that we'll take a long weekend trip there to visit the Christmas markets once they open up, as it's supposed to be one of the best cities for those.

Saturday morning, we had breakfast at the hotel and hit the road, making one last stop before we left town: the Nazi Party Rally Grounds Museum and zeppelin field. The entire facility is pretty large (although unfinished). The museum is in the main building, not very large, but pretty informative, with the majority of the displays having English translations posted as well. After walking through the museum, we went into the rally grounds themselves... this was a massive horseshoe shaped building, designed to hold more than 50,000 people, with a roof 230 feet above. The facility wasn't finished, but it was still possible to see how massive it was planned to be, as the foundation and most of the surrounding building was partially remaining.

We wandered around the grounds a bit, then jumped in the car and drove around a small lake to the zeppelin field... that's what it was referred to as (because a couple of zeppelins landed there), but it really was the parade grounds. The grandstands are still standing, as well as most of the earthen surroundings (that the seats were to be built on). The field itself fit more than 200,000 people on it - it's just impossible for me to describe the scale of it. The grandstands are almost a quarter mile long (across one side of the field). During special occasions, 150 spotlights ringing the field would be lit, pointing straight up, creating what they called a "cathedral of light." When you see photos of Nazi leadership looking down on tens of thousands of soldiers in a parade formation, there's a good chance that picture was taken there. Quite sobering to be able to climb the grandstands and stand on the same platform as one of the most evil men to walk the face of the earth - I couldn't bring myself to step out onto the platform itself, but it was definitely a time for reflection.

We stopped at the last Esso station in Germany, which was around 40 miles from Austria. We decided to get a bite to eat at a restaurant in that town... and it wasn't a tourist area at all. We very well might have been the only Americans to have stopped in the town itself in the last month. It was a bit of a challenge for my German language ability (or lack thereof), but we managed to get our food and pay for it without making complete asses of ourselves.

To drive on the autobahn in Austria, you have to have a special sticker called a "vignette." You buy the vignette from a gas station for around $10 for 10 days (which would be enough for our trip). The Esso station wasn't close enough to Austria that they sold vignettes, so after eating, we drove to the next rest area gas station to get one. I put it on the car, and as we were leaving the rest area, we got flagged down by a cop.

In all of Europe, cars have license plates on the front and back of the car, and all the license plates are the same general format, with a (usually) blue stripe on the left side with letters indicating what country the car is from. At that point, we were still waiting for our German registration for the car to come through. Tennessee only requires the rear license plate, and I have a Packer plate on the front... which looks NOTHING like a European license plate. We're used to getting looks wherever we drive, but this was the first time we've had to have a conversation with the police about our car registration. Luckily, the cops spoke at least a bit of English, so after explaining that we were waiting for our German registration to come through... and handing over both of our passports, my German driver's license and the US registration for the car, they sent us on our way after only about a 10 minute delay. Next stop, Vienna!

We pulled into the hotel in Vienna and parked the car in the underground garage. We checked into the hotel and grabbed dinner from the kebab place across the street, and tried to decide what we wanted to do the next day.

The wife had been exploring online, and found that there's something guides are doing now... giving free walking tours, where you pay what you want after the tour is over. She signed us up for one of those, and we metro'd over the next morning, and walked to the square where we met up with the group. We learned about the history of Vienna, and the monarchs who ruled for a few hundred years (the Habsburgs, if you're interested). I've tried to dig into the history, specifically to give y'all fine folks a little hard info with your entertainment, but I'm incredibly confused about the relationship between the Holy Roman Empire and the Habsburg monarchy. Somehow, some (or most) of the people who lived in the fancy castles in Vienna were some sort of rulers of part of the Holy Roman Empire... whatever that really was. If you look at a list of Holy Roman Emperors, there are folks from France, Germany, Austria, Italy, Bavaria, Prussia, Luxembourg, and all the countries and duchies between. I'm certain it makes sense to someone, but you'll have to find another blog to read if you're really wanting that kind of information.

After the tour, we went to the Globe Museum of the Austrian National Library. The wife's always had an appreciation for globes, so I thought that'd be a good stop. Lots of globes, both terrestrial and celestial globes. Attached to the globe museum was the Esperanto Museum of the Austrian National Library... Esperanto is a language created in the late 1800's, intended to become a universal second language for international communication. After a hundred and fifty years, there are around 200,000 people who speak it... doesn't sound very "universal" to me, but I had a teacher who was fluent, so I at least knew what it was, and since the museum was in the same building, and included with our ticket to the globe museum... now, we can say we did it.

Dinner was at the kebab place again. My pidgin German seemed to do the trick there - it was close, and we could make ourselves understood there. The Austrian guys who ran the place seemed to be kinda "over" us though.

The next morning, we took the metro up one stop to the Schönbrunn Palace. This was the palace where all the aforementioned Habsburg family lived in the summers. Quite decadent, and the buildings and grounds were much larger than we (mostly I) expected. The grounds encompass around 400 acres, with the main palace having around 1,440 rooms.

Did you know that snow globes were invented by an Austrian? Neither did I, but one of the little kitschy touristy things I found for the afternoon was a snowglobe museum. Turns out, that was the original snowglobe company. Down in the museum area, they had samples of all of the kinds of globes that they'd done before, and some "famous" ones... they had some that included the confetti from President Clinton's inauguration, and one that they'd created as an official invitation for one of President Obama's daughters to visit Vienna. I'll let you decide for yourselves if the word "famous" needs to be in quotations... I thought it was pretty cool though.

Afterwards, we ate a late lunch at a place recommended by one of the ladies at the snowglobe factory (a stroke of genius for the wife to ask her for a recommendation, I thought!), and then took the metro back into the tourist area to find a Christmas market we'd skipped through on our walking tour. We walked around the main shopping area downtown and encountered a store for the Manner company. They make the little wafer cookies that have a sort of icing in between wafer layers... I know I'm not describing them very well - I know that you'd know what I'm talking about, if I was a better writer.  We've loved the cookies for years, and we discovered that the Manner company is based in Vienna. Looks like we've got another factory tour to fit in! 

The next day, we packed up our stuff and metro'd (and walked) to the Heindl chocolate museum (and factory), where we compared their version of the history of chocolate with what we'd learned at previous chocolate museums... pretty much the same. Then, we bought a bunch of chocolate at their factory store. 

We metro'd back to the hotel and checked out, and retrieved our car. Next stop... the Manner factory! We stopped by there, and bought a bunch of the wafer cookies, in all sorts of different flavors that we hadn't seen before.

One of the things that I'd added to my list of interesting sights was a kangaroo refuge a little south of town. Turns out, for all of my lackadaisical "planning," I hadn't taken into account that they'd be closed on the day we were planning on driving by... I still got a t-shirt that says "There are no kangaroos in Austria" though.

We skipped the kangaroo refuge on our way out of town and drove to our next stop... Salzburg.

First things first. We're working on keeping the wife's status at a couple of hotel chains, so all of the hotels we stayed at (with the exception of the resort we originally booked) are all part of the same chain. Due to her status at that specific chain, we got an upgrade at the hotel in Salzburg. A significant upgrade. A mama-hootchie upgrade. They put us on the top floor, in a King Suite with our own terrace. In the afternoons, a maid would knock on the door and ask if we'd like a turndown service. I might just be spoiled now, as far as hotel rooms go.

From here on out, I'll always be bringing up the shower at the hotel in The Hague, and the King Suite in Salzburg. I'll find a way to work both of those into just about every conversation.

For dinner that night, we took a pedestrian bridge across the river and walked up the hill to the Augustiner Brewery & Kloster. 

The Augustine hermits got permission to open the brewery in 1621, which was then bought out by Benedictine monks in 1835. Over the next 50 years or so, they expanded into more of a biergarten type business, and that's the way it's been ever since. We really enjoyed our visit to this place, and we'll be going back. 

