Today was a bit of a disappointment, as the museum Keeley really wanted to see was inexplicably closed without any signs or anything up. This meant we spent the day just wandering around Munich, shopping and checking out the festival again. Unfortunately, the stage entertainment was no better today with the exception of six middle-aged men in fat lady suits dancing to "Girls, girls, girls". At least they were intentionally terrible – the local dance group composed of about a dozen 15-16 year old girls was rubbish. There were less people dressed up today, but still enough craziness to make it interesting walking around. When we finally got sick of the city centre, we went to the hostel and played table tennis, and finally got on the train to Bad Gastein. It was delayed a bit in Salzburg, but generally the ride was typically comfortable as we now expect from Deutsch Bahn and OBB (Austria's equivalent). Once in Bad Gastein we met a couple of other residents of the hostel – a Kiwi called Alex and some rather drunk Norwegian girls. They shared their food with us, which is always a bonus. The hostel itself is a bit annoying in that it doesn't accept any form of electronic payment, so we have to go and find some money pretty quickly in the morning as we have become accustomed to not needing much cash. The other adventure tomorrow will be the thermal baths, the one reason we are in Bad Gastein in the first place.
Today Keeley and I decided to go in separate directions. I took the 45min walk to Olympia Park to see the BMW museum and showrooms. The buildings are impressive, particularly the brand new BMW Welt (World), a huge indoor showroom of every BMW series on the market. It also has a restaurant, concert hall, and a number of interactive displays advertising all the new technology being incorporated in the cars. The museum was even better, and predictably slick in its presentation. It began with a very cool dynamic sculpture of dozens of silver balls on strings that would form different shapes, like the outline of a car or abstract ideas like wind, progress, sportiness, etc. What followed was, from a cynical point of view, an hour or so of exhibits of essentially BMW self-congratulation and propaganda. It was, however, highly enjoyable, much like an exclusive motor show. I saw the history and development of the brand's cars and motorcycles, played with some very cool computer technology (the projector ones that sense where you're pointing), saw touring cars, F1 cars, luxury vehicles, a special section dedicated to the M-Sport division, a cool display that showed every model badge for the last forty years, and an interesting exhibit on the future of driving. There was a hydrogen race car, a concept car with a number of 'practical' developments, and some really out-there ideas like asymmetrical LED tail lights to improve the response time of the driver behind. Interestingly, BMW's design department operates in small teams in a competition atmosphere in the initial phase, so the first response is actually a design competition within the company. It was a very worthwhile experience, but I think Keeley did the right thing by not coming. She would've been bored and it would have been a waste of money.
The second part of the day was also enjoyable. In her travels Keeley had discovered a festival, and by the time we got back there it was well and truly in full swing. Almost everyone (including the middle-aged, almost more than anyone) had dressed up in crazy costumes, from fluoro fur to witches, dragons, clowns, bunny rabbits, blue men, criminals, you name it. There were alcohol stalls lining the streets, huge pretzels bigger than out heads (they even taste like the little pretzels in a packet you get at home), poor quality song and dance on three big stages, drum groups, and a general carnival atmosphere. More amazing than anything was how quickly it went up. There was no sign of it on our walking tour yesterday (the soccer must have distracted everyone) yet today it was completely on. It was great to be part of the party, the atmosphere was fantastic.
A slow start today – we were obviously still struggling from our big night out. We did make it to the walking tour, where our rather annoying American guide took us through the city. We saw a couple of pretty impressive churches, not least of which was the Fraukirche. This cathedral has quite a history – the devil himself allegedly had a hand in its construction; the story goes that the architect made a deal with the devil to allow it to be built more quickly in exchange for no more windows to be added to the church. Little did the devil know that from the entry to the church none of the existing windows were visible, so he had incorrectly assumed that there were none and that the church would be a dank, uninviting place. There is even a footprint in the foyer to prove it. The building was also used as a navigational point for Allied bombers in WWII, and it was accidentally hit. When the tower was rebuilt they placed a gold brick there to mark the impact point.
