Happy Birthday in Hamburg

Let me tell you that a life of 30 days of vacation while living and traveling Europe is not easy.  As I write this, it is the first weekend we are home by ourselves in about 8 weeks.  We capped off our busy stretch of visitors and trips with a visit to Hamburg for my birthday weekend.  The 100EUR round trip flight deal we saw a few months ago seemed too good to skip, and so we went, saw, relaxed, and celebrated my 28^th birthday in style along the city on the harbor.

Hamburg is a special place because of its history and establishment as a harbor port along the Elbe river, which flows North draining into the North Sea (now the 2^nd largest port in Europe).  Therefore the industry, architecture, weather, and culture make Hamburg feel like an ocean side city even though it sits on a river 100 miles away from the coast.

After checking in the hotel and filling up on some Thai food, we started our visit at the Ballinstadt Museum.  This museum highlights the emigration of 5 million Europeans who left for a better life from the port in Hamburg, many of whom spent their last night at the accommodation provided by Albert Ballin.  We saw what it would have been like for our European ancestors who would have sacrificed everything and endured so much hardship to immigrate to America.  This left us with a rather strange feeling considering how we had undone all their hard work over a century later by simply taking a 12 hour, comfortable flight back across the ocean so we could live in Europe. Overall it was a very cool, well-presented museum. 

Afterwards we went to the International Garden Show, which was being hosted in the area.  25 euros, a lot of unnecessary walking, and one very confusing return monorail ride back later, we realized that this was kind of a bad idea.  At least we got some nice photos of the flowers. 

We set off our first morning in Hamburg for what seemed like an easy search for a bagel shop (at least according to Google maps).  About an hour later we gave up and settled in at a chain, Balzac Coffee, at the modern shopping mall - it was not a complete loss because they did have (two) bagels there.  We always have to laugh at ourselves when we make an effort to get off the beaten path and discover something new, only to be sucked back into the mass tourist areas.  This was one of those moments.

We spent the first part of the day cruising around the city: the Rathaus, the Alster lakes, Hafen City and the canals, and doing some window shopping.  

Having adapted to the typical festival in Bavaria, we were naturally drawn to the Stuttgart wine festival for lunch, which featured food/drink tents with Dirndl clad waitresses.  Maybe we were overly adventurous when we ordered typical Stuttgart specialties flammekuche and maultauschen for lunch, because while we could eat them the one time, we won’t be ordering those again.  

Afterwards, we went down to the famous Reeperbahn street/ St. Pauli district (red-light, bar, party scene).  Here we ran into 10,000 biker dudes and loud Harleys because the world’s largest Harley Davidson convention was being hosted this weekend.  We might have sped-walked through the scene to find something a little more peaceful. 

After regrouping back at our hotel, we switched gears and went up the tower in St. Michaelis church which gave us the essence of Hamburg impression. 

Sunday (my Birthday!!), we decided to scratch the famous early Sunday fish market so we could take it easy and go for a swim at the hotel spa.  Here we were surprised to find out that most of the people, well actually all of the men, were not wearing swimsuits in the pool.  So that was a more awkward swimming pool experience than expected, but we still enjoyed our first swim of 2013 nonetheless (as it’s been snowy/rainy/cold pretty much all year in Munich).  Sorry – no pictures for this one.

Thanks to an insider tip from Julie’s coworker, we set sail on the harbor on the public transit ferry 62 where we got up close to the shipping industry and some nice views of the city.  Much cheaper to just use the HVV bahn ticket we already had rather than spend 20EUR+ for a ‘professional’ boat tour. 

As the weather was turning south, we took an afternoon break and watched a movie and facetimed with momma.  We then went out for a high-end fish dinner along the water at the upscale Fischereihafen, which began my spontaneous birthday evening.  Since I was unable to decide from the menu, I just chose the 4-course chef’s surprise.  All four courses were equally delicious (tuna tartare, prawns, local fish battered, and a mixed dessert plate), but it was extra special because it was the first time I ever had a waiter reveal my entrée in front of my face by removing one of those fancy silver covers.  Man, this was the ultimate birthday surprise! 