When you go in, you get a mug off the shelf and rinse it out yourself, then pay for whatever kind of beer you want. You take that receipt over to a guy at an old fashioned wooden keg, and he fills your mug up. You buy whatever kind of food you want (pretty much anything you'd find at a regular beer market) and go find a table to sit at in the seating area - think traditional biergarten type long tables and benches. Just a really cool environment, good food, good beer... we'll go back.

Next morning, the wife did some sort of "Sound of Music" singalong tour. You'll have to ask her how it was. She tried to tell me, but I lost interest when she kept breaking into song.

That afternoon, we went to the Stiegl brewery for dinner. Seemed a bit more of a commercialized experience, rather than an authentic biergarten, but that was fine. They produce one of my favorite radlers (a mix of beer and fruit juice), so it was on my list. Afterwards, we parked and walked through the old town area; there were a few stores open, but it was mostly just about the atmosphere of the place, and all the neat little alleyways. We'll explore more next time we're there (and more is open).

Next morning, we packed up and drove back into Germany. We had nothing planned for this day (except travel), so we were looking for stuff to do along the way. We stopped at a little town called Chiemsee. Turns out, there's a lake there, where there used to be a recreation area for the US military... but now. it's just a pretty lake with a little town next to it... and an island in the middle with one of Ludwig II's castles on it. This is the same Ludwig II who built Neuschwanstein castle (that Cinderella's castle is based on).

The castle at Chiemsee (Schloss Herrenchiemsee) was based on the castle at Versailles, but some of the proportions are a little off... some of the arches are a little wider, so the Hall of Mirrors is evidently a little longer in this version than in the original, those kinds of differences. The castle was never completed, and Ludwig only was able to stay there for a few days in September 1885. After his death the next year, the building was almost immediately opened up to the public as a tourist attraction. 

Ludwig is often referred to as "mad" or "crazy," but from a historical perspective, the question of his sanity hasn't been settled. From the little research I've stumbled across, he comes across as more of a dreamer, unprepared for the responsibilities of the monarchy, but quite willing to expend his considerable personal wealth on what seemed to be foolish projects at the time.

I'll close this little section with one of his most famous quotes: "I wish to remain an eternal enigma to myself and to others."

We had a quick bite to eat after the tour, then caught the ferry back to our car. Next stop... Edelweiss!

Our last tour over here (in Rome, for my newer readers), we were authorized to use military facilities during our tour, the shops and hotels on the US military bases... we stayed at the hotel in Naples many times (since it was convenient to a lot of the touristy stuff down there), Sicily, Livorno (the next town down from Pisa), Aviano (up by Venice)... our trips to the American facilities gave us places that felt more like home, and played an important part in keeping us all comfortable in a chaotic foreign country where we all felt a little out of place in every situation. One of the facilities we were authorized to use was in the Bavarian Alps, a designated R & R facility for military members worldwide - Edelweiss. If you ask our kids, our three vacations at Edelweiss would probably be some of the best memories they have from overseas. You can understand our exhilaration to have this stay booked before we even got in country.

We got all checked in, and it was all the same... but we're not the same family unit we were. We're in a different place in our lives, and it was just the two of us... so while Edelweiss remains one of my/our favorite places, it didn't quite have the magic that we felt previously.

There was a laundry room onsite - and we knew about it when we were planning this trip, so we only packed enough clothes for half the trip - so we did laundry the first night, and ate in the restaurant on the lower floor.

The next morning, we headed into Munich, about an hour or so away, in time for another free walking tour that the wife signed us up for. We met the guide and the rest of the group at the Marienplatz, in the center of downtown. Throughout the tour, we learned a lot about the history of Munich, and our guide was quite entertaining. We've decided that the "free" tours are the way to go in the future... we paid between €20 and €25 each for the tours, and they've been quite informative and entertaining.

After the tour, we had lunch at the Ratskeller under the town hall, then navigated our way back out to the Christmas market our guide had showed us. 

Thus begins our glühwein adventure.

Glühwein is a hot mulled wine, usually found at Christmas markets. Typically, you pay a €2 or €3 deposit for the mug, and around €4 or €5 for the wine itself. The cups are small, about 6 ½ ounces, with each Christmas market having their own colors and designs for the cups. We had glühwein 5 days in a row, but if we want to break that record, we'll have to start over, since we didn't have any today.

Some cities have multiple Christmas markets, and the market that we went to in Munich wasn't the main market for the city; this one was just a smaller one that happened to open a few days earlier than the others. This one had a couple of weird things of note; specifically, two booths with animatronic figures. One had a singing moose (that I took a video of - I'll try to figure out how and where to post it), and the other had a threadbare rat/mouse thing, telling a story to his/her/its kid.... think "low budget Chuck E Cheese Christmas Crack-head," and you wouldn't be far off. The market was pretty cool though, and we kept the two glühwein mugs.

We had dinner back at the resort at the American buffet restaurant. Eh.

The next day, we started out with coffee and muffins from the (third) restaurant at the resort, then hit the road for Mittenwald. Mittenwald is about a half hour from Edelweiss, historically known for their talented woodworkers who create violins, violas, and cellos there. We wandered around town for about a half hour, but couldn't find the museum. We finally stumbled across a giant carved violin sculpture - probably 15 feet tall. Looking for more things to do around town, my wife somehow talked me into going to the Leutasch Gorge, right outside of town, and a few feet over the Austrian border.

From the parking area, it's a gentle quarter mile (or so) climb up an access road, then down some metal stairs to the side of the gorge itself. The gorge isn't more than 30 or 40 feet apart at its widest, with a walkway suspended along one side of the gorge, about 50 feet above the crystal clear river winding its way through the rocks at the bottom. Incredibly beautiful walk, up to a suspended bridge over the river - the wife took lots of pics, you'll have to harass her into sharing them.

We drove back to Garmisch (the city where Edelweiss is) for lunch, then wandered around the tourist area for a while. One of the stores we encountered was an antique store, and my wife fell in love with a pitcher that she found. She's collected a specific type of pottery for a while (google Salmon Falls Pottery to see the general style), and she found a pitcher that's the same general type of pottery, salt glazed, but it's weird looking. Picture a ring, standing on its edge. Put a little base under the bottom, and a little can shaped thing on top, with a handle from the edge of the can connected part way down the outside of the ring... do me a favor, and google "ringkrug" (no quotes, all one word). The images that pop up... yeah, that's it. Before she got too attached to it, she wanted to do a bit of research first. We verified that he'd be open on Monday, and wandered on. We had some glühwein at the little Christmas market (day 2 in our record setting stretch), and kept both of those mugs as well (our mug count is now at 4, for those of you keeping track at home). After glühwein, we went back to Edelweiss.

Next morning, we had breakfast at the buffet, then did absolutely nothing all day long. Glorious nothing. Sat around the room all day. Took a bit of time out of our busy schedule to go down to the outdoor hot tub. We soaked for about a half hour, then got out... at which point, we saw a sign on our way back in telling us that beer was available, so the wife had the idea that we hadn't "hot tubbed" correctly, so we got a couple of radlers and got back in for a while.

Dinner... I feel silly typing this, but I'm not gonna lie. We went to Pizza Hut in town for some good old fashioned American pizza. So sue me.

Afterwards, we went over for more glühwein (that's day number 3, but we gave the cups back to get our €5 deposit back - still just 4 cups).

The next day, we headed into town for coffee and croissants while we waited for the antique dealer to open at 11. By the time noon rolled around, he still hadn't showed, so we went on with our day. We left town and headed up to a neighboring town called Ettal, where we'd found a cool woodcarver back in 2010. The store was in the same spot, and was exactly as we remembered, great prices, great selection, and as near as we can tell, all hand carved. So... we spent way too much money there, and kept wandering.

