Sheep Guarding Llama

We are really becoming the go to bed early, get up early family.  In bed by ten last night and up after “sleeping in” significantly this morning at seven.  And it is Liesl, of all of us, who is consistently up first.  Every morning she wakes up and slaps me until I get up.  Day after day.  It is exhausting.

It wasn’t raining when I went to bed last night but it had rained on and off yesterday.  Pretty early on in the night the rain started and it came down hard all night and was still going this morning.  It was a ton of rain but made for really nice sleep with our huge four foot by four foot window wide open.  No screen, of course, because this is Europe.  They don’t do screens here.  We were a bit damp but very glad to have finally had a cool night for a change.  It has been a while since we were not too warm to sleep well.

This morning we got up and went down to the breakfast that is included with our hotel.  I am liking how these European hotels do a dedicated table just for us and have the girls all set up before we get there.  It is a really nice touch.  We were the first ones to breakfast this morning and were concerned that we were there too early because no one else was there but I have a feeling that this is a “sleep in” kind of town.

After breakfast we hit the only grocery store in town which happens to be effectively next door to our hotel.  We picked up some essentials and took a gander at our first Austrian grocery store.  Nothing surprising after France and Germany but interesting, nonetheless.  We are getting good at foreign grocery stores.

Then returned to the room for about an hour and then headed out to hit the town.  Our first stop was a quick one into the sports store to see about buying hats.  With all of the rain it would be helpful to have nice travel hats.  Dominica and I found matching Jack Wolfskin lightweight hats that we liked so we each got one.  I found a jacket that I really liked but it was two hundred and fifty Euros so I decided against that.

Our most important stop was to do the Hallstatt Museum.  That was our one, family must-do activity and we got there before there were any crowds.  Actually, we think that there might never be any crowds.  The people descending on Hallstatt appear to be more of the souvenir and knick-knack crowd than anything else.

We enjoyed the museum and, most importantly, Liesl really enjoyed the museum.  It covers most the history of the Hallstatt region which, of course, is a really big deal as that is what is important about town.  But it has some displays on the local flora and fauna, artwork, politics, etc.  We were quite surprised that Liesl had such a good time.

About halfway through the museum we had a Liesl bathroom emergency and had to leave.  Liesl was terribly upset that we couldn’t finish the museum.  But we found her a restroom and the museum was kind enough to let us back in so we went and finished all of the displays.  We were really glad that we did the museum as there are not that many activities that really make Liesl happy.  She has been a great traveler but the bulk of the trip is her putting up with stuff that we want to do so this was a special treat that it turned out to be something for her too.  We all liked the museum and recommend it.

It was still raining when we left the museum.  The storm drains are backed up and there is standing water on top of them.  The lake appears to be several inches higher than it was yesterday and things that were above water yesterday are not today like some docks are now underwater.  I wonder how often this happens or if this is something really unusual.

We stopped by the bakery on the outskirts of the main part of town and grabbed sandwiches for lunch and some pastries.  The sandwiches, just tomato and cheese affairs, turned out to be amazing as did the cream filled pasty horns.  Liesl got a donut (with sprinkles, of course) which she devoured.  Luciana loved the sandwiches.  What a palette she has already.

We have been trying to figure out what to do about the salt mine tours because we cannot take the girls on them.  We were contemplating going separately, just Dominica while I watched the girls then just me while she did.  I tried to get Dominica to go but she wanted me to go first to see how it was.  So at around five till one I set out for the salt mine tour, which is the only attraction in town other than the museum, which is directly adjacent to our hotel.

The mine tour is twenty-two Euros with our hotel discount and starts with an excellent funicular ride up the mountain side with amazing views of town and the lake.  It runs every fifteen minutes so you don’t have to wait very long.  I rode up on the quarter after one load with maybe six other people.

Of course I failed to bring a spare camera battery and my Nikon battery died the instant that I passed the turnstyle!  Argh. So no good pictures from the salt mine trip.  I took a few with the phone but it is not the same.

At the top of the mountain (this is an Alpine peak, I am talking about) the funicular drops you off and you walk a trail that takes probably ten to fifteen minutes to complete.  Before you start the trail there is a restaurant with amazing views and a high scenic bridge built only to use to get an incredible view of the lake.  There are a few “stops” along the way where you read a little sign telling you some piece of the history that happened there.  The coolest part of the walk is when you walk through the high Alpine meadow where they believe five thousand early Hallstatt settlers from the pre-Roman era are buried.  Fifteen hundred of these have been discovered already and they believe thirty five hundred remain in the ground.

It was a nice walk high in the mountains in a forest with a soft rain coming down.  A good place to walk alone and contemplate the history that has happened right here under my feet.  Amazing stuff.  When Greece was just thinking about becoming important Halstatt was already important, rich and powerful.

I really enjoyed this part of the mine tour – but you can do this portion without actually doing the mine tour.  Which, in reality, is what I recommend doing.  Don’t miss this part with the funicular, the views and the history walk.  If you really want to save money, you can hike up the mountain for free and get some exercise, but for most people just pay for the funicular.

I got to the mine tour station and the next tour was at two.  That means waiting around for twenty five minutes with nothing to do.  They have a little snack shop and a gift shop up there and hope that you will spend a fortune while you are stuck waiting for a mine tour to begin as there is absolutely nothing else to do and your cell phone isn’t going to work up there either.

