Leah & Julian in The World

Schweinwürstl, wiener würstl und sauerkraut.

Munich is stereotypical Germany – beer gardens and the associated foodstuffs, costumes and music.  The Hofbräuhaus is the biggest beer hall in the centre of Munich.  It is where Hitler first spoke to a large crowd.  The hall itself greets you like a beer and sweat sauna, so we dined in the slightly less crowded beer garden.  Two litres of beer, eight pork sausages, sauerkraut and dampfnudel later, we left feeling quite satisfied indeed.

Well it’s not all about the beer.  The Deutsches Museum is perhaps the best science and technology (certainly the best I’ve seen) museum in the universe!  We spent about three hours here and only covered a small part of the 10 miles of exhibits that present information of probably a senior high school level.  The museum contains real, working, life-size exhibits of absolutely everything related to science.  You can make paper, build a bridge, perform a titration, press a tablet, generate electricity, gaze for a star and so on and so on.  We did spend some time at the pharmacology exhibit (hey, it was one of the few bilingual ones) which had extremely well presented displays including a giant cell you could walk into.

There are two types of meat in Germany – pork, and processed pork.  We dined at our first European Michelin ‘gastro-pub,’ just a light lunch (salad with pork) but the ingredients were quality and fresh.  So, to get away from the schweinefleisch, we ate Afghani from a little restaurant below our accommodation.  Probably the most similar food would be Turkish, but definitely different – lots of aromatic spices.

Now that's a handle.

Leah wants me to write about the shower in our room – it’s just there next to the bed, no ensuite – just a shower in the room.  But alas, I won’t say anymore because it’s not that exciting for you to read about.  Small things…

The shower.

New Town Hall, Munich

For South Park fans...

We left Rothenburg early Wednesday morning to drive the Romantic Road to Füssen.  We spent most of the day on the road, but did make 2 notable stops.

Firstly, we visited Wieskirche, a church that seems to be in the middle of nowhere.  It’s nothing much to look at from the outside, but inside it’s a whole other story.

Heaven

The church features ceiling and wall frescos by Johann Baptist Zimmermann, who is Germany’s equivalent of Michelangelo.

Doorway to heaven

Late afternoon we braved the steep climb up to Neuschwanstein Schloss, the fairytale castle built by “crazy” King Ludwig II at the end of the 19th Century. Ludwig was dethroned shortly before his death after being declared insane.  He was removed to Berg Palace, where he was found dead a few days later, along with his psychiatrist, in Lake Starnberg.  His death is a mystery because he was a strong swimmer, there was no water in his lungs to indicate drowning, and there were also no obvious wounds on his body to suggest another cause of death.  The castle was incomplete at the time of his death and remains so to this day.  The guided tour is a short 30 minutes, as only about 6 rooms are complete and worth seeing.

Neuschwanstein Schloss

Walt Disney based his fairytale castles upon Neuschwanstein, and it has been a romantic icon ever since it opened to the public.  However, we were struck down with “the scaffolding curse”.  This is not the first time we have been victims…  In the last week, St Jacob’s church in Rothenburg, a church we went to visit along the romantic road in Landsberg am Lech and Neuschwanstein have been all but obscured by scaffolding.  At least the front of Neuschwanstein was still visible!

Scaffolding!

Shiny new Mercedes

As some people have already discovered, Europcar kindly upgraded our hire car… to a brand new Kompressor Mercedes Benz.  So new, it’s only done 7000kms.  It sounds wonderful in theory but it increases our anxiety given we’re driving on the right (wrong!) side of the road for the first time!

We arrived in Rothenburg last night, so didn’t get a chance to explore until today.  Rotherburg is a beautiful medieval city, if you ignore the hoards of tour groups that descend on the town during the day, ohhing and ahhing over the tacky German souveniers and the decidedly underwhelming puppet display in the clock tower.

Fortunately, most of the tourists disappear in the evening, which was one of the incentives to spend 3 nights.

Gate into Rothenburg

Today we visited the Crime and Punishment Museum, which contains hundreds of examples of torture instruments and objects of ridicule.  We even saw 3 examples of the delightful invention known as the chastity belt.  Yes ladies, your husband or father could lock you into one of these belts while he was out of town, thus ensuring you remained virginal and chaste in his absence.

Easter decorations over the fountain (all individually painted blown eggs!)

Madenburg

After picking up our C-Class Kompressor (thanks for the complimentary upgrade, EC) from Frankfurt train station, we headed 1.5 hours south to Landau (one hour if you like the fast lane of the autobahn).  In Landau we met with ‘tour guide’ Andy (and his daughter Maira) who just happened to stay with my family in Brisbane 19 years ago.  We were provided with a superb visual and informative tour of the Palatinate region, including: the Mediterranean-like vineyards,  Madenburg (castle), Trifels Castle, authentic German cuisine, Schreber Gardens, Landau itself and a quick trip to France…

Landau is one of the warmer places in Germany.  It has a Mediterranean climate in the summer at least; according to Andy it is ‘bloody cold’ in winter.  It was here we felt spring had really begun and also the first time we could dry clothes outside under the sun!  Some of Landau and the surrounding villages were destroyed in WWII but many old, beautiful red and yellow sandstone buildings remain.

