All good things must end

Thursday, October 3, 2013

As a memory of our trip, this is a view of the Linderhof gardens on the day when we had new snow in the Alps. So many adventures and good times.

Our flight home didn't depart until 11:30, so we had ample time in the morning for our breakfast. Again, it was excellent, and I even polished off my Coffeemate. Turning in the car was not a problem, and we got to our gate with no issues. We had to wait a while, but it was all fine.

The flight home was again a great one, with the beverages, food, and lots of movies to watch. Brandon and Nika picked us up almost on time, and it was good to be home.

The next day, we got this photo of Janet with all of our souvenirs. She's holding our cowbell, then there are the espresso cups, beer deckels, Swiss cows, and Moldovan pitcher.

Janet's turn to summarize!
Our three weeks in Europe were magical. Truly, an amazing trip filled with the plans that Ken so carefully plotted out! Each day was packed full of places to go, food and beverage to experience and Ken's knowledge to help me know what we were seeing. I think that having people to meet along the way -- Wilfried and Renate, Boonie and her family, and Mahaela -- were the icing on the cake. It was such a treasure having people to connect with who were not only personable, fun and caring, but knowledgeable and added information that we would have missed for a lack of knowing the culture or history. I can't thank Ken enough, as always, who planned out, with fine tuning, a vacation for us that was beyond magnificent.

Munich - our final day

Tuesday, October 2, 2013

We spent the entire day in downtown Munich, and it was fun other than Janet froze. She didn't bring a coat, fooled by the sunshine before we departed the hotel. This photo is where we ate lunch, the Paulaner Traditional Ale House ("zum Spöckmeier").

The buffet breakfast at the hotel was probably the best breakfast of our trip. They had so many choices, the staff was attentive to our need for coffee, we had our own pot of coffee, and so many types of bread and jam.

This time we had the Euros necessary to purchase our tickets to downtown, and the trip was just fine. We did see lots of people in their costumes, likely headed to Oktoberfest which was still going on. When we got off the train and walked out of the Marienplatz station, we were in front of the most touristy spot in all of Munich.

This is their elaborate Rathaus, in Munich's very center. We entered the scene about 15 minutes before the famous Glockenspiel was to perform (11 am), so the platz was completely jammed. Tour groups were everywhere. While waiting, Janet and I went inside the rathaus and saw that Cincinnati was a Munich sister city:

 

Quite impressive company we have: Kiev, Harare (capital of Zimbabwe), Sapporo, Bordeaux, Edinburgh, Verona. It's a list of possible future destinations for us.

We went back out to the platz in time for the Glockenspiel, whose 43 bells play a 15-minute carillon. 

During the music, on the top, the 32 figures act out festivities from the marriage of a duke from 1568. Then, 15 figures on the bottom do the Coopers' Dance, first performed in 1517 to avert the plague. It was pretty cool to watch.

We then embarked on our walking tour. We walked northward to Max Josef Platz, which was across from the National Theater. Its namesake statue is of Bavaria's first king. We continued north alongside the Residenz, the Wittelsbach dynasty's palace dating from 1385. This family continued to rule Bavaria right up until WWI, and included our infamous mad Ludwig II. We did not tour this, but continued on to...

...the platz in front of Theatinerkirche (1688), where most of the Wittelsbach family is buried. Janet and I went in, and as usual, it was unbelievably elaborate.

We walked over to Karlsplatz, which is on the rim of what used to be the walled city.

Behind this fountain is one of the 14th-century city gates, called Karlstor, there in the background. Once we walked through it, we were on Neuhauser Strasse, one of the old main streets leading back to the Marienplatz center. It was filled with shops, churches, fountains, and the Augustiner Bräu restaurant. We went into Michael's church (1583), which is famous for having the second widest vault in all of Europe, next to St. Peter's in the Vatican. 

Here's another view of Neuhauser Strasse looking back at Karlstor. We also visited the Munich Cathedral, Frauenkirche, whose twin domes are a symbol of the city.We spent time walking its perimeter, and gazing at the large tomb of Kaiser Ludwig the Bavarian, who died in 1347 but whose tomb was completed 300 years later.

My sister Janet had recommended the City Museum, especially for its puppets and musical instruments. So, we next went there. We spent too much time on the first two floors in the Typically Munich exhibit, but finally made it to the upper floors for the best stuff. Yes, the musical instruments were fascinating, but mostly the puppet exhibits we enjoyed. Eerie sometimes, weird some of them, amazing how they'd put on full theater using them instead of actors.