We drove up to the town of Oberammergau, host to a famous Passion play. According to legend... in 1633, the villagers of Oberammergau vowed that if their village was spared from the plague, they would perform this play every ten years. After they made that vow, there were no further deaths from the plague, so they started performing the play in 1634. Now, they perform the play every year that ends in the number zero, but the 2020 play was postponed for 2 years (thanks, COVID). So, the 2020 play closed just last month, and the town was in a bit of a lull after hosting all of the tourists there for the summer and to see the (delayed) play, and it's not quite Christmas season yet there. Evidently, the play is a pretty big deal. The town has around 5500 inhabitants, and close to 2000 of them perform in the play. We didn't see the play though - we just had coffee & croissants at a café, then wandered through all of the touristy areas.

We made it back to Garmisch late afternoon and wandered back over to the antique store. He still wasn't open. We consoled ourselves with more glühwein (that's 4 days straight, still kept just 4 cups). 

The last morning at Edelweiss, we woke up and took our time getting ready for checkout. We checked out and left a little before 11:00, and went into downtown Garmisch. We got coffee & croissants at a café (again), then went over to the antique dealer - he was actually open this time! 

So my wife had done some research on this thing, and looked for the specific things that she read about and saw online, and found them on the jug, so she ended up getting it.

Then, we hit the road, and drove the 5(ish hours)back home. Sorry for the end of this novella to be so sudden, but I'm tired of writing, you're tired of reading, and that's kinda the end of it, unless you want to hear about catching up with laundry and filling the fridge and pantry back up!

As always, if you've got any questions, let one of us know!

Back to the old stomping grounds...

I'm going to try something different for this post. I'm going to write it day by day, to try to put together a better narrative of our trip - we'll see how it works out.

This morning, we woke up a little early and walked down to the bus stop, and caught a bus to the metro station, then took the metro to the airport... the first time we've done that, and it worked out pretty well.

We eventually boarded a flight to Rome, as the wife took a one week temp assignment to help out in her old office. We were met at the airport by a driver who the local office uses, and he brought us to a hotel near the Rome office. We checked in, and planned our evening. 

We left the hotel and wandered around the area looking for a place to eat, and ended up choosing a streetside osteria. We ordered a couple of glasses of wine and some appetizers. We took our time eating, then headed toward a bar about a 20 minute walk away; it was the closest place we could go to watch the Packers game.

Turned out to be a little Scottish pub with 4 tv's in different areas; we'd reserved seats at a table near the TV that would be showing our game. We shared our table with a couple from Canada who were Packers fans, some Washington fans were at the next table over. Fun atmosphere, even though the Packers stunk up the place.

Walked back to the hotel after the game, getting ready for bed. More tomorrow.

So... It turns out I'm not that good at updating this daily, as I missed a day. Sorry about that... Here's what you missed:

Woke up way too early and had breakfast with the wife before she went to work. Decided that I wasn't quite done sleeping, so I went back to bed for an hour or so.

Got up and walked down to the metro station, and took the metro to a stop down south, to visit one of my favorite stores: Eataly. We first discovered them when we lived here in Rome, and have since visited other stores when we've been near. The chain was originally started by a group affiliated with Mario Batali, but he got kicked out when he was accused of being a slimeball. Anyway, it's a cool chain with all kinds of authentic Italian foodie stuff. They're all over the world - check them out if you're near one. Thus ends the commercial.

Rode the metro back, and inadvertently found a way to avoid climbing the Spanish Steps... For those of you who aren't familiar, they're a famous, picturesque set of stairs - but they're not fun to walk up. Turns out, there's a metro stop within a block of the bottom (Spagna), and a series of underground passageways and escalators that lead up to the top of Via Veneto. Who knew?!?!

Got back to the hotel and waited for the wife to get off of work, then went out to dinner; she finally got to have cacio è pepe - she's been jonesing for some for a while, and that's one of the dishes that I don't make. It's more her thing, and I haven't seen any pecorino cheese around Frankfurt. At dinner, we sat next to an older couple who travels quite a lot... they had all kinds of stories of places they'd been, we shared a few tips with them as well.

Walked down and had gelato at one of our favorite places... oh, story time again! 

When we moved here back in 2010, we lived in a hotel in the tourist area for a few weeks before we could move into our apartment. One of the things we did to keep the kids engaged was to test all of the local gelato places to find the best, and we ended up with 4 favorite ones in Italy, with one of them being in the tourist area near the hotel. That's the one that we went to last night, and it was just as good as I remembered. Walked back up the hill to our hotel. 

This morning, the wife headed off to work without having breakfast, so I ate without her, then took off exploring. I intended to find a local wine store, or a grocery that had wine, as I've been looking for a wine she really enjoyed when we lived here. Couldn't find it, so just kept walking. 

Rome was built on 7 hills, and our hotel is on top of one of them. Just about any direction you go, it's an easy walk downhill, with just enough of an incline that coming back just saps your energy. So I decided not to walk back, at least not straight back. I wandered through the 2 main tourist areas (Trevi Fountain & the Pantheon), and then remembered why I hate wandering through the tourist areas... too many clueless tourists! I took a turn in a direction I've not been in before, and found myself in a section of town I haven't been in before, toward the Tiber River and away from all the tourists. I had the idea to take the metro back to the station next to the Spanish Steps (so I didn't have to walk back up the hill), but discovered that I was nowhere near a metro station... the nearest station was Spagna, the station that I wanted to end up at, but around a mile away from it.

Now, it's time for a confession: I finally broke down and did a millennial thing that I haven't done before...

I rented a scooter. One of those Lime scooters that you get on at a street corner and drop off wherever you end up. It cost me around $5 for a 10 minute ride that would have taken me 45 minutes to walk. I'll probably do it again, too.

I rode it to Spagna and took the passageway/escalator to the top of the hill next to the hotel. 

So, now I'm back at the hotel, just hanging out, waiting for the wife to get off work and staying cool in the air conditioning. We'll probably go out to dinner later. If she wants to walk around, I'll probably try to talk her into taking some scooters back up instead of walking up that damn hill. Ciao for now! 

So... my master plan of writing an update every day didn't work very well. Now we're back at home, and I'm writing about the rest of the last week. Oh well, won't bother trying that again.

We ended up going out to dinner that night as well, then walked over to a gelato place that one of her coworkers suggested (Come il late, if you're interested) - and that one rocketed up to the top of our list. We ended up going back there a couple of times, even though it was a little out of the way.

Next day, I just hung around the tourist area, explored around a bit. Once the wife got off of work, we got together with her coworker for dinner. She picked a place on the north side of town, close to our old stomping grounds. We caught a cab up there... well, after our cab driver got lost, we finally got up there. We told him the area we wanted to go to (Ponte Milvio, for those of you keeping track at home), but for some reason, he heard "Ponte Sistino" (or something similar). We went a few blocks in the wrong direction before we called his attention to it, so it took a few extra minutes (and Euros) to get there.

The food was great - it was a little similar to a churrascaria (Brazilian steakhouse), in that they brought the meats out on skewers, but you had to order the skewers individually, three different flavors of steak skewers. Bottle of wine too. We had hopes of visiting another of our favorite gelato places (in the same shopping area), but they were already closed. The wife's coworker gave us a ride back to the hotel that night.

More hanging around the tourist areas... got dinner at one of the local restaurants - I think the wife had cacio è pepe again (I was picking up on a pattern at this point). Then we walked back up to the gelato shop that the wife's coworker introduced us to.

