Catherine & Shaun in Europe: January 2015

Hello Again!

Before the memory of Christmas completely fades into the cold grey monotony of January (ahem, nearly February), I thought I'd better get on to updating our blog!

Our trip to Germany felt like a long overdue one, being the longest holiday we'd had since June! Although, moving house on the 23rd of December and then leaving the house at 5am for an early flight was not necessarily the start to the holiday that I'd envisaged... Nonetheless, we managed to relax (I think) and also see a lot of Bavaria, and Berlin.

Mittenwald

We arrived in this cute little Bavarian town, about 2 hours by train south of Munich and about 5km from the border with Austria, on the afternoon of Christmas Eve. We had a traditional Christmas menu for dinner at a lovely restaurant up the road from our Pension (Christmas Eve is the equivalent of Christmas day in Germany, as it is in many parts of Europe). Between our lack of German and the waiters limited English we weren't entirely sure what we were eating, but it tasted great all the same! We eventually figured out that what the waiter explained to be a big white bird was actually Goose, and not swan... We were also introduced to another German tradition, where if a restaurant is filling up (and even if it isn't), they will seat another couple at your table - even if it was only a small four-person table to begin with! Ergo, an awkward conversation with two snooty old German's not interested in practising their English!

On Christmas Afternoon we were blessed with some snow. I realised that I'd never actually been in falling snow before. I felt (and admittedly, behaved) like a small child. It was fun! The only problem was that it was cloudy, so we never got a chance to take the cable car up the mountain.

So much snow!

Fussen

Our next port of call was another small Bavarian town, Fussen. This town is close to the magical castles of King Ludwig II, whom some of you will know as either the mad King, or the Fairytale King of Bavaria. We took the train from Mittenwald all the way back to Munich then across to Fussen. We arrived in the late afternoon, having to fight the hoards of tourists pushing their way onto the train on their way back to Munich after visiting the castles. We eventually found our way to the hostel where we had a Peruvian themed room complete with a loft bed! I'm not sure if Peruvian people sleep in loft beds, but I'm not sure I'd recommend it. It was hard to get up and down, plus I banged my head several times while trying to get my bag from underneath!

Anyway, we went out for dinner to a medieval themed restaurant (so far this has been a very themed day), this time we got to wear a bib (!) and Shaun got to drink out a ceramic stein, which pleased him greatly. The food wasn't bad, although I should have just opted for meat because the sauerkraut scrolls I got we're not at all appetising! The best part of the evening was the schnapps, followed by the server pouring more schnapps down your throat from a little barrel until you asked him to stop. I thought Shaun was going to drink them dry!

The next day was an early start to get up to the castles. Thankfully we arrived on the second bus up and only had to wait about half an hour in the cold before the doors opened to buy the tickets. It was freezing and snowing, which unfortunately also meant it was cloudy... The first castle Hohenschwangau was the castle where the mad/fairytale king and his brother grew up. Apparently Crown Prince Maximilian was hiking in the woods and found the ruins of the castle built in the 1200's by the Knights of the Swan that had been destroyed by Napoleon and decided he liked it so much that he bought the ruins, rebuilt the castle (then called Schwanstein, stone of the swan) and moved there with his wife. His sons were Ludwig and Otto. Ludwig (II) built Schloss Neuschwanstein (new stone of the swan) and renamed the old castle to Schloss Hohenschwangau (Swan County Palace according to Wikipedia). Schloss Neuschwanstein took 17 years to build and not all of the rooms were completed (still aren't). I think he spent a bit much money... He had a cave in his house for goodness sake! I'd love to know the proportion he spent on his own room - such elaborate carving! He dedicated the castle to the composer Wagner, who he thought highly of. Unfortunately Ludwig only got to live at the castle for 172 days before mysteriously drowning in a lake near Munich.

Hohenschwangau

Schloss Neuschwanstein

The guided tour of the castle didn't take all that long, so afterwards we braved the snow and followed the trail of stupid tourists determined to put themselves in danger by crossing a big chained fence to make their way to the bridge overlooking the castle. It was VERY slippery and my Darwin alarm was ringing quite loudly. We figured that we'd made it so far and other idiots in tennis shoes appeared to be going so we carried on to the bridge. The view was worth it, just a shame we didn't have a bright sunny day, because then it would have been magnificent. That was one of the coldest days we'd had so far, and I was well and truly over the snow! We were rewarded with some hot gluhwein in a warm pub out of the cold. That night we had dinner at a small restaurant (also advertised as a casino) and had a fairly tasty, yet not particularly memorable meal, aside from the fact that Germans don't seem to appreciate personal space and the waiter sat another couple down at our very cosy four person table. It was rather awkward so we finished our dinner practically in silence and soon left. Don't judge us for not being social, we were tired...

