Author: traveltalesfrombb8

We finally fully recovered from the food poisoning and not having anything concrete planned allowed us to sleep in for one of the first times on the trip. Of course, sleeping in was really only till 8:30ish, but it was nice to be able to do some stuff at our own pace today. We decided to use Rick Steves Munich walk tour to guide us on our way, but it was nice to be able to go off the route at times and just enjoy this amazing city. But before that self-guided tour, we went and checked out the festival grounds for Oktoberfest! The grounds are huge! It looked like they were just about to start setting up for a spring festival that started at the end of April. We then made our way to the subway, I mention this seemingly unimportant fact to pause on our story of the day.

Let’s talk about their trains, trams, and buses. Though you could walk around the city fairly easily, they make it so easy by having a connected system of public transport. If you get a day pass or a 3-day pass like we did, you have the freedom to hop on not just the bus or the subway, but every mode of public transport! Plus, not once did we get checked for a ticket, but that doesn’t we didn’t buy tickets, cause I wasn’t about to get a fine in Germany. We rode this system non-stop on our time there. It was wonderful and I sure as heck miss it back home.

Back to the Rick Steves tour! Our audio tour (how is this free, it’s awesome) was a perfect complement to all the other tours that we had done so far. It was all the buildings and sites that we hadn’t seen yet. We saw and looked in lots of cathedrals and saw the famous glockenspiel go off in Marienplatz. Something I find interesting is that every single cathedral/catholic church we go into smells exactly the same, stuffy and sterile and a little gross. Don’t know if that is cause they are old, but it was just very interesting. This was such an informative walk around the city. Even better was the ability to hop on a train and head back to our hotel halfway through the audio tour and take a nap. Really was a great compliment to all we had done.

Our last morning in Füssen and the first day we were actually able to sleep in, which was nice.  Breakfast at Hotel Zum Hecten left a lot to be desired, but it was an otherwise great place to stay.  Almost all of the breakfast was cheese and bread.  This meant I got some cereal to change it up a little bit.  Even my wife, who loves cheese, got a bowl of cereal because she was a little sick of the same stuff over and over.  This is, what I think, caused the events of the hardest day yet.*

Our train didn’t come in ’till about noon so we hung out and had some coffee at a local cafe to waste some time.  Kind of a nice boring morning.  Only problem was, I didn’t feel right. Something felt off in my stomach.  I took it as food just not settling right and that it would go away.  So I did my best to sit back and relax on our train ride to Munich, excited to finally get off and stay in Munich after passing through it three times already.

When we got to the Hauptbahnhof (Central Train Station) in Munich, nothing was feeling any better, only worse, but I was determined to keep on exploring.  We made our way to the Radius tours office, check them out if you are in Munich because they are the best!  Here is a link to some of their tours if you want to see what they do: Radius Tours.  Anyways, back to the story.  We made our way to the Radius tour office to book all of the tours we wanted to do in our time in Munich!  After doing all of that, I asked the guy working there, who was awesome, where the nearest bathroom was because I was about to hurl everywhere.  He was so nice, he let us use the staff bathroom for free (instead of having to pay a Euro for the public restroom and it was closer).  Now luckily there was no one else in the bathroom because it was bad.  As soon as I made it into a stall and got my backpack off I exploded. Not literally, but everything came out of both ends.  It was just awful. At least it did make me feel a little better, but now we had to find our hotel.

Again, we struggled, I wasn’t feeling well which didn’t help, but we eventually figured out where to go.  We didn’t get that lost this time, which is great!  As soon as we got to the hotel I crashed on the bed.  It felt great being able to lie down cause I just felt achy all over the place.  Then I thought, “Hey, maybe I should take a shower or just sit down in the shower and let water run over me, that will feel good.” As I was sitting in the shower relaxing, something, maybe the hot water, triggered the rest of what was in my stomach to come out. Ugh.

Luckily we didn’t have much else to do that day. I got to enjoy listening to a Fulham win!! Woohoo!  For those that don’t know I support Fulham Football club and it was great to not have to wake up at 7 am to listen to the game.  Excited to see them in person in 1 week! After that, I was feeling better, but definitely not 100% and it was time for our first beer tour.