So from the time I got to the base of the mountain until the tour itself started took an entire hour.  That’s a long time to “wait in line.”  We had guessed that this entire tour would only be forty minutes so Dominica was already expecting me back at any moment.  Boy is she going to be surprised.

The tour started and the tour group, which was pretty large with sixty-six people in my group, started by getting suited up in protective gear and then going through a really tiny little museum thing that lead to the mine entrance.  Our tour guide, Lisa, got us started after about fifteen minutes.

The mine tour was interesting only because it gave you a chance to go into a real salt mine and because this is the world’s oldest salt mine and is believed to be in continuous operation for seven thousand years.  That’s pretty amazing.  The tour itself was boring and uninformative.  I understand that there isn’t that much to tell about salt mining on a tour but this was pretty lame which is pretty much what Rick Steves had said about it.

The tour does include two descents via slides which are kind of cool but take a long time with a big crows.  The longest one in 64 metres  long, if I remember correctly.  It is a long way to slide down on your butt, that is for sure.  It is fun but I can see it being pretty scary for a lot of people.  You can hit around thirty kilometres per hour on the slide.  I only did twenty but there were people going much faster than me.

Most of the tour was painfully boring and there is a lot of walking underground.  There are really slippery spots too and a good deal of the tour is very much in the dark so it is easy to fall in the darkness and the ground and walls are exceptionally hard.  There were a couple of awful videos during the tour which gave no new information that you don’t already know from just being in town.  At the end there is a pretend laser light show (as in, line drawings like a laser show but done using a normal projector – extra points for over the top lame there) by which time you really wish that you could just leave.  The entire underground portion takes around an hour and a half, maybe just a touch more.

At the end of the tour the highlight is mounting onto a real mining train and getting driven out of the mine.  That part was genuinely a lot of fun.  I really liked that part, it was something unique.

At the end of the tour they drop you back off in the gift shop and you have that ten to fifteen minute walk back again.  Then the funicular down the mountain.  If you take a while getting out of the gift shop, which is easy to happen as, at least for me, it was completely packed and I had to fight my way out, and if you walk slowly and don’t hit the funicular just right it can easily take you forty-five minutes to an hour to get back from the tour.

I fought my way out of the shop and walked very briskly and sometimes jogged to get back to the funicular which I did way ahead of the rest of the tour.  I was the only person riding down on my trip down the mountain.  I easily beat most everyone back by thirty minutes at least.

By the time that I made it back to the hotel (which was directly next to the tour – the building right next door) it was a full three hours.  Way too long for how uninteresting the tour was and how expensive it was.  Not something that I would recommend again and Dominica obviously decided that it was not for her.  She was glad that she sent me in as a Guinea pig on this one.

Dominica was ready to go out again after I had returned and the girls had had naps so we went back out again and hit the bakery one more time and got strudel to eat along the lake side.  Then we hit the rubber ducky and dirndl shop to rent a really cute dirndl for Liesl for an hour, from five until six.  Liesl was so adorable in the dirndl.  Unbelievable.

So we walked around town for an hour taking tons and tons of pictures of her in the costume.  She did so well.  She really put up with a lot.  An hour of modeling is a long time for a three year old and she was a trooper.  I can’t wait until we can get these uploaded.

Liesl was so adorable that some tourists even stopped and asked if they could get their picture taken with Liesl.  Liesl did a great job posing for them as well.

We dropped off Liesl’s dirndl, bought some cards with pictures from town on them for our walls at home and then headed off to dinner at one of the fancy places in town at the top of the square so that we could try out a real Halstatt fish dinner for which the town is so famous.

After dinner it was back to the hotel so that Dominica could pack and the girls could go to bed. Once Luciana was asleep and Liesl was happily watching Lady and the Tramp on the iPad I set off to find some Internet access so that we could get some updates posted and pictures uploaded.

We had tested earlier and there is free, public WiFi in the center of town at the tourist information center so, if necessary, I could sit outside on the steps and get some things done. It was cold even if the rain had stopped but the rain could potentially start again so I opted to instead make an attempt at the Heritage Hotel which, I had heard, offered free WiFi for people at the café.

The Heritage has a very nice café down by the water. I got there around nine and there was one couple left there and otherwise the place was deserted. Unbelievable that any town can have so many people and so few people out and about. This place is a ghost town.

I settled in for some coffee and got busy uploading updates and pictures and writing as much as I could. I put in nearly two hours at the Heritage, most of the time completely alone. They were really nice to let me stay for so long as the only customer and not a guest in the hotel. Eventually they needed me to move out to the lobby as they needed to shut down and clean the restaurant and café but they didn’t completely kick me out. They were great. I’d likely use them the next time that I come to Hallstatt. Seems like a really nice place.

I made good progress, getting all of the pics from Switzerland and Germany uploaded, two SGL updates and one Kidding Around Europe update uploaded. I went through three double espressos while sitting there.

I got back to our hotel on the far side of town a little after eleven. It was a very quiet and dark walk through town. Except for the street lights glowing along the lake road there were pretty much no lights anywhere. Even looking out across the lake at the other towns there was very little light. There were some crazy teenagers driving like maniacs through the streets still, however. Hallstatt is a very dangerous town lacking necessary traffic controls.

Tomorrow morning we are catching the ten thirty train headed to Vienna. We have enough time to relax a bit and get breakfast in the hotel before we leave. Hopefully it will not be too stressful of a travel day.