The statue in the main town square is interesting, with the four cherubs on the bottom fighting the evils of famine (a dragon), the plague (a chicken-devil thing), enemies of war (a lion), and Protestants (a snake). Also in the town square are the old town hall (bombed in the war and rebuilt in the fifties) and the new town hall (built circa 1900 in a neo-Gothic style to look older than the old town hall, and it survived the war so technically it IS older than the old town hall). We also saw the funky new Jewish synagogue, with its mesh top that lights up at night to serve as a beacon to attract Jews back to Munich. Around the city there are plaques and small memorials (112 of them) subtly fixed to buildings remembering people or places that were destroyed during WWII. It's a very different way of remembering the terrible past compared to the huge, conspicuous monuments in Berlin.
There was a cool market that we didn't really have a chance to look at, but will no doubt revisit tomorrow. We walked down the most expensive street in Europe (all boutique shops like Louis Vutton etc) and heard how Oktoberfest first began; the king of Bavaria married his girlfriend and threw a lavish party for the citizens. Everyone had such a good time that they did it again the next year, and it continues to this day. Apparently so many Australians come to Munich during Oktoberfest, get drunk and lose their passports that they set up a temporary Australian Embassy to deal with it during the festival (there isn't a permanent Aussie Embassy in the city). Our tour concluded with the place where Hitler brought the Nazi party to life (he took over a socialist group that he was supposed to be spying on for the military) and marched (unsuccessfully) to try and take the city. It was here that he was arrested and sent to the prison where he wrote Mein Kampf. Interestingly, the place where he did make a lot of speeches when he finally came to power has a couple of lions that overlook the Residenz (government house) on one side and a church on the other. The lions are set up so that the one overlooking the church has its mouth closed, symbolising that people should never speak out against religion, and the other has its mouth open, symbolising that people can criticise the government. It's interesting that during the Third Reich the exact opposite was true.
Braving the cold walk back, we made dinner and did a little planning. It's so time consuming trying to check out the various options for travel and accommodation. It's so mind-boggling, but it has to be done.
Feeling a little tired, but otherwise not too seedy, we got up nice and early for our train to Munich via Nuremberg. The trip was fairly boring, but did allow us to catch up on some much-needed sleep. On the second leg (the ICE between Nuremberg and Munich) the train was completely packed and we had to stand, but it wasn't too bad because it was only an hour. The train had a speedo on the screen showing us that it was going around 300km/h at some points.
Our hostel in Munich is another Meininger franchise, like we had in Vienna. It's very good, clean, has a bit of character and all the facilities. Basic meat and veg for dinner, and a long conversation with a couple of 18-year-olds from Sydney, Ryan and Cam, who are travelling before they start uni (architecture and musicology respectively).
Today was forecast to be around minus six degrees Celsius, and it snowed all day. Naturally, we spent most of it outside. Because we did the Third Reich tour on Tuesday we missed the regular free tour of Berlin so we went back to do it today. Our guide, Lucy, was a very bouncy, over-caffeinated girl from Adelaide. She was also an excellent tour guide, lending the stories a really enjoyable vibe that made the time pass quickly. She did, however, rush the tour along between stops to the chagrin of some of the slower walkers. We saw a lot of the sights of Berlin like the Brandenburg Gate, with its statue on the top. The statue was originally the goddess of peace, but after it was reclaimed from being stolen by the French it was rechristened Victoria, the goddess of victory and her head moved to look down on the French Embassy and Parissenplatz. We also saw the outside of the Reichstag, with its glass dome (more about that later), walked through the holocaust memorial that we only briefly visited on Tuesday (Keeley slipped on the icy hills and hurt her wrist, but it's okay now), past a piece of the wall and the air-force building. The air-force building survived the war (unlike 90% of the city) and was retained by the Soviets during their post-war occupation of East Berlin and turned into their Ministry of Ministries, or head government building. In 1953 there was an uprising of workers because their pay was being cut for not reaching unfeasible production targets, and 250 people were killed by the Red Army for their resistance. We also saw Checkpoint Charlie and heard a story about a man who escaped the East using his wits alone. He went to the checkpoint and claimed his mother was sick in the West, and it was imperative that he crossed the border. Naturally, he had no paperwork but he claimed it had been left at another checkpoint. The guard on duty detained him while he investigated at the other checkpoint. While that was happening, some other guards came and asked the man why he was being detained. He said he was from the West and his mother was sick in the East, and it was imperative that he crossed the border. They released him to the West to "go and fetch his passport", and he was never seen again.
