An Italian Paradise

We spent 6 amazing days/nights in Sardinia to celebrate my birthday.  Ever since Noah’s 22^nd birthday on a beach in Greece, he has been saying that one day I will have a birthday in an amazing beach location – and 5 years later we made it happen!  Now Noah isn’t the only one who gets to celebrate his birthday in amazing locations.

Our vacation to Sardinia, a Mediterranean island south of the island of Corsica (France), was the first trip I planned when we moved here.  I randomly chose Sardinia after staring at Mediterranean Sea destinations on our giant map of Europe on our living room wall.  And I was very happy with my choice – Sardinia is full of beautiful beaches and delicious seafood.

Our trip started off rocky when we tried to pick up our rental car, but I will leave that story for a separate blog.  Instead I will pick up with us arriving at our beautiful hotel – the Hotel Gabbiano Azzurro.  We immediately changed into swimsuits to go check out the beach.  Here are a few shots from the beach, and the view from our hotel balcony.

The next day we took off in our little smart car to explore Tharros – an ancient Phoenician city on the other side of the island.  It was established in the 8^th century BC, and is now an open-air museum.  Half way to our destination was the small city of Nuoro, and we figured we could stop here for lunch.  This was our first foray into the difficulties of finding open restaurants on the island.  We drove through the city around 1pm, and couldn’t find a single place to eat.  Everything was closed.  I remembered reading somewhere that restaurants opened late for dinner, and people ate panini-style sandwiches for lunch.  Ok, but where were the sandwich places??  After worrying that we would starve, we finally found a grocery store.  Not ideal, but it is food!

We finally made it to Tharros a few hours later, and were able to explore the site by ourselves.  No one else was in it (maybe they didn’t want to pay, or were waiting for the guided tour that started an hour later), which was preferable.  We could wander the site at our own pace and immerse ourselves in the history of it all.

After walking around in the heat, it was time to head to the beach.  I had read that the beach by Tharros was the high point of the area, and they were right.  It was a beautiful sandy beach, with sandy bottoms, and crystal clear waters.  And it wasn’t crowded – a plus.  We spent the rest of the day in the water, and Noah decided this was the best beach ever.  Too bad it was over 3 hours from our hotel, otherwise we would have been back every day!

The next day we took off across the island again, but this drive was only 2 hours.  Our destination was Neptune’s Grotto (or Grotta di Nettuno) – a cave at the entrance of the sea.  To get there you start at the top of a cliff, and then traverse the 654 steps that cut along the edge of the cliff.  I was worried it would be a terrifying decent, but the escala del cabirol (goat's steps) were built very solidly and wide, so I felt rather safe.

When we reached the bottom, we entered the cave and were greeted by the cooler air.  While we didn’t go further than the entrance (it cost money, and you had to do a guided tour that was 45 minutes – we didn’t feel like it), it was still a worthwhile adventure.  The entrance to the cave alone was stunning.

Along the road we took to the grotto, we passed a few beautiful old churches.  We decided to hop out of the car and explore them both – the tall church with the tower is the Basilica della Santissima Trinità di Saccargia, and the smaller church is the San Michele di Salvenero.  They are both Tuscan Romanesque churches built in the 12^th centuries using local stone – black basalt and white limestone.   

The next day was a dedicated beach day, and this is when we found Cala Brandinchi – nicknamed la piccola Tahiti (the little Tahiti).  This was another gorgeous beach – with the perfect crescent shape and turquoise waters.  We would return to this beach a few more times during our trip.

We made it back to our hotel for another sunset dinner at the fancy restaurant.

I woke up the next day a year older, to be welcomed by a stormy day.  I wasn’t going to let the weather get in the way of enjoying my birthday, so we grabbed the SLR camera and took off to drive along the coast.  We ended back up at the Cala Brandinchi, and had the place to ourselves.  We had about an hour of rain-free time, and used the interesting lighting from the storm clouds to take quite a few photos.  