I was lucky this morning and woke up early, very early, at about five fifty. I decided to get up and get ready for the day – no need to go back to bed and we have a big day ahead of us and normally (on this trip) it is Dominica getting up early to get us ready so I knew that she would appreciate if I was up and ready before she even woke up. If I had time I planned to go down to the lobby and upload more pictures if there was time.

By a little after six, though, Dominica was awake and we decided that since we were awake that there would be no point in sticky to our original “lazy” plan of catching the nine thirty train our of Mϋnchen to Salzburg but we could rush and make the same train schedule but at seven thirty instead – the same train route runs every two hours which is really nice. So even if you miss your train the worst thing is that you have to sit in a nice train station for two hours having some coffee or gelato. Not too bad.

So we were running around like crazy trying to go from asleep to packed and ready to head out the door in about thirty minutes tops. We made it and were out the door at ten after seven which gave us very, very little time to make it to the train station and when we are fully loaded with children and luggage we do not move quickly. So it was a rough haul the eight hundred metres from the hostel to the train station. We were hot and soar by the time that we arrived and we made it by the skin of our teeth for the early train, but made it we did.

I grew up a bit of a train fanatic, my father got me into model railroading at a very young age and being into model railroading introduced me to European passenger rail long before I ever came to Europe for the first time. When I went to Germany in 2009 I was quite excited to be able to ride on DB which I had wanted to ride since I was probably ten years old. From my childhood there were three rail lines that I always wanted to ride: Germany’s DB, Switzerland’s SBB and Austria’s ӦBB. We’ve been riding DB for weeks now and we got to ride SBB, which was awesome, several times while passing through Switzerland. This morning I finally got to ride the last of my childhood fantasy train lines, Austria’s ӦBB.

Not only did we get to ride the Austrian line out of Mϋnchen but as this was the huge Mϋnchen to Vien (Vienna) to Budapest express line this was the ӦBB’s flagship, high end, ultra luxurious high speed RailJet. This is the be all, end all of European passenger lines and puts even the Swiss SBB lines to shame in comfort and style. There is no denying that I was excited when we boarded the RailJet and moved into First Class.

First Class means “at seat” dining, which is awesome. The prices were really good too. So Dominica and I both ordered breakfast since we hadn’t had time to even grab coffee at the train station. Dominica got a yoghurt with fruit and muesli and coffee. I went for the smoked salmon with horseradish, a delicious hot roll and a bottle of wine (only available to passengers sixteen and over, lol.) Breakfast was delicious and service at our seats was very nice. We were lucky enough to get a four seater spot with our own table which is the normal way that we travel if possible.

RailJet also really shines at having great informational displays. I first saw this in Switzerland on the SBB but this was even better. The overhead displays on RailJet also give great information as to upcoming stops, planned and real times of arrival, different map displays showing the position of the train, current speed, etc. It makes travel much more interesting. The only thing that SBB did better in the display department was having a “follow along” Google Earth video going along with the train from time to time.

Getting into Salzburg was very smooth. The train was a few minutes late but our connecting train was the next train on the same track so we didn’t really have to worry about being late since the next train had to wait for us anyway.

The next train was not RailJet but still very nice. In this one we got a private cabin which is our favourite way to travel. A six seater couchette is totally the way to travel with kids. The first class cabins are great and unlike the older DB couchette that we took a few days ago that didn’t have any air conditioning this one had power at every seat, working and adjustable temperature controls per cabin, much more modern appointments and seats that convert into beds. Very cool.

One this that we learned today is that in Europe “first class” does not refer to the first class but is actually a term for second class and second class is what the third class is called. True first class is actually called “business class”. Very confusing. I would have thought that business class would have been an in-between level. Having something above first class makes no sense unless you are thinking of it as the zero class.

The second leg of our trip went without a hitch. This has been a great train travel day. We started early, we had great food, we’ve had awesome trains and the scenery has been just outstanding all day. One thing that we have really noticed is that when traveling in Germany, Switzerland and Austria that it is really noticeable that people really go out of their way to help you. Strangers will get up from their seats, pick up your luggage and help you off of the train – consistently. People hold doors for you. People even help moving luggage and children up and down large flights of stairs at train stations. It’s not that we’ve been anywhere were people were unfriendly, but it is really mentionable that there are places where the “go out of your way to help others” mentality is prevalent in everyday life.

We made our connection to our third and final train for the day, again without a problem. This time we transferred to a little local connector that would take us through all of the little towns on our way down to Hallstatt. While this train was not fancy or exciting as far as the train itself it didn’t need to be – this train took us through the best scenery ever. Words cannot describe how beautiful the Austrian Alps can be. Nothing that we have seen in Switzerland or Germany compared to this. These mountains were bigger and the Alpine lakes and little villages are just magical. This is truly the land of faery tales.

The train station for Hallstatt is really amazing. The train comes along this little tiny spot on the side of a hill and just drops you off on a little dirt path which you walk down and then go down a steep trail down to the boat dock where a little boat ferries you across the most breathtaking lake to the tiny village of Hallstatt.

Hallstatt is this tiny village sitting at the base of a tremendous mountain sitting on a pristine lake surrounded by massive Alpine peaks. There are a few villages on the lake with Hallstatt being the only famous one but the others being far more accessible. Even having seen many pictures of Hallstatt there was no way to do it justice. The town is just so beautiful. Both the town and the setting are so impressive. Either would be amazing on their own. Putting them together is just not fair.

