Germany Day 11

Today started out with an early start to get everything packed. For a change I was not really in the mood to get everything done before I went to bed even though it was relatively early. So I showered and packed up the suitcase as well as I could before going down to breakfast.  At breakfast I waited until Sid showed up so I could make sure I said goodbye to him. I had already talked to Juliano the night before because he would be off at class before the official breakfast time. After chatting for a few minutes I headed to downtown to do a small bit of souvenir shopping but really didn’t find anything much and then headed back in and checked out of the hotel.  I was able to get on the road by about 11am. Maybe a few minutes before I wanted to but really I didn’t have much else to do and I wasn’t sure exactly how long the drive to the airport was going to take. I have to mention exactly how expensive gas was at this point. I paid a fortune for the various fill-ups I needed during my epic drives and such. I managed to get gas on the road for the most expensive price I paid on the trip. I shudder to think how much it was and will not admit it publicly.   The car was not really my favorite but I have certainly driven worse. I drove 2008 kilometers during the trip.

The GPS took me on a different route to get to the airport than I had taken to get to Oberammergau so I was seeing new things including driving basically right on the edge of Munich. I was lucky that there was little road construction and the traffic was still fairly light even in the city. I think it took me about an hour and forty minutes to get to the airport from the hotel including the stop for gas. Checking the car rental back was fairly quick and I was in the wrong terminal when I was done but it was not really that hard to get to the right terminal so I can’t complain on that. Check-in at the airport was quick because there were no lines and I managed to be under weight on the luggage which sort of surprised me. I think I should have put more into the suitcase than I did but I wanted to make sure I was not getting extra charges. After check-in I was able to find the gate area quickly and did a bit of souvenir shopping in the airport before eating at a small restaurant named Airbrau. I had a couple beers and the Kasespaetzle, which is basically the German version of Macaroni and cheese.  I liked the food and the beer, which was unfiltered quite much. After eating I basically headed right to the gate. It was very early but I really had nothing else to do. Unfortunately I had a couple of gay guys who sat down next to me and commented on all the other passengers for the duration of my sit. I was quite happy to get on the plane and get away from them honestly.

On the plane I sat next to a woman named Beth who was coming back from a vacation in Budapest. She lives in Malden so this was her last stretch of flight. We chatted for a while through the meal and then she started to read then slept and I watched a couple of movies on my laptop. There was a weak selection on the entertainment system so I didn't bother with anything on it.  The flight was uneventful really and we landed on time and I managed an easy passport control, the guy directing traffic was wearing Bruins things and I got to talk hockey and the Stanley Cup Finals for a few moments before passing through that. It was not a long wait for my bag and customs just took my slip and I was out the door. My brother picked me up and we were home quite quickly.

I have to say that this was a great trip from beginning to end. I had great fun with the class at the start and did some fun stuff around Brussels and saw Amsterdam of course. I also had an incredible time on the vacation portion of the trip. Yes it was a long time to be away from home but I was fine with that. I was still a bit disappointed when it came time to pack up. Bavaria is beautiful and really the location and the history is just something I love. I got to hike and bike aside from see castles. If only the ocean were also nearby, then I would have found my heaven I think. I would definitely enjoy going back there. I am sure I have other places to visit first but it definitely is going to rate amongst my favorite vacations I am sure.

I will try to get all the pictures posted in the next couple days and a quickie slide show for those of you who want the condensed version hopefully before the weekend is out.

Germany Day 10

My plans for today were not really set until the morning. Even with the late return on Sunday I woke up early and had breakfast as usual. I wrote that post this morning before and during breakfast. I spoke to Sabine and she said that it would be a good day to go to Zugspitze, which is the highest mountain and point in all of Germany.  It is not really far away from the hotel so it at least seemed like a good starting point for the day. I packed up and headed to on my way before 9am easily. Erich and Sabine both said the earlier the better. The drive was not difficult though I had a tough time deciding which point I was supposed to go to when setting the GPS. I missed a turn and drove a bit out of my way and had to turn around. Still I was there fairly quickly and actually the timing was quite good.

The plan was to ride the cog railway up to the first stopping point. When I bought my round trip ticket the train was only 2 minutes away. I really didn't have to wait at all. The cog railway goes up through the woods a fair distance, has a nice view or two along the way then it basically turns into an all tunnel ride for the larger part of the trip. They have some small facts on a TV screen while you are in the tunnel because, well, it's kind of boring.

At the first stop you could see all the snow from the past couple storms quite easily. I walked around outside and took a few pictures. I should point out I was the only guy wearing shorts and a polo shirt with no jacket.  It was perfectly cool out though and not cold. After stomping around the area for a few minutes I again timed my next stage perfectly. The next step is to ride to the summit in a cable car. The cable cars have a 90 person limit (I am sure that means European, bet they could fit 120 Asians or 50 Americans). When I got there it was mostly loaded but I was able to squeeze in and it wasn't but a couple minutes before we were on our way up. As cable car rides go it was not really all that scary, probably because I was in the middle of a full car and it was really tough to see anything to get a sense of height. It was a very brief ride, only a few minutes. At the top everyone piles out and you get to walk around several platforms around the summit area. Technically you can climb to the summit summit where there is a gold cross but the path was closed due to the slick and snowy conditions. It looked quite scary and maybe I would have tried it on a day without snow but never today anyway.  It involved a ladder and pull rope to get up there.

Even at the summit the weather was cool and enjoyable. It was very sunny out. The view was clear for many miles and I took a ton of pictures. I wandered around the whole area from front to back and front again and pretty much captured all the views I could see as best I could. After a while I saw the lower beer garden wsa not really busy, only one couple there and decided to stop there for a beer or two and lunch. It was before 11:30 but I figured it was a good stopping point for the time. I ordered a Franzikan Weisbier which was ok and I had the roast pork with the large dumpling and red cabbage. It was quite good. I actually liked this one better than the one from Edelweis. Not long after I came down another couple of customers came down and ordered the same thing as I had so they must have thought it looked good too. It wasn't really long before the entire place was packed solid with people. I kind of felt like a trendsetter to some degree. Even all the black birds up there got in on the action and customers were giving them bread from their hands. In any event I had my second beer and the settled the bill and wandered for a few minutes more before taking the other cable car back down to Eibsee which is where I started the cog railway ride up. This one again was a large car with a lot of people in it. I got near a window but there still wasn't the same complete sense of height. I wonder if the car just felt too big or something. There were some incredible views. I am not sure. I think it took about 15 minutes from top to bottom. It might have been longer but it didn't feel like it.

At the bottom I wandered for a few minutes trying to figure out where my car was in relation to the cable car terminal rather than the train station. It wasn't long before I sorted things out and got in the car to figure out my next move. I decided I would again try out Reutte. I had only passed through it last time and I was hoping to get a small souvenir or two from Austria without having to go back to Innsbruck. The route I took by not using the GPS must not have been the most efficient even if I was following signs because I was on the road for a while. In any event as I was nearing Reutte I came across Ehrenberg. Let me say that I had found the name and idea of Ehrenberg in my research for this trip and it was what I actually planned to do in Austria. Ehrenberg is a medieval castle ruins that looked very interesting to me. So here I stumbled upon it by accident. There was no way I couldn't go there. I pulled into the exit and then down into a space in the lot and  realized there are several things that make up Ehrenberg. More than I thought.

At the parking area is Ehrenberg Krause which is a fort at the base of the mountain. I really didn't bother with it much. It is in renovations right now and it is 18th century work. Then up the hill about 30 minutes they say (I think I walked it in about 15 minutes) is Ehrenberg Schloss.  The castle was started in the 13th century and was built up over the years through the 18th century. It is all ruins now. Amazingly, or enjoyably or both, yes definitely both, there was not another soul in the ruins when I got there. I started to clambering through it and taking pictures from all angles. The grounds are huge and there are a lot of great things to see. They posted signs that explained the structures and when they were built. I was pretty much in heaven here. Castle ruins and no one else to ruin the experience, no pun intended (I suppose I could have said spoil).  In any event I was in the main castle for quite a while. As I started to head out I saw the first people that came up there besides me. They were older and were definitely tired from the climb.

Of course there is also Schlosskopf. That is an 18th century for that is built on a higher peak that overlooks the castle. I saw the sign for it and it said 30 minutes up. I would have kicked myself if I didn't do it even though I could see how steep a climb it was going to be. It took me about 20 minutes to get up there. I had to stop and rest a few minutes at one point because it was also very hot out. They thought it was going to get over 30C here and it did. That is over 85F minimally.  Anyway, I made it to the top of Schlosskopf and again was the only person up there. Perhaps it was a little less interesting to me being more of a gun fort than a castle but I still spent a while up there. I was able to hide in some shade for a bit and I was able even to spend 2 Euros on a bottle of apple soda that I desperately needed. They had nothing without bubbles in it, especially the water so I figured it was the least damaging. It actually was quite enjoyable, probably because I was so thirsty. Nice of them to put a soda machine up there.