The bridge we walked to in the slippery snow

View of Hohenschwangau

Schloss Neuschwanstein

Berchtesgaden

We arrived in the very snowy Berchtesgaden and took a taxi to our hotel (Hotel Hoher Goll und restaurant Hoblbank). It was quaint, but no wifi was annoying #firstworldproblems. We took a 15 min walk through thick snow into the town centre to have a look around, it is another cute Bavarian town, this time with the Christmas markets (advent) still open. We indulged in some more gluhwein and delicious cheese toasties and stopped in for a couple of beers. This was mostly to drown in our own self pity, as we called into the tourist information centre and found out that the Eagles Nest is closed in the winter.... How we didn't figure that one out in advance I'll never know! We trudged (or more accurately, pretend skied) our way up the hill back to the hotel and gorged on ribs at the cute little restaurant - it felt a bit like a wooden cabin, filled with German trinkets that they seem to like filling their houses with. It made a nice atmosphere though.

View from our hotel

View from Hotel

The next day we revised our plans and took the bus to Konigsses (Kings Lake) and for a few minutes saw the gorgeous mountains before it clouded back over. We took the boat over to the other end of the lake where there was an old monastery turned into a restaurant. On the way the driver opened the doors and played on his trumpet, and you could hear it echo back.

Once at the other end of the lake we went for a walk in the woods to see if we could find the glacier that all the signs pointed towards. We walked for about an hour (uphill) past a cute little church hidden in the forest, following a few footprints in the snow. Thankfully we weren't the first to have gone up the morning! We made it probably within 5 minutes of the glacier when we came across another couple who said that the trail ahead was completely snowed over and had tried to go further but ended up waist deep in snow. At this point my Darwin alarm started ringing again, and we decided that the glacier was probably covered in snow anyway, and that it was probably a good point to turn around. It was still a beautiful hike nonetheless, truly like being in a winter wonderland.

Later that evening we went back out into the cold and found a place for dinner - Gasthoff Neuhaus, which had apparently been around since 1576. Well, they've managed to perfect their food in that time because it was probably the best of the trip so far! We had pretzel and dips for starter (which we didn't need), Shaun got his pork knuckle, and I had gnocchi. Shaun was in Heaven, I think he may have considered divorcing me to marry the plate of food. Apparently the sauerkraut, mustard, potato dumpling topped off by horseradish made the dish... With perseverance we managed to fit some apfelstrudel and vanilla sauce in, it was delicious! However, I was in a serious amount of pain afterwards - eating that much is not a good idea... I think we will be back to Berchtesgaden in the summer so that we can see the Eagles Nest, Obersalzburg and enjoy the scenery and some hiking in temperatures above zero...

Nuremberg

I feel like we spent about half of this holiday on trains! Aside from wishing we'd just gone straight to Berlin to save ourselves the hassle, Nuremberg wasn't actually a bad place to stop over. Unfortunately, I'd booked a hotel miles from the train station - walkable if it weren't dark, snowy and slippery... We stayed in the old part of the city, which turned out to be good in a way because it was a lovely area to explore given we didn't have much time. First of all we dumped our bags then jumped on a bus to go to the documentation centre - a new museum built in part of the old congress hall, which had a lot of information about the rise of the Nazi party and how they managed to come to power. Nuremberg was seen as one of, if not the, focal point of the Nazi rise to power, and was considered the most German of all German cities. We didn't have as much time as I would have liked to cover the whole museum in detail, but it helped to give an insight into just how one person could rise to such levels of power - it was all about showmanship and playing on the people's emotions. There was also an interesting clip from the Nuremberg trials - disgusting to see their blatant denial of any involvement or wrong doing. Perhaps denial was how they got to sleep at night.

Documentation Museum

Later in the evening we walked through the old city, past the courts where the Nuremburg trials were held. We also walked up to see the old imperial palace and to admire the views over the city. We saw some people (young and old) sliding down the hill, and it made me disappointed that we weren't organised enough to partake in any snow activities on this trip. Oh well, turns out I'm not a huge fan of the snow anyway (probably because my balance is rubbish) but I guess I can see why people like it!