Wife went to work, I hung out in the tourist areas. After she got off of work, we walked across town a little ways, as the wife wanted to go through the Van Gogh exhibit - she'd had me buy tickets for it for Friday night. We walked to that area, and had a quick bite to eat beforehand... then were turned away at the door, as evidently there was a private event that night. Not sure why I was able to buy tickets for that night if the museum was closed, but... they told us that the tickets would be good the next morning as well, so we planned on coming back Saturday morning. We had planned on getting together with that coworker again afterwards, so we called her, and she said that she'd meet us back at Ponte Milvio. We hopped into a cab, and the wife told the cab driver where we were going, repeating it multiple times like she was working out the pronunciation - solely to insure that he'd heard it correctly. So we made it there in one piece, and met up with her. Turns out she'd made reservations at another one of the local restaurants.

We got to the restaurant, and all of the patrons were gathered out on the sidewalk out front; looking in, there was some sort of medical emergency going on inside. We all stepped out of the way - she had brought her dog along, and we wanted to just make sure that we were out of the way... after a few minutes, we all drifted in different directions, and shortly, we couldn't find the coworker anymore. I looked around, and she'd stepped inside, and was assisting with the first aid efforts going on, with her dog pacing on his leash behind her. I snuck inside and had her give me his leash, to get him out of the way, I took him back outside with me. The wife and I hung out with him for a few minutes, then I took him down the sidewalk a ways to get away from some of the people. He & I chilled out at the end of the block for about 15-20 minutes, then went back to the restaurant after getting a text from the wife that the ambulance was leaving. 

The four of us were sat at a table toward the back of the restaurant, and we ate more great food, drank more great wine. While eating, I checked to see what time the gelato place in that same shopping center (that we missed on Wednesday night) closed, Google said 11:00. Around 10:30, I left the ladies at the restaurant and walked around the block to the gelato place.

Google lied.

Got over there, and it was closed. Ended up meeting back up with the ladies, then walking to another place, where the wife got a tiramisu, then we cabbed back to the hotel.

Saturday morning, we walked over to where the museum was, in hopes of using our tickets from the previous night. We got some coffee and pastries for breakfast, then headed toward the museum, getting in line a few minutes before 9 (when the museum opened). Our tickets were accepted without a second look, so we wandered around for a while, checking out all the Van Gogh paintings on display. Not sure why the wife has taken a liking to Van Gogh in particular, but she's seen his work in (I believe) 5 different places: Rome, MOMA in NYC, The Mauritshuis in The Hague, and the Musée d'Orsay and The Louvre in Paris. More power to her - at some point, we'll make it to Amsterdam, and I'm sure we'll see more Van Gogh there as well.

Afterward, we walked back to the hotel and finished packing everything up, in time to get picked up by our driver for our ride back to the airport. An hour and a half flight later, we landed back in Frankfurt, where we attempted to take the metro back to our town... but after waiting for half an hour or so, we gave up on waiting, and just caught a cab back to the apartment (20 minute drive, versus over an hour on metro and bus - no brainer!!).

So that's it for last week - another trip coming up shortly, watch this space.

Another week, another trip!

So... when last we spoke, I had landed in Frankfurt on Saturday morning. First thing Monday morning, we walked down to our local metro station and caught a metro to the main station downtown, then boarded a train bound for The Hague. We arrived a few short hours later and navigated to our hotel... sadly, a different hotel than our last visit. The shower in this one wasn't nearly as impressive as the one from last time. The location was quite a bit closer to the train station though - I guess you win some and lose some. We checked in, then started poking around, looking for a place to eat - that turned into a much bigger ordeal than it really needed to be. Turns out our hotel was right on the edge of the main shopping district, with restaurants lining most of the surrounding streets. We didn't know that at the time though, and somehow managed to stay away from most of the populated areas that first night. Anyway, found an Italian place - the wife had lasagna, and I had pizza.

The next morning, the wife went to work, and I decided I was going to shower and shave my head. There are only a couple of readers of this blog who remember me with more than stubble on my head - I've been shaving it for eighteen years now. Not a single time in that eighteen years have I needed to go to the emergency room for an injury sustained while shaving... until last Tuesday morning in The Hague. I nicked the top of my ear while shaving my head in the shower, and bled like a stuck pig for two and a half hours, direct pressure be damned. I walked to the local pharmacy twice for different supplies, and finally gave up and went to the emergency room, just simply for some help getting it to stop bleeding. 

The doctor tried direct pressure. Didn't work. She tried superglue. Didn't work. She tried something else - I can't remember what it was, but it didn't work. After over an hour of trying to get it to stop, she ended up putting a single stitch in, then a strip of some sort of clotting material, then 2 or 3 of those steri-strip things. Then, she covered my whole ear with a bandage and tape - I joked to my wife that I was working on my Halloween costume, dressing up as Van Gogh.

All for nicking myself while shaving.

Let's see.... oh, I got to visit my Hat Lady again. Last time we were there, I found a hat store, and the lady who owns it took some time with me and helped me pick out a hat. I'd been wanting to be a "hat guy," but hadn't been able to find one that looked good. She spent a lot of time with me, helping me choose the right style and color, and now whenever we go back to The Hague, I'll try to go back and see her again. 

Lots of exploring... to be perfectly honest, The Hague has turned into one of my favorite cities. It's just a comfortable place to explore. The demographics of the city seem to skew pretty young, but in both of our visits we've stayed mostly around the tourist areas, and there's a major college in that area of town as well, so that might be coloring my viewpoint.

This morning, before we hopped on a train headed back to Germany, we walked through the Mauritshuis museum, and saw some of the work of the "Old Masters," including Rembrandt and Vermeer. There were quite a few other artists exhibited there as well, but I'd only heard of those two and Rubens (also saw some of his stuff). If you wanna read the work of a real art critic, you're on the wrong blog. Saw lots of pretty pictures.

I think that was about it... more trips are coming up, so stay tuned!

What a long/short month it's been!

 Well, there have been lots of activities since (most of us) last spoke... buckle up for a bit of a ride!

One of the things that the wife has done in past years is an assignment in New York City for the month of September providing support for the United Nations General Assembly. With us being at a new assignment, with a new boss, she wasn't sure if she'd be able to go this year. After careful deliberation, her local boss signed off on her trip this year. There was nothing saying that I needed to be here during that month, so we planned for me to head back to the states that month as well, to "check on the kids and house." Actually, just an excuse to spend some time back home.

She left Frankfurt in early September, nonstop to JFK. I'll only be able to relate specific parts of her story since I was only involved with a portion of it. A few days later, I flew to Knoxville, connecting through Charlotte. Charlotte shows up again later in my story.

She arrived and settled back into her New York routine, with minimal differences from the activities of previous years. I arrived in Knoxville to meet Cori waiting at the airport for me. We retrieved my checked suitcase and went outside, to find Palmer waiting in the loading area. We got home and surprised the animals... the kids have been in charge for the last few months, and evidently didn't tell the dog and cats that I'd be coming home.

I arrived on Friday night; bright and early Monday morning I had a lab appointment scheduled at my doctor's office. We changed some of my medications before we left, so I wanted to check and make sure that all of my levels looked okay. Later Monday afternoon, I took the cats in for their annual shots and checkup. They both hate vet appointments, and I'm quite sure that neither of them are looking forward to my next visit home, if they think this is what they can expect.

The following day, the boy and I drove to Nashville, and took a Jet Blue flight to La Guardia airport in New York to take up some space in Rebecca's hotel room. He stayed in the city from Tuesday night till Friday morning. This was the first time the wife and boy had seen each other since we moved to Germany. He and I hung out and explored during the day, then hung out with the wife in the evenings. While he was there, he and Rebecca went to a Broadway show (Aladdin, I think), and he went to Book of Mormon on his own. On Friday morning, I put him in an Uber to La Guardia, and he flew back down to Nashville. When he hit the ground in Nashville, he met up with the girl, who had driven his car to Nashville from Knoxville. She got onto a plane to NYC (La Guardia again), and he drove back to Knoxville in the car she'd just driven in. I took an Uber to the airport that night to meet Cori and get her back to the hotel. Her flight arrived late in NYC - she was scheduled to arrive at 10:00 pm, and didn't get to the gate until close to 11:30. Evidently, the plane that was at the gate her plane was scheduled to use had "issues" of some kind. If you read closely, you'll see a parallel later in the story.