The beer tour was a lot of fun!  Good people to talk to and even though I couldn’t stomach much, such great beer.  This tour was more about the history of beer in Munich and the history of the Oktoberfest, as our tour took us to the Oktoberfest museum.  Learning about why they do the festival and why everyone is invited!  It is celebrating the Kronprinz Ludwig and his marriage to Princess Therese. Everyone was invited and they liked it so much they wanted to do it again and again!  Even got to “enjoy” a meal in a beer hall even though my drink of choice was water.  So even though I had to skip on some beer, I did get to enjoy some of the small samples, it was a fun tour to learn more about Munich’s history.  Keith (who is from Ireland) was a great tour guide.  Even though it was a little bit rough getting the food poisoning we had a lot of fun in our first night in the place they call “the village with a million people.”

*The culprit for the food poisoning was most likely milk in our cereal, our bodies weren’t used to the unpasteurized milk.

After spending the morning exploring the castles, we decided to go back and check out a few things in Füssen.  There were a couple of sites in the town that we hadn’t seen yet.  This included the Füssen museum and the high castle that stood over the city.  First up was the museum!

The Füssen museum might have been a really awesome thing to explore, but there were a couple of small problems.  First problem was that all of the exhibits had descriptions in German, which makes sense because we are in Germany.  We had an English booklet that described the exhibits but they did not match the exhibits so we spent most of the tour confused.  That problem was dwarfed by our second problem.  The museum was really dark, and my wife and I were the only guests touring all of the exhibits.  The part that gave us the creeps was a “chapel” that we walked into.  After walking in, my wife immediately started freaking out.  We were distracted because we were looking for a point of interest in the chapel, a famous group of paintings depicting the Dance of Death.  It was pointed out in Rick Steve’s book so we urged ourselves past the creepy metal grate that sat in the middle of the floor separating the back room from the front room with the altar.  I didn’t think it was that bad until I realized how cold it was in there.  My wife noticed a dehumidifier humming in the corner and the ominous grate in the floor, which we quickly realized was a crypt!  After catching a quick glimpse of the painting, we quickly crossed back over the crypt, which is from the 8th century, and ran out of the chapel.  Luckily we didn’t find out until later that the cross in the chapel actually had a piece of bones from the town’s patron saint, St Mang.

After quickly scurrying out of the chapel, we made our way around to some more interesting things in the museum.  We found out that Füssen in well-known as lyre makers.  That lead to them producing violins and other string instruments.  Lets just say, we went through that part pretty quickly too.

Then we went off to see Castle #3, though it wasn’t really a castle compared to the others we saw today, more like a fortress. It is called the “Hohes Schloss” or high castle in English.  This one really had some interesting features including a very interesting art gallery full of some really cool paintings.  Almost everything in there was biblical or from history of the town.  This helped us learn more about what they believe and what the town was about back in time.  Also, the walls the castle was painted with a lot of faux architectural details to make it look like there was more too it than just a wall.  It was interesting after seeing castles with those actual features.

After all of this exploring, we were hungry!  So naturally we looked up some highly reviewed places and of all things, we found….an Italian Pizzeria.  Seriously, of all the places to eat that is what we really wanted.  Some good comfort food and it was really good!  The pizza may have been some of the best I have ever had!  The server was also just a joy!  We wanted to sit outside even though it was cold and he kept giving us a hard time for it.  But we were determined to enjoy the small town cafe feel so my wife ordered an Irish Coffee to warm up.  There was even someone who was at the restaurant that worked for a tech company in Palo Alto way back in the day!  He introduced himself and it was fun talking to a German that lived at one point around us!  This was a great way to end our time in this little Bavarian town.  Happy to move on to Munich tomorrow!  So much more exciting history to learn!

Today we woke up nice and early to catch our bus to the castles!  The best part about staying in Füssen is that you get this thing called the Füssen pass which lets you take any of the public transport in the area for free!  This made our bus trip up to where the castles are totally free!  Getting to the castles, you see their beauty and can’t help but think,”How the heck did they build these things on top of these big hills/mountains so long ago?”   We got there pretty early by catching the first bus in.  We wanted to make sure that we would beat the crowds. We were there so early in fact that we had some time to wait until the first tour started. This allowed us to hang out on some benches along the shores of the Alpsee, directly translated as Alp lake. I can see how it gets its name as the alps are soaring up around us!  It was great to take a breath and take in the beauty of God’s creation.  Then came the tours!

