Day 70 - Interlaken

After one final look around Bern we got on a train to Interlaken with some American girls we had met in the hostel. The train ride was comparatively short compared to our other trips and it didn't take long to find our hostel and dump our bags. We wandered around the town for a bit but were a little disappointed. There doesn't seem to be much to do in the town itself and there isn't even much variety in the shops; it is mainly an assortment of chocolate shops, souvenir shops and restaurants. Additionally, EVERYTHING closes for lunch from 12-2pm so it was a little annoying not being able to go into some shops. On the upside, we did try some amazing Swiss chocolate praline truffles. They were brilliant, and we quickly realised that the cheap supermarket chocolate that we have been snacking on is very poor quality in comparison. The smell as you walk into the chocolate shops is just brilliant, and there are some interesting combinations available. I have never seen so much Toblerone either.

 

The rest of the afternoon was relatively uneventful as we passed the time talking to the girls (Alex and Alyssa) and relaxing. It was all building up to the fantastic night sledding we did. We met at the shop, got fitted with some snowboard boots, and jumped in the bus for a twenty-minute ride up into the Alps. There was only the four of us in the bus, plus the guide, which is normally too few to run a tour but they did anyway. We jumped into a rickety old gondola-lift from 1975 up to the top of the run, then sledded down. The views are amazing, even though it was night, because the snow and stone/trees contrasted so much with each other. Also, you could see the little villages nestled amongst the Alps, which was cool. High above us, much higher than anything else, was the solitary white light of the Jungfraujoch train station, the highest train station in Europe at 3400-odd metres. We are visiting it tomorrow. The sleds are very easy to control and a lot of fun, and we got some decent speed up. The best part was that our eyes adjusted quickly to the light and it was pretty easy to navigate the slope. We stopped and saw a frozen waterfall, and the snow cover was so thick that the railing that normally prevents people from falling into the waterfall and river was buried (so at least 1m deep). At the end of the run we ate fondue and a Swiss potato cake thing and had some beer and a bit of a laugh. It was great fun and definitely something I would do again.

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Days 68 & 69 – Bad Gastein, Salzburg, Bern

The breakfast at Euro Youth Hostel in Bad Gastein was epic. There is no other word to describe it – cereal, yoghurt, fruit, cheese, meat, bread, rolls, juice, tea, coffee the works. It certainly put us in a good mood for the day. We also Skyped with Grandma and Grandpa, which I think they were pretty impressed by. Grandpa was a natural and who knows what will happen – he might subscribe to this webcam thing soon…

 

Our first stop of the day was the thermal baths. The complex is incredible. It is situated just over a natural thermal spring, and around 750,000 L of water runs through it every day. The water from the spring is so hot (around 50°C) that it has to be cooled down before they can use it in the pools. There are four large pools, a waterslide, a sauna, but best of all, one of the pools is outdoors. It is absolutely incredible to be sitting in a pool while snow falls on your head and shoulders. The view over the ski slopes is amazing, and the fog generated by the interface of the cold air and hot water gives the whole thing a little bit more magic. Sitting in the bubbles and warm water seemed to release all of the tension in our muscles after lugging our packs around for the last little while, and we walked away feeling very refreshed. It was a great experience.

 

The chapter on Bad Gastein closed pretty quickly after that – we got on a train to Salzburg after lunch and arrived in the afternoon. The city was initially a little disappointing as so many people we've met had built it up to be gorgeous (a little like Prague I suppose). It was pretty, but not particularly stunning. The castle is suitably foreboding overlooking the town from its seat on the hill, and the old town is actually quite enjoyable, with markets and lots of good window-shopping lining the cobblestone streets. One especially interesting sight we saw was a couple of guys hurling big iceblocks off their six-storey roof onto the pavement below. One of those things we just would never see at home (obviously). The night passed slowly as we waited for our 11pm bus to Bern. The Austrian Eurolines (bus company) website was useless and the number they gave for their call centre wasn't connected. Additionally, the pick-up point was in a back road near the train station, there was no timetable up, and the lady at the tourist info was not exactly reassuring ("the buses almost always go from there"). We joked about having to catch the 12:44am train to Zurich, but the bus did come and we spent a long, restless night undoing all the good work the thermal baths did.

 

Bern is a fantastic town (it doesn't exactly come across as a city in the Australian understanding of the word), and it probably helped immensely that the sun was out and it was a spectacular day. Our hostel is pretty good, with a cool common room and good kitchen. Keeley struggled much more than me with the tiredness so she spent most of the afternoon on the couch relaxing. I didn't accomplish much myself, although we did see the cool cathedral with its 12m-high stained glass windows and beautiful Gothic tower and interior. It is a really pleasant place to walk around – almost every block has an undercover arcade so it would be great if it were raining. There are some really modern structures like the wavy tram stop outside the glass-box Hauptbahnhof (central train station) mixed in with the old, Renaissance and Swiss-Gothic buildings. There's a cool fountain near our hostel depicting an ogre feasting on small children, we saw the bear pits (a pretty sad affair after seeing the good pits in Prague zoo and the Alpine zoo, as these were little more than holes in the ground), I explored the parliament building complex and its gardens, and generally just soaked up the city. It's one of those places that is hard to leave, but would be boring if you spent too long here. Besides, we're going to much more exciting places tomorrow (Interlaken).

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Day 67 - Munich/Bad Gastein

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.

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Day 66 - Munich

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.

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Day 65 - Munich

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.

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Day 64 - Berlin/Munich

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).

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Day 63 - Berlin

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.

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