The boat approach to Hallstatt is probably the best way to come in to town although the other option is driving by car through the tunnel in the mountain, parking in a parking lot at the top of a steep cliff overlooking town, getting a crazy view down onto town and then descending stairways down into the back alleys so that you meander through places where it feels like you don’t belong and that are lost in time just to pop out onto the main square. So both approaches have their merits. It is hard to say which is really better for the first timer but the boat approach is the traditional one that has been used for thousands of years so I like it best. It is something to think about all of the Romans and Celts before them catching a boat from the same location to go to Hallstatt thousands of years ago.
The town itself is highlighted by two churches. One with a tall spire sitting in the middle of the “ground floor” of town right off of the main square. The other is a less vertical but far more expansive complex sitting on a cliff above town and commanding a powerful view of the village. The main square is the only real open area in town and is quite small. Almost all of town itself consists of tiny alleys, tightly packed houses from the 1500s and later and steps leading heaven only knows where. Every inch of town is old, pristine and gorgeous.

Halstatt currently has a population of only one thousand people in a village that once upon a time had twice that many inhabitants. Now have of the space in town is dedicated to rentable rooms and the town is a purely tourist town but one of the few tourist towns really worth visiting. Even being completely driven by tourism and inhabited fifty-fifty residents to tourists the local culture seems to remain and thrive.

Hallstatt is a very little town but of immense historical importantance. Hallstatt is an UNESCO World Heritage site. As the locals like to say – before there was Rome, there was Hallstatt. Hallstatt was a thriving salt mining town by around 800 B.C. and has been so important a center in Celtic history that the Hallstatt Era is named for it (800 B.C. – 400 B.C.) Hallstatt was first Celtic, then Roman and finally a Germanic town. Almost three thousand years of known continuous inhabitation that is well known and around seven thousand years believed. One of the stores in town has a live archeological site with Roman and Celtic remains beneath it that you can see while shopping.

On our train ride to Hallstatt we met two sisters from Vermont who then rode the boat over with us (everyone from the bus had to ride the boat together – there is nothing else to do if you get off at Hallstatt) that we talked to a bit. We ended up running into them in town several times today which highlights just what a tiny little town this is. We quickly got to know several people like this that we would meet someplace and then see in town over and over again.

We went right to the main market which is quite small but really pretty. There are a few cafes and hotels on the market square. Hallstatt is really interesting because the town is what I like to call “three dimensional” as it is a vertical as well as horizontal city. You have to make your way to different layers to find everything.

We didn’t know where our hotel was so we did some exploring and found the tourist information office – it is pretty easy to find most everything as there is just one main road that is pretty obvious and it starts at the boat dock and winds past the main square and runs down by the lake going past nearly all of the businesses. There are some side roads and hidden alleys and such but mostly they are for the residents and not the tourists so there isn’t too much need to go into them while looking for food or a hotel.

We ended up getting simple directions from the tourist office and were able to walk right to the hotel. It only takes about ten minutes to walk the entire length of time. It is crazy how small this down is.

We got checked in. The hotel is quite nice – our room is huge and they had a baby bed already in the room and ready for Luciana. She is very happy about that. Going the last three nights without a baby bed has been really stressful for us. Luciana needs a baby bed, it really is not discretionary for us. Our room also has a giant window that completely opens and we have a great view of the mountains. Our hotel is directly adjacent to the salt mine museum entrance and our window looks straight out onto it so we can look out and gauge the crowds pretty easily.

The one really bad thing about our hotel is that there is no Internet access. We had been pretty sure that this was the case and it is not a tragedy but after being basically without any the last three days and none the two days before that we are getting a little edgy without it. It would be awfully nice to be able to, at the very least, update the pictures from Switzerland. We are now two countries behind on pictures and videos. I only got about half of the Luzern pictures posted before getting out of Mϋnchen.

After getting settled into the hotel we set out to return to town and get some food. We looked at the Rick Steves’ guide in The Best of Europe as Hallstatt is one of his big recommendations and he has done a lot to make the town famous but when we checked out some of his recommendations one was completely closed (forever, as far as I could tell) and one was apparently open but didn’t have any patrons or workers about so we looked around a bit and moved on to somewhere else.

Before we actually made it out of the hotel some storm clouds rolled up over the mountains and the bright, sunny day went quickly dark and we got to see an awesome Alpine rain shower. There was some slight, distant thunder but it was really just rain and it was beautiful. The temperature dropped dramatically too. This might be the best place every to watch rain – big mountains, glassy lake and lots of trees with those great rain textures of ancient buildings plus lots of little streams in town, the sound of a waterfall – all in one place.

We settled on a café on the main square and the rain had stopped just before we got there. We sat outside and ate, oh my mother would be so proud of me, asparagus strudel! Asparagus is like the official vegetable of the region. All through Germany, Switzerland and Austria asparagus is sold in quantities like nothing I have ever seen. In the US even seeing it in a grocery store is somewhat rare and seeing it on restaurant menus is not too common but here nearly every stand in every farmer’s market sells it, no food is more advertised, and nearly every restaurant sells a variety of asparagus dishes, often with them being highlighted. The strudel was excellent, we both really liked it. Liesl got the local variation on kase spӓtzle which is potato noodles actually made from cheese which she really liked.

After lunch the girls ended up at a knick-knack shop and Luciana convinced Dominica to buy her another stuffed lamb. Liesl then leveraged Luciana getting something into getting a package of eight small plastic frogs.