Not the prettiest looking building for a fancy restaurant, but the views the other way are much nicer

Afterwards we climbed stairs to the top of a building near the restaurant to catch some nice sunset views.  There we asked a German man to take our photo and we got to talking in German for a bit.  After a few minutes he told us about an open-air concert along the Reeperbahn which we must go see and offered to drive us himself.  It took him a bit of convincing, because Julie was playing old episodes of CSI in her head, while I was thinking hitchhiking to the Reeperbahn is probably not a good idea.  But once I met the man’s wife and learned he worked for a public TV broadcast station, and they had a daughter studying in California, they passed my ocular pat down. So we went along and were dropped off at the concert on the Reeperbahn (without anyone being kidnapped or drugged).  The concert was actually a fundraiser for victims of the recent flooding.  It was a really cool, pleasant event and we heard a new German artist whose album we bought later. 

Sunset

Benefit concert.  The artist on the right - Anna Depenbusch - is whose album we bought 

When we made it back to the hotel, we decided to give ourselves a bit of a tour to see what else this place had.  When we went to the top floor, we noticed the door to the penthouse suite was open.  We had a look around to see how the other half lives and caught some nice views from the private balcony.  It was the perfect end to my spontaneous birthday evening. 

On Monday we had half of the day to kill before catching our flight back home.  So we scheduled a tour at the Miniatur Wunderland, which is an enormous display of small worlds complete with planes, cars, people, animals, culture, and of course lots of model trains.  They have around 10 different countries on display, including a special feature of our own Bavaria and one of USA.  It was all very awesome, but it’s the kind of place where two hours of fighting through crowds and children for a view can wear you out. 

Bavaria, Hamburg, Las Vegas

They even simulate night vs day 

You can see the planes take off

After 4 great days celebrating me, it was time to make the 1-hour flight home.  Auf Wiedersehen Hamburg! 

Heading east to Dresden

Friday morning Noah and I packed up one of our Statt Auto cars with the dogs and our suitcases and road-tripped up to Dresden.  We met my mom and her friend Kathleen for the last weekend of their Europe trip.

After a five-hour drive we arrived late Friday afternoon to our hotel – shortly before the ladies showed up from their train from Prague.  But to make it to the hotel we had to make a stressful detour through the old city to avoid flood-damaged streets. At one point Noah had to make an awkward 3-point U-turn between two horse carriages right in the heart of the city (with a manual, no less!). But thankfully no real harm was done and I navigated us in time to greet our guests.  The four of us dropped our bags in the rooms and grabbed the dogs to explore the ‘core’/tourist part of the city (for blog purposes I will refer to as just the city, though obviously Dresden is much more than this central tourist section).  I think we were all a bit surprised to see how close everything is in this area – After walking for just 10 minutes from our hotel (the Innside Dresden – great location), we were already hitting the other edge of the city.  Perfect for a 48 hour mini-vacation! 

We began our ‘window shopping’ walking tour of the city with the Frauenkirche, then headed over to the Brühl's Terrace.  This took us along the river to the Schloßplatz - where the Residenzschloss, Katholische Hofkirche, and Staatsoper Opera house all meet up. 

We tried to check out our ticket options for the Residenzschloss for Saturday, but the offices were already closed.  Oh well – back to the Staatsoper where everyone was dressed very fancy for a ballet.  Noah had the idea to get tickets to the ballet so we could see the inside of the Opera house (which is supposed to be fabulous), but no one really had the right clothes for that. 

Behind the Staatsoper is Der Dresdener Zwinger – a palace that served as the Dresden Court back in the day.  Now you are able to walk around the building and gardens on your own, and it is a rather lovely place (even though the courtyard has a bit too much dirt area and not enough garden area for my tastes). 

It seemed like in just a few hours of walking we had already seen the entire old Dresden city, at least from the outside.  Though at the same time, the denseness of historic buildings (ok, maybe reconstructed historic buildings) combined with the “car-free” walking alleys/boulevards is what makes this city so great.

We ate dinner at an Italian restaurant near the Frauenkirche (isn’t everything near that?), and then headed to the Fürstenzug (Procession of Princes).  This is a large mural made of roughly 23,000 Meissen porcelain tiles on an outer wall of the Residenzschloss.  Very impressive – though this is one panorama I didn’t attempt to try to capture.  We also grabbed a few shots of the other attractions during the blue hour.

Saturday morning we made our way back to the Residenzschloss to purchase tickets for the afternoon as the Historical Green Vault requires you to reserve a specific time.  Side note – it sure seemed like the tickets for the ‘on the hour’ (as in 11am, 3pm, 4pm, etc) sold many more tickets than those on the ‘30s.  Anyways, after securing our 3:30 time slot after a bit of confusion (I guess our 15:30 sounds too close to 14:30 when we speak German), we headed to the re-built Frauenkirche. 