The tour also took us to the site of the book burnings at the university, where there is a cool memorial of a room underground with empty bookshelves. There is also a beautiful memorial nearby to the victims of tyranny and terror, with a sculpture in an otherwise barren room and snow falling down through a hole in the roof. It was stunning to see. Finally, we ended at Museum Island and saw a gallery that was supposed to have "the biggest marble bowl in the world" in its foyer. Alas, the bowl arrived late, the building was already constructed, and the bowl was too big to fit in the door so it has sat out the front of the steps ever since. The last story of the day was how the wall fell – the press secretary of East Berlin had missed a big meeting where it was decided to open the border to the West but with impossible restrictions. He, however, misread the notes he was given and announced to the wall would be opened, effective immediately and the hordes of people that flocked there overwhelmed the guards at the checkpoints. Because he had stuffed up the dates there were no procedures in place to stop it happening and the process of German reunification began.
After the tour we returned to our hostel for a very late lunch, but this left us practically no time to do anything so we went to the Reichstag and climbed inside the dome. It is a very interesting an clever piece of architecture – the glass represents the transparency of democracy, the dome with its ramp open to the public shows how the people are above the parliament, both literally and figuratively, and there is a big mirrored core that allows you to see down into the parliament chamber from anywhere in the dome. It's brilliant.
We made a cottage pie creation for dinner, then headed out on a pub-crawl. It was a really good night, and we met some great people like a surgeon from Singapore who was passionate about theatre. The pubs were all pretty good and we only drank the free drinks, but that was plenty for us to have a suitably good time. The only downside was the very long walk at the end because we missed the last train by minutes. Other than that, it was brilliant.
Today was the day that we (well, Keeley) had been looking forward to for quite some time. We made our way to Tropical Island, the largest indoor water park in the whole world. Located about 60km SW of Berlin, the place is gigantic – inside an old aircraft hangar, you drive past all these old military bunkers to get to it. It is a very professional arrangement, where you get a wristband as you enter and pay for each thing as you use it. There is a rainforest, a big 'beach', a 'lagoon' pool with fountains and spas and a current pool that spins everybody around. Another section of the park is devoted to saunas and relaxing – naturally we ignored this bit. There are a couple of restaurants, cocktail bars, fast food places, a stage, a 4000 sq m kiddie land (only maybe a sixth of the park) and best of all three big waterslides. We spent most of our time on the slides and in the lagoon. The highest slide was an exhilarating seven seconds of pure speed, then there was a very slow twisty slide, and the most fun one was the slide that you rode down on rubber tyres. There seemed to be no rules to the tyre slide – some people were going down in trains of five, others without a tyre at all. We went solo (you often twisted around so you couldn't see where you were going), in a train (our combined weight made us go quite fast) and both on the same tyre (even faster – we flipped off towards the end of the day). It was great fun. The way the park is designed makes it really attractive to families, and although it was Wednesday there were lots of people around. You can even stay at the park overnight in tents – it is open 24hrs. A few people looked like they weren't going to pay for the tents and had set up sleeping bags on the benches at the 'beach'.
By the time we got back to Berlin we were tired from swimming all day (and climbing the steps to the slides – preseason training =)). We made some epic nachos for dinner, had a long chat with some Aussie girls we'd met, and finished with some fantastic celebration crepes to congratulate me for my appointment to U18s Nationals (Keeley felt it was important to include this). Tomorrow we have to go around and see all the sights of Berlin we've missed so far, even though we may freeze to death in the process…
I write again, I don't promise that it will be new and exciting, you have read it all before. For the benefit of the few people who care about my thoughts of Europe, here is the second highlights package.