After lunch we did the Rick Steves’ walking tour of town which takes almost no time at all. He estimates fifteen minutes to see the sights and he isn’t kidding. For tomorrow we have a couple of things planned. The big one is seeing the local museum. The next big one is the salt mine museum which is going to be a challenge because both Dominica and I want to see it but kids under four are not permitted so we have to do it separately while the other one watches the kids for an hour or two. That is going to be a big undertaking. Then there is the ice museum or something like that that is supposed to be pretty cool (ha ha, get it?) If we can fit those three things in tomorrow, we will be all set for Hallstatt. Most people, we think, only do one night in Hallstatt so by doing two nights we really have some time to really get everything in without working too hard at it.

The tour done and our bellies full we walked back to the hotel. We were feeling good still so we walked on to see the part of town that is not historic and where most of the “real” people live. This is technically the next town over but it is all extremely close. We found the village park and took the girls there to play for a while. That worked out great. Liesl loves the sit on bouncing things that all of the parks here seem to have. These were popular in Letchworth State Park when I was very little but I haven’t seen many in the states in decades now. Liesl also had a lot of fun trying a long cable run and we got a great video of Dominica trying it as well.

Once the girls were tired it was back to the hotel. We hung out in the hotel for a while, maybe two hours. Then Dominica decided to send me out looking for food. Everything (and I do mean everything) in Hallstatt closes really early, normally by around five. So if you wait at all to get food there is nothing that you can do. I’m not sure how this is possible but no one seems ready to capitalize on the town full of tourists who are trapped with no activities and no access to food for nearly eighteen hours a day.

So the girls stayed in the room and I went out to forage. The rain had returned so I was under an umbrella most of the time but it was not that heavy and I do love a good rain. I searched high and low and did an extensive walking tour of town hitting all of the back streets, climbing all of the hidden stairways, etc. It was really cool and I found some outstanding viewpoints. I walked the cemetery in the church yard high on the hill, I found the village parking lot carved from the mountain side, I looked into the recently bored tunnels through the mountain – a little off the beaten path is really interesting here. I got some great pictures. Hopefully I get to upload them someday.

While I was out looking for food I stumbled on a shop that was amazingly still open that rents dirndls (the traditional trachten of Alpine and Bavarian girls) that has sizes that will fit Liesl. We have been talking since being in Bavaria that we might need to get a dirndl for Liesl so that we can take pictures of her in it. So this might just be ideal. I picked up the brochure. They also sell, of all things, Austrian themed rubber ducks which, of course, are one of Liesl’s favourites. So I bought her Franz, the lederhosen wearing rubber duck. She will love that. Talk about a weird shop and one that is so perfect just for Liesl. It should have been called the Liesl shop.

I finally found us some pizza from a back alley, up on a hillside pizza bar where it would seem only the locals hang out. I got that and walked it back across town for Dominica. I asked at the hotel lobby if there was anyplace still selling coffee and she said no. Nothing open past five. That is just crazy.

After we ate Dominica was still hungry so she sent me out again. No rain this time. There is a little street vendor not far from us that is surprisingly still open but it is really just a bar with like five food items. No “real” food for us there, but they did have desserts so I got a couple things and brought them back for Dominica. They had coffee there, actually, but no take away cups so no luck. Dominica tried getting coffee from the coffee dispenser in the hotel which is one Euro for a cup and when she used it it was out of cups and took her Euro and threw her coffee away – charging her and then mocking her for wanting coffee. That wasn’t very nice.

The girls played, rather rambunctiously, around the hotel room for about two hours before finally calming down and going to bed around nine thirty. It is easy to go to bed early in a town where we have no Internet access, there is effectively no television and everything in town is closed. It is rather like camping without the campfire.

I worked on SGL until ten but in a silent town it is nice to go to bed early. And there is a wide open window with the soft glow of an Alpine peak at night calling to me. I hope that we get more rain during the night.

Tomorrow we will be focused on the standard tourist activities in Hallstatt. Then we will be off to Vienna. Austria is our sixth country on this trip. Only three more to go after this. Tonight, according to my dad, is the halfway point of our trip. I can’t believe that our huge trip is halfway done. Time is flying by. It still feels like we just got here. I don’t ever want to have to leave. I just wish that Oreo could be here with us. It is terribly sad knowing that he is far away, missing us. Liesl mentioned him today and was very sad that he was not here too. She misses and worries about him.

We slept in some this morning.  We have been debating what to do today.  I am convinced that we need a day of downtime, but Dominica is in favour of hoping a train somewhere to go see a castle or another city or something.  In the end our sleeping in pretty much resolved that question.  Originally we had been planning on going to see the famous “local” castles but the cost is really high to do this and the castles are really quite silly – the one is a real castle but only marginally interesting as castles go and the other is a never used castle built pretty recently and while it is beautiful and kind of interesting it is interesting only from an architectural standpoint and has zero historic significance and the interior was never even finished.  It was used as the master for the Disney castles but that is its most important cultural influence ever and as it is really just a facade the Disney castles are actually more important and just as authentic.  It exists only to be a tourist attraction so I’m more than willing to pass on that.

We had thought about doing Salzburg or someplace else today but that would be a lot of traveling and just to hop off of the train, walk around until we are exhausted and ride the train back.  That is a bit too stressful for us at this point.  Best to stay local here in München for our last day and just enjoy where we are and maybe relax just a little bit.  We will be in Austria for the next four days – no need to go there a day early just to be someplace new.