Castle tour #1, Hohenshwangau: This is the “smaller” of the two castles here, but that didn’t make it any less fascinating!  When you go in, you see art everywhere and each of piece of art has a description above them.  The descriptions were for the visitors to understand what was going on in the art work so they could understand the history that they were seeing.  It was very interesting that the king and queen had their own separate floors and separate sleeping areas.  I did enjoy that the king did have a secret staircase that lead to the queen’s bedroom though.  Overall, Castle #1 was good and it was simple. Another thing that I really enjoyed was the telescope that Mad King Ludwig had to check on the progress of the castle being built higher up on the hill and castle #2 in our castle day, Neuschwanstein.

Castle Tour #2, Neuschwanstein: It started with a long hike up the road to the next castle. After the mile and half uphill hike, we reward ourselves with a snack and some delicious hot chocolate.  We were also rewarded with spectacular views, I guess that is what happens when you walk straight up a hill for a while, which was a great view of the valley below us. Also, we got see up close and personal the amazingness of this castle.

Neuschwanstein, known as the Disney castle because this is the castle that Disney based Cinderella’s castle on.  This castle was the pride and joy of King Ludwig II.  Unfortunately for him though, he did not get to live in it long (6 weeks) before he died and it was never finished.  This castle was worked on for 17 years and many in the Bavarian Government were not happy with Ludwig spending all his time building a castle and had a psychiatrist declare him insane.  Then only a few days after this “Mad” King Ludwig and the psychiatrist ended up dead in a lake….suspicious, I sure think so.  Anyways, back to the castle that Ludwig had built.

It was built as Ludwig’s beautiful countryside “home” as the main place of residence for the king was Munich.  Now home is an understatement because this castle is huge.  Not only is it huge but the views that you get throughout the castle are breath-taking!  A great view of the Alps and the Alpsee was my favorite view as you can see below!

There was so much decadence in here.  He had a throne room built like one in the old days where there was only 1 door in and the painting on the ceiling above signified that there was only God above him, the king.  His bed had wood carvings on it that took 2 years to complete.  Heck he even had running water in his bedroom!  It really is too bad it wasn’t completed because the extra stuff that could have been added would have been that much more amazing!  They said it would have taken them 5 more years to complete the rest of it! After Ludwig died, they turned it into a museum and a place that the public could enjoy. They even still hold parties and performances in the ballroom of Ludwig favorite composer, Richard Wagner.

Overall, it was a super fun day at the castles and the most fun really was hearing the history of what went on with these two spectacular places.  The guides we had were really proud of the German history and what these castles represent.  We then had one more castle and some more things to see back in our home base for this part of the trip, Füssen.

 

Goodbye Salzburg!  It has been great spending time with you! Really though, I did prefer the places just outside of Salzburg because that Austrian countryside is just magnificent!!

Being able to take the railjet to Munich made our ride back there much easier.  No stops, unlike our last train which stopped everywhere!  There were also very few people onboard and it was such a comfy ride!  Then we got some lunch at the Munich train station while we waited for our next train down to the very bottom of Germany to a town called Füssen.  Our train down there was almost completely empty which made it feel like we had a personal ride down to Füssen.  We definitely came at the right time of the year!

Füssen is way out in the German countryside, which is a beautiful setting.  The town with an amazing Alp backdrop, a castle sitting on the hill in the middle of town and a very interestingly colored river running through it (a milky green color).  When we got to Füssen, it was very, very warm, which made carrying all of our gear a little more difficult. We also soon realized that this a very popular tourist town.  All the tourists were already there, they just had come earlier and not on our train.  It was packed as we walked around the cobble stone streets finding our hotel.  Of course, as we ended up doing in every city, we took a wrong turn and wound up spending twice as long walking trying to find our hotel.  The town itself is a cute little town, the main walkway reminded me almost of main street in Disneyland.  It has a lot of what I would think of as old European charm.

After we finally found and checked in to our hotel, which was underneath the high castle, we set off on our Rick Steves Germany walking tour of the town.  There was a lot more interesting stuff in it then we had thought.  The town itself is really quite old.  It dates back to the Roman Empire as this was the first place they would have come after coming out of the alps.  It was really cool hearing about all this history of this small Bavarian town. It is crazy to think that we are visiting places that date back to biblical times!