After finishing up my drink and taking all the pictures I could take I started my way back downhill. The sign said 60 minutes to Ehrenberg Krause which is where my car was but it took me more like 30 minutes. I am always happy when the signs are for people other than me... At the car I decided I could see Reutte from the castle so I would just drive there sans GPS. It was a few minutes but easy to find. I found a parking space near the center that was for a supermarket and had a one hour limit. I walked through the center and then back to the car. Nothing touristy at all. I was not surprised but a touch disappointed. I ran into the market and bought another soda from the same company because again they have something against cold still water out here. I do hate them for that. This was a black currant looking thing and I kind of liked it too but I actually liked the apple stuff better. Typically I like black currants. It might have been a different type of berry. I set up the GPS for the hotel and drank that in the car on the way back. The route it took me was by the lake I passed the rainy day I went to Fuessen. I didn't stop for pictures. There were a lot of people sunbathing on the edges of the lake. It was very hot out. My car thermometer said 31C at that point and it was basically 5pm. It wasn't a long ride back but I had to contend with a bunch of jerk motorcycle drivers along the way. I think they are really bad out here thinking they own the road. In any event I let them all pass me and eventually I felt like I was the only one on the road which was a nice way to finish it up. I pulled into the hotel a bit past 5pm and freshened up then started writing this before dinner.

At dinner I started with watermelon instead of soup. Since the day was hot they offered the melon as an option to the soup. It sounded like a good idea and I was happy with the choice. I had 2 Koenig Ludwig Hell beers which are their basic pilsners. I hadn't tried it before so I figured now was the time. I liked the dark beer and this one was decent too. I had a stuffed cabbage roll in for dinner and that came with mashed potatoes. It was very good and I used the sauce from the cabbage rolls to season the potatoes. I figured I should have something that seemed local for the last dinner here at the hotel. I again have to state that Peter is an excellent chef and I really loved his food. After I finished my second beer I had the dessert which was a sorbet made with blue caracao and I also had a grappa to finish off the trip since I saw it in the drink menu. Both Sid and Juliano came down to dinner and we talked about what happened on the weekend and so on. By accident some of Juliano's classmates found the hotel while finishing their hiking and came in to eat. So after I settled the bill I headed off for the evening.

I fly out on Tuesday in the mid afternoon so I have some time in the morning to get some stuff done. I will probably need to start for the airport at about noon or so. It should be an hour and a half drive to the airport. I am not really looking forward to that but after two drives of five and a half hours each I am sure it will be nothing.

Germany Day 9

Today started a bit later than I would prefer because Kate does not wake up early. Still I was able to get up, write yesterday’s journal and shower just before she woke up so maybe too much time was not wasted.  After she got ready we headed outside for the bus again and took it to Bonn to have breakfast at the Bagel Brothers, which is her favorite place for breakfast. I had a bacon, egg bagel and a cup of coffee. She had a ham and turkey bagel.  After breakfast we walked to the the Bonn Hauptbahnhof which is the central station of the city and rode to Cologne spelled (Köln but I am too lazy to fix it that way, sorry). The train ride took only half an hour so the two cities are close together.

The most important thing to see in the city is the Kölner Dom which is a very old cathedral. It dates back to the 1200s so while I am sure it was added to over the years it still has a very deep history. In some respects it is not the best looking church. On the outside it is very dark with years of pollution but the stonework is very detailed and ornate so it is still interesting to look at. The inside of the church is very large feeling. There is not much by way of decoration, especially after seeing Wieskirche and Ettal but still the grandeur is felt due to the height of the ceilings.  They were having mass because it was Sunday. We didn’t stay inside too long. After that we paid the 3 Euros each to climb the steps to the top of one of the steeples. There are twin steeples on the church and you can climb to the highest point where anyone can stand safely. It was nearly 500 steps to the top and the majority of the climb is through narrow spiral steps. It did feel like we were climbing forever and definitely by the time we got to the top there was a real sense of height. The problems were that people had damaged all the stonework up top with graffiti which bothered me a lot and also that they had some series wire fencing to prevent people from falling which sort of made the view a touch less impressive (and more difficult to get pictures). Still it was very cool to have done it and though the day had started cloudy by the time we got to the top the sky was clear and it was getting warmer. It wasn’t nearly as crowded as the top of St. Peters in Rome, which was nice.

After we walked all the narrow spiral steps down we turned just a little bit and saw the Stadthaus or local town hall (at least the old ornate one). The walked around seeing the main shopping street of the city (she is a girl after all so it is something that interests her).  All the stores were closed because it was Sunday. This route brought us to a small wine bar named Divine where Kate used to work for a couple of years. She was hoping the owner was there but instead it was his Polish girlfriend soon to be wife. She is very nice and my goodness was she attractive. Kate explained that she had a baby 4 months ago and you couldn’t tell at all. In any event we each ordered a couple of a local beer called Fruh Kölsch and talked for a while. It was very relaxing. Towards the later part of our stop the owner did show up with their baby for a few moments and then a bit later we left.

Our next goal was to get to the train station again so we could cross the river towards where their arena is to eat at a restaurant named Vapiano. It is an Italian place that is sort of cafeteria style. When you enter you are given a card and you can walk around and order things at very stalls. They will cook it right in front of you. Kate had not been to the one in Cologne but to at least one in Bonn and again she really liked it. So we both decided to get pasta. She got a scampi and I got the arrabiata as I often do. The cook was not particularly the quickest but it was sort of neat to watch him do his work for the couple people in line before us and then for us. He was a touch heavy on the salt but overall the food was real good. It was already getting time to consider driving home so I had an iced tea and Kate bought a Vita Malz which I tasted (it is odd). By the time we were done eating we were both very full. From there we just walked back to the train station and rode straight back to Bonn. I forgot to mention the bridge we crossed with the train has a couple of chain link fences on either side of the pedestrian walkways and people attach locks to the fences. The locks have the initials of the boyfriend and girlfriend carved into them. There were seriously a lot of locks especially on the side we were closer to on the ride back. I couldn’t really take a picture from the train. After that we swapped to a subway and then walked not very far back to Kate’s house.

We basically traded pictures and I had a quick glass of water before I was out the door and in car for the epic drive back. I left about 6:30pm and was able to get to the hotel at just before midnight with one stop to fill up the car with gas.  I pretty much just dropped everything and got right into bed at that point.  I was exhausted. It was a very enjoyable day as was Saturday. Kate was an excellent tour guide. 

Germany Day 8

Today started at the regular time with me getting downstairs to eat breakfast maybe a few minutes early because the wireless was not working when I woke up. I found out at this point it only works when their computer in the lobby is turned on and they turn it off at night. Breakfast was moderately quick with no changes to menu. After checking over a few things and packing an overnight bag I was pretty much immediately on the road. It had rained all night and all through breakfast and in some respects I didn’t mind that I would take some time away from Bavaria as beautiful as it is there.  I explained what I was doing to Sabine so she wasn’t concerned and asked if I should take my room key because I was not sure what time I would return home on Sunday. She said yes and I’ll just have to try to get back in time for dinner.

I suppose there isn’t a ton to describe about the epic drive across Germany. It was about 5 and a half hours with 2 pit stops including the one to get petrol on the autobahn. The Opel is not really the most screaming car in the world but I was up around 100mph a couple times. Over 160kph that is. Since the car has no pickup especially at high speeds the European driving tendencies could be a problem at times. Basically, they drive on the right lane of multilane highways (the autobahn) and in general move out to the left lane to pass. That I like a lot. But so many of them wait until a car that is moving up really fast to pass is just behind them to move out to the left lane and force them to brake and lose all momentum. It is like they are completely unaware of the rest of the cars on the road.  I really didn’t see much scenery because I was concentrating on driving mostly. What I did see looked nice and at times repetitive. I had a tough time finding music on the radio and had to surf channels constantly. Often I was listening to songs I hadn’t heard since the 80s or so. Bleh.

When I arrived in Bonn I missed the house by the GPS but pulled into a lot not too far up the road. I found that Kate had texted me a few minutes before and I texted her back with where I was.  She said she had just got home and was outside in front of her place so I pulled out and found her and we found a place to park. From there we quickly stopped into her place and she changed from her work clothes and we made some basic plans and then headed out to catch the bus to downtown Bonn. It is about a 10 minute ride away. Of course it was weekend schedule and the buses come less often. We also seemed to have the bus we were expecting disappear and had to wait for what should have been the second bus. Not really a big deal, but about a half an hour lost. It was ok though. We talked about what had been going on over the last few weeks.

When we got into downtown she started to show me the sites such as the part of the old medieval wall, the university buildings the scene down to the old palace like building which is apparently now a museum. I was a bit hungry but she ate at work so she brought me to the place with her favorite pizza and I had a half a small pizza. Then we continued on walking. I am sure my order of memory is poor because we saw a lot of things like the town hall buildings (old and new). In fact I think the new town hall was among the first things I saw. There is a lot of interesting architecture around Bonn. It seems like a medium sized city that had to go through a lot to reidentify itself after the changeover from being the capital of West Germany to just being a city again when the wall fell. During the walk we each got an ice cream cone as well. She had mango flavor and I had cappuccino. It was quite good. She said it was her favorite place for ice cream. I think that was before the university. Also I got to see the Rhein. It is much more a functional river than a tourist river as say in Paris or London. I didn’t see any tour boats out there but there were definitely ferries. They don’t appear to have a lot of bridges across it around Bonn.

Out in a suburb there is a small town called Koenigswinter which has some medieval castle ruins that she wanted to take me to so we started our way to the train that would get us there. We had 15 minutes to kill so we walked further on and she got us a doenner to split. It is basically what I would call a gyro. We had a chicken one. It was good but a real mess to eat and I think the guy could have mixed things up a bit better. We finished those on the train as we had cut it kind of tight. The train ride was about half an hour to forty minutes.  Along the way an elderly woman yelled at a kid who was playing with a lighter on the train. Good for her I thought. The kid was punky but he did eventually listen to her which surprised me. The ruins are called Drachenfels. It means dragon rock. There are 7 hills to climb to make it to the top where the ruins are. The hills are quite steep and you can instead take a cog railway up but we missed the timing and chose to walk. It was nice but the humidity was painful for me. We made it up though. It was very similar to the walk from Hohenschwangau to Neuschwanstein.  While we were getting near the top we stopped to take pictures of the views. There is another castle there as well that was already closed when we got there. It is a fairly impressive gothic looking building but Kate didn’t know a lot about it. She had never been in it.  As we neared the top we found a couple baby mice near a bench which we used to sit down for a few minutes. They were cute, and with very short tails. I took a small video of them.