Before getting to the church, we were distracted by a Meissen porcelain shop.  I am always on the hunt for nicer souvenirs that we will want to keep forever (think Icelandic wool blanket instead of a magnet of a Viking hat), so I liked the idea of buying a piece of porcelain from Meissen.  However I quickly learned I have expensive taste – my favorite vase was over 600EUR!  Instead, I turned my focus towards some porcelain candle holders that look pretty with or without a candle lit inside.  As we were shopping, the employees brought out some water in a nice porcelain bowl for the dogs to drink out of.  They were treated like royalty – I don’t think I have ever had a drink out of something so expensive! 

After we dropped the dogs and purchases off in the hotel, we finally made it to the church.  Our first stop was to go up to the very top of the Dome for some fantastic views of the city. 

After snapping way too many pictures across three cameras, we made our way back to the bottom with hopes of seeing the inside of the church.  However a wedding was starting, so the doors were shut to visitors.  No worries – we could come back later since our hotel was just down the street.  Instead we opted for a video in the visitor’s center a few blocks away.  We paid our 2EUR each for an exclusive English screening of their movie (exclusive only because we happened to be the only ones there) and learned all about the extensive reconstruction of the church. 

Basically the Dresden Frauenkirche was built back in the 18th century, but was destroyed during the WWII bombing of Dresden.  During the Soviet Rule, the site was kept as an anti-war memorial.  There was always intent to rebuild the church, but it wasn’t until after reunification that it finally came to fruition.  In the 90s reconstruction finally began, and they re-used as many stones and artifacts as possible, recreating those beyond repair.  What stands now is an almost complete replica of the original church, showing the scars of WWII in the contrasting dark stones (the original ones) and light stones (the new ones). 

After the movie we were all pumped to go see the inside of the church, but as the wedding wasn’t over we settled for lunch – buffalo burgers and ribs at a Canadian restaurant.  Hey – can you blame us for avoiding German food when we can’t avoid it back home?  As we were finishing lunch, we saw the church open up and crowds begin to enter.  As we had picked up the dogs from the hotel room for lunch, we couldn’t go as a group.  Noah and I went first, followed by Sandy and Kathleen.  Luckily my mom, like 80% of the people inside, didn’t pay attention to the ‘no photos’ signs and captured some shots. 

On the right: The alte Turmkreuz that melted in the WWII bombings

We were now getting close to our 3:30 time slot at the Residenzschloss’ historic green vault, so off the dogs went to the hotel room, and off we went to the ‘Dresden Castle’.  Our camera’s had to be put away for the vaults (both the old and new green vaults), so you just have to take my word that there are some amazing treasures inside.  These rooms are filled with beautiful jewels, stones, and fancy creations that overwhelmed my senses. 

After letting the museum wear us out (museums tend to do that to me), we got ice cream treats and headed to the steps of the Brühl's Terrace that look over the Schloßplatz.  We ended up sitting by an accordion player that apparently only knew two songs.  I used this time to take about 100 photos of my dogs, so be glad I am only posting a few. 

Ok, so the top left one is from the Zwinger visit on Friday.  But it was too cute to not include here.

After finally being driven mad by the accordion, we crossed the Augustusbrücke to have a beer (ok, a Radler for me) at Augustusgarten.  Just the week before the Elbe River was flooded and rose over 25 feet above normal levels.  As the Biergarten sits on the banks of the Elbe, they had photos on display showing the beer tables completely immersed and the pavilions halfway under water.  Basically we would have been sitting completely immersed in a river just a week prior.

For the record - I put water in the beer glass for Rita

After a repeat dinner at the Italian place (where I sent a dish back for the first time in my life – the pasta wasn’t cooked!), we wrapped up our long Dresden day.

Sunday morning I had the bright idea to go to Pfunds Molkerei (The Guinness Book-certified ‘world’s most beautiful dairy shop’), so we headed on a long and hot walk beyond the ‘city’ into more of the real city.  First we walked to Augustusplatz to see the pretty fountains, and then began the long walk down a road that is under construction.  Once we finally arrive at Pfunds Molkerei, I learned it is really just a cheese shop with some nice tiles.  And we had a 30 minute walk back.  This time we stayed to the riverbank for our walk, so it was a bit cooler and nicer, but overall I think we could have skipped that part (but thank you to Noah, Sandy, and Kathleen who kept their mouths shut!).