But then we started getting rained on, so we took off back north to our hotel.  The weather had cleared here, and we threw on our swimsuits and went to the hotel beach.  I have no idea why we were the only ones on this usually crowded beach, because the water was like a warm bath.  But I got 2 private beaches for my birthday thanks to the rain, so I was a happy girl.  We ended the night with take out pizza and wine, and watched one of our favorite shows I had downloaded on iTunes – Mantracker!!!

We were down to our last full day, and what do you know, we went back to Cala Brandinchi for the day!

We were given another beautiful sunset for our last night in Sardinia, and I was sad to leave the next morning.  But coming home is always wonderful when you have two little dogs greeting you at the door like long lost kings returning from battle. 

Bavarian Quick Hitters

As we are at the peak of our travels and visitors season, I realized we often find time to just write about our ‘big’ trips – those that are at least overnight, often in other countries.  This means we have skipped over a few of our Bavarian daytrips and daily happenings for the last month or so.  So I will try to hit upon some highlights of our time in Bavaria these last 30ish days.

Freilichtmuseum Glentleiten

Last month we had yet another public holiday, and this one we spent with Aunt Ellen.  She took us to a  Freilichtmuseum (‘Free Air Museum’ = outdoor museum) that showcased the daily lives of the rural people in Upper Bavaria.  They have over 60 historical buildings that have been moved from their original location somewhere in Upper Bavaria to a condensed location.  It was really interesting to walk through these small farmhouses where people worked and lived back in the day.  It’s always surprising to see how people lived through our modern viewpoint.  But when that is all you know, and things like televisions or modern plumbing haven’t been invented yet, you don’t know what you are missing out on.

Oberammergau 

Our next stop after the museum was to spend a little time in Oberammergau since we were so close.  Oberammergau is a town known for ‘Lüftlmalerei’ -  frescoes painted on their buildings.  For example, some have fairy tales like Hansel and Gretel painted on them, while others have scenes from the crucifixion.  One of the painted buildings we visited was where Noah’s Uncle Dave and Aunt Jennifer were married.  

Noah’s birthday

June 23^rd marked the day Noah hit the big 2-7!  He is getting old, luckily he has his much younger (by 30 days) wife to keep him youthful.  While the actual birthday was spent in Annecy, France, we returned to Munich to a delicious cake from Aunt Ellen!  It even had soccer candles for him to blow out.  Here he is posing after blowing all the candles out in one try (and Sadie looks very impressed in the background).

A quick visit from a Longhorn

We had our first visit from a non-family member when a college buddy of ours – Rohan – came for a short visit (2 nights) before a conference.  Unfortunately this was the hottest weekend we have had – hitting 90 degrees!  It might not seem like much to those friends in Texas/Arizona, but remember…. no air conditioning!!!  We thought we could escape the heat by venturing into the Alps for the day, but no – it was just as hot there. 

We went to Herzogstandbahn (same place as this post, but obviously no snow), and took the train to the top.  We ate lunch and set out to hike down the ‘Alp’.  Noah assured us that it was only 6 kilometers, so it should be easy, right?  Sure, but not when it is 90+ degrees and an elevation change of 1,000+ meters!  Us girls (me and the dogs) were pretty worn down by the end of it, but it was a beautiful hike.  We even came across a few small waterfalls that helped cool us all down.  And at the bottom we were rewarded with the cold waters of Walchensee to dip our feet/paws in.

  Noah's model shot after dipping his head in the waterfall, and the path of the water:

 Our reward at the end, though it felt like forever to get there:

Auf wiedersehen from the Weiss family until the next post about our next big adventure!

Getting Around

Today’s blog is all about ‘Das Auto’ to celebrate the receipt of my new German driver’s license!

An American license is only valid for the first 6 months of residence in Germany.  Therefore, it was time for the upgrade since recently we passed this mark, which is really hard to believe.  Although we are living without a car for the first time in over 10 years, it is nice to know I can legally drive again on the autobahn with a rental car.  Getting the license is also an important milestone because I had avoided the task since our arrival.  I really hate going to the DMV offices just like everyone else, and the thought of doing this completely in German did not make me rush the issue.  But eventually I went out and conquered.