At the top the ruins felt like some of the stuff I had seen in Sicily. It was kind of nice up there. The view was very beautiful. It was strange to see a completely forested set of hills just right there next to where we were on one side and a city on the other. It gave a good view of Bonn and you can even see Cologne in the distance. The place is basically open to the public  and it was good to see it was basically clean and free of graffiti there.  We stayed up there for a couple minutes then walked back down. Kate hated walking down more than up due to the steepness at times. We had to wait about half an hour for the train and got a couple sprinkles of rain but that was fine too. We took the train back to town and got out at a different stop than we started from and she walked me through the area that made up the most of the political buildings that were used when Bonn was the capital. There is a strange looking statue of the head of Konrad Adenauer that makes him look sort of like a vampire. There is also their equivalent building to the White House to see.  From there we walked to the museum building we had seen from the University. It definitely appeared to be a former palace. Now it houses a geological and zoological museum. Natural history I guess. After the brief stop there we went to have dinner.

It was already about 9:30 by then and we got to the restaurant at about 10:00. Fortunately they stay open to midnight. The place is called the Café Roha. They serve Ethiopian food. Kate really likes it and says she has been there four or five times since she has been back in Bonn. I have never had Ethiopian food so I liked the idea of something different. I had an Erdinger weisbier and we ordered a combination plate for 2. Basically it is a lot of different things to eat that you pick up with bread and just eat with your hands. The food was quite good. There was some lamb and pork and a lot of vegetable type things such as lentils and spinach and potatoes and a scary looking hard-boiled egg. I liked that a bit of the food was spicy, which is not something I have had since I have been in Europe this trip. It was too spicy for Kate but she must have like it anyway because she continued eating.  We stuck around and had a second drink at the restaurant before find a place to have one last beer then we could catch the night bus back to the house. The service at this place wasn’t the best but we managed to get our drink and then get back out. Kate had something I had never considered trying which is beer with soda mixed in. It was coke and beer basically. I tried a sip and thought it was just too strange. The carbonation of the coke changed the carbonation feel of the beer. Anyway I think I could skip on it. The apparently will also mix Sprite and orange sodas as well.

The night bus takes a lot longer to get to her house than the two stops it took on the day bus so we actually got out early and then walked about 10 minutes to the house where she set me up in her brother’s room as he was not in and then I crashed for the night almost immediately. I think we got in near 2:00am.  I was very tired.

Germany Day 7 Addendum

In my excitement about getting the some more pictures posted I forgot to describe the actual food I had for dinner. I had 2 Paulaner Roggen Dunkels. As far as I can tell a roggen is a rye beer.  That seems to be what it translated as because it was not barley and it was not wheat.  Not sure what else it could be.  The soup they served was a cream of asparagus. Out here they serve white asparagus so the soup was completely white. Not sure the fascination with the white stuff really. It is fresh asparagus season though so they serve it a lot right now. In the restaurant in Fuessen and the restaurant in Linderhof they had special asparagus menus for the season.  In any event, the soup was followed by a very nice garden salad lightly dressed with vinegar and oil and a few herbs. Next, the meal I chose was spaghetti Bolognese which is pasta with meat sauce of course. It was quite good. The pasta was not overcooked and the sauce was pleasant. I quite enjoyed it. After the pasta I had a coffee and a their dessert of the night which was a stracciatella mousse.  It was very tasty and I am glad I got it. I chose to get it because Juliano got it and said it was very good. I was thinking of being  good about eating and just getting the coffee.  After that was done Sabine convinced me to get another beer which was a good choice I think too.  All in all an excellent meal.  I think it is going to be hard for me to find better meals than I can get here at the Friedenshoehe.  For the record, Erich told Juliano the name of the place translates to “Higher Peace.”

Pictures from Luxembourg Day 2 - Germany Day 1

The pictures for Luxembourg day 2/ Germany day 1 can be found here.

Germany Day 7

Today the weather showed it was going to continue not to cooperate so I decided it would be a driving day. I ate breakfast fairly quickly and then headed out to the car. It fortunately still hadn't started raining and I managed to get a good morning of driving in with only a few sprinkles. I decided to drive out past Linderhof and south through Austria and past a town called Reutte. I did manage to stop and take some pictures of scenery on the way especially by the lake before Reutte. Truthfully that town didn't look very much to see and I just ended up passing through it. I was going to stop and get petrol but the station was too crowded so I opted to pass on through and got back on the roads to Fuessen.  When I pulled into Fuessen I figured I should stop and look around. It is a tourist town that is bigger than Schwangau so hosts a lot of the tourist traffic that stays for the Ludwig castles. They have their own small castle as well that I could see as I pulled into the parking lot.

So far the rain was staying light and I was able to get into town and walk around a little bit and then turned towards their main church and visited that. The main church is just below the castle which I think is referred to as the Auldstadt which means old town or at least that area is. I couldn't see an actual name for the castle. Like Ambras it has been emptied out and is now an art gallery. It was starting to rain a little bit so I figured it was a good idea to go in and check it out.  There were not a lot of pieces but some were interesting. Most of it was from the 1800s it appeared. The grounds appear to be from Medieval times but of course it was damaged and rebuilt a couple times. After I finished up the castle I got outside and the rain had picked up a bit so I hid under a tower for a little bit then decided to move on. I had to move in stages as the rain slowed up for a little bit here and there.

When I made it back down the hill I found the first restaurant I could reach which was the Ghasthaus vom Schwanen.  I mainly chose to eat there because of the rain and it was basically the first door I crossed. I could see a few people inside as well. They had Croatian specials as well as German food and I had their Grill Plate Schwanen which was a huge amount of food. It was a mixed grill including turkey, pork, pork sausage, beef, bacon, French fries and their special Croatian style rice. I accompanied with two small Koenig Ludwig Dunkels and then followed with a coffee to hopefully make the rains go away.  Unfortunately I got back outside and the rains had only increased in intensity.

I basically did some canopy dodging to make my way towards the car until I found a place selling umbrellas for a reasonable price and then bought one for less than 3 Euros. That allowed me to get to the car and pay the ticket out. 3 Euros there too. A lot less than Innsbruck anyway. With the rain showing no signs of let up I decided I would just set the GPS to the hotel and take my time getting back. I didn't manage to get stuck behind any tractors for significant amounts of time so it was generally a wet but pleasant drive. I got back around 3pm or so and Erich was in the lobby so we started talking a bit and eventually he told me about the wireless he has and where I can reach it in the restaurant so I ran upstairs and grabbed my laptop and set up the wireless. It is so much nicer to be live online and not have to deal with the QWERTZ keyboard and things in German though I figured out most of the German I needed for the computer.  Still I would have preferred to be out a bit longer and have seen more, especially of Fuessen but the weather was akin to the rains I had when I was on Gotland during my Sweden trip and I just didn't have the will to fight it. It probably didn't help that I had shorts and a polo shirt on with no jacket though I didn't feel it was cold. It just isn't great shielding from the wet. So I made it a lazy afternoon in the hotel until dinner time and caught up on some computer things I hadn't been doing when not using my own laptop. After that I took a short nap and listened to some music on my cell phone until about dinner time. Along the way Kate texted me to come visit her in Bonn for Saturday so I agreed to do that and then went down to have dinner.

They had moved us indoors rather than on the porch for the weather and it was perhaps a bit quieter in there. Juliano was downstairs for dinner too and since the indoor room was more spread out we opted to share a table instead of sit at our own. We chatted about the past couple days and what we were doing on the weekend and such while we ate. Sid came down a bit later and joined us and we talked about things for a while before heading off to bed for the evening. I had already figured out that the wireless does actually reach my room so I had set that to uploading my second day Luxembourg photos to see if the speed was reasonable and unfortunately it is not great so I will still have load the larger number of picture days when I get home I am sure, especially with heading to Bonn on Saturday.  Still, I will post a link to those pictures separately.

Germany Day 6

My thoughts for today were to get to Austria. It really isn't that far away from where I am and it seemed like a reasonable thing to be able to do. I had talked to Erik earlier in the week and he said Innsbruck is not really that far away and has good things to do there so I did a bit more research and found they have a castle there on the outskirts of the town as well and I decided that was what I would do with the day. Since my previous two days had been so active I sort of needed to just let my legs rest a bit and see things by way of car more so than bicycle or walking. 

I went to breakfast at the typical time and took my time eating and eventually Sid came down to breakfast and I offered for him to come along. He had never been to Innsbruck in all his visits here so the idea intrigued him. I figured that it would be good for me to have him along because I needed to rest a bit and having someone else along would make me walk slower and do a bit less than I might do if I was solo. This plan did work out to my advantage in the long haul so I was happy with the day. We left probably about 10:00am and the drive down was quite nice. We stopped over the border in Austria to buy a special sticker for the car that allowed us to drive on the Austrian autobahn without getting fined then continued on to Innsbruck. Sid said there was a good cafe to stop at on the way that apparently would overlook one of the towns but the cafe turned out to be closed for renovations so we had to just continue on. From the parking lot there were no good pictures to be taken but I could tell the cafe itself had some good views.

