January 5, 2011 – 7:17 pm ET (6:17 pm CT) on Delta Plane at Gate A22 at Boston Logan Airport :: Are you f-ing kidding me? So I have now been up almost 24 hours straight. We woke up at 4 am Vienna local time for an early flight to Amsterdam. That flight went off without a hitch. Landed at Schipol Airport in Amsterdam and headed straight for the city for an hour of touring. No problem. Get back to Schipol Airport and manage to go through passport control 3 times as we had put our one carry on in a locker there. Also had to go through security twice at Schipol. I even got the "pat down." no problem. Slight technical difficult with the "on demand" video as a result only managed to watch 2 movies instead of the possible 3...No Problem. Land at Boston Logan Int'l airport and go through passport control and customs...No problem (besides Eric's bag being the last one off the plane.) Transfer belt for our rechecked luggage is broken...No problem. Walked the 1 mile or so to terminal A with our luggage and rechecked it at Delta desk. Walked through security for the 4th time today. No problem. Get on our Boston to Minneapolis flight with what was going to be an early departure. Well that was over 2 hours ago. Mechanical problem with the hydraulics so here we sit. About 20 people that were connecting in MSP for Sacramento left the plane so I now am sitting in a row with nobody next to me. That is truly the only good thing. Still sitting here, and I hear the grinding noise coming from below. I sure hope that I can get home tonight. The way it is I will be up for over 24 hours. I really wish I could have slept on my early flights. Oh well.
January 4, 2011 – 6:44 pm (11:44 am CT) Vienna Airport :: Our vacation is almost over, how sad! We slept in...well Eric slept in today and I watched the Nanny (in German of course). Watching the Nanny in German cracked me up because Fran's voice wasn't annoying at all...it was actually rather nice so when they make comments/jokes about her voice the locals here must go huh? We checked out of our hotel and traveled over half of Vienna to get to the airport to check in to our last hotel. It was noon and we were able to get right in to our room...awesome! We dropped off our bags and hoped on a bus to Bratislava, Slovakia. What an interesting experience! Slovakia used to be part of Czechoslovakia and under communist rule until 1993. You can still see the communist influence there, the old check point is still there on the border, the grey concrete buildings everywhere, it is like communism sucked the color out of their life. Anyways they have come a long way in the old city center. Buildings have been redecorated and are very colorful. Some things will never change (like the major motorway they built right next to the cathedral...and I mean RIGHT NEXT, they could have an exit ramp going through the nave.) Also very communist-like that the locals hate is the UFO bridge or the Novy Most Anyways it was a great experience...we wandered around the streets and sights for a few hours. It seems like everybody in Bratislava speaks English. It is great because I know about as much Slovak as I do German! Finally we hopped on packed bus bound for Vienna's airport. It is about a hour each way to and from Bratislava...the closest two capitals I think in the world. We grabbed some lunch at the airport and now chilling in the room watching Simpsons (in German), drinking some Coke and Water and munching on some random food we picked up at the grocery store in the airport. Early morning flight tomorrow....6:55 ugh!