So we did breakfast down in our hostel.  It isn’t bad but we didn’t allow ourselves enough time and I didn’t even manage to get a second cup of coffee at the buffet because Luciana was needing to walk around so much that I had to spend all of my time watching her.  But the food is decent and Dominica really likes it because they have all you can eat yoghurt and müsli.

Once we were ready to face the day I looked into using the local tram system to get us back to the Marienplatz but discovered that that was too costly and complicated and required so much walking that it made no sense at all.  So I finally convinced Dominica to give walking a try.  She is tired of walking everywhere but we definitely need to keep up the exercise with all of the food that we are eating.

The walk to the Marienplatz really was not bad at all.  Dominica’s goal for the day, however, was to see the performance of the famous city hall glockenspiel here in town and our only hope was to make it for the noon performance as we missed it yesterday and it we would be out of town before it would do it tomorrow.  It was twenty till noon when we left the hostel and it was estimated to take thirty minutes to get there on foot.  So with Liesl in the stroller and Luciana strapped to me we booked hard through the streets to see if we could get there in time.  This turned what likely would have been a nice, casual walk into a practical race, but we made it just in time having to run past the amazing city center fountain that was along our route.

The glockenspiel was pretty cool but not as cool as the one in Bern in the clocktower there.  This one is only about one hundred years old but is more elaborate.  There was a huge crowd in the city plaza to watch it.  Still amazing, though, all of that clockwork movement and music.

Before we left the plaza we took the girls to see the living statue there.  Liesl was a little afraid so did not get her picture taken with him but Dominica did.  So once we have good Internet access maybe people will get to see that.

From the plaza we went on foot searching out the famed public market that is sponsored by the city.  It has the outdoor beer garden that Rick Steves shows on his television show and that people often talk about.  It took some doing but we found it without too much of a problem.  We love our open air European markets and are getting pretty good at navigating them and buying food there so we did that.

We picked up fruits, cheese and some hot sandwiches and headed for the beer garden where you can bring your own food (and everyone does) as long as you buy your beers there.  The city sponsors the beer and puts all of the local breweries on rotation to support them.  A pretty cool idea for the city to do and a great use of city resources.  The place is packed and helps the brewers but also supports the market too making it a hot spot of activity.

Getting beers at the market is easy.  There is a stand in the middle of the garden and you just walk up and grab as many as you want as they have them already poured for you.  The price for a half litre is the same as half the price of a litre so there is no advantage to getting a smaller portion – this is a standard means of not promoting drunkenness throughout Europe but a novelty to Americans where good behaviour is seldom encouraged proactively.

The beer was excellent as was our food.  Dominica and I each had a half litre of the local beer.

After our lunch we went back and hit more of the market.  We found a local maker of Turkish delight so we picked up twenty Euros worth – not a trivial amount of Turkish delight even from a high end, hand made local maker.  I have had Turkish delight before but never a variety of it and Dominica has never had it at all.  This was the perfect place to introduce the girls to it as Turkish cuisine is an important one in Germany much like Mexican is in the United States or Indian in the UK.  Without actually going to Turkey this is likely the best that we will find.  And it was quite excellent.  We had the seller just hook us up with a variety that he picked out.

While we were getting the Turkish Delight, someone stopped and asked us in English what they were selling and we got into a conversation with her – and she turned out to be from Austin, Texas!  We are finding it really amazing how often we are running into people from someplace or another related to us.  Two girls from Utica yesterday, two women from Austin today, a whole family from Denton, Texas last week.  It just keeps happening over and over again.  It is really neat making connections with new people from back home when abroad, though.  Helps to keep things interesting.  We had a really nice conversation in the market.

We shopped for a while longer then returned to the beer garden but got no beer.  We just grabbed some fish from Nordsee, the fast food place that I ate at while in Germany in 2009, and ate it at a table and took the opportunity to use the facilities there.

Even though we had not been out for very long we were feeling pretty tired so decided to return to the hotel.  Today really did need to be a “down” day.  So we took a much more casual walk back the way that we had come.

We stopped at the fountain this time and since it was hot Luciana and I stepped into the fountain mist for a bit and cooled off.  Liesl declined.  I think that she was a little nervous at the force of the fountain.  It is a huge fountain but really gorgeous.  One of my favourite fountains ever.  Tons of water and all at level so that you can walk into it.  I’m sure that on really hot summer days that it is a popular place for kids to run and play.  Today people were gathered around it but no one was actually going into it.

On the walk back we ran into two students from Illinois and we walked and talked with them for a while since they were going our direction.

We had been on the look out for good gelato but never found the shop that we wanted all of the way back so as we passed the hauptbahnhof we ran in and got gelato from the place that we like in there.  The gelato is excellent there but the guy who dips it is really careless and your cone is falling apart before you take your first taste.  So you have to be careful and a double is the largest that you can get there safely.

We got back to the hotel and it was probably heading towards four o’clock.    Everyone was tired though.

Dominica had to spend the evening packing as we leave for Hallstatt, Austria tomorrow.  She is really starting to hate every piece of clothing and anything else that we have with us.  She is also regretting the number of places that we are going.  The pain of moving is wearing on her more and more each time and she is dreading each future move all the more.

My job this evening was to go down to the lobby a few times and attempt to get some updates out and, if possible, some of our pictures.  Our pictures have been backing up on us and it takes me many hours to get even a handful of pictures uploaded from here.  That is both annoying and stressful as we try to get things done while here.  It is veyr hard to do anything when we have to spend so much time doing the most trivial tasks online.  Email, Facebook, Flickr, SGL, Kidding Around Europe… we had plans to do so much and we can barely get to anything.