There was a very steep downhill ride that apparently had a lot of safety outlets for trucks that had break issues on the way into Innsbruck but we got there without much issue. Once the GPS had basically gotten us into town I turned off routing and just followed signs to the Zentrum and then to a parking garage for the auldstadt area of town which is the old town.  It turned out the garage was a touch expensive still it was better than risking a parking space and getting towed for not knowing the rules.

Innsbruck was kinda neat. It is a city where most of the Bavarian region does not really have cites except Munich, still it was not a very large city though it did have its own small airport. We drove by the airport on the way in. After parking we walked to what appeared to be the old town area and guessed correctly. We verified by a city map and then sort of wandered around to see the area. We walked out to a statue on a high post after seeing the golden dome, which is really not a dome but a golden roof on a sort of outcropping from a building, still it was very nice looking. After the statue we walked back to the main pedestrian street and found lunch at a restaurant that mainly served pizza and had a couple pasta dishes. I nevver got the name. I had a pizza capricoccia which is one with ham, olives, mushrooms and artichokes and Sid had one with spinach and feta. The pizza was quite good. I accompanied with a small local beer. It was a decent lunch and both of us finished our whole pizzas. They were very thin crust and very tasty.

After lunch we found the two churches on the map, one a Jesuit church and the other Saint Jakob's Cathedral. Both were nice and I am sure Sid appreciated visiting them. From there we walked out past that statue I mentioned before so I could find the Triumphal Arch and take a couple pictures of that then the Olympic ski jump they have on the outskirts of town. Innsbruck is a former Olympic town from long ago, I think most recently in 76.  I think they still have some serious ski jump competitions there each winter. Obviously there was no snow for jumping today. Indeed by the afternoon I am sure it had gotten to about 30c and was kind of humid too. On the way back in we wandered a bit and did some souvenir shopping before getting some really excellent gelato at a shop on the corner of the street we had lunch on. The girl at the counter was very cute and she made my ice cream cone into a flower with the way she put on the ice cream. I had coffee on the inside and bourbon vanilla as the petals. It was quite neat and also excellent gelato. We ate it in the shop then basically headed back to the car and got out of the garage.

After that we used the GPS to get us to the local castle, Ambras Shloss.  It is basically a large palatial residence of the royal family of the Austrian region dating back from the 15th century. The rooms were all bare of any furnishings in general and they had used the palace as a portrait gallery of all the important nobles from the region. They had small armory museum which was cool to me because none of the pieces were behind glass so I could take reasonable pictures and the interior of the palace courtyard had a really interesting set of al fresco paintings that made the plain walls look much more detailed. The palace also had a small chapel that was nicely setup with ornately carved pews.  Unfortunately, Siemens had rented out the spanish hall for some company function so we did not get to visit that part of the castle but they did discount my ticket by 3 Euros for the inconvenience. I liked the castle a lot. I think really it is fair to call it a palace and not a castle but I have learned to ignore those distinctions as fewer castles and more chateaus and palaces are what have survived out here. I prefer the stuff that looks like Warwick Castle in England but that type of structure just didn't survive the ages well. 

In any event, when we finished the castle it was back to the car and on the road to the hotel. On the way back we spent a fair bit of time climbing the mountain out of Innsbruck behind a truck and several other vehicles going 10 miles an hour as a diesel truck could not seem to get going any faster. Fortunately things did speed up when we reached the point we crested the hill but then he got stuck behind a tractor and that still kept us slow until the trucks too a different route and we were able to pass the tractor.  The remainder of the way back was relatively uneventful if the views were incredible in either direction.

Today was the day that Peter and Sabine and everyone have a day off and the hotel restaurant was not open for business to night. I guess this happens every Thursday which Sabine informed me of in the morning. So basically none of Peter's cooking tonight. Sid and I deciced we would go to Ettal and eat at a cafe there and we hoped to find Juliano but he wasn't at the hotel. We had gotten back at about 5:30pm and literally a few minutes after we did the skies started to open up in some serious downpour thunderstorms. We waited for a while hoping to find Juliano, hoping he hadn't hiked himself into some horrible place before the storms hit but eventually it was obvious he wasn't going to arrive at the hotel and the rain slacked up a bit. We got in the car and drove around a bit to see if we could find him but were unable to do so. Along the way we got stuck in a serious bit of storm that included hail as well as the incredible downpours. We had to pull over because the windows fogged over and the rain was coming down so hard it was impossible to see. We waited until the defroster kicked in enough then headed on to Ettal to the Cafe Edelweis. The menu was in German and I mixed up my words a bit so ordered a roast pork dish with two types of dumplings that came with a cabbage salad as well. I had two Ettaler Dunkel beers as well in the evening. The food was very good and not really all that expensive either. During dinner we had a couple more outbursts of rain but it had basically stopped by the time we left.

After dinner we drove to the hotel and I headed up to the room to type this in and call it a night.

Germany Day 5

Today I wanted to visit Linderhof. It is one of the 3 castles that King Ludwig built and the only one that was actually completed. I believe he had planned a fourth but both his money and his life were gone before that happened. Linderhof is about 15 kilometers away from Oberammergau and I took up Erik's offer to borrow a bike to get there rather than drive. He suggested I take the bike trail there and then ride the road back. I figure each day I can do stuff without driving is a day I don't have to spend money on gas. As long as I enjoy what I am doing it is a good plan.  I got up and had breakfast and was able to borrow some of Sid's sun block before I left. I had to wait a couple minutes after I was finished for Erik to return so I could borrow the bicycle. He had ridden his into town to buy a newspaper. He let me borrow his own bike mainly I think because it was the easiest to get. I borrowed a lock and basically with my camera bag strapped to my back was on my way. I think I left about 9:00 to 9:15 or so.

The ride started out along trails I had already walked for some distance including part of what we had walked by accident to get to Ettal the day before. The bike route to Linderhof is clearly marked with signs so you always know which way to go. It is sometimes along the road and sometimes in the woods. I liked the shady parts of the ride a lot. It was a little bit cooler to start the day than the previous day and with the motion of the air around the bike it felt quite good. I even didn't sweat too much. I can admit my legs were still tired from the two previous days of walking and I actually was able to take my time riding, something I am not normally able to do. I think I exited the gate quickly but as soon as I was on new trails I slowed up a bit to keep my legs from being too destroyed for the ride back. It would be another 13km back by the road.  There was some stunning scenery along the way and that gave me the excuse to stop and take pictures also which helped me pace myself a bit more. I am sure I rode through Graswang along the ride although it didn't look like much to see. Less than Ettal which would be nothing without the monastery. The ride to Linderhof is up hill generally but the slope is very slight most of the time so overall it was not that difficult a ride. Erik said one area was going to be tough but I really didn't notice it much if at all.  When I finally made it to Linderhof it was probably about 10:40 or so. I arrived into a parking area with one small souvenir shop. I found there were not bike racks so had to lock the bike to a tree. I think if it were my bike I might not have worried about it so much. I don't think it would have gotten stolen, but where it wasn't mine I had to be responsible and make sure.  After I secured the bike I bought a bottle of water at the shop and drank it down rather quickly.

From there it was a matter of following the signs to the castle ticket office and buying a ticket for the tour. This works similarly to Neuscwanstein in that you buy your ticket for the tour and then walk to the castle and are let in by an automated barcode reader. It was a little bit looser than Neuscwanstein but it effectively worked the same. I was a few minutes ahead of the tour but not much so I used the time to take pictures of the outside of the castle and the surrounding grounds until it was time for my English language tour. I guess maybe a lot of English speakers don't go to Linderhof or something because my tour consisted of a mother and her 4 children and one other girl who didn't say a word the whole tour. I like the fact that the group was so small but I would rather the kids were a bit less restless than they were. I suppose a couple of them were to young to get the process. Nonetheless they really weren't that bad and their mom only shushed them a couple times. The guide was a woman who brought us through basically all the rooms of the castle.

Linderhof is the first castle that Ludwig built and the only one that was completed as I said before. It is the castle that he lived in the longest, which I think was about 3 years. As with Neuschwanstein the castle construction was dedicated to someone, basically Louis XIV.  So it is designed to look like the palace of Versailles in miniature from the inside. The outside has a similar feel to with the French style gardens and fountains. Each room was somewhat based off the idea of Versaille though there are not that many rooms. It is a small castle.  The king's bedchamber was quite magnificent as the bed was huge and the room very detailed. The room was set up to be a receiving room for guests the same as if it was Louis XIV's time. The view from his bed is of a large waterfall type fountain that is quite impressive looking. Additionally, the castle had a hall of mirrors. It is fairly impressive if not quite up to the hall in Versailles. Standing in the right place makes the room look gigantic of course as the repeated reflections go on forever. It is a cool effect.  Apparently it was Ludwig's favorite room to read in. The guide said the many candles that could be seen in the room would typically be lit and that would add to the effect incredibly. I am sure it was a great sight.  They won't light the candles now I am sure for fire safety and to protect the room from damage. I think the tour was about a half an hour long and ended in the hall of mirrors. From there they send you down the servants steps to a small gift shop in the bottom of the castle. No pictures allowed inside the castle again so I bought the book.

After the castle proper I walked up the hill to the Moorish Pavillion which is also quite stunning looking. I did not write down the German name and my book is only in English without reference to the German names of the sites.  The pavilion is supposed to be themed after the book 1001 Arabian Nights. The door is covered by curtains and as you go inside you find the room is protected by glass panels so you can look in but cannot actually get in. I am sure that is because too many people cannot look but not touch.  It was very cool looking inside but the glass made it tough to get good pictures and to see the whole building. Still, I liked it.