January 3, 2011 – 5:15 pm (10:15 am CT) Vienna :: My feet are sore....it is so nice to put them up and watch some Two and Half Men in Germany. We walked about 10 miles today...I'm probably exaggerating but it felt like it. We had a late start. I'm a nice wife and let Eric sleep in. We didn't start our day until 10am, first we watched Mr. Bean. The best part about Mr. Bean in German is he doesn't say much anyways so you don't have to know German.. We started by doing the Rick Steves walk. We got to see the Opera, the expensive shopping street, St. Stephen's Cathedral (this time we actually got to explore, last night we stopped by during Mass. Eric said that we actually went to Mass, although we didn't stay as it was in German and it was the Gospel), St. Peter's church and Hofburg Palace. While at St. Stephen's we went up the North Tower for a great view of the city. Unfortunately we had to take the elevator up North Tower as the 343 steps of the South Tower was closed. Aw shucks...I didn't have to walk up the steps. Actually the South Tower has a better view but our view was the easier one to get to. We checked out the Treasury at the Hofburg Palace, not as impressive as the one in Copenhagen and London but we could take pictures which is way cool. After a great pizza at the Pizza Bizi, (just like Punch Pizza for my Twin Cities people), we did a ring tour on the trams. The Ringstrasse is where the old city wall used to be. Emperor Franz Josef tore it down and put in this boulevard. After that we ventured out the Schonbrunn Palace. It started to snow and got really cold so now we are relaxing in the hotel. Soon we will go out for dinner and a stop at Mc Donalds to update my website. (See yesterday's entry below about the hotel/internet problem)
January 2, 2011 – 9:40 pm (2:40 pm CT) Vienna :: I really hate arriving in a new town when it is dark. I really like how well connected this city is....and how spread out. After a bit of a ride on a couple subways we made our way to our home for the next town nights. Its an ok hotel considering the prices. The area is close to a shopping area and a subway station. After Eric took a snooze we ventured out into big city of Vienna. The big church, St. Steven's is covered in scaffolding. It seems like that always is the case with me. Oh well. It looks amazing I can't wait to see it tomorrow...hopefully we finally will get some sun! We walked around the city center, checked out the Rathus (City Hall)...wasn't lit. Checked out the Opera House...looks very cool. I'm so excited to walk around tomorrow! We stopped at a candy store where I finally got my Maltesers. How exciting...if you know me you know I love Maltesers. I'm going to have to stock up again on them before I come home. So I'm enjoying some Maltesers and watching some TV. Tonight’s “American TV/Movie in German” is South Park and Futurama. For those that like South Park its the KFC/Men get testicular cancer so they can smoke marijuana episode. Ha Ha. Good stuff...oh and for some reason my computer doesn't want to connect to the hotel's internet so I have to go to the local Mc Donald's for free wifi...and boy is it fast here.
January 2, 2011 – 2:35 pm (7:33 am CT) Somewhere between Salzburg and Vienna :: Our hotel is Salzburg was awesome (for the price it should be). It was a "luxury" Best Western. I didn't want to get out of bed this morning so you know it must have been comfy And the free breakfast was awesome, your typically European breakfast. Croissants and Nutella is always a favorite of mine. We went and heard the hills sing this morning on the Sound of Music Tour. It was by far the best run, most organized tour of the 3 that we did. The weather was less than cooperative. It snowed a lot but it is so pretty who cares. So we saw all the sights of the movie so Eric is happy. I didn't realized how much he knows the movie! He was even singing along to the soundtrack that played as we drove along. I've said it before I love train travel. We are currently on a Railjet train to Vienna. We raced to catch this train so we can get to Vienna while it is still light outside. Very cool. Boy this train is PACKED! We had to walk through 2 cars to find a seat and room for our stuff. Crazy! Lots of skis so people must be going home from their ski holiday. I guess that makes sense it is Sunday afternoon. I woke up this morning to see the Badgers lost in the Rose Bowl. I'm so ashamed! How could they lose to TCU? So should TCU be co-national champions? hum....I hate the BCS. Anyways we are cruising along at 195 km/h (121 mph) we should be in Vienna in no time.