It was after the museum that we went to the Paulaner Bier Hall for lunch. I ordered a full maß, but I had to ask why they served it in a Hacker-Pschoor mug. Our waiter, a funny guy actually, said that Paulaner owns Hacker-Pschoor. He also told us it was founded in 1450, and that Spöckmeier was simply the name of the new owner back in 1520. As we departed, we got to see their Weißwurst parlor, dedicated to that famous sausage that is supposed to be eaten only prior to noontime.

Had to at least visit briefly my old haunt, the Hofbräuhaus!

After all that beer at lunch, I was not interested in drinking, but I just wanted to return to see it. Its history is interesting: Started in 1589 when Duke Wilhelm V disliked the local beer (really? He didn't like Augustiner, Paulaner, or Spaten?), and ordered that a bock beer be specially brewed for the court.

Here is the band, but they were on a break. This entire place is really like the beer tents at Oktoberfest. Our tour book said it is so touristy that locals tend to drink elsewhere. Their gift shop sure did have tons of souvenirs.

Outside again, we visited a gift shop and finally bought our cow bell!

We passed through an open market place just off the center square called ViktualienMarkt, and we marveled at all the sausages, meats, confections, breads, and gifts. We headed toward the south of the old city and came to Asamkirche.

That's the church on the right, and Asam Haus on the left, where the two Asam brothers lived. They built the church as a private chapel in 1733, but the citizens liked it so much the Asams let them use it as a parish church. 

On this trip we had visited numerous opulent churches, but this one took the cake. Just unbelievably lavish. It was noted for having the portraits of the Asam brothers on either side of the alter, and you can see one of them just above Janet's head in an oval frame. It took a whole page of our tour book to describe this "glorious rococo" chapel.

We continued south to another of the original walled town gates, this one called Sendlinger Tor. This concluded all the sites we had wanted to see, but I got the brilliant idea to have one final Munich beer to cap our Bavarian vacation. We had not yet had Spaten beer, so we marched off to the city center where I had thought I remembered a Spaten beer hall. We didn't see it, so we asked and it was way far away. So, we decided to return to Hofbräuhaus!

By now the beer hall was very crowded, and we barely could find a place to sit. The band was playing, and it felt like Wiesn again. 

We sat with this fun Swiss couple who were on internships in Munich. The funniest story was that I tried to order a ½ liter, but they don't offer it (unless you want a Weißbeir)!! The only lager on the menu to drink is a maß! Talk about a drunk-inducing policy! Ah but what the heck, I had a maß (my "training" after three weeks was in high gear).

Down the hatch. I kept hoping the band would play the Hofbräuhaus song since I knew the lyrics, but they didn't. I laughed that the WC had 25 urinals.

After this final fling, we walked to the southeast to another of the 14th-century city gates, Isartor, to catch our train back to Neufahrn. Once back, we hoped that our car would not have a ticket on it, and it didn't! Back at the hotel, we had to park off in a neighborhood again, but I kept an eye out and when a spot opened right in front, Janet stood there guarding it while I ran off and got the car. We spent most of the evening packing, and deciding what we would discard so that our treasures could all fit in our suitcases and bags. What a wonderful trip this has been!

Driving to Munich

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Today was almost all traveling to get to our hotel north of Munich. We did divert off the highway just once, to visit Lindau on Lake Constance. The old town remains on an island just off the coast near the eastern end of the lake, which you get to over a bridge. It's famous for this entrance to its harbor, with an 18th-century lighthouse on the one side, and a Bavarian Lion statue on the other. We did not stop the car on this diversion, seeing this landmark only while we drove by (I got the photo from the Internet).

The best and funniest story of the day came right at the beginning, trying to pay our hotel bill. They did have a nice buffet breakfast, and there was normal activity in the kitchen and the first floor in general. However, once we'd packed and I went in to pay the bill, no one was in sight. I waited, but then began wandering around the entire 1st floor looking for anyone. I finally started calling out for someone. Then louder. No one was to be seen. I continued to wait and call out for about 10 minutes, and finally a lady came in (who did not speak English). I gave her my credit card to pay, but she couldn't make it work in her little machine. So, she indicated I'd need to pay cash. I showed her how I didn't have the cash, and asked her to try again to make her machine work.

The bill was 98 €, and I had 60 €, so I thought she might just let us go for that much. But no, she kept insisting I pay more cash. So, I pulled out all my Euro coins and all my Swiss franc coins (I had lots) and tried to convert it and total it up, but she told me to wait and she went looking for someone else. When he came, he got out his calculator and looked at exchange rates in the newspaper and finally indicated that all my Euro and Swiss francs, plus U.S. $20, would cover the bill. By then, I had been adding everything up in my head and doing rough conversions of the Swiss francs and U.S. money and figured the same thing, so I agreed and we could finally take off.