We have been living life without a car for 6 months and overall I would say we enjoy it thanks to an incredible public transportation system (especially in Germany, where punctuality is very serious business).  There is an amazing infrastructure of trains, trams, and buses that can get you to any square block in Munich on time in about 10-45 minutes from our apartment.  Furthermore, we can get to any other town or city in Germany very efficiently, cheaply, and with a fantastic scenic view.  The main benefit of using the public transportation is that the stresses of driving are avoided (traffic, wrong turns, parking etc.).  The only real disadvantage is that we have to shop more frequently (usually on Saturdays since stores are closed late nights and Sundays) because we are limited on how much we can buy.  The other real benefit is that it makes the city safer and more fun by taking care of the whole drinking and driving problem.  Even our dogs like traveling by train with us!

Of course there are certain times when owning a car would be quite useful.  For instance, when your train gets struck by lightning and causes an infrastructure shut down which causes a three-hour delay in getting home from work.  Ok, I really wish I had a car that day.  Or when your wife is in the hospital and it takes 2 hours to reach her, yeah it would have been nice to have a car that day too.  But for most urgent instances we have Aunt Ellen and her Twingo available to rescue us when we need more dog food or another crate of Dr. Pepper.  It’s been a nice lifestyle change to live in a society where you don’t absolutely need a car to survive.

And yes it’s true that gas is twice as expensive as in the US (around 8 USD per US gallon), but the cars are around twice as fuel efficient (between 40-70 MPG in US gallon).  By the way the emphasis on US gallon is because I recently learned there is also an imperial gallon which the UK uses that can really complicate comparisons (this tends to inflate the numbers upwards of 100 MPG).

Here are some tales from the road in the few instances I have driven a car here.  The first was in a rental car to pick up the dogs at the Frankfurt airport which was a very stressful experience to say the least (see blog #12).  I was so stressed out that I told Julie we should move back to the US and I would never drive again.  The part that put me over the edge, which is quite humorous in hindsight, was trying to pump gas at a gas station.  The clerk and I were stuck in a very frustrating loop where I would insist on prepaying with my credit card, he would point outside and say something I could not understand, I would hunt for the credit card machine, and then return inside to ask him again.  This went on for several rounds before I finally understood you don’t prepay for gas, there was no credit card machine outside, and he was telling me to go pump gas first and then we can try using the credit card inside.  Whooooops, I guess we all have our breakdowns once in a while!

The next time I drove was a work trip using a company car.  A month later a speeding ticket showed up on my desk at work, which was a bit embarrassing since I was new to the job and everyone seemed to know about before I did.  Anyhow, the good news is that going roughly 10 mph over only cost me 25 EUR, the cost of learning that Munich likes to use speed cameras and be careful to reduce speed accordingly when exiting the autobahn.  I think I also vowed to never drive again in this instance too.

Thankfully I have the freedom to drive again with my new license but I’m not in any hurry to do so.  We like the trains!

Germany is the bomb... literally

It might be hard to believe, but there is a very real (though small) risk that Noah and I could die from WWII.  How is this possible?  Glad you asked!  Since the end of WWII, finding live bombs (or more formally – unexploded ordnances - UXOs) in Germany is still the norm.  As in, just last week there was an old American bomb found near our train station, Laim.  They had to shut down the station as a precaution as they deactivated and removed the roughly 70 year old bomb. 

Approximately 600 tons of unexploded munitions are discovered yearly in our new country.  And this article from the BBC says that in Berlin alone, the Allies dropped about 465,000 tons of explosives, and about 1 in 8 bombs didn’t detonate.  “As Germany hastily rebuilt its cities after the war, authorities didn’t have the time or the means to locate and dispose of a large part of that tonnage” (another good article found here).  These discoveries are so common that most cases only make the local news. 