After the pavilion I headed over to the Grotte which is a fake cave built into the ground made to look like a natural cave. I believe Ludwig used it as an entertainment chamber. It was set up so he could have musicians play while he either was pushed around in a small boat or perhaps sat in his special booth. The ticket price for the castle includes the tour of the  Grotte but it is not set for a specific time on the ticket so you can go when you want but they only appear to do tours every 10 minutes or so. The tour is initially done in German by a guide. There were a lot of people who went in and it was difficult to see at first but fortunately they have a prerecorded audio version of the tour for after the German part so I got to stay around and listen to that with only myself and girl from the castle tour still inside. She didn't say anything this time either. The Grotte is definitely something that points out the eccentricity of Ludwig beyond some of the other stuff they had. They were playing Wagner when we entered. Something from Tanhauser. Of course all I could hear is, "What's Opera Doc?"  Still it was kind of cool. I guess it was the first structure in all of Germany to be set up for electricity which is also a cool fact to know.

After the Grotte I walked back towards the ticket office with a brief stop for the Moroccan house which is a neat structure that also had a set of glass panels to allow you to see inside without being able to enter. I took a few pictures but as I was doing so a large crowd started assending the steps to the house noisily and I beat a hasty retreat.  From there I worked my way back into the ticket and souvenir shop area and decided to have lunch at the Hotelshloss Linderhof's restaurant.It is basically the only location I could see to have a sit down meal though a few of the shops also sold on the go type food. I wanted to sit down and relax though so I chose to eat there. I had a dark beer from Haubrau Munich. The glas said it was a weisbier but I think it was just the wrong glass because it didn't taste like a weisbier.  Either way it was quite good. I ate a turkey cutlet with asparagus which was white asparagus.  The food was tasty and filling.  After eating I also had a Shokokuss which was a chocolate sundae with both chocolate and chocolate chip ice creams. They put a macaroon on the spoon and it had a wafer cookie stuck in it as well. I really enjoyed it a lot. I am sure it was more calories than I really needed but I earned it with the biking I think.

After lunch I basically headed back to the bicycle and mounted up for the ride home. Taking Erik's advice I took the roads rather than the trails. He said I wouldn't have to pedal at all on the way back. This probably would have been true if it wasn't for the giant headwind I seemed to find as soon as I got on the bike. I am not saying I had to struggle to get back but it definitely wasn't pedaling-free as the wind kept pushing me to a near stop on the flatter surfaces. Still it was basically downhill the whole way. Where the trails were probably about 15km the road is about 13km. I did like the trails for being able to hide from the sun somewhat which was not something I could do as much on the road. Either way it was basically a pleasant ride and I fell into town about 2:45 or so. I have to admit my legs were jelly and I couldn't ride up the hill to the hotel. I am embarassed for that but I walked the bike up and locked it away for Erik.

After a quick run up to the room to get some water and wash up a bit I walked back into town to see if I could find some sun block of my own and was able to get some for a reasonable price at a sporting good shop that I am sure seasonally changes from hiking to skiing.  I had washed my face so I applied some more as soon as I bought it and then walked around town a bit more sort of randomly then headed back to the room at around 3:30. Sid and Juliano were in the lobby talking and I chatted with them a few minutes. Sid convinced Juliano not to follow his plan to hike to Pershling which really would have been about 9 or 10km out and then back and instead offered to drive him to another town where he could see something different and get some hiking around a pond that is there. He offered for me to go too but my legs were just too shot to consider anything and I figured my best bet was to climb up to the room and get on the balcony and write the blog to this point. The nice thing about my balcony is it is on the shady side of the house so I could sit out and relax and write in the cool breeze with my friends the bees.

After I was done writing the early part I took a short nap because I was exhausted then headed downstairs to dinner. I had 2 Koenig Ludwig Dunkel beers and the chicken fricasee with rice and peas. The fricasee was a cream sauce with mushrooms and was quite good. There was a lot of food and I managed to eat it all which surprised me. I guess I was really hungry. Along the way Sid and Juliano came back and had their dinners and we chatted. They found a mud treatment area and put their feet in the mud and they said they felt much better after doing it. I followed dinner with a coffee and no dessert since I had the big dessert at lunch. After that we still chatted for a while longer then it was off to finish up this and get some well deserved sleep.

Germany Day 4

Today I didn't really think I wanted to drive so I decided I would do some local walking and hiking. I went down to breakfast at 8 and ended up talking to the British guests who were leaving today for a while such that I didn't leave the hotel until about 9:15. My first task was to climb Kofel. Kofel is the mountain right behind the hotel. The Venezuelan guest had already climbed it twice since I had been here but he is also around 15 years younger than me and obviously a runner. Still I knew I had to do it or I would not be fully happy with my trip.

To climb Kofel I needed to walk outside of town to the cemetery and the cut through it to a trail behind it. This trail leads to the trail up the mountain. The start of the trail cuts through a cow pasture with several cows hanging out and lots of cow pies along the way. It was a bit disconcerting because you basically have to pass a few feet away from them to get through or I guess maybe walk all the way around the outskirts of the field. There is a bench with a message in German inscribed on it on the other side of the pasture. From there it is basically switchback trails straight up the mountain. The Venezuelan kid said he did it in about 45 minutes but I took about an hour and 15 minutes to get to the to point before the last stage of the climb. At this location is an intersection of trails that come from different points along the mountains. I am sure some come from very far away, in the range of several kilometers.  Starting up the final stage to the peak isn't so bad but it comes to a point where the climb gets a bit steeper and they have cables on spikes to help you pull yourself up. I've documentd many times my fear of heights and this is the area that definitely struck me right away. I was able to do it by not thinking about what it would be like on the way back down. I can tell you there were a few spots that definitely I searched for alternate routes and perhaps at least one location I made up my own because of how close to the edge without any security cable I would have to go. I did manage to get to the very top where the crucifix is. It was apparently erected in 1988 if I get the inscription correctly. It is quite large. The view from up there is totally spectactular. The weather was perfect if maybe a touch warmer than I would have prefered and I could see very far around the region. I stayed up there cooling off for a bit because the climb was very intensive to get up there and I was soaking with sweat by the time I got to the top. Even with the sun there was a slight breeze that made it nice to be up there.

Working my way down was the adventure I expected it to be and there were many places I had to crab crawl my way through or I would have probably just sat there and cried. Still there's no crying in mountain hiking so I just had to suck it up and work my way down. I had been at much higher points in Peru but nothing so hand over hand for climbing that I can remember. Perhaps I erased it out of my brain. After getting through the areas with the pull cables it was a bit easier to deal with and I made much better time and cooled off again from the sweat I had remanufactured while coming down the sheerer bits. Still it was basically switchbacks straight down the mountain and even going downhill it is fairly straining to the legs. After passing back through the cow pasture I headed to the cemetery and back into town. My hotel is on a hill if I haven't mentioned that... I got in at about 12:00 so was out for nearly 3 hours or so. I was filthy from all the crawling and sweat and since my room was next to be made up I opted to wash up quickly instead of take a shower.

After cleaning up I headed into Oberammergau and decided to have lunch at the restaurant at the Hotel Wolf which I am going to have to walk past again to get the name it appears. I ordered a beer and they gave me a Paulaner which was a typical Munich beer, so maybe less flavor than I like but not bad. I also ordered a Wolf Burger. Had I had any idea what I was getting I would never have done so. The thing was gigantic. I could only eat about half of it and I made a mess of myself and everything around me along the way. It was seriously a terrible scene of carnage. While I was eating I had decided I was going to walk to Ettal which should be about 5km away. Not that far for me to walk. Sid happened to find me at the restaurant and joined me to have a coffee. When I told him what I was going to do he asked if he could join because he needed to get his walk in. I agreed but he needed to get changed so I told him I would finish eating and get an ice cream at the really popular place right in downtown and then meet him at the hotel. I had to change and wash my pants of all the tomato wreckage that fell out of the burger anyway. I got a coffee ice cream cone that was really very good dense ice cream. I really liked it a lot. I ate that on the walk back to the hotel and then got up to the room, changed and washed the other shorts off and put them on the balcony to dry and found Sid downstairs.

Apparently along the way to Ettal we managed to take a wrong turn and what should have been an easy 5km walk turned out to be a 7.5 or 8km walk as far as I can tell. In the long run I think both of us were happier with the longer trek because we got some really nice views along the way and I think seeing Ettal from the path we took was much nicer than the path that we should have took. Ettal is a small village that has a monastery in it. The monastery also has the baroque (I think, it might be Rococco) church and apparently is used as a school as well. The town is small and pretty much the main thing is the church itself. It is as detailed and spectacular in its own way as Wieskirche was.  Also it is Catholic. When we finally got in town we stopped at a cafe and I had a water and Sid had a coffee and an applekugel that looked really good. If I hadn't had my giant lunch I might have tried it also. After that we visited the church quickly and I took a  few pictures of it then we found a place to buy some more bottled water for the walk back. This time we took the correct path back and it was the basic 3 miles it was supposed to be. This trek took us until almost exactly 5pm so I used the time before dinner to quickly wash up again and to then write this on the balcony. The weather was still perfect out and there was a nice breeze blowing to make it even nicer. The bees still like me but I guess I am learning to deal with them.