January 1, 2011 – 10:14 pm (3:14 pm CT) Salzburg, Austria :: Wow…three entries in one day, I’m getting good at this. Salzburg is much like I remember. We got here about noon and hit the ground running. We did a walking tour of all the major sights. We took the lazy way up to the Hohensalzburg Fortress via the funicular. I love that ride. Anyways the line was übber long for the state rooms so we decided to skip it and just venture around the grounds. This is by far my favorite place in Salzburg. The markets were still going in the Domplatz (the main square by the Cathedral and Town Hall). Like Munich all the fountains are under wood to preserve them so that sucks but what are you going to do? They had an ice skating rink set up in the Mozartplatz. Unfortunately the glockenspiel is under renovation until the end of January so we didn’t get to see it, oh well. We finally had a good meal which lasted about 2 hours. We were way UNDER dressed for the place but we just look like stupid Americans. Fortunately this restaurant was next door to our hotel (and provides the hotel with room service). When we got done we wanted to get some authentic apple strudel to go and when they brought it out in a plate we were shocked. The waiter proceeded to tell us to take it with us! How weird. Boy did I feel stupid carrying out this large plate of warm caramel topped apple strudel but it was so good it was worth it. Tomorrow is our infamous Sound of Music Tour. I saw infamous because at one time I told Eric that I’d take him on our own SOM Tour but we wouldn’t see the church, the abbey, the gazebo or the house. To which he replied what do we get to see?…I said the bridge and garden…he said what kind of tour is that. The one requirement before I would agree to the tour was that he had to watch the movie with me before we left. He complied so we are going on the tour. Well it is almost time for bed. Tonight’s “American TV/Movie in German” is My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Gute Nacht!!
January 1, 2011 – 10:32 am (3:32 am) Somewhere between Munich and Salzburg :: Well after last nights amazing experience we are a bit tired this morning. We just made our train to Salzburg with minutes to spare. I love train travel, no security checkpoints, no TSA agents groping us. Oh by the way I forget that mention the first day that Eric was subjected to the groping. Ha Ha. They randomly selected people as we boarded the flight and he had no choice because that machine is not by the gate. Anyways, back to Europe, Munich was great! I'm looking forward to Salzburg. Now I'm off to the Bistro for some water. As I said no Starbucks stop for us as we just made our train. Later!
January 1, 2011 – 1:22 am (12/31/10 6:22 pm CT) Munich :: Happy 2011! What a crazy night. I thought I was in a war zone! They have no regulation for fireworks here so everybody had them and everybody was shooting the off. They were even throwing them into the crowd! It was nuts. The square was completely empty as people were shooting fireworks off at each other. You could see the fireworks flying in opposite directions. Everybody had those firework shooter things and they would hit buildings and right back down and then explode. I have to say I was a tad bit nervous. Anyways it was an experience. We thought to come back and sleep but Caddyshack is on (in German) and it just too much fun to watch.
December 31, 2010 - 6:50 pm (11:50 am CT) Munich :: Happy New Years Eve everybody! Wow it is crazy that we celebrate New Years Day at midnight, go to bed, wake up for our morning train and people in Minnesota will just be celebrating the New Year. Alas...Today we finally got to see the sights of Munich. It is very easy to see the main sights in a day as they are so close to each other. We started by walk down from Karlstor Gate to the Marienplatz (Mary's Square), stopping at St. Michael Church along the way. All the churches in the center of Munich were destroyed during WWII and rebuilt. All the churches have photos of what they looked like after the WWII. AMAZING! Next we walked to Frauenkirche (Church of Our Lady). This is the Cathedral for the Archdiocese of Munich. Pope Benny XVI was the Archbishop here in 1977-1982. For being the cathedral it is rather plain compared to the other fabulous churches in town. We finally got to Marienplatz just in time for the daily "jousting" of the glockenspiel on the New Town Hall. After that we hiked up the 306 steps of St. Peter's Church to get the best view of the city. It was your typical hike up....2 way traffic on a single lane stairwell. The view was great! We check out a couple more churches and had some lunch and then hoped on the train for Dachau. Dachau Concentration camp is surprisingly only 10 miles away from Munich. Crazy to think of what was happening so close to this great city. It is a very somber experience. It hasn't changed since the last time I was here 10 years ago. After that we hopped on some trains and head tours the Olympic Park. Munich hosted the 1972 Summer Olympics. We saw the swimming pool arena and the olympic tower which only cost €4.5 to go up a whopping 186 meters (~600 feet). It was dark by the time we go up there so there wasn't too much to see. We could see the stadium but it was dark....you would think it would be some what lit up...but NO! They were preparing a skiing hill for some ski championship thingy happen in January 2nd. Right now we are watching some "Die Simpsons" in German (Eric is so happy...the Simpsons) Yesterday it was Family Guy in German. Next is Two and a Half Men. We are going to head down to the Marienplatz later for fireworks. This place LOVES fireworks. Every where we go we see people carrying huge bags of fireworks (most of which I think are banned in the US) and you can hear them going off all over the place. But Simpsons are done now, time for dinner. Ciao! Glückliches neues Jahr!