Luckily the odds of us riding our bikes and exploding into the air like the cartoons is pretty slim.  Most of these bombs are found during construction work.  And it is so common, they scan the area specifically for bombs before breaking ground on new developments.   Though sometimes, like in late 2011, they find one when the water levels drop.  The city of Koblenz had a prolonged dry spell, and two bombs dropped by the Royal Air Force in the early 1940s were discovered in the riverbed of the Rhine.  They had to evacuate almost half of the town (45,000 people) – including a prison and 2 hospitals – while they sent in the experts.

However these are still real, active explosives in the ground, and sometimes the inevitable happens.  2 years ago three people were killed by a 1,000 pound bomb in Göttingen, Germany.  “The bomb was unearthed during construction of a sports stadium, and exploded an hour before it was to be defused, killing the three experienced bomb technicians on-site” (article found here).  I guess I should be glad that in my research for this blog, I only found this one instance of someone dying.  But I am sure there are more – just not in the top results these days. 

While this topic could spawn many emotionally loaded conversations regarding war, especially with this being about WWII, I’ll leave that for non-internet discussions.  Instead, I will send a cheers to those brave (or crazy) folks who decide to be bomb diffusers in Germany – you guys make all of Germany safer. 



Pariiiiii

After a phenomenal birthday weekend in Annecy, we geared up for our 3 nights in Paris.  We caught the early train to Paris so naturally there were screaming children to keep us from snoozing.  That didn’t slow us down though as we arrived around midday to our centrally located hotel- just one block from the Louvre!  My mom met us there fresh off the plane from America.  Thanks for joining us Mom!

We had steady rain our first day, but that did not stop us from storming the streets.  We started with a falafel lunch in the Jewish quarter that was one of the best falafel meals we have ever had... yummy!  We followed lunch up with a cold/wet stroll through the streets and brought home some fresh challah bread and French macarons to nibble on.  Good food is always the way to set the tone for a good trip.  After drying out a bit we took a riverside walking tour through the heart of the city.  Wandering through the streets is my favorite activity in Paris, which in my humble opinion has the most expansive and incredible architecture of any city I've seen.... beauuuuuutiful!  Eventually though the rain defeated us and we had to call it a day.  Don't tell anyone but we ate McDonalds for dinner in the hotel room.... with 'Freedom Fries' and all.  :)

Anyhow, the weather Monday was much better so we took full advantage of the outdoors.  We started in the area of Montmartre and visited the Sacre Coeur Basilica.  The views of the city were almost as spectacular as the building itself. 

Afterwards we stopped through a cemetery which, like the city, also has some really spectacular architecture.  We captured a few nifty shots.

We had a fantastic lunch of French onion soup, duck confit, and pasta with salmon: so simple but so good!  We spent the evening/night watching the Eiffel Tower….I mean it’s pretty much law that every tourist visit the tower within their first 24 hours in Paris.  Not wanting to break any laws we posted up at Ol’ Eiffel around dusk, which given the northern latitude was a stunning 9:45 p.m.  We watched the tower light up and twinkle just in time before bedtime.  Although not the prettiest, it really is an unbelievable structure I think everyone should see- pictures don’t do it justice.

Our final full day began at the Musee d’Orsay, apparently the most popular sight in all of Paris.  Even though we bought tickets in advance the line was still 45 minutes to get through the door.  And although the crowds were a bit intense inside, it was well worth it to see some of the most impressive works in art history and some amazing architecture. 

We spent the evening visiting the holocaust memorial museum and the Notre Dame.  Continuing with the tradition of eating well, we had delicious crepes for lunch, really amazing Thai food for dinner, and some designer ice cream for dessert (25€ to feed 3!!!).  Good food is apparently the perfect way to end a really good trip too.

All in all, we had a really amazing time in the city of perfect walking tours and food, but it felt like we hardly scratched the surface in 3 days’ time.  Though this is about all the time we could handle given the extra intense crowds, traffic, and noise.  It was time to get back home to our quiet village of Munich.  Au Revoir Pariiiii, thanks for the memories!!!