At 6pm I went down to dinner and had a breaded fish that I was told was a pike style fish that was excellent. I accompanied with a Hacker-Pschorr double bock beer named Animator that was really enjoyable, in fact I had 3 before the night was over. 8.9% alcohol which ain't bad for a double.The soup starter was a chicken rice soup that Sid said was a new experiment for Peter who is actually the chef these days. In my time with Sid I learned a lot more about the dynamic. Erik is Peter's father and Peter is the chef. Erik definitely speaks better English than Peter. Sabine is Peter's either wife or girlfriend and is the main waitress here. She is really sweet and fun to talk to. So I think technically Erik is the owner but is in his 70s.It sounds like the survival of the hotel is a bit precarious and a lot of that may be due to their location which is outside of the center of town and up a hill.  It would be a sad thing because while the hotel is not a 4 or 5 star establishment it is clean and they are so nice, friendly and helpful that I want them to be successful on that merit. I hope they can continue on. If you ever consider visiting this region please look up the Hotel Friedenshoehe. I mean that sincerely.  Sid had dinner with Sebile who is a local area actress who was taking him to the theater tonight. She was a very nice woman who spoke enough English that we chatted through dinner though she said she lost a lot due to lack of usage. All the same she spoke English very well. I had a coffee before my third beer and decided I wanted that last brew before retiring.  While I had that our Venezuelan guest came in from his hike after class. His name is Juliano.  He hiked Laber but did not reach the top. Technically he was 5 minutes late for dinner but of course they were nice to him. We chatted a bit and then he headed off to bed so he could wake up for his class and I talked to Sabine and Peter for a while before heading off to bed myself. I had a very active day in which I accomplished a lot and a very enjoyable night as well.

Germany Day 3

Today was the day I had decided would be my visit to Neuschwanstein Schloss. I have to admit when I woke up the weather looked a bit grim and I am sure it had rained a couple times in the night as well but I was told the weather would be good and it would not be a bad day to do it. I had breakfast again at 8am because that is when they start. I didn't want to miss the coffee anyway because I was pretty sure it would be a full day ahead of me. I basically had the same as the day before and I am sure that will be the routine for the duration of this stay. After breakfast it was a quick job of packing up the car (which basically means getting the GPS) and then setting it for my destination and I was on my way. I do not think it is hard to get around here but that little device is certainly going to make it hard for me to learn the roads. I am fine with that though as I will be in the area only for a bit over a week. By the time I got started I could see some blue in the sky and perhaps things were really going to get better. During the drive I took my time and I think it might have taken about 45 minutes to get there in all. 


On the way in you reach a church and you have a view of Neuschwanstein in the distance. I stopped there to take a few pictures and then I headed into town. The castle is definitely as stunning looking as I thought it would be. I am not sure if it was that same, "Oh wow," moment I had with Le Mont Saint Michel, but it was darked close. I think the castle being visible from a further away distance makes it look smaller at first view so maybe that limited the wow factor a touch. I found the first parking lot at the bottom of the hill for 5 Euros and decided it would be my easiest place to park. It wasn't very full but of course it was still early in the morning, before 9:30 I think.  After packing up the GPS I worked my way up the hill to the ticket office and bought tickets for both Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau castles. The former is the castle that King Ludwig II spent all of his money building and is one of the best looking castles out there as subjective opinion goes.  The latter is the castle he grew up in with his parents. It was built on the site of a Norman fort if I understood it correctly. That fort had been destroyed in the Napoleonic wars and the family rebuilt it to the castle it is today basically.  In theory it is not as extravagant as Neuschwanstein but it is still a very nice castle.

When you visit Schwangau and book your visits you have to book for a specific time for each castle. The girl at the desk, who was really cute, suggested English language tours for Hohenschwangau at 10:50 and Neuschwanstein at 11:55. Each tour takes about a half an hour. You are responsible for getting to the castle at the appropriate time for your tour. It appears they do tours in German, English, Italian and French (maybe) or you can get an audioguide tour.  I chose the English tours of course. When you get to the specific castle the entry is automated. Your ticket has a barcode on it and they have a automated ticket booths which will only let you enter if your tour is active. When your tour number shows on the screen at the right time for your tour you barcode your ticket and the turnstyle lets you in. No need for anyone at the ticket booth. After you get in you line up for your tour number in a queue and then they let you in and you start the tour. As I said, I started with Hohenschwangau. I wandered the area around it and took a bunch of pictures until it was my time to do the tour. The guide was quite good if his voice didn't carry quite as well as I would have liked. The castle is very nice inside and being a completed castle that had been lived in it was quite well furnished. Apparently as with Neuschwanstein most of the furnishings are original.  That is pretty cool to know. Unfortunately you can't take pictures inside either castle for this reason. As usual this meant buying th pretty picture book.  Ah well.  The tour lasted about 35 minutes and most of the details were of Ludwig's mother and father as well as Wagner who stayed there as a friend of the family some many times.  More on that in a little bit.  Overall it was a quite enjoyable tour.

When Hohenschwangau was over I had to make my way to Neuschwanstein. Typically people take either a bus or a horse drawn carriage it appears but many people also choose to walk as I did. Since Neuschwanstein is much higher up on the mountain than Hohenschwangau the walk is basically all up hill. I took the climb as a challenge to meet in order to help me train for the Warriors Dash coming up in June.  I can tell you it was about a 25 minute walk or so and it was non-stop uphill. By the time I reached the top I was pouring sweat because the sun had started to come out and my calfs were burning from the strain. It felt kind of good but it did take a while for me to dry down. Since the walk was quick for me, I had plenty of time to kill before the tour and I did that by wandering around and taking pictures and then just resting in the shade for a while. At 11:55 my tour was up and again I had to barcode my way in then queue up.  This time we had a young woman guiding the tour. Her voice did carry a bit better than the guy from the other tour but she at times seemed to be straining to annunciate. It was fine though, she did a great job. I would say the guy might have been doing his tour longer because he had a fair bit of extra facts that she didn't have for Neuscwanstein. If you didn't know Ludwig had a love of castles and commissioned this one built and the were working on it for I believe 17 years before he moved into it. It was not completed when he moved in. The second floor was to be for guest rooms and had not been finished at the time of his death. The first floor was for the servants and did appear to be completed. You see the kitchen at the end of the tour and it appears to be the ground floor so with the living quarters for the King being on the 3rd floor it was 4 floors up for food.  In any event, the completed rooms are quite spectacular, especially the throne room, though there is no throne in it. It was never built. The room was set up in the style of a Byzantine chapel and the chandelier is gigantic. Going up to the fourth floor you find the music room which is grand and has some incredible paintings. In fact the whole finished part of the castle (sans the servants rooms) are all wonderfully painted in themes based on Wagner's operas. Ludwig was a big fan of Wagner and had actually dedicated the design and decoration of the castle to Wagner. Thus all the rooms had the paintings with themes based on his operas. I am not sure that Wagner stayed in Neuschwanstein, but Ludwig lived there for less than 180 days. When it was obvious he had run himself out of money building castles the government created a secret council and declared him insane thus allowing them to depose him from rule. It is the reason he is known as Mad King Ludwig they say. 3 days after he was removed from power he died under mysterious circumstances, it sounded by drowning in a lake. They say know one knows if it as suicide, murder or an accident to this day.

After completing the tour of the castle I had a hasty lunch of a sausage on a bun and a beer that was moderately forgettable if 4.9% alcohol. After that I took some pictures from a small supsended platfrom in front of the castle then I walked up and around to the Marienbrucke bridge (not sure I spelled that correctly). The bridge is over a waterfall and gives an incredible view of the castle. It again was mostly uphill to get there but was not quite as far a distance between the two castles. I took quite a few pictures there hoping that at least one or two of them do the place justice. The bridge is metal with wooden planks running as floorboards. The planks were often very bouncy and flexy and it was a bit disconcerting for one afraid of heights. I did however manage to stay on it for quite some time and didn't skitter off at the first wierd bounce, so I felt good about that. I crossed it to the other side and then back again in the time there. I believe there are other paths that could be followed in the region but without a great map I wasn't going to risk sending myself far out of town by accident so I just worked my way back into town when I was through with the bridge. On the way down I stopped and got an ice cream at a cafe along the route. I had a choco-coconut flavored ice cream in a waffle cone. It was quite good and reminded me of a chocolate coconut donut, my favorite type of donut. When I was back in town it was a bit after 3pm so I decided to do the souvenir shopping I needed to do and then got back to the car, paid my 5 Euros and drove out of town.

On the drive back I got stuck behind a tractor being followed by a truck. They do allow passing on these two lane roads but it is all windy and in the forest a lot of the way so I really didn't get a chance to get around them. Fortunately I had already made up my mind I was going to detour to Wieskirche on the way back because it was still before 4pm. So when I made that turn the tractor and truck stayed straight. The detour couldn't have been more than a mile and a half. The Wieskirche is a huge baroque style church. It is really massive looking from the outside. I am not sure it rivals Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome but I am sure that it is another quite stunning use of parishoners' money.  Apparently the Bavarian region is Catholic in general and this church is Catholic. It felt Catholic to me. It is free to visit and they don't appear to mind taking pictures so I did leave a couple Euro donation. If they want to charge me to get in in the first place I might skip but if it is free to get in I can donate, if only to keep the place up.  I didn't really spend a huge amount of time at the church but appears all there really is to see around Wies so after the visit I packed back up and drove back to the hotel for the evening. Since the food in the hotel has been good and it keeps me from having to worry about drinking and driving I figure it is the best that I try to eat here each night. So far I have enjoyed it.  At the hotel I was a bit early for dinner but got out on the balcony for my room and set about writing this. It is a beautiful night out and if it weren't for the bees that liked the flowers in the flowerboxes on the balcony it would have been perfect. Still they only bothered me a little bit and I can't tell if they are stinging types or not though one definitely enjoyed getting in my face while I was typing. All the same I don't think it bothered me too much or I would have moved inside to continue. 

