Regensburg

So having fled Vienna for fear of becoming destitute in Central Europe we were again headed back towards Deutschland. This was pretty much a flat out driving day going about 400 km. We were on our way to Regensburg in the little explored area of eastern Bavaria. Some interesting facts. All BMW 3 series cars are built in Regensburg. It houses the oldest music academy in the world ... well that's all I can remember for interesting facts. Now let me tell you some more about Regensburg. It is a maze! Now this is not mentioned in any guidebooks. It is very small but it takes a half hour to get anywhere in your car. Also note they do not warn you when you are approaching a pedestrian only zone, you just find yourself there. Now getting back to guidebooks. Somewhere in Vienna is a lovely, well worn lonely planet Germany guidebook. We do not know how it was left there. It just was. This was discovered some whereafter crossing the border. Hmmm ..... (cuss warning for the young'uns) fuck. That book had been indispensable. We were now in some serious tourist trouble. The best part about the book has been the accommodation recommendations and we needed them now. It is now pouring rain in Regensburg and we have no idea where to find a place to stay. The GPS had some for near where we parked the car but the problem is this software is only current to 2003 tops so those ones were gone. We walked through the streets getting thoroughly soaked until stumbling upon the closed tourist centre. After that we headed for the first place that looked like a Hotel. We came across one that had a smaller double bed but came with a bathtub! For €80. Done! After Vienna this seemed like a steal! After walking back to the car it took me 30min as aforementioned the make the 1/2 km drive and find the right street to drive down. The hotel it would appear was on the pedestrian plaza and not easily accessible via automobile. Went and parked about a 5 minute walk away and trucked back with the rest of the baggage that Lisa didn't take when I stopped willy nilly next to the plaza. After this with three bags in tow I was ... lost. Bloody maze I tell you! Thank god for the GPS unit. I might still be wandering in circles if not for that thing. http://www.garmin.com/ they deserve the plug. After getting settled we went for an underwhelming mexican dinner and made a decision between going to sleep or strolling the now closed down town. We chose the latter and were very very very glad we did. We came across a travel book shop as we had to get a new guidebook. After looking for a moment Lisa said "there's our book" and there it was a lonely planet Germany book ..... Auf Englisch!! A choir appearing to sing "ode to joy" would not have been inappropriate. We made a note to return before leaving the next day. Back to the hotel for some much needed rest. Now one thing about this small little town. These people are noisy. About 2am there was some shouting in the street directly below our window. Then @ 7:30 it was time to vacuum right outside our room. Regensburg had officially lost all of it's charm. No wonder it's little explored. We bought our Germany book and also got one for the Netherlands and were on our way. Lonely Planet confirmed it's indispensability by alerting us that we probably spent €30 too much for our room. We shall keep this one under tight supervision.

Weather

Driving north towards Leipzig we encountered some heavy rain on the Autobahn and they don't slow down for it either. That's because it only seems to last for about a minute at a time. We stopped in a town called Hof and had a great asian lunch. This was the first place we had been where english was not spoken. That was great fun to bridge the communication barrier. During lunch we discovered that we were a 20 minute drive from the Czech border and decided to at least take a picture of the country. This lead to us retracing some of the highway we had driven in on. The weather had left quite a mark in an hours time. It looked like there had been a snowstorm. We later guessed that it was hail. We also got to see what happens when you make a mistake at 170 km/hr. In the middle of the hailstorm it looks like an Audi A3 had taken a turn for the worse and was on it's roof and totally wrecked. I have never seen an ICBC commercial up close. I also made note that I would indeed slow down in the rain.

Leipzig

Leipzig (where we are now) is part of the former East Germany and it shows. Right across the street from our hotel is a Karl Marx Diorama. It was also the home of Johannes Sebastian Bach for most of his career. First off Leipzig is small. We can walk the whole city guide map in about 30 minutes. We first went to visit the Ründer Ecke museum. This is a free museum dedicated to highlighting the Stasi or East German Security Service. It is housed in the former Leipzig headquarters of the Stasi and it was fascinating. They tell you how every single person in Leipzig was monitored how the Stasi amassed 6.5 km of files on all the residents f Leipzig. It also showed all the cool spy stuff they had along with pre-packaged disguise kits for every occasion. Very cool in an oppressive sort of way.

After that we made the short walk to the Bach Museum. It is housed in the home of one of his former friends and it is assumed that he spent many a night playing music there. It also had a bunch of old instruments from his time. It is also across from the church where he was the choir director for much of his life. It was very interesting but I think you have to see it. It sounds boring explained but it really isn't. Lisa found some old sheet music for the viola in a cool little shop next door. We wandered around some more until we found an internet cafe. So that's the story up till now. Will talk at y'all later.