With checkout time at hand, we packed up the car and headed back home to Munich.  Monday morning we said goodbye to our last of the long string of visitors and began looking forward to Noah’s birthday weekend in Hamburg!  

Herzlich Willkommen to Hotel Weiss

As Noah alluded to in our prior Vienna post, we have been rather busy lately.  This is due to all of our amazing visitors that have come through Munich to see us!  Ok, maybe some of them came for Munich too.  As mentioned in the Partnachklamm blog, we have had non-stop visitors since the weekend of May 19^th, and this upcoming weekend will mark the end of this visitor surge.  The other thing the weekend of May 19^th marked was the beginning of the non-stop rain that caused all the flooding in central Europe, which coincidentally ended the day my father flew out… but more on that later.

The second Saturday of my parents visit, we expected our friends Allison and Steven.  They were spending a week in Germany and France, beginning in Munich.  Unfortunately their British Airways flight was cancelled last minute due to an airplane fire on the Heathrow runway, and they had to scramble to change planes to get there only one day late.  This meant the four of us (my parents and Noah and I) had to watch the UEFA finale without them – Germany won!  Ok, to be more specific, FC Bayern won!!!  Sorry Dortmund – this just isn’t your year.  Nope – it is FC Bayern’s!  Winners of all three winning-able things .  Sorry, I should really have had Noah write this paragraph.

Anyways, Allison and Steven came in Sunday, and we tried our best to give them a positive impression of Munich despite the endless rain.  I think we did ok – and they still were able to see quite a bit of the city before leaving 2 days later for France. 

For the holiday weekend/3 year wedding anniversary trip, Noah and I headed to Vienna to see Viennese rain while my parents hung out with the dogs in our apartment.  For more on that trip, you can check out Noah’s blog post from earlier in the week.  It sounded like my parents didn’t even get the one day of sunshine that we had in Vienna, so they spent the whole long rainy weekend inside.  The good news: Tuesday (June 4^th) the sun came out and we finally had a beautiful day!  The bad news (for my dad at least): this is the day my dad flew back.  Sorry Pops – hopefully your next trip will be better.  But it’s ok – he is averaging 2 trips to Europe a year since we moved here, so his life is far from bad.

On our real anniversary

With the sunshine brought our last set of visitors – three of my mom’s friends from back home: Kathleen, Terry, and Pat.  They were lucky to have an entire weekend of blue skies and sunshine, with only a small rain shower their last night in Munich.  I steered them to outdoor activities as much as possible, hitting up two separate biergartens (Hirschgarten and the Englischer Garten’s one by the Chinesischer Turm) the first day alone.  I just wanted to be outside as much as possible – and so did the rest of the city!  We found that whenever we ate inside, a restaurant would be completely empty.  I think everyone was so starved for good weather, that barely anyone wasted their time inside. 

This upcoming weekend will take us to Dresden where we meet up with my mom and Kathleen, so hopefully for us (but more so for the people of Dresden) the Elbe river is back to normal and the city is tour-able.  We will try to help the city out with our tourist wallets – mainly because our hotel refused to let us cancel with a refund… thanks Innside Dresden for that!   We will make the best of whatever is in store, and then on Sunday we will all be back in Munich for their last night in Europe.  Monday we will be back to just us, and will probably miss all the English we were surrounded by this last month.

Before My Socks Dry in Vienna

This blog is a bit delayed, as we just now have had some down time since our Anniversary trip to Vienna 2 weekends ago.  Better late than never!

Before the trip, we were doing our usual research into the city of choice, and ran across a reference to a film from the 90s: Before Sunrise.  It is a romance film of two people who meet on a train from Budapest to Vienna and spend the day/night exploring Vienna together. As a side note, the sequel Before Sunset was released 9 years later (2004), and the 3^rd film Before Midnight was released 9 years after that during the week of our anniversary (just two weeks ago!).  Each film features the same actors, Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy.  Therefore, it really seemed fitting to start the trilogy about the couple who met on the train to Vienna while we were taking the train to Vienna ourselves.  Now if we produced a movie about our own experiences in Vienna, then we would have to title it Before My Socks Dry, since the weather took a little bit away from the Hollywood romance seen on film.  But still, Ethan Hawke can’t compete with me.