I wrote for a while tonight and at least got a few things posted.  SGL is up to date and only today’s update itself did not get completed.  I got maybe fifteen pictures uploaded.  A good number considering the pain involved but a ridiculously small number overall.

While I was down in the lobby the second time (I had to come and go depending on what the girls were doing as far as sleeping) a crowd appeared so I moved to the bar area to get away.  While in the bar area some kids came in to play pool and I was in the way so I moved to the bar itself and ended up hanging out with Marlene who works the front desk in the evenings and had checked us in the first night and one of the girls that I had seen this morning at breakfast and one of the other front desk girls as they were all hanging at in the bar.  We probably hung out, along with the bar tender, for an hour.  Marlene was from Berlin and only moved to München recently for work.  The girl from the breakfast buffet had moved up from Lake Constance (or there abouts) and was not a local either.  I believe that our bartender was actually local.  Bavaria is a place that a lot of people move to for opportunities, it is very affluent.  We had a good time, though, and I learned more about the city and region.

Some Canadians came in and joined me at the bar, two guys from Montreal and a girl from British Columbia.  We hung out for another hour or so and had a good time.  They invited me to go out to the beer hall with them but I knew better.  I’ll be hurting tomorrow if I go out late tonight.  And I already had four large beers in the hotel so going out would be a major drinking night, it isn’t like I didn’t have a half litre at lunch too.

So at eleven thirty (yes, that early) I went up to the room to go to bed.  Everyone was already asleep so I just fell into bed.

I woke up to Liesl tapping me on the arm at eight.  “Daddy, the sun is up!”  Liesl is a firm believer in getting up with the sun.  And she believes that everyone around her needs to believe this too.  She has been like this for months.

Dominica was up and showered.  Then we all went down to the “restaurant” in the hostel for our free breakfast that we received for not getting the baby bed that we had ordered.  Breakfast was nice, nothing special.  I brought the laptop down with me and managed to upload all of the SGL updates but failed to upload more than four pictures to Flickr while I was there because the uploads kept timing out.  This is going to be tough.

We went back up to the room and Luciana fell asleep.  Then Dominica and Liesl decided to take a nap.  It started raining first lightly then quite hard.  We looked at the weather forecast and it is rain and thunderstorms all week.

So I returned to the lobby and plugged in my laptop so that I could work on updates and see if I could get any more pictures to upload.  As we have hundreds waiting to upload we are a bit desperate to get that process underway as it might take forever.  And as the upload to Flickr is our only real form of backup of the pictures getting them up there is far more important than just sharing them with family back home.

After only a few minutes in the lobby where I got plugged in and back online, water started dripping from the lobby ceiling and then dripped faster and faster and soon the whole back quarter of the lobby was raining.  It started just coming from one light fixture but soon was coming through several as well as the smoke detector and other fixtures.  The power started flickering.  Definitely not good.

Our hotel, being a hostel, is completely full of college students.  Pretty much all from the US which is pretty silly.  So all you hear here is English and it is not like being in a foreign country at all.  Apparently Munchen is “the” travel destination in Europe for American college students.  I guess I kind of knew that but I really never understood.  We’ve seen practically no American tourists on this trip until we arrived here.  Now they are all that we see.  Even walking the street outside, every conversation is in English and embarrassing hearing hte things that Americans say when traveling abroad.

It is no wonder that Americans think that everyone in Europe speaks English, if everyone comes to just a few places like this that cater to Americans you will, of course, hear English everywhere.  I feel like we are the only Americans who ever go anywhere not designated purely for tourists.  Traveling abroad, which is supposed to be so good for students, is pointless if you come to places like this and are shielded from the local culture completely – wrapped in an English speaking, American catering bubble of protection.  It is like going to Cancun in the hopes of learning about Mexican culture!

Now that we are done with work and school (my grades aren’t in yet but the final project that I did late into the night last Friday has been graded and I got a one hundred on it – so I am glad that I didn’t work any more as at the time I was considering another two to three hours on it and getting no sleep at all that night) I am attempting to task myself with writing roughly ten thousand words per day.  So far so good except for the Luzern travel day and that one was not really my fault – there was no time to even attempt writing that day.  I am getting better at writing on the trains now too.

Being in Europe is really making me want to get back into bicycling.  Everyone here rides a bike and they do such interesting things with them.  They have great pull-behind carts for the kids to ride in, they have different types of bikes that we do in the US, they travel all over from country to country with them.  Dominica and I keep talking about making getting nice bikes, a pull behind cart for Liesl and Luciana, and riding all over Europe.  What an adventure that would be.  We could easily carry as much luggage as we have now on bike, especially if we had a tow-behind or, possibly, two of them.  Two would be nice because we could carry tons more stuff and the girls could either ride together or separately.  I wonder how old Liesl could get and still be okay riding in one of those.  If she had her iPad (or whatever) it seems like she would enjoy it for a long time.  I’m not sure how much weight those can carry or how big of a child can comfortably fit in them.