Didn't particularly like Prague and that is all that will be said on the subject because this is for Highlights.
Vienna wasn't that impressive either, which was a little disappointing since I had such a good time last time. I blame the company. We did find a brilliant music museum 'haus der musik'. It was interactive and very interesting, it was all about future music. Other then that there was snow, eye-seeking snow- I'm serious it would fly up under my hat to get my eyes, very uncool.
The overnight bus was interesting, you don't expect the bus driver to get lost, but he did.
Rome was brilliant, sunny and almost warm, interesting and full of character. The colosseum was very cool to see and I learnt a whole heap of interesting facts that weren't in gladiator. The best thing that we did in Rome was easily the Vespa ride. So much fun, and I hardly drove the thing. Was quite happy looking at the sights instead of remembering to stay on the wrong (or right, as the case may be) side of the road.
Venice, easily my favourite place in Italy and the only place to come close to equalling Poland, in fact I think I would go as far to say that it does. The canals, the glass blowing, the MASKS! I was in heaven. It took me the whole 3 days to pick a mask, but the one I got is perfect. The food was a bit of a highlight in itself. We had the craziest pizza the first night, half Mr. X (so what ever they had left over in the kitchen) and half fried potato (which is French fries). It was different, I'll give it that.
Then we headed to Innsbruck, a ski village sandwiched between huge snow capped mountains. It is amazingly brilliant, every time you turn a corner the view gets better. Innsbruck was the hosts of a winter Olympics, so the place is scattered with Olympic venues. We read in a brochure about bob-sledding and decided that we had to give it a go. I was amazing; it only lasted about 42 and a half seconds but was incredible fun. You go up the side of the walls and are 90 degrees to the bottom of the run. Its brilliant fun! The bobsled is so rattly that you swear you are going to fall out. It was simply the best experience and money much better spent then going on a Gondola ride in Venice, me thinks.
Oh and the food, nearly forgot the food here. We met some 'locals' on the bobsled, they invited us out to dinner at this micro brewery. We were instructed to order off the 'Triolian Specialties' page as this is traditional food to the area. It was great. We both got a meat dish that had pork and beef fried in a pan with potatoes and onions. It was SO yummy. I also got an iced hot chocolate; it was different, but not bad.
We then headed to Lauterbach in Germany. For those of you who don't know that is where I did exchange in 2006. We stayed with my host family, however Johanna, the only English speaker in the family was in Ireland. We have had a good time trying to communicate. It's been hard, but I think that since we are both trying really hard that it is sort of working. While staying here, we have been making the 2 hour trek into Frankfurt to watch the hockey. But it is worth it. The hockey is great fun, we have been missing it a fair bit and it is good just to watch and pick on all umpires and stupid players getting cards. On one of the nights, we went out to dinner with Mr. Stepf and his wife, Mr. Stepf being one of the German teachers from the exchange. It was such an enjoyable night and I am so glad that we made the effort to catch up. They took us out to a very nice restaurant (Italian) in Fulda and then to a micro brewery afterwards. They were such lovely people and we both had a great time. Scott got some good wine and beer while the waitress struggled to give me a vodka and OJ… Oh and he had some crazy shot I am very glad I didn't try because you had to chew on coffee beans.
I'm looking forward to the next couple of weeks, the home run. We have set a date for our return, it gets us in the day before Scott graduates. So the next month is going to get a bit busier, but that in itself is exciting. We finish Germany, 4 days in Berlin, and the worlds biggest indoor water park, I'm so excited. And 3 days in Munich. Then we head back into the Alps for a couple of days (Bad Gastein, Austria and Interlaken, Switzerland) Before really kicking things up a notch. The short way to write it is Switzerland, France, Spain, France, Denmark, Netherlands, Belgium Germany, Home. See you all in a month and a bit, and please everyone keep safe.
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