View from Burg Trifels

From Landau it is a short drive to a (insert collective noun for castles here) of castles.  We walked through the woods up to two of these, Madenburg and Burg Trifels.  The view from both was, although hazy, spectacular of the little terracotta coloured villages nestled in the woods or vineyards below.  Burg Trifels (built 11th C on the stone apex of a 500m high mountain) is again red sandstone and is a complete castle – rebuilt by the Nazis during WWII and restored again recently.  It is here that King Richard I (depicted as the good king in Robin Hood) was captured in 1193 as he was returning from the crusades.

Inside Burg Trifels

Our culinary horizons were broadened by Andy.  We sampled the regional specialties of beer, wine and food.  The region is known for its wine, both red (dornfelder) and white (riesling, grauburgunder) and there is an annual festival each autumn.  As for food, well we don’t have to eat for the rest of the week now.  For dinner, I ordered a sample plate of local food which included bratwurst, sauerkraut, saumagen (pork and potato in a real pig’s stomach) and a leberknoedel (liver ‘meat-ball’).  It was actually all very delicious, hearty food.  We also ate many cheeses, wursts, bread, cold meats and of course Oster ei.  Lunch the following day was an ‘Aussie’ BBQ of corn, pork sausages and pork steaks, held at Andy’s Schrebergarten.

Meat, meat and more meat.

Live in a flat without a garden? Why not buy a Schrebergarten?

I mustn’t forget the short excursion to France.  Wissembourg town is only 30 minutes drive from Landau, just after you pass through the no-longer-used border checkpoint.  As you enter, everything quickly becomes French; the town offers a more relaxed café atmosphere and plenty of patisseries!

Maira, Andy and Leah in Landau

Easter gardens in Bacharach.

Our first stay in Germany was along the Rhein.  The train from Amsterdam followed the river all the way to Bacharach – a very small town in western Germany, at the same latitude as Luxembourg.  This area of the Rhein is in quite a valley and there are many small villages, each with its own castle, perched on the river banks.  Bacharach is medieval half-timbered houses, a medieval castle (Burg Stahleck), vineyards and of course riesling.  As it was almost Easter, the town and gardens near our accommodation were filled with bright Easter decorations.

Bacharach gave us the opportunity to eat traditional German food prepared by the locals, including pork knuckle, venison stew with spaetzel, sauerkraut, schnitzel and apple strudel.  We spent all three afternoons here with a glass or two (once, a ‘tasting’ (almost a bottle) of six local wines) of riesling, just sitting in town and relaxing.

Prost!

Just north of Bacharach is St. Goar, home to Burg (Castle) Rheinfels, which we visited by a 45 minute boat ride along the Rhein.  It was Good Friday and warm and sunny so St. Goar was inundated with locals making a day trip to the cafes and souvenir shops along the waterfront.  Burg Rheinfels was once the biggest castle on the Rhein until it was destroyed by the French in 1797 (only after 28,000 French troops failed to take the castle in 1692).  It was quite warm by the time we finished the 20 minute steep walk up to the castle from the town, but the views of the Rhein made it worth it.  Not a bad place to stick a castle and watch for the enemy, I’d say.

Pfalz Castle (in the water) and Gutenfels Castle on the Rhein

St Goar and Rheinfels Castle

Pension im Malerwinkel, our B&B in Bacharach

Altes Haus (1368), Bacharach

ICE train to Frankfurt

Our major form of transport for most of the European part of the trip is the train.  We have a 2-month Eurail pass which, mostly, allows us to jump on and off any intercity train in something like 22 European countries. To get from Amsterdam to Bacharach, we had to make 2 changes plus 1 unscheduled change.

Navigating the stations (major ones have at least 20 platforms)  and reading the timetables is a bit of an art, but quite easy to pick up.  For instance, the platforms are so long, your train (which may not be the only train at that platform) could be down one end and you wouldn’t know it from the other end of the platform.  The trains are well marked with their destination and have either a 1 or 2 on the carriage to designate first or second class.

I’m sure we’ll have more train stories in the future, the main one so far is getting stuck in the door trying to exit the train in Rotterdam.  You’ve got to be quick!

Amsterdam Centraal Station. Note that you have to know the final destination of the train, as your stop may not be shown on the board.

Museumplein, Amsterdam

We had a whirlwind visit to Amsterdam, as we had accommodation booked in Germany from the 8th of April.

I think I had a lot of misconceptions about the city.  Yes, it does allow its inhabitants considerably more freedom than most other western cities, and yes, parts of the city are all about sex and drugs.  But the city has a lot more to offer than that.  The centre itself is very pretty as many of its buildings in the centre date from the 17th century, and the canals are beautiful.  The sex/drugs stereotype is mainly confined to the Red Light District, and we never felt unsafe – except when we were trying to cross the street!  You have to be on the lookout every second for cars, bikes, trams, buses and motorbikes/scooters.  And of course, the traffic is all driving on the right side of the road – it’s enough to make your head spin!

The Van Gogh Museum is fantastic, and we were fortunate that they had a special exhibit featuring The Starry Night, which is usually displayed at the New York Metropolitan Museum.  Van Gogh is one of my favourite artists, and I enjoyed the exhibit very much.

We also went to the Anne Frank house, which was very moving.  I read the book just before leaving on this trip, so much of what she described was still fresh in my mind when I saw the “Secret Annex”.  Unfortunately, we had to queue for over an hour at both the museum and the house…  Next time we’ll have to bring a portable printer so we can buy internet tickets and avoid the lines!

Amsterdam by night