Leave your money here. You won't be needing it any more.

All righty heading south out of munich we drove to berchtelsgaden. It is a fantastic little town nestled snuggly in the heart of the German Alps on the Austrian border. This is Also the site of obersalzburg or it's somewhat more nefarious name "The Eagles Nest". This was Hitler's mountain top retreat and eventually became a second command post after Berlin. TO get there you've got to drive up this CRAZY road. It's like driving up a cliff. That said though it is beautiful. I can see why anyone (even homicidal insane crazy evil people) would want to be there. But while driving up the road all I could think of was that the place would be perched on a cliff with a giant boardroom with one high backed chair at the head. You know, like those evil hideaways with the self destruct mechanism? that was not to be. Almost all of the buildings from the Nazi era have been destroyed and the site now houses the Dokumentaion Obersalzburg. This is a museum dedicated to WWII. It chronicles Nazi Germany and the war in great detail. We decided to spring for the English audio guide as everything was in German. It really is a great museum. But there is something to be said here. There is very little told about what happened AT The Eagles Nest. This kinda irked me. Not enough to not recommend it though. If you find yourself nearby make a point to see it if only for the view. In any case that museum does hold a small part of the vast underground bunker system. That was pretty cool. Again these guys did nothing with modesty. The Bunkers were HUGE! Just wish we could see more of them. After spending way more time than we thought we would we were back on the road and headed for Austria.

The hills are alive!!!!

We arrived on the highway outside Salzburg in an startlingly quick time. THis is Sound of Music country. Roll down the windows and I swear you can hear Julie Andrews and the Von Trapp family singers ... wait a minute. no you can't. All you can hear is the sound of wind rushing past the car. That's because once you are in Austria there are a whole lot less cars. The entire trip between Salzburg and Vienna was virtually deserted. Which meant it was time to put all 1.6 litres of engine to work!! I got the car up to about 180-190 km/hr. I think that is about as fast as I will get it to go. The GPS gave an top speed of 182.

Wien (Vienna)

ROughly translated Vienna means leave all of your money here. It is also as far east as we will make it this trip. It is even further east than Prague. So Take that Europcar!!! My first impression was not a great one. I had some Specific images from films like Before Sunrise and The Living Daylights and the two did not meet at first glimpse. I will say this: Vienna is Big. Vienna is kinda dirty. Vienna is ... (bad language ahead) FUCKING EXPENSIVE. To give you an idea. We are paying 100 some euro a night to stay in a place taht would loook at home on the Granville Mall. Now it's nice enough once you get in but there are some NUTS on the street. So this was the start of our time in Vienna. I also want to make another point here. Before coming all the guide books said that EUropeans really conserve energy because it's supposed to be outrageously expensive. Well I do not buy this. Why? you may ask. Because all of their building are heated to a very oddly high degree. Perhaps it would cost less if THEY didn't use so much. Just saying.

Vienna in the Morning.

After waking up late and having breakfast we went to the Spanish Riding SChool. This is a dream come true for Lisa. It was also a turning point in my relationship with Vienna. The riding school was okay. Lisa will tell you it was fantastic I#m sure but for me it took quite some time to get interesting. By the end though the horses were doingg some pretty crazy jumps that I won't try to describe. The only thing that I found odd was why they make the horses do some things. Like jog in place. That just seems mean. As for the change of heart for me it came from getting into old Vienna. Everywhere you turn you seem to run smack into history and beautiful buildings. And the Music! It's everywhere! We bought tickets to a Mozart/Strauss concert for 20:00 (they use the 24hr clock here). THat left us with about 7 hours to kill. We wandered the town for a bit ogling the buildings and went for lunch. What happened after lunch deserves mention. We met the craziest person. He was selling tickets for a bus tour that we wanted to take around Vienna. He was also selling them to about four other groups ... at the same time. I cannot explain any better as it's late and I am beat. We got a picture. You'll get the idea. The bus tour had some great facts. Vienna is the 5th most visited city in the world. Lisa and I tried to think of the top 4 and see if we could debunk that. NYC, London, Paris, Rome ... Tokyo but we are not sure. So could be! it#s offseason and the place is CRAWLING with tourists. ALso on this tour was Mozarts Figaro house. MEaning that was where he wrote it. Pretty cool.

TONIGHT WE'RE GONNA PARTY LIKE IT'S 1341!!!!