Finally collected the girl and Uber'd back to the hotel. That Friday was one of the high stress days in Rebecca's schedule, so she got back to the room after we got there. She and I went down to wander through Times Square for a little while, while Cori decided that she'd had a long day, and wanted to go to bed.

The next day, Rebecca was able to clear out a bit of time, so we met up with one of the guys who'd traveled up from Knoxville for the UN, then metro'd to Little Italy to wander around the Feast of San Gennaro for a little while. We walked down to One WTC and putzed around down there for a little while, then took the metro back to Times Square and the hotel. We took Cori out through Times Square that night, just so she could experience the true chaos once, as she'd never been in the city before.

The next morning, we had breakfast and wandered around a little bit, then jumped in (yet another) Uber for the airport for our 3:00 departure. Our boarding was delayed (still not sure why), and we sat on the plane for a while. After waiting on the plane for a couple of hours, they finally let us back off the plane, to hang around the gate area. And wait. Then, wait some more. Then, they moved us to another gate. Where we waited a couple more hours. Then finally boarded the replacement plane. To then sit and wait for almost another hour while they checked out yet another issue. We ended up flying home without video service, which I truly don't care about; but when that's one of the main selling points of a cut rate wanna-be airline, you'd think that's one of the few things they'd get right. When they came over the PA to tell us that the video system wouldn't be working, the whole plane was so fed up with the delays and the lack of communication from the flight crew that we all yelled that we didn't care about the video, and just wanted to get home.

I'm truly not sure what time we finally took off, or what time we landed in Nashville. I just know that we ended up getting home around 2:30 in the morning on Monday morning. We were supposed to be home around 8.

I hate Jet Blue. The only reason I'll fly them again is to use up the vouchers we got for that debacle. Six homeless guys with a Red Flyer wagon wouldn't have been a much worse choice for our transportation, and we probably wouldn't have been much later getting home. At least we would have had some entertainment on our journey.

The next couple of days passed in a flurry of doctor's appointments and trying to chase down vaccinations of random types.

Cori and I got back on Sunday night (technically Monday morning), and on Thursday I drove to North Carolina to visit with a couple of people. One of my best friends moved to BFE, NC a couple of years ago, so I wanted to see him while I was in the area. Additionally, I need to tell y'all about our trivia nights real quick.

While we lived in Knoxville, we started going to trivia (pretty much) each week. We'd get together with another couple of people we'd gotten to be friends with, and settled into a routine where we'd meet at one of the local hangouts for dinner & random questions, occasionally winning a gift certificate. Our trivia crew grew a bit, ultimately including: S & E (our local friends, a couple), J & A (a coworker of Rebecca's and his girlfriend/fiancé/wife), Rebecca and me, and frequently Cori. This pattern went on for a couple of years. J was the coworker we had gotten together with for lunch while in NYC. S & E moved right outside of Raleigh at about the same time we moved to Germany.

Back to our tale. On the way to visit my friend in NC, I got together with E for drinks in Chapel Hill - S was out of town for a golf tournament (or just to play, not sure which). S & E were planning on coming to Knoxville the following weekend, so I made plans to meet them somewhere around town. After reconnecting with her, I kept driving through and spent the weekend hanging out with my high school buddy, his wife, and his mother in law. I drove back to Knoxville on Sunday morning, in time to catch the Packers game at the bar on Sunday afternoon.

While we've lived in Knoxville, we've been watching Packers games at a local craft beer market with our local Packer Backer club - the club's grown quite a bit since we've moved there. We joined in 2014, member numbers 34 and 35, thank you very much. In the years since, the membership has swelled to over 500 members, and spending just about every game with these folks every football season, we've gotten to know most of the people there. It was good reconnecting with them, especially after telling everyone that we were moving overseas, then showing up for 3 of the first four games this season.

The next week was filled with chasing down and visiting with friends, and getting more damn shots.

Rebecca was initially planning on flying back to Germany straight from NYC, but she was able to change her plans and come to Knoxville for a few days instead. On Thursday night, Rebecca, Cori, J & I went to trivia (just for old time's sake), and won first place. Rebecca took a picture of Cori, J & I, and sent it to the trivia group.

Palmer's girlfriend came to town somewhere in this time (I'm probably getting the order of events all screwy - what do you expect from me?!?!?). Some of our trips around town included random mixes of kids, some didn't. Nothing worth special mention at this point - just normal day to day life.

Saturday night, the wife and I got together with S & E. When I'd gotten together with E in Chapel Hill, there was no mention of Rebecca being in Knoxville, as it wasn't planned at that point. Rebecca and I went to the bar to meet them, and when we saw them pull up, she went and hid, then came out once they'd joined me at the table. S & E are a bit younger than we are, and we jokingly refer to them as "the kids." As Rebecca and I mused to each other: we have quite a bit of history surprising our kids, so it's not much of a jump to put together a surprise for the kids. Over the last few years, S & E have become quite close friends of ours - I officiated their wedding - so it was nice for all of us to be able to get together again.

We got to go to the bar and watch a Packers game with our club again; the last game I'd watched there, there was no plan for Rebecca to be in town, so we were able to surprise our friends there as well once her plans changed. See? It's a pattern!

Monday was Palmer's 21st birthday, in addition to being the day Rebecca left to come back to Germany. We all (Rebecca & I, Cori, Palmer & his girlfriend) went out to breakfast at a local place, so he could have his first legal drink. Had a pitcher of mimosas for the table. Cori had to stick with straight orange juice.

Rebecca & I stopped at a couple of places for some last minute (for her) shopping, then I dropped her off at the airport.

I went back to the house and loaded up Palmer & his girlfriend for more birthday shenanigans. We went to Pigeon Forge to do a tasting at a moonshine distillery. Wandered around the tourist areas, then headed home. Palmer & his girlfriend wanted to get together with some of his coworkers, but that fell through, so we ended up having a little tasting of random alcohol around the house. #JustBadDadThings

The next night, they went out with that coworker (and others), then came home a little loopy; we watched a few episodes of House of the Dragon. 

Just hung out and caught up with friends for the rest of the week.

When we booked my flight home, we had scheduled me for a 2 hour layover in Charlotte. American Airlines, in their infinite wisdom, sent me an email prior to my trip, and told me that they'd taken it upon themselves to change my return, evidently deciding that 2 hours was overly generous, and switching me to a 30 minute layover instead. In the week prior to my departure, I went out to the airport (rather than attempting to navigate their oh so helpful customer service number). The ticket agent couldn't figure out why they'd changed me, and switched me to the only remaining option: a ten hour layover in Charlotte, following a 5:05 am departure from Knoxville. Yay. Be at the airport at 4, to sit around for ten hours in a strange airport, arriving in Frankfurt after 24 hours of traveling. 

And airlines wonder why people think they suck. If I could have just skipped the Knoxville leg, I could have called those 6 homeless guys and their Red Flyer wagon and slept in a bit longer. Hell, I could have had one of the kids drive me to Charlotte, and they'd have been back home before my initial departure.

I guess it's not just Jet Blue - I've really begun to hate air travel in general. I've frequently wondered how much a good old fashioned ocean liner would cost for future trips back to the states. Even below decks with Jack in third class, I'd have more room than being crammed into the increasingly Lilliputian seats in roach class, and I wouldn't have to deal with all the BS the airlines serve up. I'd just hope they watch out for icebergs.

Maybe I'm just getting old. That's probably it.

Anyway, that's all for now, all the members of our family are back in our (current) rightful places... for now. More shenanigans are afoot, but as is my usual pattern, I'll wait until afterwards to share the events with you. Until then, I'll be yelling at the local kids to "Runter von meinem Rasen!" - that's (per Google Translate) "Get off my lawn!" in German.