The nice thing was getting rid of my pocket full of Swiss franc coins, since I had so many. I think they totaled something like 12 €. Luckily I still had that U.S. money in my wallet too, not packed away somewhere out in the car.

So off we drove, on pretty country roads until we left Lindau, when we got onto an autobahn again. 

Here is a close-up of the lion statue guarding the harbor entrance in Lindau. It was also cool while there to see the beginning of the Deutsche Alpenstrasse, which during our trip we drove on many parts of, and also saw the very end of, in Berchtesgaden.

Once we got to our offramp northeast of Munich, in Neufahrn, we actually missed it due to construction's stop-and-go traffic, and we had a huge truck in front of us blocking our view. We had to sit in that barely moving traffic for quite a long time before we could get off and back on again in the other direction.

We finally did find it, set in a neighborhood, very much an unlikely location. We originally had wanted to take the commuter train into Munich for the late afternoon/evening, but alas, this did not work out. We drove to the station, straight up the road about 1.5 miles, and went to purchase a ticket from the machine. It would not take a credit card, and I'd spent every last Euro to pay our hotel bill that morning. I decided to run up the street quite a distance to a bank to exchange money. That, amazingly, didn't work either. The bank said one cannot exchange money unless you have an account there (in which case, who would want to?). So, defeated, I ran on back to the station to get Janet, and we drove on back to the hotel. We thought maybe they could exchange money.

The desk guy was very helpful, and thought for sure something was amiss that the bank would not exchange money, He made several phone calls on our behalf, and in the end agreed that banks no longer exchange currency since the usual way to get money nowadays is to use an ATM card. Well yes, but did either Janet or I have the means to use this method? We had already been through this much earlier in the trip when I tried to find my ATM card in my wallet. It turned out I had accidentally removed it just before we left while removing other cards I wouldn't need. And, Janet didn't know her PIN number for her ATM card.

Our only option was to drive to the airport and exchange money at one of those stands where they rip you off with lousy exchange rates and commissions. We paid $60 for only 34 € (normally we'd have gotten about 44 €).

This is the only photo I took with my camera today. It's just down from the restaurant in Neufahrn where we ate, called Hofbräuhaus Freising. I liked the Bavarian May Pole. Farther down this street was the train station, and behind us a ways on this street was our hotel. For dinner we had ox tail and "Hofbräuhaus pot".

We waited until after our dinner to drive to the airport. Luckily, it was very close. After that, we couldn't find a parking spot in front of the hotel, so I asked and they had a garage, but you had to pay. So, we drove down the residential street until we saw an opening off on a side street, and walked on back about 1/4 mile. The rest of the evening I planned out our day in Munich tomorrow.

Mihaela, Leonardo, and Château de Chillon

Monday, September 30, 2013

Exactly as arranged before we left Ohio, we met Mihaela Darii Sposato and Leonardo in Vevey. Leonardo was such a cute and alert little guy, although he got a bit restless later before he ate (at Nestlé) and fell asleep. In the afternoon we toured our favorite castle, Chillon, in Montreaux.

We got up late at Boonie's, so we had to rush to get going on time. We used her Nespresso to make three coffees to get us going. By the way, Susanne had said that 90% of Swiss kitchens have Nespressos.

We departed Bern about 30 minutes later than we'd wanted, after carting all our stuff down the 80 steps of Boonie's place. About halfway to Vevey, we entered an area that, for the first time on this trip, was not German-speaking. My printed-out directions got us to the train station, luckily early. You can set your watch based on Swiss train schedules, and exactly at 10:00, there were Mihaela and Leonardo!

Isn't he a cutie! We walked to Lake Geneva and strolled along the shore. Pretty soon we reached the fork in the lake, which marks the location of the Nestlé Food Museum.

We went completely around the museum looking for an entrance and couldn't find one. Once back to where we started, Mihaela noticed it was closed on Mondays. Oh well.

In front of the museum (you can see "Alimentarium" in the background) was the well known Charlie Chaplin statue, in honor of his years living there. He had been a victim of Senator Joseph McCarthy's witch-hunt, and was already in his 60s when, in 1953, he chose to live in exile in Vevey with his family. He died there on Christmas day in 1977, at age 88.

We then strolled in the other direction until we got to Nestlé. Along the way, Leonardo got fussy and poor Mihaela was so concerned about it on our behalf. She needn't have worried. Janet thought he was hungry, but Mommy thought no.