I went down for dinner basically right on time. No nap today because I arrived at the hotel at around 5pm. I spent a few minutes just standing on the outside portion of the porch watching the locals cut the huge field of hay and spread it around until the waitress showed up. It was not the normal waitress who is Sabine, but instead Jeannette who is a neighbor apparently.  All the same the service and food were excellent. I had to Koenig Ludwig Weissbier Dunkels to accompany a rolled meat roast stuffed with pickles and onions and bacon, spaetzle and mixed vegetables. The food was excellent and I found the spaetzle really grew on me the more I ate them. If you are unaware they are basically the German answer to pasta being a dough that is strung through a press and boiled. In the brown sauce from the meat they were very tasty. Along the way Sid and the guest who is here for the Nato school who is from Venezuela originally and lives in L.A. right now all talked about various subjects. It was a beautiful night out and a very enjoyable evening. The weather was perfect from about noon on though I guess it was warmer in Oberammergau than it was around Schwangau where I was most of the day. Sid said it really got too warm with the sun. By the time dinner had come though the temperature was just perfect. I'd guess around 22C or and no wind.  After the dinner I finished off my second beer slowly and then had the dessert and a coffee. The dessert seemed to be a peach cobbler type thing without the crumble. I am not sure what it was called because I never saw the menu for the day. They didn't have it ready at breakfast and I ordered based on description before I left for the day. It was also quite good. We talked long after we were all finished eating. It is always great to get different perspectives on life and the world. It reminds me that for all the people in the world there really are a lot of persons out there. I differentiate the two. People as a group and persons as individuals.  Life would be awful if we only acted on the will of the group rather than as individuals. But enough philosophising. I definitely like it down here in this corner of the world. I can see why Sid keeps coming back so often very easily.  Neuschwanstein was definitely the reason I came to this region, but it is obvious there is something beautiful about the whole area.

When I get to post them there will be around 280 pictures from today.

Germany Day 2

Today started out late by Tom standards and I might continue that for the remainder of the trip. I am not sure. Breakfast starts at 8am which is late for me, but since they have good coffee I may as well aim for it each day. After getting cleaned up I found the computer for the internet. Fortunately I had made a text file of my writing before I even got to the computer so though I was having a difficult time with the QWERTZ keyboard I really only had to worry about it a few times. The real challenge was in also trying to figure out what meant what in German. I can figure out Kopiern, but there are many choices that one takes for granted on a computer. I think if it was Windows I'd not even have to worry about what it says because I know where things are in Windows. Heck I even turned on showing file extensions on my Ukrainian student's computer and it wasn't even in our lettering scheme let alone English.  

In any event I was able to past in my post and get on to breakfast which was continental in style as I expected and had a ham and swiss cheese sandwich along with yogurt, fruit cocktail and a peach to go with the coffee. I told the waitress whom I suspect is one of the owners along with Erich the chef that I didn't need the milk and sugar for my coffee because I drink it black. She said to me, "In Germany we have a saying that you drink your coffee like your the color of your soul." I agreed mine was probably black.  She joked she drinks hers very white. After breakfast Erich found me and gave me all sorts of maps and detailed information about the area. It was very nice of him to spend time to explain things and I used his advice as soon as I was off on my way.

I had decided I would just stay around the Oberammergau region for the day and not bother to drive anywhere. He had told me some good ideas for walks and I started with what seemed the simplest. Apparently King Ludwig had given the town a statue of the crucifix after seeing their passion play here and that was just up the hill from the hotel about a 5 minute walk. At the time it was the largest single piece sculpture in the known world and was made of a German soft marble. The statue of the crucifx stands over 12 meters tall. There are statues on either side as well each done from single pieces of rock.  It is in very good shape and you can see it from some areas of the town as well I found out later on in the day.  After the statue I decided to follow the nature trails that he had pointed out for me and walked along to the mountains near the hotel and away from it. I managed to find enough solitude to relieve my bladder along the trail and then around towards a stream or river (not really sure what to call it, too small to be a river I think) along its course for about 4km until found a bridge to cross over and could walk the trail on the other side. I didn't walk my normal full speed because there was a lot to see and there was no real rush for it. I wanted it to be a fun day but also partially a lazy day though my idea of lazy is still more active than most people I think. Anyway, I made my way into Oberammergau proper and strolled around the town for a while and found the building where they hold their passion play. Apparently they do this every so many years and it is a very big deal when it happens. Obviously being past Easter it was not something going to happen right now. It was obviously closed when I got there though I think a tour may have had access to get inside. During the amble about town I visited a few gift shops to get ideas for later in the trip though of course I didn't feel it urgent to buy right now since I have many days around here.  At around noon, 3 hours into the day of walking, I stopped at cafe to have lunch. They had a limited English language menu but I was happy with what I chose which was a cream of potato soup and grilled trout with parsleyed potatoes and salad.  I accompanied with 2 beers that were a bit watery in flavor for my taste but might have had a better alcohol content than I was expecting. The beer, named Hacker-Pschor, was from Munich and was very pale.  After eating I found a place to get a small ice cream cone, having caramel ice cream then wandered around town for a bit longer.

Eventually I decided I would go up to Laber which is a mountain that has a cable car, gebahn, to the top. I figured it would be another good test of my fear of heights and I was hoping there would be some nice views up there.The walk to the gebahn was not long but it was all uphill and was fairly enjoyable. I kid you not when I say that the second I stepped inside the building it started to pour out. I was totally not expecting it though it had been getting cloudier as the day went on. Honestly the morning was perfect sunny and warm weather. So by the time it was my turn to ride the car I thought it would still be raining. It wasn't though. Not sure if that would have added to the effect. I think it would have. I shared the ride with a German couple where the wife spoke some English and an elderly German woman, someone who must have been her grandson and a pointer that was very upset to be stuck still for as much time as he had to endure. He whined a lot during the ride. I felt bad for him.  After we got to the top I set about taking pictures of the views and maybe about 10 minutes into that it started to rain again. Looking at the sky it was apparent it was going to continue to rain on and off and instead of walking down the mountain which I had tentatively thought of beforehand I opted to take my return ride back down in the cable car. Mainly it was getting into real bursts of downpour and I was wearing shorts and unprepared for out and out rain. I didn't want to soak my feet or destroy my camera mostly. So when I rode down I was solo which was something that added to the fear effect concept a bit but was not really all that bad. There were a couple points where some strong gusts of wind pushed the car about a bit and I was mainly glad when the trip was over.

After the cable car rides I walked back into downtown and wandered around a bit more but the rain was finding its way into the town as well as it was in the mountains so I opted to go the drier path and head back to the postage stamp sized room to write out some of this. I opened up the door to the balcony though to let some air in and relaxed after I was done writing before dinner. I had some time to kill and managed to sneak in a short nap.

Around dinner time I ran downstairs and did a quick check of my email then headed into the dining room. I had already agreed that I would have dinner at the hotel and I was going to have the pot roasted oxen with horseradish sauce and boiled potatoes with peas and carrots. The starter was a vegetable soup that had incredibly finely minced vegetables in it and was quite tasty. For beer I had more of the beer, Hacker-Pschorr, I had in the afternoon and was able to read the bottle and find out it was 5% alcohol by volume, so yes it was definitely a stronger beer than I was expecting. I had two of those, they came in Grolsch style bottles with the resealable stopper top though brown glass.  The oxen was very nicely done and the horseradish sauce was creamy and mild and actually went really well on the potatoes as well.  I enjoyed the meal very much and only left behind one wedge of potato and a little bit of the peas and carrots.  I got my second beer a bit late in the meal and rather than rush it I decided to take my time and enjoy it before moving on to dessert. In the meantime a fellow guest came in and we started talking. His name is Sid and he's from Montpelier, Vermont. He has been coming to this region for a very long time and it was interesting to talk to him. He gave me some more good advice on things to see around here. He is friends with Erik as I am sure visiting the same place over many years will definitely help along. We talked about politics and travel and many other things and along the way I had an ice cream dessert and a coffee that were both very good. Some Americans from Alabama came in for dinner in the time frame and things got a bit loud at times but overall it was a very nice night. The rains eventually let off and the sun across the mountain behind the hotel was truly spectacular to look at. I should have opened the door to the veranda and taken some pictures of it but hopefully I will get a similar chance later in the week. In all it was a very enjoyable night and I spent several hours downstairs just hanging out. After I settled up the bill it was on to the room to complete the post and get my pictures downloaded to the laptop and backed up externally.

I can say today was more like I am used to where I took around 240 pictures. The prior days really limited totals had me down a bit. This is more the picture taking Tom I know.  As mentioned before I will have to post them when I get home.

Luxembourg Day 2 - Germany Day 1

I sort of think the best way to represent today is to consider it like in an Indiana Jones film. There is  map in the background and a red dotted line that goes across the stages of my travel. It was the better part of 11 hours of travel from start to finish, so needless to say it is basically all I did for the day.

I woke up at a 6am in order to get breakfast at 7 when the hotel breakfast buffet opened. I got cleaned up and mostly packed up. I should point out that this was the second shower in a row with only a half wall for water stoppage which meant that I crammed myself into the corner again so as not to soak the whole bathroom. The extra bonus was the half wall was not properly sealed to the top of the tub. After that it was down to breakfast. It was a typical European continental style breakfast where I chose have a sandwich with ham and a sandwich with cheese and some yogurt. I had an orange juice and two cups of coffee. The breakfast was included in the room rate.