Auf wiedersehen!

Paris!

So, as part of the wife's work responsibilities, she took a trip to Paris for a week, and I made the cut as her "plus one." Ironically, the timing of this trip was such that our 24th anniversary fell during our trip - who woulda thunk it? Us spending our anniversary in Paris?!?

When she travels for work, she has to book her travel on her work card, while we booked my ticket on a personal card. Booking our tickets at different times introduces a complication, in that during the reservation process, you pick your seats... unless the system doesn't allow you to pick your seats, and just picks an available seat for you (which is what happened for both of our tickets). We checked with the train folks at the station before we left about sitting together, and they told us to talk to the people on the train. I asked one of the conductors on board about it, and he told me it wasn't a big deal, go ahead and sit with her. What he/we didn't take into account was that the seat I was occupying was probably reserved for someone else, and they wouldn't be happy to find me sitting in it. Cue us moving three times on the way there so that we could sit together, moving each time a new group boarded the train (at each of the three stops between Frankfurt & Paris).

Regardless, we got to Paris in the early afternoon hours on Sunday and checked into our hotel, resting and relaxing for a few minutes before finding our way around town.

Lets talk about the hotel for a moment (lots of "First World Problems" coming. Sorry!). Reading through this post, there are a few parts where I'm complaining a bit. I'm going to change the color of my whining, just move past the text that's colored red if you're not in the mood to listen to my bitching.

I know that Americans are a bit spoiled when it comes to some of the more modern amenities - we've been forced to get used to it while living in Europe, both in this tour and the last one. Most of y'all know (or can make an educated guess) how I feel about air conditioning. I've voluntarily placed myself firmly in the "pro" A/C camp for decades. Our hotel had A/C in our room, and the control allowed us to set the temp all the way down at 62 degrees, which, while a bit on the chilly side, would be quite refreshing after a long hot day touring in the sun. Well, it would have been refreshing if those numbers had anything to do with the actual temperature in the room. The only thing the thermostat seemed to actually do was show us the current temp in the room, at times climbing to a roasty-toasty 82 degrees, while completely ignoring any and all requests to turn our room into a refrigerator.

While I'm complaining about first world problems... we've stayed in 4 hotels while we've been in Europe, and I've noticed a trend: Europeans are convinced that shower curtains are unnecessary. In the post about our trip to The Hague, I wrote at length about the amazing shower there... in our hotels in Berlin, Stuttgart, and now Paris, there was no shower curtain. Berlin and Stuttgart both had stalls with half of the space enclosed, and the other half open. Our hotel in Paris had a nice deep soaker tub, with a two foot width of plexiglass attached at one end next to the handheld/rod mounted wand - nothing else. So, every night when I'd take a shower (in a vain attempt to rinse off the dried sweat from a day in 90+ degree heat), everything in the bathroom would end up wet, since there was nothing keeping the shower water in the "shower." As much as I loved the shower in The Hague, I hated this one just as much, if not more.

Evidently, water heaters work a little differently in Paris than they do in the states. In the states, a hotel has a water heater which heats up the water for the building. In Paris (or our hotel, at least), hot water is delivered by the imaginary hot water fairy, and (s)he was having a bad week while we were there. There was a sign on the bathroom counter telling us that there was a problem with the hot water, and the temperature would fluctuate between warm and hot, with no notice. Unfortunately, the temperature fluctuated like that even when I had the temp set quite cool (in a vain attempt to cool down and rinse off the dried sweat from a day in 90+ degree heat). Nice and cool, warmwarmhotHOTHOTHOT - ice cold!

I hated that shower.

Enough complaining about first world problems for now, but I reserve the right to circle back around whenever I feel like it.

So our hotel was right next to a mall - this seems to be an inadvertent theme with our travels.

The mall was weird. Rather than having individual stores, the vendors were basically open stalls. Clothing, jewelry, purses, perfume - most things that you'd find at a normal mall, just in stalls instead of individual stores. Only thing was, this was a high end mall. Think Rolex, Chanel, Prada, all those high end brands. Here's a pic to give y'all an idea:

We putzed around in there for a while, but shockingly enough weren't able to find anything we couldn't live without. We ventured up onto the roof and took what we believe to be our first selfie ever, with the Eiffel Tower off in the distance. (Spoiler alert - she made me take a bunch of selfies while we were there. If you want to see them, ask her really nicely, and maybe she'll post them on her Facebook account).

After we were done there, we took the metro over to the Eiffel Tower itself. We went through the security checkpoints at the bottom, then saw how long the lines were to buy tickets, and that we wouldn't even be able to go to the top, and just took a bunch of pics from the bottom. She made me take more selfies there too.

We really need to talk about their metro system at some point - warning, more "First World Problems" incoming. Remember the red text warning above?

The Paris Metro system is a thing of beauty... almost. They've got the whole metro thing figured out, from what I can tell. Subway stations on just about every corner, and you can get from one side of the city to another for less than two bucks. There were three main issues we encountered - I'll walk you through them.

1. The metro is quite popular. The weather outside was decidedly NOT delightful. I have smelled things now that I would really prefer not to smell again. That many people, jammed into that small a space, and since France evidently hasn't got the whole "Air Conditioning" thing figured out just yet... let's just say it was unpleasant at times. 
2. In other metro stations, there are only a couple of levels of tracks. In most metro systems (that I've ridden on), more than one subway line will service that track. For instance, if you're waiting for a "Blue" train, you might have to wait there while an "Orange" train stops first. Not in Paris. If there are 6 different lines that service a station, there are 6 individual platforms that you have to navigate to catch the right train. In some cases, the platforms seem to be stacked, and at times you'll have to walk through the platform area for one line to take 3 more sets of stairs to get to the line you're looking for.
3. Escalators. Most of the stations didn't have a lot of escalators. There might be one or two going into the top level, but by and large, you were hiking up and down endless sets of stairs to access the lower levels. We saw a couple of elevators, but they definitely weren't in every station, or even a good number of the stations we used. 

During the day, Rebecca went to work and I did random stuff around the room and neighborhood. Nothing noteworthy, so I'm not gonna bother sharing any of it. All the following stuff was in the afternoons and evenings, after Rebecca got back from work.

Tuesday evening we took the metro over and took pictures of Notre Dame from the outside. I'm not sure if the inside is open (or the progress on the restoration after the fire), the outside was mostly covered by scaffolding. I had a silly surprise for my wife... with us both being Texans (me by birth, and her as an honorary Texan - specifically because she did her part and added two more Texans to our family!), we're both barbecue junkies. I'd found a review of a barbecue place over here (that we haven't gone to yet), but I was poking around restaurants in Paris and found a place that had pretty good reviews. So, I picked that place - I told her before we went in that she could veto it if she wanted - and I've gotta tell ya, the barbecue was definitely edible. We both had the brisket, and while I'm not going to waste time comparing it to Texas 'cue, it was actually pretty good. Afterward, we metro'd back to the hotel.

Wednesday evening we went over to one of the boss's houses for dinner. This particular boss is one of the guys Rebecca worked with in Rome, we got to know him and his family pretty well, so we spent the evening catching up with him and his wife. The Paris office is over the Frankfurt office, so he's in her chain of command, but he and his wife are just cool people, and it was good to get to spend some time with them.

Thursday evening we got together with one of our friends from back in the day - he was actually my best man when we got married. We met up with them at a restaurant and had a great meal, then walked around for a couple of hours. He wanted to take us to see the original Moulin Rouge cabaret, so we walked from dinner down the hill in that direction. Evidently, the area the cabaret is in is the next block down from Paris' sex shop and strip club district, so that was entertaining. That night, we ended up taking a cab back to the hotel.