SO after crazy McGee's Vienna Extravaganza we sought some dinner. We again wandered for what seemed like forever while most places were closing down being Easter and all. We ewventually stumbled onto Berzel-Gwöld. It is a very funky place where we were seated in a basement of a building built in 1341. Original lighting too ... not joking. It was pitch Black with the exception of candlelight. Once you got used to it it was lovely. Also I should mention this. The portions on this continent are massive. It's like they use one animal per person per meal. They are that big!

Concert

We trudged to one of the many palaces around town for our concert. I refused to take a cab. This city has enough of our money already. We went to see a selection of Mozart and Strauss by the Vienna Residence Orchestra. They are a 7 - 35 piece orchestra that act as one of Vienna's top Orchestra's behind the Vienna Philharmonic. The Concert was pure magic. That's about all I got. I am tired. We did buy a CD which was then signed by the lead violinist. Sweet!

In any case we may or may not be leaving Vienna tomorrow. We may stick aroound to see what else we can find. In closing the past couple of days have been great. It's hard to believe that we have only been here a week and have twice as much time to go. In closing it's been great. Vienna has been great. Happy Easter!!! .... again.

Bavaria Sehr Gut!!!!!

Well what a fantastic couple of days. We headed out from Rothenberg and headed for Nürnberg. We had heard many good things about Nürnberg and we were somewhat disappointed. It is not what you might call a pretty city. It actually seems to have been beaten with an industrial sized ugly stick. Once in the walls of the Altstadt (old town) it was better but outside was .... ouch. We went to the German National Museum. This is a very important museum in Germany chronicling German culture from medieval times till the present. There was also a fantastic exhibit of German master painters with a little Rembrandt thrown in. Very cool. After that we headed to the Nürnberg courthouse. The site of the Nürnberg war crime trials. However we were not there at the right time. It is still a working courthouse today (no war criminals though) and we were unable to walk around. Ah well.

After that it was on to Füssen. Füssen is at the foot of the alps and it's big claim to fame is Neuschwanstein. The home of King Ludwig. It is quite a sight to see. However out of a planned 200 rooms only 17 are complete. Turns out that Bavarians didn't`t take to kindly to all their money being spent on fantastic castles as Ludwig was known to do. So around his 40th birthday he was declared mentally ill and went to the country with his psychiatrist. The next day he was found floating in a lake under suspicious circumstances (like there are any others to be found floating in a lake under). Sometimes it's not good to be King. However they should be glad he did build them. Neuschwanstein is the most visited place in all of Germany. It's a workout as well. As you can see it's on a mountain top. God bless the horse drawn carriage. Inside is most definitely the stuff of fairy tales. The carving on the kings bed took 14 master woodcarvers 2 years to complete.

München (Munich). Love at first sight! What an amazing city. Upon arriving in München we walked about 20 minutes to the Marienplatz. This is a huge pedestrian area that holds the city hall and a gazillion shops. It also happens to hold the tourist office. We headed there and they found us a hotel about 15 minutes from there. Excellent. After checking in Lisa recovered from hiking all over a mountain castle and I headed out to explore a little. This is all that I thought Europe would be. There are a whole ton of coffee houses (no starbucks I might add. They've yet to fully colonize this area yet.more in a minute) brauhauses and shopping. There is also a dearth of Girls! Girls! Girls! Girls! Which certainly adds an extra touch of class. Just one discreet SEX sign and a skeezy looking hallway. I went and scouted a place to buy a suit. I've been meaning to do this the whole trip. Only problem is there is never enough time. So after that I wandered around near the Marienplatz and went to get Lisa for dinner. We had a traditional Brauhaus recommended to us by the girl at the front desk of our hotel. So we headed there. What we had was very very good. But wow. Bavarians eat some strange stuff. I may have to give cow's heart a try before we go. Or maybe some Offells. "what zee leetle cows think viz" yum. Back to Starbucks for a minute. I saw something which kinda bugs me while strolling around the Munich streets last night. My first euro Starbucks. Well coming soon anyway. All I can say is I hope they do not become as ubiquitous here as they are in Vancouver. I really think that it would take away from the city and give people another reason to not experience something different when they are away from home. Just a thought. Anyway I forgot to mention the best part of my walk!!! I saw a Euro police chase!!!!! It was kinda OJish though. What I mean by that is that people weren't diving out of the way but here's what happened. Right at the Marienplatz I saw this VW Golf speeding along sort of dodging around pedestrians with another Golf behind it iwth the blue light on top. I thought that it may have been people playing around as they all looked really young. Anyway they jump up the curb and shot off down the Marienplatz.... the pedestrian mall. The police chase was confirmed a few seconds later when a real police car folooowed with lights on and went across the plaza as well. Very cool.