After our walk around the city, our day ended enjoying a nice Bavarian meal at the restaurant in our hotel.  I got spaetzle with pork while my wife got some fresh river trout.  We giggled at the menu and how it poked fun at those who cannot partake in alcoholic beverages.  The non-alcoholic portion of the drink menu was titled,”For people who don’t drink alcohol, and for those who unfortunately cannot”.  Also,  my wife ordered us a traditional apple pancake dessert which filled us both to the brim and we even had leftovers to bring to our room as we wound down from the day.  All in all, it was very tasty and our first taste of some real German Beer. Just like our other food and beer, it all just tasted so fresh, free of preservatives and of course delicious.

It was a fun day, but nothing too crazy about it, just a simple day really enjoying our time exploring a new part of Germany!  Excited to get to check out the castles tomorrow!

After the Sound of Music tour ended, where they filmed the Do Rae Mi step scene, we decided to check out the stuff on top of the cliff overlooking Salzburg.  You see old town Salzburg is built right up against a cliff face that they have made cuts out of to build stuff and there are some cool things up on top of it.  To get up to the top you have to take an elevator, so that is what we did.  We took an elevator ride up to the top and we were treated with another amazing view (pictured above).  Austria is so full of these.  We made the decision then to take some time and relax a little bit after going, going, going for 3 days straight.  A nice relaxing lunch with this view from atop the cliff was just what the doctor ordered.  It allowed us to pause and reflect on our trip so far, with a great view.  So we spent the afternoon slowing down a little bit, which 100% included some apple strudel or apfelstrudel.  We then ventured back down the elevator and went for a walk along the river back to where the Sound of Music tour had ended.  There is geocache in that park and we were determined to find it.  Unfortunately after a good 25 minutes of searching, we could not find the geocache and decided to get back to being touristy.

We then went back to our hotel to make sure to snag some coffee and coffee cakes and planned out what we should do for dinner……….Indian Food. A weird choice I know, but it was right next to our hotel and had really good reviews! It wasn’t as bad as you might think, I mean India is closer to Austria than America.  The best part was listening to the owner, who is Indian, speaking in German.  That is not something you get to experience everyday.

All in all, it was a day filled with some amazing things.  We learned a lot about Austrian history and were intrigued by some church history and learned a lot about the church in Germany and Austria.  Did you know that if you go to catholic church they take you “tithe” straight out of your paycheck every two weeks if you state that you are catholic??!? Crazy.

This is probably the first day that I really felt happy and content about the trip.  No anxiousness or worrying about making sure we catch this train or that train.  Not much thinking about what we had to do next, but just time to spend exploring the great Earth!  It is finally starting to feel like we are on vacation too and not just a weekend away!  Not worrying about work, or really life at home at all and just taking in the fresh Austrian air and just felling so happy and blessed that we were able to take a trip like this.  The best part, at this point at least, is knowing that we are just getting started. Only 3 days in to an awesome 19 days!

Last night’s sleep was much better.  Sleep came easier and even when we woke up, we were able to fall back asleep pretty easily.  The only problem was the heat, it was so stinking hot in our room.  We opened the windows, but didn’t want to sleep too much with the screen-less windows open to the courtyard. We ended up with some good sleep and hopefully, crossing our fingers, we have finally adjusted to the time change and overcome jet lag.

We really picked the right hotels for breakfast though! The dining room that we ate breakfast in was beautifully decorated with a full breakfast buffet with some of the freshest fruit, creamiest creams, and tiny shot glasses for juice.  Thanks Rick Steves for the hotel recommendations!

Then came the big moment, one of the things that both of us were really looking forward to, our first big tour! The Sound of Music Tour!! Our tour bus, or our tour minivan really, was waiting for us outside our hotel a little early which made me think that there were going to be a ton of other people we were going to have to pick up. NOPE, that was not the case, there was no one else to pick up! It was going to be our very own private tour because no one else had signed up! Two thumbs up for shoulder season travel! I was expecting this to be a fun tour where we saw some cool sights from the Sound of Music, and we did. We stopped at the house where they did the outside shots and of course the gazebo! But that wasn’t even close to the best part of the tour.

The BEST part was the Austrian scenery. It is an incredibly beautiful country, in fact I don’t know if I have been anywhere else in the world that is as spectacular. My breath was taken away on countless occasions, from the mountains to the incredibly green rolling hills of the country side and the spectacular mountain lakes. I don’t think there will be anything as amazing on the rest of our trip and that makes me a little sad, wish we had booked more time to spend in Austria.  I guess there is a good excuse to come back! It was amazing and we got so much more than we bargained for.