Friday I got tickets for the Louvre at 7:00 (it closes at 9:45 on Fridays). We metro'd down there and were able to enter the museum at 6:30. We got audio guides in English, but honestly... they were damn near worthless. It was difficult to figure out where we were, and almost impossible to figure out where we wanted to go, with no way to search and figure out where different types of art were. We ended up not being able to use them very well. We poked around a bit and found our way to the Mona Lisa; she's in a room with a huge line of tourists waiting for a chance to gawk at her. After struggling through the crowd to catch a glimpse of her, we decided to try and find another section of the museum that wasn't as crowded. The museum is massive, and spread across 3 buildings, five floors. We were looking for the section with Van Gogh and Picasso - you know, people we've heard of before... the fourth time we got lost and the third time we passed a specific exhibit, we threw in the towel. We kinda feel like we've checked the box; we got to see the Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo. Done. It just wasn't enjoyable after that.

Saturday the only thing on the list was the Arc de Triomphe. We took the metro there and walked around under it a bit. There was a line to go up, and I just wasn't feeling it, so we looked around for something else to do. We ended up taking the metro to the far side of town and walking around in the Pere Lachaise Cemetery. We found a map and walked through to Jim Morrison's grave; there are lots of famous people buried there, but honestly, there were none that I absolutely had to see. We walked around for a while, admiring the grounds, then got lunch at a nearby restaurant. While we were eating, we were looking at other things to do, since our train didn't leave until 7ish. Becca found info about the Orsay museum online, so we metro'd over there. 

The Orsay deserves its own paragraph. What a wonderful experience! We got audio guides for this one too, and the difference between the guide at the Louvre and this one was like night and day. This one was so much more user friendly, and gave us the opportunity to get information that we wanted, rather than just randomly playing stuff when you were standing at a certain spot. The layout was very logical, and the locations of the art we wanted to see (Van Gogh, Picasso, etc.) were well identified and easy to find. I'd go to the Orsay again before I'd go back to the Louvre - it was just such a great experience!

We took a cab to our hotel to pick up our luggage, then rode the metro to the train station. This time on the train, we just sat in our assigned seats, even though we were in different cars - it just wasn't worth the hassle for me. We got home after midnight.

The past week has been... well, I can't say "uneventful," because there have been a couple of big developments, but honestly they're just big deals for us - I can't imagine that y'all care much, but I'll put them in here anyway. Our car is here. We'll be taking possession of it on Tuesday, and I think this will change our experience here quite a bit. I expect that we'll still take transit most of the time, since it's really convenient, but we'll have a lot more options.

Speaking of options, we hit a bit of a breaking point with my cell phone. My frustration bubbled over a few weeks back, and I just gave up. I haven't been able to get it working to call German numbers, and have been endlessly frustrated to be stuck without a reliable way to get in touch with Rebecca, and not being able to place local calls (to deal with getting insurance set up for the car, etc.). We finally broke down and just bought a phone locally for me to put my German SIM card in, and it's working! Now, the wife and I can call each other during the day, and I can actually use my phone while I'm out, which is a big change.

Anyway, that's all for now. Let one of us know if you've got any questions!

Big changes...

You all know the Shores family never does anything the normal way, right? Well, we're at it again.

The wife and I are at that stage in life where the kids are getting ready to move on, and most normal people in our situation would be working on being "Empty Nesters." Well, we're finally "Full Nesters."

Cori is (at this moment) over the coast of Newfoundland, on her way back home after a couple hour layover in Chicago. The parents have officially turned over control of the house to the kids, and flown the coop.

Cori is eager to get back to her life, her friends, her job, her schooling... and her cat. Palmer is planning on picking her up from the airport this evening... he'll have to leave a get together with all the folks from work, and the first test for the kids is whether he takes her straight home, or drags her back to the bowling alley (and the party). They both work at the same restaurant, so they know all the same people, but after flying 4500+ miles in 23 hours, I'm not sure she'll be up for socializing much.

Right now, the line is -4 on him dragging her back to the bowling alley, but circumstances might change those odds as the time approaches, so get your bets in now!

I'm in the process of planning trips to have "in the can," so at any point the wife can say "Let's take a long weekend," and I can present her with multiple options. I've got a couple of day trips planned, and 3 weekend trips planned thus far. I'll post about the trips as we take them, but feel free to send us your suggestions on where we should go.

A local trip, then a trip to The Hague!

Becca's boss was travelling, and his wife was going stir crazy, so we "planned" a trip with her to a neighboring town, as a little touristy jaunt (our version of "planning" just being repeatedly asking each other where we wanted to go until we just gave up and randomly picked). We ended up going to a little town a bit outside Frankfurt called Rüdesheim am Rhein, a cute little winemaking town. We wandered around for a couple of hours, had lunch, and took the train and bus back home. Becca's boss and his wife live in the same town as we do, so we ride the same buses, subways, and trams all the way home when we do touristy stuff together.

Speaking of Becca's boss's wife: I've noticed that she's made a few different appearances in the blog (and will undoubtedly make many future appearances), but she's a bit shy and would prefer to go by an alias rather than her real name. In the future, I shall refer to her as "K," short for "Karen". She's a delightful person, and should in no way be thought to have the stereotypical "Karen" personality, and her name isn't "Karen", but it amuses me to periodically harass her (by proxy) simply by referring to her with that letter. Honestly, she'll probably make me change it, but for now..... she's K.

And now, back to your normally scheduled blog post.

So Becca's job over here is actually to provide support for two offices, the office in Frankfurt and the one in The Hague, in The Netherlands. Both offices have a big inspection coming up, and she needed to visit the office in The Hague to go over all of the paperwork, so she timed it so that Cori and I could go as well.

We were looking at train tickets, and my frustration level was rising... there wasn't a direct train - all of them had connections, and some of the times were quite tight. The fewer connections, the higher the price. Taking all of that into account, I did some research, and found that there's a bus line that goes from here to there, with only one connection - a 45 minute layover. The return trip would be direct. The price was quite attractive (about a third of the cost), and only about 2 hours longer each way - that seemed like a fair tradeoff to me. I ran it by the boss, and she okayed it, so I booked it.

As our trip approached, I got an email from the bus company telling me that the bus from Frankfurt to Amsterdam was cancelled - they thankfully kept our ride from Amsterdam to The Hague though (the segment after our layover), for some odd reason.

I cancelled the whole trip there (keeping our return), and we went up to the train station one afternoon to just buy them from one of the kiosks up there - hoping that'd be simpler. It was... kinda. We ended up with tickets with short layovers. Ugh.

We took a bus and metro to the main train station Monday morning and got onto our train (and into our reserved seats) with no issues. For a couple of the connections, we had to run between trains, but we made it okay. We wandered the streets of The Hague until we found our hotel, and found out that because of Becca's status with Hilton, we'd been upgraded to a King Suite room - a big bedroom with a king size bed, and a second room (with its own bathroom) that they rolled a twin size into for Cori. Score!

I must share about our shower - it was a double shower, with a connecting area between them. Picture two standard sized stalls, with an additional two feet between them - so extra wide. Each end had one of the big rain type showerheads, and one of the handheld wands mounted on a vertical bar, so you could adjust the height and angle. The first night, I found that if I turned the rain head on in one end, and the handheld wand in the other, and positioned the wand just right, I could effectively get flooded from both directions at the same time, with different temperature water if I wanted. I want one of these showers - but I think they're only for rich people. I don't know if I rate one of these in real life.

During the day... I'd get up with Becca and we'd go down to breakfast in the attached restaurant (Cori told us that she'd rather sleep), then we'd go back upstairs and Becca would get ready and go to work. Different days, Cori and I would do different things... the only thing that was a requirement for me was the Escher museum, so Cori and I went there on Tuesday afternoon. The other days, we putzed around, sometimes went out and found stuff to eat, sometimes explored. When Becca got home, we'd figure out what we wanted to do for dinner; one night, we found a Japanese restaurant, one night an Italian restaurant.