December 30, 2010 - 9:47 pm (2:47 pm CT) Munich :: What a long day! We started out by going on an 11 hour tour of Royal Castles of Neuschwanstein and Linderhof. So we were up early this morning and got on a packed bus with the most scatter brained guide. Apparently there were more people wanting to go on this tour today than usually. They normally have 2 busses but today that had at least 5 that we know about. It was so crazy the amount of people fighting to get on buses for the tour. Unfortunately we ended up on the worse bus. For some reason they decided that our bus should do the tour backwards. So we went to the Neuschwanstein Castle first. Well that caused our tour guide to go into frazzled mode as she didn't know what to do about lunch and the other stops along the way. We had the stuck up Chicagoans next to us. And a group from Singapore. I thought Japanese tourist were bad, well this group from Singapore are whole other level. Our guide told us to be back at the bus immediately after our tour. The group from Singapore demanded an exact time to meet back at the bus and they ended up being the last people on the bus....15 minutes late. How frustrating! They wanted a time and then didn't even make it back in time. The hike up to the castle was a work out. It is 1 mile straight up on a snow packed walk. You could ride a horse drawn carriage but the line for that was ridiculous long and we had plenty of time to walk up. The weather didn't cooperate at all. It was so foggy we could barely see the castle!!! My pictures show what we were dealing with. Thankfully after our tour on the way down the clouds lifted long enough for me to get some pictures. So the tour was fine. There are 4 floors but not many rooms are finished as Mad King Ludwig died before it was done. They are such Nazis about photos...not allowed. I snapped a few of the last room when everybody had left. I've gotten quite good at taking secret pictures. After that we went to another castle, Linderhof, which was tiny but still very interesting. It was so cold waiting for the castle tour. Finally we stopped at the tiny town of Oberrammergau for some shopping. Very cool town...google it! Beautiful Cuckoo clocks and a Christmas store. We made our way back to Munich by around 7:30. We went to Hofbrauhaus for some oom-pah music and beer. Very historic beer hall, just like I remembered. We grabbed some lunch and are now chilling in the room. Tomorrow we will actually do some tour around the center of Munich. Because the castles are closed tomorrow we had no choice but to do that tour today (along with the rest of the world).
December 29, 2010 - 8:45 pm (1:45 pm CT) Munich :: Today was a pretty easy day for us. We had a 4 hour train ride (which we almost missed). Long story short, it was slow at the grocery store and hence we almost missed it. Thankfully we didn't, we would have to wait 5 hours for another train and we would have to pay a lot for it. Anyways, the train ride was fairly boring. It was fog/misty the whole time so we couldn't see much. We got to pass through Austria though and around a big lake. We got to Munich about 1:30 and after checking into the hotel we headed to the Deutsches Museum. Funny story on the tram. Eric got up to sit by me and this old guy drinking a beer was asking us questions. I think he finally understood we were from America (he kept saying Canada) and that we lived in Chicago. I figured it was the closest major city that he may have heard of. Very funny he continued to talk to us in German and then when we got off he shook Eric's hand and patted me on the back. Weird! Back to the museum...I remember it being much cooler than it really was, but then again the historically train display, the musical instruments display and the bridges display were all closed for renovations. Shucks...hun Dylan? Also all the information on the displays were in German. Makes trying to figure out what everything so hard....how lame! So we did the mining display, aeronautics and astronomy. After that we wandered around the city center by the train station and the Karlstor Gate (the city has four old gates to the city). Stopped for some pizza and then went shopping at Karlstadt...the Munich equivalent of Macy's. A very huge department store. Everything here is still decorated for Christmas which is very awesome. They have an outdoor skating rink setup in the square near the train station. We picked up some very delicious pastries called Trimmi? and we are now just chilling in the room. Eric is watching the Chelsea/Bolton game which is live from Chelsea Stadium in London. Announcers are speaking in German so Eric is talking to himself as he watches the game. Ha ha. Tomorrow is Castle time.