These statues in the water were along the Lake Geneva footpath. Across the lake we saw the French Alps. It was supposed to rain, but it was quite nice. We stopped in a park to see if Leonardo could be comforted. Janet began to blow soap bubbles that Mihaela had brought, and Leo was entranced. He tried to touch them, and his eyes followed them. This went on quite a while, and he was focused on the bubbles then entire time. But as soon as Janet stopped so that we could continue on, he was mad and cried. He liked those bubbles!

Eventually, Nestlé came into view. The first thing we did once we got to the Nestlé building was shop at the company store. Janet and I bought chocolate, and Mihaela bought some baby food for Leonardo -- which was a good thing! We entered the lobby, and while I was waiting for Philippe Pittet to come down, Mihaela fed hungry little Leo. He ate a whole jar of chicken/vegetables, a jar of applesauce, and half a jar of pudding! So, he really was hungry.

 

I was lucky Philippe was there and able to visit. I had tried to let him know I'd be there, but I'd used the wrong e-mail address. It was so nice to see him again. I learned he is retiring at the end of the year. He used his building pass to let Janet in to see the DNA staircase.

After we headed back along the lake footpath toward the Grand Place to find a restaurant, little Leonardo fell asleep. We ate at an outdoor cafe (named Le Charlot for Charlie Chaplin) and Leo slept through the entire lunch!

We walked on back to the train station (gare) and said goodbye as Mihaela and Leo boarded their train. Leo had awakened at the station and was as charming as could be. It was so nice to finally meet Nika's sister.

Once back to our car, we reviewed our options and decided to tour the famous castle in Montreaux that in all my trips to Vevey, I'd never visited - Château de Chillon. I rode by it on the September day in 2004 when I broke my hip, but that was as close as I had ever gotten.

This photo from the Internet shows why this castle has been on Swiss tourist materials for 200 years. It was never damaged or destroyed, always inhabited and always maintained. It is one of Switzerland's top tourist attractions.

This was our favorite medieval castle tour of our trip. For one thing, we found a free parking spot directly across the road! But actually, it was how realistic it was, dating back to 1005 when it was first built on a rocky outcrop in the lake.

Because it is an island, it has a natural moat. It was home to the Counts of Savoy for hundreds of years starting in the 13th century. 

It was a maze of courtyards, passageways, secret staircases, cellars, and battle-ready walls. We were lost most of the time, which added to its fun. It got this way because of sections added over the centuries.

Covered walkways along the upper walls. Here's another view:

You can see the base rock island there in the center, sloping upward. We also saw it in the cellars.

This was the dungeon prison, where prisoners carved their names on the walls and posts. Lord Byron, who wrote a famous poem in 1816, The Prisoner of Chillon, carved his own name there and now it is preserved behind that piece of glass you see behind the man's head on the nearest post.

I know it's hard to see, but in all caps it says BYRON. 

We climbed and climbed up stairs and steps until we reached the top room in the central Keep, and the views were cool, in all directions. The Keep is the central highest tower, dating from the 11th century. Castles had these as a last-resort refuge if the outer walls were breached, and you could get to it only by ladder or drawbridge. Once Chillon became a tourist attraction, however, they added 76 stairs to reach the top.

I guess back in the middle ages, men weren't so tall. Not too far from this spot, they still had the "toilet", which was nothing more than an opening that dropped straight down onto the rocks next to the lake below.

One of several huge fireplaces in this castle in the four big halls, which were a status symbol in the Middle Ages. Remember, Chillon was a residence for most of its history. Above the fireplace is the coat of arms for the House of Savoy, who lived here for many centuries. Here are more photos from our tour:

How did Janet get way up there? As I mentioned, we were lost most of the time.

As we departed, we got one more photo of the chateau with the French Alps across the lake.

We then got on the autobahn and drove toward Munich, intending to get as far as possible for the night. Instead of following my original plan to cross the Rhein River south of Lake Constance, I decided after passing Zürich to go straight north. We would see RheinFalls and then head east on the north side of Lake Constance.

Everything went well until we decided to stop for the night near Schaffhausen, where RheinFall is located. I figured that getting off in the town, we'd find numerous places to stay. Wrong. We got lost looking, so I finally decided to back track to RheinFall and look there. Again, after much driving, we found nothing. By now it was dark and I was not at all pleased. We stopped at RheinFall to see if we could see anything, or maybe eat dinner, but again, nothing. The access to viewing the waterfall was blocked since it was after hours and no one to pay.