View of one of the turrets of the old city gate from inside a market area

Awesome Christmas decorations

This is the court where the Nuremberg trials were held

Typical old style German buildings near the Imperial Palace

View from the Palace to the city below (and watching people slide down the hill)

Berlin

Turns out I didn't make any notes of our trip while we were in Berlin, so this section might be (thankfully) shorter than the rest, but probably deserves far more! Berlin is such an interesting city, with so much history. It took us a rather long time to get there though, as again we opted for the cheaper, yet significantly slower train.

Entertaining ourselves on the train

We arrived on the evening of New Year's Eve, and checked in to our hotel (where apparently the terms 'double' and 'twin' are used interchangeably) and then headed out to find a pub and get the night started. We found a nice pub around the corner from our hotel, and settled in. On the big screen in the pub we saw images of the party at the Brandenburg Gate, and soon realised that we didn't have a hope of getting even close! We also happened to hear an unmistakably kiwi accent booming across the bar, and eventually made friends with a couple of kiwi blokes who'd made friends with an English couple from Lancashire. They became our party buddies for the evening and the six of us set off into the night to get amongst the revelry. We learnt another thing about Germans that evening, that they love fireworks! The streets of Berlin were something like what I imagine you might find in Sarajevo! It is not an event I'd recommend if you're afraid of fireworks. We made it to the Berlin Victory Column with a view down to the Brandenburg Gate, and decided to part ways before we got lost in the crowd anyway. Shaun and I found a spot with a reasonable view and stood around until midnight. Unfortunately the smoke from everyone elses fireworks completely masked the main display!

So many fireworks!

The following day we visited the Pergamon Museum, where archaeologists had reconstructed the Ishtar Gate to the ancient city of Babylon, amongst other very interesting artifacts from the ancient world.

Ishtar Gate to Babylon

The next day we did a walking tour of Berlin. It was a brilliant way to see the highlights of the city and learn about the history. Our guide was a young American chap who was studying for a Masters in Classical History at the Humboldt University. He was super knowledgeable and also entertaining. Some of the highlights of the tour were the memorial to the burning of 20,000 books and works of many famous German authors that occurred outside the university during the Nazi regime, visiting the memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe, the Brandenburg Gate, the site of Hitler's bunker, the part of the Berlin Wall where they uncovered the cellar of the Gestapo Headquarters, and other significant sites of the cold war. The book burning memorial is worth further mention, it is an inconspicuous glass plate set into the ground which on closer inspection is a window into a white painted room filled with empty bookshelves and a pile of ash on the floor. Very powerful.

We then went up the Berlin Cathedral with a great view over the city in time for sunset. Our final day was spent at the German History Museum and visiting the East Side Gallery, which is a section of the Berlin wall decorated by artists.

Berlin Cathedral

Bullet holes in columns outside one of the museums from the Battle of Berlin

Memorial dedicated to the unknown soldier

Humboldt University

Memorial in the site of the book burnings - this plaque has a quote from German Author Heinrich Heine in 1820: 'That was only a prelude, there where they burn books, they burn in the end people'.

Memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe (Holocaust Memorial)

Holocaust Memorial

Do these look like tears to you?

Part of the Berlin Wall and the uncovered cellar of the Gestapo Headquarters

This was an interesting memorial - the mural on the wall in the background shows how the East German regime portrayed socialism, and in the photo in the foreground is from a demonstration of construction workers wanting better conditions, which sparked the beginning of the 1953 Uprising, where the Soviets came in with tanks to suppress the action, killing around 100 people.

These are the cardboard cars that the East Germans could buy during the cold war. Although, apparently the waiting list was so long that if you put a deposit down when your child was born, they might get a car on their 18th birthday...

The ceiling inside the Berlin Cathedral

View over Berlin from the dome of the Cathedral

Museum Island. The Art Museum had an exhibition of Maori portraits on...

The TV Tower in the background.

The Reichstag. This is the German Parliament, and also the building that the Nazi's apparently burnt down to expedite the fall of the Wiemar Republic.

The memorial to the murdered Roma and Sinti of WWII

Brandenburg Gate

Apparently Napoleon stole the statue on the top of the Brandenburg Gate. The Germans got it back and modified it so that the lady is now looking down, in what one might interpret as a glare, ironically in the direction of the French Embassy, in Pariser Platz nonetheless.