Overall, we had a really nice, relaxing time in Wien even though we were limited on sightseeing due to the persistent rain.  Starting about May 20^th, most of central Europe began the weeks of non-stop rain that caused the record flooding we have been seeing this last week or so.  We were really lucky that our trip and our lives in Munich were not affected other than some wet socks.

Upon our arrival Thursday, we were greeted by our really cool, circus themed hotel with an early check-in – 25hours Hotel Wien.  We dried off, warmed up, and then made our first ventures in the city only to find that EVERYTHING - including most restaurants - was closed because of the holiday (which we misunderstood in thinking it was only a German holiday).  So we found a café where I had an iced coffee and Julie a bad, over microwaved chocolate cake (what café doesn’t have fresh cake?!).  To cope with our failures and re-start, we went to the English theater to see The Great Gatsby, which we found quite entertaining despite the sometimes ill-fitting Jay-Z/Beyonce music.

On Friday, we slept in and went out for brunch at an amazing Israeli inspired restaurant called Neni in the Naschmarkt (open air market) serving delicious pita bread, humus, fresh cheese, falafels, and breakfast arrangements.  This may have been the highlight of my trip had the sun not come out the following day.  Despite the umbrella/raincoat combos, we still had to go back to the hotel so we could change socks afterwards.  We took some nice, long afternoon strolls and got to see the essence of Wien through the some small breaks in the rain.  We stopped at a beautiful café for a break but were completely fooled a second time when Julie ordered the same cake and a few minutes later we heard the microwave beeping in the kitchen.  Stay away from the delicious looking Mohr im Hemd.  At this point, tired of peering from underneath our umbrellas and of falsely advertised cakes, we decided to settle in back at the hotel restaurant, 1500 Foodmakers, for dinner (plus we needed to change our socks a second time).

At Naschmarkt.  Octopus anyone?

Rathaus, Votivkirche

We had some fantastic pizza at the hotel along with homemade orange iced tea (me) to drink.  Then our luck took a turn for the better and the sun came out just as the sun began to set.  We rushed paying the bill so we could run out with our camera and see the sun/sky again (keep in mind that we had been living in constant rain the week before in Munich as well).  We took a wonderful stroll to the city center and were able to see the whole city from a fresh, umbrella-free perspective.  Then we realized how Wien felt like the “Paris of the East” in that every building/structure has such elaborate architecture that is bigger and more dramatic than your average European city. 

View from our hotel's roof; Julie jumping for joy at the lack of rain; Hofburg

Inside Stephansdom; Hofburg

The following day our luck continued and we had about 8 hours of good sunshine – we rushed through the city to see all the things we felt we were missing out on.  Perhaps we were over ambitious when we decided to jump right in and walk about 3 hours from Hundertwasserhaus, through Prater, to the Danube without eating breakfast.  Thankfully an overly-elegant café on the not-so-pretty river was able to rescue us with some water and a Sachertorte.  We made it back the tourist safe-haven near St. Stephansdom for some lunch at an outdoor café.

Hundertwasserhaus; Having fun with statues in Prater

After lunch, we toured the nearby streets and squares before making a stop at the Dorotheum auction house (think antiques road-show gems).  Despite the fact that we were getting a bit worn out, the sunny weather drew us out of the city to Schloss Schönbrunn, which is like our own Nymphenburg Palace by our apartment except the gardens/grounds are much more impressive.  The best part of the entire trip was scaling the hill behind the castle to the Gloriette for refreshing city views and the perfect break from our “see all of Vienna in 8 hours” kind of day.  We went back to the hotel for some more pizza and pasta (and more homemade orange iced tea for me).  We nixed the idea of going back to the Prater for the evening, as cramming a 4 day vacation into one sunny day can wear a person out.  Instead we settled for the second installment of our trilogy (we didn’t get to the third one as it is in limited release).

Since I only brought 4 pairs of socks for a 4 day trip, and was averaging 3 a day on rainy days, I was pleased to wake up and find them all dry.  This was just in time as the rain had begun again as we made our way by train home.  Although we couldn’t have the Vienna trip we were really hoping for, we realized just how lucky we were when we saw the flooding damage across the land as we made our way home – especially after our train was diverted due to flood damage through the town of Passau, which would be hit the worst with flooding beginning that night.  And even through all the rain, we still thought it was an awesome, very beautiful city worthy of anyone’s Europe itinerary.

*queue happily-ever-after music*