München day two.

Dachau.

We took the train out to Dachau. I don't really know what to say about the experience. I am very glad to have seen it though. Everyone should see something like this at least once. It's hard to imagine the scale of what took place until you see how huge a small camp was. Dachau was the first major concentration camp built in 1933 to hold political prisoners. It served as the model for all future concentration and extermination camps. Today it is only a fraction of the size that it was. It was not a camp used for mass murder. While a gas chamber and crematoriums were eventually built there only small numbers were executed there.
It's main function was slave labour and medical experiments. The gates hold the message "Arbiet Macht Frei" literally translated Work Power Free. Prisoners coming here were initially told that should they work hard they would go free. While many prisoners were periodically released many would never leave Dachau except on trains to Buchenwald or Auschwitz. It's hard to imagine the scale of those"bigger and better" camps. No witty commentary here. Just sober reflection. Never Again.

http://www.kz-gedenkstaette-dachau.de

After Dachau we were ready for something lighter. After lunch we went out to the BMW museum. Well a scaled down version. The current museum is closed for renovation while a much larger wing is built next door. It is situated right next to the BMW factory. Standing there was like being at the foot of the mothership. For those that don't know BMW's have been a passion of mine since I was about 11 years old and my Dad bought a Gold 1989 535i. Having said that, the much smaller museum was a little bit of a let down (that's what high expectations will do for you). I had been really wanting to see a 1957 BMW 507. It is the car that the current Z8 is based on. It was not there. :(. Bummer. Oh well. "We shall return!" .... possibly next week. Tomorrow it is off to Vienna. Much love and Happy Easter to all.

-Andrew and Lisa

Well Marked My Ass!

So the guide book was right about the admission being worth it so we assumed that it would also be right when it said that the Romantic Road would be well marked along the way. So we figured we could get along with out the GPS map device that we have because "it is well marked, with signs in German, English, Japanese and Chinese all along the way" .... Well it is not. When we did find the signs, they were only in German and Japanese and only about 1 foot by 2 feet and always after the turn had to be decided and made.

Lets just say that we are now happy that we got to see the miniature towns of Lillstadt and Wachbach and the one lane road between the two, which the locals drive in both directions really quickly. I think we actually only saw about one third of the actual towns on the official road, but they were all quaint and cute.



Rothenburg ob der Tauber

Rothenburg is a time warp village. It is a medieval walled city and most of it survived the war intact and what didn't was re-built. The streets are all cobbled and the houses are half timbered. We stayed in a pension (small family run hotel like a B&B) that was built 400-600 years ago. We had to stay in the place we did. After asking at several fine establishments and politely decline €150 a night rooms we decided that it was getting dark and the town was shutting down. At about 7:00pm we were getting a little bit desperate. After trying our fourth place (which was too expensive) the lovely front desk girl pointed us to The Gästehaus Raidel and rousted a little old lady out of bed. She hobbled to the door when we asked the price we couldn't say no.

In the morning we went for a walk around the old wall. The wall runs all round the town we walked around half of it, the old authentic part that was not blown up by planes was high and uneven and Andrew didn't seem to mind but I kept on thinking that I was going to fall off or hit my head on the beams above (the whole thing is roofed as well). We also went to the Krimianl Museum which had all sorts of old trial customs and torture devices and the St. Jacob's Church which had an altar carved out of wood in 1504 CE that is said to have a drop of Jesus's blood on the cross in the middle. (However it was not visible the day we went so we cannot verify this claim)


Schneeballen

Schneeballs are the specialty of Rothenburg, there are about 12 stores that sell little more. They are kind of like doughnuts ... kind of. We had been warned that they were not great and as Rick Steves calls them "penitance food" but Andrew and I tried a chocolate schneeball and a powder sugar schneeball and liked them. We bought mini ones (a little bit bigger than a golf ball) but the actual offical schneeballs are the size of softballs!





Nightwatchman

At 8 o'clock at night you can meet the night watchman, Georg, in the town square for his night tour of Rothenburg. He takes a group around the city giving interesting facts and funny stories about Rothenburg and the middle ages in general. Did you know that the word "Salary" comes from the word for salt, from when salt was almost as valuable as gold and was often traded straight up for goods. That the night watchman was the third lowest profession in the middle ages just above grave digger and executioner (who were friends because they had the same clients with a small time difference) and "Man Holes" are tiny doors in the big city gates so that men out after curfew could after paying a fine couldstill get into the village after the gates were closed for the night one hour after sundown. The doors allowed only one man at atime to prevent the enemy from getting in too easy. http://www.nightwatchman.de/ he has a dvd too!

www.rothenburg.de Check out the webcam, it is of the main square with the large Glockenspiel clock and the Rathaus (City Hall)

Romantisch Straße

SO having obtained our spiffy BMW 316i wagon we headed out of Frankfurt ... eventually. Frankfurt has some crazy roads. Keep left no right no left. pfffffft. In any case having escaped from Girls! Girls! Girls! Girls! ville it was time to get out into the countryside. We headed for the Romantic Road which is Germany's most travelled tourist route/trap. It was a very important trade route from Northern Europe to Rome back in the day.