One afternoon, Becca got off early, so we took a tram over to the beach (our hotel was about a 20 minute tram ride to the North Sea). We wandered along the boardwalk area for a couple of hours. There's a double-decker pier (with all of the normal beachy stores on it) that has a huge ferris wheel out at the end (with air-conditioned, enclosed cars). We took a ride on that, took a bunch of pics. Got dinner at a restaurant on the beach then walked around some more. Took a tram back to the hotel.

Let's talk about public transportation for a second. Sounds boring, but stay with me here. Public transportation over here is a lot more prevalent than in the states; cheap, easy, and convenient. For our trips in Germany, they've got a special running right now where you buy a ticket for €9, and you can ride any kind of public transport except the high speed rail for free. There's no scanning your ticket or showing it to the driver (or conductor) - it's basically on the honor system. At any point, they can ask to see it, but on all of our trips on local transport, we've only had to show them once (ironically, it was on the train back from Rüdesheim with K). If you don't have one and you get carded, it's a €60 fine - I don't know how the fines work, because I've always got my ticket with me. Hopefully, I'll get through the entire tour here without having to find out how the fines work.

The transit system in The Netherlands works in a similar fashion, but you can buy a ticket for a specific amount of time, with the default being 2 hours for €4. That's for single trips. If you live there, you can buy a card to use with money stored on it, where you scan your card when you get on the tram and it debits the card for the right amount of money. We bought timed tickets on the way there, then bought an additional set on the way back. On the tram on the way back, some transit officers got on board the tram and checked everyone's tickets, ending up at the back of the tram. The tram stopped, and more people got on, but one guy who got on had trouble getting his card to scan - evidently, he didn't have enough loaded on it for his trip. He glanced around the tram and saw the transit officers, so he beelined up to the front of the tram, planning on getting off on the next stop. I don't know what the officers saw, but they immediately followed him up there, and blocked him from getting off the tram. When we got off a few stops later, they were all still deep in conversation. I suspect that interaction didn't go well for him.

Friday morning, we got up, had breakfast, then headed out to catch our bus home at 10:40. The train/bus station was about a half hour walk from the hotel, so we meandered over there with enough time to get some food and drinks for the trip.

The bus left on time, but with a traffic jam outside of Düsseldorf and an accident about 20 miles outside of Frankfurt, we ended up being on the bus for around 10 hours. I actually didn't have any issues with taking the bus, while Becca and Cori weren't the biggest fans. I had downloaded some stuff to watch, so I was fine. The girls just stared out the window and time seemed to drag for them. We ended up having to wait for about a half hour for the bus home - I stopped at the store once we got to town and picked up some pizzas to throw in the oven for dinner.

So... that was our trip to The Hague. Becca will have to go back there occasionally, and I'll undoubtedly accompany her on some of her other trips there too, but we thought it'd be nice to give Cori an opportunity to visit there while she's in town.

Till next time!

Happy Fourth!

We wanted to take a long weekend for the Fourth, so we broke out the old laptop. Between Google maps, the Deutsche Bahn (train) site, and Trip Advisor, we threw a bunch of electronic darts at the screen, waffling back and forth between a few different options before settling on Stuttgart.

Cori and I took a bus down to Becca's office on Friday and met her when she got off work. We caught another bus to a metro station, and rode down to the main train station downtown. We rode the train around an hour and a half south. Our hotel was fairly close to the main train station, so we just walked over there. Our hotel was next door to a mall, so we walked to the food court for a quick dinner.

Next morning, we had tickets for the Mercedes-Benz museum, so we took the metro up to the nearest station and walked over. Very extensive museum, covering not just the history of the company, but delving into a lot of what was happening around the world at the same time.

Afterwards... well, one of the things I'd found in Stuttgart was the Schweine-Museum. Just by looking at the name of the place, you might think that it's a museum about pigs... you'd be right. I thought it would be a cutesy, folksy, fun place.

[NARRATOR] You'd be wrong. Dead wrong.

Everybody's got a friend who collects something, right? You may have that one friend who collects stuff with frogs on it, right? They really like frogs, maybe have a couple of frog figurines in a curio cabinet, and a couple of posters of frogs doing silly stuff, right? Everyone that they know knows that person likes frogs, so when you're out shopping and see something cute with a frog on it, you pick it up for them, right? I think that's how this pig museum started. One couple really liked pigs, so everyone they knew decided to get them more random crap with pigs on it.

However many years later, there's a pretty good sized 3 story building completely filled with all kinds of pig stuff, including a room devoted to pig porn. This place was pretty over the top, and I feel a little bad dragging the girls to go see it. Honestly, I feel a little bad dragging myself to go see it. Let's move on.

We made our way back to the rooms and rested for a while, then I packed up and took off for the mineral baths... basically a pool complex. Evidently, Stuttgart is known for its mineral water, and there were a few different facilities with swimming pools filled with the stuff. The one I went to had multiple different indoor/outdoor pools, at different temperatures, all the way from cold to cool to normal pool temp, all the way up to hot tubs. Really cool place, and I enjoyed paddling around for a couple of hours. Yes, everyone wore suits. There was a section where suits weren't allowed, but I didn't go in there. Evidently the saunas were in there, but I didn't go in to look around.

I went back and met up with the girls, they'd evidently walked around the downtown area. For dinner, Becca and I took the metro back over to the downtown area and found a restaurant; pretty good food, I took half a salad back for Cori.

Sunday morning we took the train up to the Porsche museum. This museum wasn't laid out as neatly as the Mercedes museum, and it seemed to focus specifically on the 911 and their racing program (whereas the Mercedes museum tried to put the history of the company more into context with what was happening around the world at the same time). It was still fun looking at the cars though.

Sunday afternoon we found a little museum right next to the hotel called the Museum of Illusions, and I dragged the girls in there as well. This one went a lot better than the pig museum though. It was rather small, but there were a lot of fun things packed in there, including an Ames Room; that's the room that's got weird dimensions, where people stand in two different corners and because of the distance from the viewer, they look to be of drastically different sizes.

Here, for your amusement, are a limited selection of photos from the museum:

Cori got big, huh?!?!?

I got better.

Me and my midget wife.

We wasted some time there and then found a restaurant nearby that was open.

Monday morning we took our time getting out of the rooms and checked out around 11:00, then wasted a couple of hours in the mall food court until our train was scheduled. Turned out the train was late by 40 minutes, but it didn't really matter much in the whole scheme of things.

Becca went to work today, then Becca's boss's wife and I met her downtown, and we went to the Green Sauce Festival. What's that? Glad you asked!

One of the things that Frankfurt is (evidently) well known for is something called "Green Sauce." Well known enough that it's recognized and protected by the EU. I'm not sure that there's a similar concept in the states, since you can get just about anything anywhere. I guess if barbecue were somehow certified by the government, and you could only get it in Texas (the true home of barbecue, as we all know). Anywhere else you went, you could call it whatever you wanted, but you couldn't call it "barbecue," because that name would be restricted to only brisket from Texas.

Anyway, Green Sauce is made of: parsley, chives, sorrel, chervil, borage, garden cress, and salad burnet, together with sour cream, oil, vinegar, mustard, salt, and hard boiled eggs. Think "Green Goddess," and you won't be far off. We've had Green Sauce at a couple of restaurants, served with schnitzel and/or boiled potatoes, served by itself with hard boiled eggs (literally just 4 halves of hard boiled eggs, sitting in a plate of Green Sauce)... we've got some in the fridge that we bought at the store, and we've had it with a few meals around the house - veggies, sausages, etc. Pretty good, but it's not barbecue sauce.

Anyway, that's what we've been up to lately... as always, feel free to let one of us know if I've brought up any burning questions for ya!