December 28, 2010 - 10:10 pm (3:08 pm CST) Zurich :: We had a very eventful day today (after a very restless night) I fell asleep at about 6:30 and walk up a few times and at 1am I was wide awake. Couldn't get back to bed. I watched a movie and eventually fell back to sleep. But yet when the alarm went off this morning it was very hard to get up. Anyways, we did a walking tour of the city of Zurich. Not really much to see here except a few churches. In the afternoon we took a tour of Swiss Countryside and Liechtenstein. We spent an hour in Rapperswil, a cute little town on the Zurich Lake. I had the best Quiche Lorraine there with real swiss cheese. Then we stopped a few small towns on our way to Vaduz, the capital of Liechtenstein. What a neat little town in a little country. We made our way back to Zurich at around 7pm and did some shopping along their famous Bahnhofstrasse. Tomorrow we make our way to Munich. Yeah!
December 27, 2010 - 6:06 pm (11:06 am CST) Zurich :: I apparently like right at 6 past the hour. Hum. Well I can say I'm very pooped. I've been up for 28 hours straight with maybe a little cat nap on the plane to Zurich. Eric is snoring away as I'm updating my pictures and facebook status. I've had a lot of Birthday wishes on Facebook and it isn't even noon back home yet! So today was very eventful. Here is pretty much a recap of the last 10 hours. Flight to Zurich was uneventful. Wow the KLM Flight Attendants are beautiful and VERY friendly. Sure beat the old bags from Delta. No issues with the luggage, we scooped them up and head for the train station. Fortunately for me Swiss Rail has the "Happy Birthday Pass." I get unlimited travel today for only 33 Swiss Francs (SF)!! To put that in prospective, Eric's one-way fare to Lucerne was 27 SF. Score me! Switzerland is VERY expensive. A locker at the train station was 8 SF (thankfully all of our stuff fight in one locker). A Big Mac Meal and Mc Royal cost us 18 SF. And that was the small drink and fry that Eric I shared. Yes kill me, we ate at Mc Donalds. We were starving and it was the first thing we saw that wasn't very confusing. Remember we are operating on very little sleep and I don't speak any German and all the other places had their food listed in Germany and I was too tired to figure out what it all meant. We went on a walk...a very long walk if you ask Eric. He at one point said that next time he is going to suggest some where warmer. I'm thinking its ok, except for the slipping on snow cover esclator on the way down to the train station. We got to see the nice sites of Lucerne including the Lion Monument and Chapel Bridge. We made our way back to Zurich and are now relaxing (or sleeping in the case of Eric.
December 27, 2010 - 8:06 am (1:06 am CST) Amsterdam :: The flight from MSP to AMS was uneventful. I tried sleeping but it was going to happen. Eric is proud of the fact he watched 4 movies. So we are half way through our 3 1/2 layover before we catch our next flight to Zurich. Nothing really exciting going on. I have noticed, however, that all the signs, ads, and billboards are in English and most of the time only in English. Have we left the USA? BTW Happy Birthday to me! :-)
December 11, 2010 - Ok I'm a little excited for our future trip that I even created the pages. So hence, the Blog has begun. I've been planning this trip since July. Everything is booked, I just have to wait for Dec. 26th to roll around so this journey can begin!