After I finished eating I headed back upstairs completed my packing and checked out of the hotel. The few minutes it took to get to the train station were very easy. It was definitely going to be a nice day in Luxembourg. I sort of wished I had chosen to stay one more day before my epic train rides to Munich then on to my hotel in Oberammergau.  Nonetheless I had to go so there was not much else to do unless I wanted to reach my hotel at some ungodly late hour. I found the ticket office and got a schedule of how to get to Munich.  I needed to get on the 8:22 to Cologne and then from there I could switch to the 11:55 to Munich.  The scenery at the start of the first ride was very stunning and everything I would expect old fashioned Germany to look like. As it went further in towards Bonn and Cologne it got more industrial. I guess I wasn’t surprised at that.  During the ride I watched The Fighter on my laptop and quite enjoyed it. I ended up sharing a 1st class booth with two elderly German women and a mentally handicapped man for the majority of the trip. They didn’t really speak English and I don’t speak German so we really just nodded at each other a few times. Getting out of the train I met a German woman who lives in Melbourne now as she asked me to help another lady take her gigantic bag off the train which of course I did.  She helped me find my train to Munich.

In Cologne I was to make a switch to the 11:55 to Munich which turned out to be 21 minutes late.  Leave it to me to make the German train system late. I have been told that it never happens. I think there were issues with the first train they wanted us to use and they had to switch it out or something. It is what looked like happened anyway. Since there was a delay I chose to buy a sausage at the stand on the train platform as my lunch then wandered out to where the first class cars were supposed to be. After a while the train showed up. Once on our way I started to watch a Japanese movie from 2005 named Starfish Hotel. It was strange but definitely felt related to a Haruki Murakami book I had read before. I really liked the rabbit guy. I suppose he was sort of the sheep guy in the Murakami book.  After that I still had maybe an hour and a half of battery life on the laptop but decided it would be best to just relax rather than try to squeeze another movie in. There didn’t appear to be any power outlets in the car. Along the time in the train it appeared we were going to make up the majority of the late departure.  By the time we were on the second last stop we were only 5 minutes later than we were supposed to be, but then as we neared Munich an announcement came over the intercom, in German only of course but I could make out the gist of it, and we had to delay so we would be over 20 minutes late. I think it was due to having to wait for another train using the same track we needed. It meant we lost all the time we had regained. I was not on a time budget but this only lengthened the travel of course.

When we arrived in Munich I asked how to get to the airport and I had to take a subway, the S8 to the airport.  It was just downstairs and easy to find. The train arrived a minute after I got there. It was a forty minute ride to the airport that was basically uneventful. It was obvious the weather was beautiful outside.  After the subway, stage 3 completed, it was on to stage 4. I found the rental desk relatively easy and was able to get my car sorted out in fairly short order. I took an automatic this time so as not to add to the stress. I knew I was coming to another mountainous region and I didn’t feel like making myself not like the place because of my car. I ended up with an odd green Opel Astra. It only had 171km on it before I started to use it. No picture for today due to the timing explained soon.  It took about an hour and a half to get from the airport to the hotel. It was basically all highway driving. I was driving 90mph for some of it but there was also spots of construction that had me lower than 50.  All the same since it was Saturday the traffic through Munich and to the south was fairly light. It does mean I need to be aware how long it is going to take to get back to the airport.  Along the drive I ran into a few bouts of rain, a couple of which were very much the downpours which also slowed me up a bit.

I got to the hotel around 7:30pm. It was still light out but the weather was playing around so it was cloudy.  I checked in and found that dinner was technically until 8pm but they would serve me because I was late, the check in took a few minutes so it was probably already 7:50 by the time I got to eat. The  chef is the person who checked me in. This place is a small village bed and breakfast type place. The name is the Hotel Friedshoehe (I don’t do the umlaut so well). I am sure it is family run and they speak English well. He told me they have guest specials for dinner and suggested I have the pork leg, a very traditional Bavarian meal. I agreed to that and quickly stuffed my belongings in the room and headed down to the porch where they serve dinner. The place is very cute. I need to point out my room is smaller than a mailbox but the cost was about $30US a night. I am not going to complain at that. I do have a private bathroom but as I expected the internet is going to be limited.

I had a Koenig Ludwig Dunkel Bier (which is a dark beer) to start and they served a soup with some form of meatballs as part of the meal. They were a very pale meat so I suspect it was probably either veal or chicken. I can’t really be certain. The soup was good if a touch salty (not badly, I quite enjoyed it, I also hadn’t had anything since that sausage in Cologne before noon and it was basically 8pm).  The pork leg came out and it was huge and juicy and tasty. I loved every bite of it even when I had eaten too much. I swear there was no way I could manage to eat the whole thing. It was just too big. They served it with steamed dumplings and red cabbage which was not overly sweetened. I loved this meal honestly. I am sure being hungry to start helped, but everything was excellent. After finishing I followed with just a coffee that was a normal coffee and very enjoyable. Possibly the best cup of coffee I have ever had in Europe (though of course that is not hard to do being I don’t like Italian style which is everywhere out here).  My expectation is that the pictures of the pork leg would make a couple people I know jealous.

From there it was up to the room to sort out my stuff and settle for the night. It was a long day of travel and I was exhausted by the time I started to write this.  All the same I think it was a good day. Rail travel is so much more interesting than air travel. I really believe that, even with the delays.

Pictures will have to be posted when I return it looks. Sorry, I am working on a Ubuntu computer in the lobby of the hotel with a QWERTZ keyboard which is killing me...

The Other Thing About Trains Out Here

In Japan they have trains that are very on time. That much I have mentioned before I am sure and then I also have mentioned how cynical the train system here is that it actually has a box for how many minutes the train is going to be late right next to the expected arrival time if it has a sign for it.

The other issue I have also compares to Japan. The platforms are all neatly labeled as to which part of the platform will belong to which car and where the entrances will be. It appeared relatively similar in Hong Kong as well.  The really nice thing was that I could find the Green Car, or first class car, without much issue. Here in this part of the world it is a complete guessing game as to where a first class car is going to be. For my rides back and forth to the office I was on 2nd class cars. The same scheduled train every day had different setups for how the cars were laid out. When I was trying to find a first class car for my trip to Luxembourg I could not walk to one in time before the train shipped out. My suitcase was too much of a bother to try to get through the narrow aisles of the second class car trains so I just stayed in a second class car for a ride. If the platforms had been labeled or they used some sort of consistency I would not have had to guess and of course guess wrong...

Belgium May 2011 Day 13 - Luxembourg Day 1

Today was the last day of class. The students handed in their tests and I corrected them and happily everyone passed. Because they were a fun crowd it was kind of sad to see them on their separate ways but all things come to an end, good or bad.  After seeing them off in their taxi to the airport (or in their cars for those that were from France) I made my way back to the hotel to pick up my bag which I left there after checking out. Quickly I turned around for the train station again where I bought a bag of chips and a coke to be lunch. I got on a 1:30 train which was an international train so had less stops than an intercity. It was still not a fast train but I got to Luxembourg at about 4pm. I quickly checked into the hotel which was only a few minutes walk from the train station and set out to the downtown area. For the first couple hours it was a bit humid and overcast but fairly nice but after that we had a couple bouts of downpours. One was very brief. The second fortunately happened while I was eating dinner.

Luxembourg is a nice looking city. My hotel is about 10 minutes or less walk from the downtown area. The large bridge that spans the valley through the city is very picturesque. The downtown area is pedestrian only. I walked around town to get my bearings and see what could be seen in a couple hours before the rains started to hit. After the first downpour ended I tried to find a place to eat and chose La Boucherie which was on the main square. I had a rump steak cooked rare of course. That came with fries and a summer squash medley. I accompanied with a Diekirch beer, which is a local brew. It was nothing to write home about but not bad either. Standard pilsner. Not up to the Belgian snuff though.  After dinner I had a sundae with coffee ice cream that was supposed to have chocolate sauce on it but by accident I convinced the waiter to put an espresso in it instead. It was awesome.  A mild mistake that worked out perfectly.  I would definitely order that again.

After dinner I found my way  down into the valley and walked underneath the big bridge. From there I headed back to the upper ground and the walked back to the hotel at a leisurely pace. Perhaps it was still a bit early at nearing 8pm but I had a full day and was tired so I decided to call it a night. Besides the humidity after the rain was positively dreadful.  At the hotel I got undressed, found out I had to get a password for the internet, got dressed again to go down to reception because they wouldn't give one to me over the phone - apparently because they use a random generator, then finally got to get back to the room to relax.

My intention is to leave moderately early from Luxembourg because it is going to be a long day of travel to Munich on Saturday. I can guarantee my day will be little more than transit, almost like I was flying except flying would have been much faster. There are a lot of places for me to screw this up but I am hopeful I will be able to manage it.

This trip to Belgium was nice. I really enjoyed the class a lot. With more time spent outdoors I realized even more how much these people smoke though and that was evident in Luxembourg as well. It seems to be something about French speakers that makes them have to smoke at all times (I am not sure what the Luxembourgers? speak, but I heard mainly French here as well). I don't fully get it. Perhaps it is why they don't pronounce most of the letters in their words.  I should remark on the quality of the trains in Belgium. Some are moderately nice but the majority are old. Also it is strange the difference in quality from station to station. Some have signs that tell you every stop the train is going to make so you don't accidentally end up on the wrong train (which is nice since they never speak English on the trains though I guess I understand the French well enough) and some don't even have signs as to which track is which train, just a monitor in the station house.  It's a bit confusing. I suppose Boston is somewhat like that.  I wasn't totally sure I was on the train to Luxembourg until they announced the stop today. Amusingly I went from a very small country to an even smaller country in the process.

The pictures from today can be found here.