Once again, I thought if I took a smaller road into Schaffhausen and not the autobahn, we would pass by a Gasthaus. Wrong. So, once we were back in town, we followed the signs back onto the autobahn headed farther north. We would just look for something from the highway.

In a very short time, we came to the German border. We were waived on, and at the very first off ramp there was a sign for a hotel. They claimed to have only one room left, at a steep price since it was a "luxury" suite. It would have to do since it was now 8:30, and sure enough, the room was pretty fancy. We ate at the hotel's restaurant, and what we remember most were all the gnats buzzing on and around the salad bar, and the guy near us who kept whistling little bird-call ditties, as if communicating. We were sort of weirded out by that guy. For dessert I had  "black forest" ice cream with lots of cherry liqueur. YUM.

Back in our room we watched CNN to get the scoop on the first day of our government shutdown. We were hoping that Germany would still accept our money!

Interlaken and the Lauterbrunnen Valley

Sunday, September 29, 2013

The Lauterbrunnen Valley was a wonder to behold, with its sharp, steep cliffs, waterfalls, green meadows, and the Jungfrau (13,642') providing a backdrop. We visited Trümmelbach Falls, Interlaken, and then had a sumptuous fondue dinner in old-town Bern.

Boonie came to get us at about 9:30 and we drove our car over to pick up Silvia. South of Interlaken was this vast, glacier-carved valley. Trümmelbach Falls, about 10 drops, are back in the cliffs; we couldn't believe how they were able to build the walkway through the cliffs for visitors to see the various curves and falls up close.

You can see a fall in the foreground, in the middle back, and a continuation of the walkway at the top. The mountainside has been sculpted from the 5200 gallons per second of glacier melt. Here is a view looking back out at the valley:

I took many photos, but they're too hard to gain perspective on what you're seeing. It was just too spectacular to capture on film.

We were dressed for rain, but we lucked out until later in Interlaken. We walked back down to the halfway point, from where we could take an elevator down to the start to save Janet's ankles.

You can see how beautiful the valley is, reminding me of Yosemite Valley. Once we were down, we had a bite to eat at this bakery behind us. Well, mine was a beer, but who's counting?

The deli-bakery was on the ground floor of the Gasthaus, below that rock mountain. I have two more scenery photos from our hike up the mountainside waterfalls:

That is Jungfrau behind in this picture. You can see how high off the valley floor we hiked!

We then drove back north to Interlaken to walk around. One of our first stops was the large, crowded, and very expensive Kirchhofer Watch Gallery, where a friend of Boonie's worked. Boonie found her and they visited while Janet, Silvia and I gawked at how ridiculously expensive most of the watches were. It claims to have the largest collection of Swiss watch brands, and we learned that the tour-bus operators have always gotten kickbacks if they bring in their tourists - mostly Chinese. But that could end due to the exposed corruption, so Boonie's friend wasn't sure how it would affect her future there.

Interlaken also had numerous expensive cars...

...like this Rolls Royce that Janet wanted to steal. In the background on the left was where we later ate a mini lunch after walking all over the place and realizing that the small, quaint eateries are not open on Sundays.

This is the Aare River that connects the two lakes, Thun and Brienz, hence "Interlaken". It rushes through here due to an 18-ft drop between the two lakes, and there are several sluices like this to control flow.

This is facing the opposite direction from the last photo, and aren't those women pretty? We kept walking hoping to find a bakery or small cafe, but no such luck.

More pretty scenery, especially in the foreground!!

This was my final photo of the day, as we walked to the parked car after having a small sandwich at the expensive cafe. The best part of that snack was my "dessert first", the vermicelli-like ice cream dish that we'd first seen someone eating in our Appenzell Gasthaus. We later saw it on an ice cream menu in Lucerne, and knew at some point we wanted to try it. This was our chance, and it was pretty yummy. It had a pistachio base.  The Grand Hotel in the photo was grand all right, but behind me was the "Concrete Stain of Interlaken" - the 18-story Metropole Hotel.

I didn't get my own photo, so here's one I found. Isn't it an eyesore in the midst of the quaint architecture and scenery in the rest of the town?

Once back in Bern, all four of us went to a modern restaurant for an incredible fondue/wine. Janet and I found our own way from Silvia's to Boonie's, and then on the street car to the restaurant. We each had a salad, then the fondue came, with bread and potatoes. I kept eating and eating because it was so yummy and I didn't want any leftovers, but even I couldn't eat it all.

We finally had to say goodbye. What a wonderful family and "exchange daughter". Boonie went on back to her mom's, and would go directly on to work in Zürich the next morning. It was hard to say goodbye as we got on our streetcar and waved as we sped off.