I did a little research and found that bikes have come a really long way since I last bought one (I bought my awesome aluminum frame Schwinn racing bike in 1991 and my mountain bike was just a casual purchase in 2000 or 2001.)  They even have what are called ebikes now that have electric assist.  That could make biking to and from the office very doable.  It isn’t like my car has air conditioning.  Biking under my own power completely would be a rather sweaty thing to do and pretty difficult but with electric assist and my rather flat commute it might work out really well.  So we are toying with looking into those.  Trek makes electric assist that is supposed to get as much as forty miles without any human intervention.  That’s pretty impressive.

Once the girls were awake today after their morning naps we decided that we just wanted to do a bus tour of the city.  Actually Dominica wanted to do a bus tour and I wanted to walk to Marienplatz where the famous beer hall is and just do that.  But the bus won out and, in reality, it was the safer decision given the strength of the storms that were hitting today.  We could have been caught out in heavy rain rather far from the hotel or one of our destinations.

The bus tour here is the Greyline (is it Grey Line everywhere in the world?) and it is hop on / hop off and leaves from the München Hauptbahnhof.  So we packed up and walked to the train station, grabbed some amazing gelato from inside of the station and went around the corner where the bus was waiting.  Perfect timing.  We loaded up and grabbed seats at the very back of the top of the bus so that the girls wouldn’t have to be quite so contained.

Unfortunately because of the rain and general logistics in München we have very few pictures to share.  Sorry about that.

München is, as we saw on our bus trip, a truly gorgeous city.  It has some amazing history and is one of the larger cities of Europe with a metro area of 5.6 million – making it nearly the same as the metro areas of Houston, Philadelphia or the Dallas – Fort Worth metroplex.  A big, big city.

The history and architecture, of which München is often touted, really is something to behold and a large number of fountains.  There seems to be one at every turn.

We rode for about fifty minutes and got dropped off at the Marienplatz and made our way directly to the city’s landmark Hofbräuhaus beer hall.  We got in and got to see the live Bavarian band, including accordion player, play for a bit although they were on break for the majority of our meal.  Very cool, though.  We got real Bavarian food – Dominica got dumplings in a mushroom stew which was excellent, I got potato cakes in a tomato sauce which would give you the impression of a Bavarian take on lasagna and Liesl got spätzle with cheese sauce which was very good too.  Dominica got a litre of the dunkle beer which is the more traditional Bavarian style and I got a litre of the house original beer.  It was all excellent.

While we were eating the rain returned much more fierce than before and quickly turned to a serious hailstorm.  We were quite glad that we had opted to eat inside rather than out in the courtyard which had looked quite inviting but I convinced Dominica that Liesl would be upset by the cold and complain so just sitting inside would be the more prudent way to go.  While the hail was coming down we met a couple from Florida who were on vacation who were sitting at the table behind us.  Americans everywhere.

Luciana was in a mood to walk after our food was finished so I walked with her quite a bit as she explored the beer hall.  She led me up to the second floor, which I knew nothing about, and discovered the “festival hall” where there was a one man band playing traditional Bavarian dance music for the locals – no tourists here.  Luciana and I were the only ones in the hall under sixty-five, maybe more.  This is where the locals come for the traditional dancing.  It was awesome.  So, of course, Luciana and I had to head out onto the floor as well.  Nothing like taking my little Luciana polka dancing in Bavaria.

After we danced we went back downstairs where Dominica had ordered dessert and was halfway through some traditional Bavarian apple (apfel) dessert.  I joined her and we finished that, got Liesl done with her meal, finish our beers (I had ordered another half litre of the weight beer as well) and then paid and packed up everything to head back upstairs so that I could take Liesl dancing too.

Dominica danced with Luciana just a tiny bit but mostly they just stood out on the side.  Dancing with Luciana just involves holding her and swaying.  Liesl actually headed out on the dance floor with me and actually danced along with the crowd for a while.  Funnily enough the Bavarian music had given way to Bavarian-polka styled American tunes like Sugar, Sugar by the Archies and Ring of Fire by Johnny Cash but we danced all the same.  We had a lot of fun.  The locals thought that it was great and the girls got tons of attention.  They are very popular.

This was definitely a highlight of our trip.  Dancing with my girls as if we actually lived in München and not tourists.  This was very special.

As we were leaving we ran into three Disney photographers from Orlando who were on vacation (two on vacation and one over to study in Lyon but still vacationing in München) and offered to take our picture.  So we have a picture of us together in the festival hall.  There were not dancing but just watching from the sideline.  There were some tourists who would watch the dancers from time to time but I’m the only one brave enough to take my girls out to actually dance.  We talked to the Floridians for a while.  We took their picture too and when I did I realized that they were using the Nikon AW100, the same as me, so that sparked a conversation and it turned out that the owner of the AW100 was a Nikon D90 user too!  They’ll be checking up on us on KiddingAroundEurope,com – which is woefully far behind.  At least SGL is keeping up.

It was getting late so we were actually running a bit late so we had to panic a bit to get to the bus stop for the final pick up of the day.  We only made it by a few minutes.

There was only one stop left on the bus route so the trip back was pretty quick and we really didn’t see anything new.  We got dropped off back at the train station where we got some gelato, again, and then walked back to the hotel.  We were decently tired already by that point.  It doesn’t take all that much to wear us out these days.

Getting posts and pictures uploaded from our hostel is nearly impossible.  It can take around an hour to upload a dozen pictures if nothing goes wrong.  So we are doing it as much as we can whenever an opportunity allows but it is a struggle.  We are falling farther and farther behind on the pictures.  We are really hopeful for good Internet access in Austria but don’t know if we will have any let alone if it will be any good.