There was one stop on our tour that really got me thinking. It was the church in Sound of Music where Maria and Captain Von Trapp get married. The church, or technically it is a Basilica, is basically set up for tourist and is even includes a gift shop as you enter. The church itself is covered in lots of very impressive sculptures and paintings. But I came to a realization that the church decided to spend money on making itself look good, instead of more important things. This led us to some really good discussion with our driver/tour guide about why Martin Luther left the catholic church, leaving mainly because he felt they weren’t focusing enough on the teaching of Jesus. Don’t get me wrong, the church is beautiful, but it felt strange.

That was the end of our official tour, but we got plenty of more great scenery as we drove back into Salzburg. Just one more note, on our tour guide. He was what I would classify as stereotypical Austrian and I don’t remember his name, but he did a great job (only been doing the tour guide stuff for 2 weeks) even if he did smell like cheese. He even tried to turn on Sound of Music songs to get us to sing along, but quickly turned it off when he realized we were enjoying the scenery and conversation with him about Austria too much to sing along. It really was a great tour! Maybe even the highlight of the entire trip! Now we can’t wait to go back to spectacular Austria!

As we arrived ready to get to our hotel, we were confused again and walked out the wrong side of the train station.  Now most likely this is because we are both in a deep jet lag haze that it was hard to communicate.  This could have been a reason …or maybe it was because I was trying to use the map from Rick Steves Germany on my Kindle, which does not zoom in so easily.  I’m glad we took that detour because I was able to take a picture of an Austrian Post Office for my brother, who collects pictures of post offices from all over the world, but mainly the USA.  Eventually, we figured out the right direction to go, the exact 180 degrees from where we had gone and went for an adventure walking around Salzburg to find our hotel!  We did find the hotel without too much problem, once we got our bearings using the little map in Rick Steves Germany!  It was a hard walk with all our gear and in a haze, but we made it!

Hotel Wolf Dietrich was our home for the next couple nights and it was very nice!  Of course, it would have been better if our room had more than zero ventilation, but we weren’t staying in the room now, because we had coffee and cakes to eat!  Very helpful for a traveling couple to plan out their night enjoying a hotel provided coffee and some Austrian cakes.

We decided that our first stop would be to take a walk down to Old Town Salzburg and that was really fun!  The old-looking shops, shop signs and the cobbled streets really made it feel old, and it is!  This definitely feels like the touristy area though as there are lots of people around and tons of construction going on around the area, which is most likely getting ready for the high season.  Not going to lie, kind of like being here in a less crowded time means more room for us!  After walking around the shops, we walked down the street to Mozart Platz, or Mozart Place.  You see, Mozart is a native Salzburgian and they are very proud of that fact!  It was so crazy to see a bronze statue of the man in the middle of his square, which is not something I am used to seeing around where we live, though where we live hasn’t been around that long. We walked around the corner of Mozart Platz to see a super cool fountain that even had water coming out the horse’s nose (as pictured above). This was enjoyable for a couple who were a little out of it like we were.

After seeing these sites, we were hungry and decided on a place that was just a little ways away from where we were. Unfortunately, it turned into quite the adventure to find the restaurant. This was good and bad. Good because it was nice to get off the beaten path and see some new things with almost no one around. Bad because my world at that time was spinning and I had a monster headache, which most likely this was a combination of low blood sugar and lack of sleep from the jet lag. We actually walked past the restaurant once, not thinking it was the right place and then eventually back tracked to this small little place called Zirkelwirt.

This is where I truly experienced a different kind of lifestyle in another country. As we walked in, the waitress asked us, “Do you have a reservation?”, to which we responded, “No.” Then she looks over her clipboard, mind you the restaurant has like three empty tables, and asks us if an hour and a half will be OK. Thinking that we had to wait an hour and half I start to walk out, but my wife realizes she was asking if we could eat in an hour and half. Wow!  In America we probably eat in less than half an hour!  This place is awesome! Our favorite restaurant!  Great food (a giant bowl of spätzle) and a delicious beer.  We had so much leftover that we were able to give some to a homeless person on the street.  It was a great day seeing so many different things.  Started in Brussels and ended with a giant bowl of spätzle in Salzburg! Now time to get some sleep….hopefully!