Würzburg

Our first stop was Würzburg which was the seat of power for the Prince Bishop of Franconia. The main attraction here is the Residenz. This is one big. ass. house.

It is a UNESCO world heritage site. The reason for this particular house being recognized is that way back when it took a lot of years for the peasant families to get that done. Usually the royal family had to wait a few generations before the thing was done. Even back then contractors were the vague answer people. But THIS house was done within one generation. The Prince Bishop of the time travelled around to all the important cities of the day to collect the various styles and put them all together in one "house". We strolled the corridors for while and noticed a sign saying that the guide book was available in the gift shop and was "attractively" priced. Upon further review ... no kidding! A 50 page glossy book with pictures and everything for €3!!!! Just like the lonely planet book said, it was well worth the €4 admission each.

-Andrew

Czech it out!

Of our itinerary that is!!! I will let the hilarity sink in before explaining .... Done holding your sides? Okay. So due to a miscommunication somewhere between the booking agency, the actual car rental company and ourselves, we will not be visiting the Czech Republic as planned. Apparently this is because should a Czech border guard take a fancy to your spiffy wheels they may well take it. Seems kinda far fetched but seeing as we had no intention of being on the hook for a fairly new BMW, Praha is out of the picture. (It may have thrown the budget a little outta whack.) This is indeed a bit of bummer but in the end it works out. As Douglas MacArthur said (sort of) we shall return.

Frankfurt

Arrived in Frankfurt around 11:00am local time after 11 hours in the air. Did not succeed at getting into business class as it was full. We did, however, get a bulkhead seat. Lot's of leg room which was nice. The bad part was not being able to sleep at all on the plane. Made for a very difficult first day. After getting through the airport which, I must say, is a snap next to Canada and the US grabbed a taxi and headed for our hotel. The drive in was remarkably quick. I guess that is to be expected when your cabbie drives at about 200 km/hr. That I must say was pretty cool. After arriving at the hotel things got even better for a super cheap €58. We got the only suite at our hotel! That's on top of the already complimentary mini-bar. Niiiiice. So after having a shower to try and shake the "I've just spent 11 hours on a plane" feeling we headed out to walk around Frankfurt.

The hotel we are at is right across from the main train station. Very handy. It is the largest train station in the world. Processing 1700 trains daily. Pretty impessive. Thankfully it was Sunday and it wasn't too crowded. Dawdled around until we found the tourist information office. Went in and booked a 2.5 hour city centre bus tour. As we were leaving a family that had also booked the tour (and who it turned out later were also Canadian) came in and were told very sternly by the lady behind the counter that they were supposed to return by 2 o'clock. Not 1 o'clock. Lisa and I made note not to return until 2.

So with an hour to kill we thought we'd walk around and check out the area immediately surrounding the Hauptbanhof (train station). It was ... interesting. If you were looking for Girls! Girls! Girls! Girls! you would have wanted for nothing. Since we were not in the market for Girls! Girls! Girls! Girls! we found the immediate area a little bit of a downer and understood why a family may have shown up back at the tourist office to kill an hour leafing through pamphlets in German.

In any case the bus tour was well worth it. It was a very intersting tour going over the cities past and present. THe most interesting thing was the Altstadt or Old Town. The interesting thing is that it is not all that old. All of the current building on the old town were built around 1980. 80% of Frankfurt was levelled during WWII and very few of the old buildings remain. This includes Johann Goethe's home. Goethe is to German literature what Shakespeare is to english literature. His house has also been faithfully recreated.

Anyhow by the end of the tour I was falling asleep. being awake for 26 some odd hours will do that. So we will be picking up the car tomorrow morning and heading south towards Munich.

Will talk to everyone later.

Andrew

Follow along!!

All right so here's the plan. Instead of mass e-mailing people the little tidbits of our trip I thought why not start a blog, send an e-mail out once, and y'all can check the progress at your leisure. This way it also saves having to remember who was sent what. We will post as often as we can and if possible will add some pictures along the way.