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!
