Hanging out with Cousin Nate

The start of 2015 has been very, very low key for us as evident from the lack of recent blog activity.  Our 2015 adventures have recently ‘officially’ kicked off with a two-week visit from my cousin Nate, who was travelling around Germany and visiting many of his German friends from the U of M.  This counts as perhaps only the fourth or fifth time I have spent time with my cousin, which just goes to show that sometimes you have to move halfway around the world to get friends and family to visit.

We celebrated Nate’s arrival with the traditional Hirschgarten Biergarten experience.  Although the weather did not entirely cooperate, we were well supplied with food from Aunt Ellen and Uncle Rüdiger.  The spread included Obazda, radishes, sliced meats and cheeses, and about a dozen hard-boiled Easter eggs - which they were still desperately trying to get rid of. 

As a side note, the Easter egg hunt is a very important tradition in my uncle’s family and is only to be carried out using hard-boiled eggs buried deep into the wild forest (see prior blog).  This is not your plastic-eggs-filled-with-candy-slightly-hidden-in-the-backyard kind of game- they take the Easter egg hunt very serious.  So Julie, Nate, and I agreed to eat the remaining Easter eggs (although none of us really liked them), to honor our Uncle Rüdiger who worked hard preparing the perfect Biergarten spread (and so that we could finally be rid of any guilt for not eating them).

The rest of the week, Julie and I spent at work and got to enjoy Nate’s company in the evening.  We shared dinners at the apartment and got into some pretty serious battles in Settler’s of Catan, which Julie ended up mostly dominating (of course).  We also got together at Ellen and Rüdiger’s place during the week to watch the first leg of the UEFA Champions League quarterfinal matchup FC Bayern Munich vs. Porto, where they ended up losing 3-1.  It was a really fun evening of yelling at the TV and enjoying popcorn from my aunt’s vintage American popcorn maker.

On the weekend, we took Nate to the famous Andechs brewery for all of our first time.  The monastery is only about 30 miles from Munich – I am not sure why we haven’t been before.  We, the doggies included, enjoyed a nice afternoon exploring the ancient sights set high up on the hill overlooking the fields down below.  The three of us split a giant Schweinshaxe (pork knuckle) for lunch and enjoyed some of their famous beer.  Rita made friends with the elderly Bavarian man next to us who was nudging crumbs down to her on the ground.  Afterwards we went for a long walk along the Amersee before calling it a day. 

Nate left us on Sunday to visit another friend (he technically has more German friends than we do), and we went to go pick up Logan and Ashley at the airport who were just arriving for part one of their European vacation.  However Logan and Ashley were asleep by the time Nate returned, and left for Paris early the next morning, leaving both to wonder if the other really existed.

Perhaps the most exciting part of Nate’s visit (at least in my opinion) was attending the second leg of the Bayern Munich vs. Porto quarterfinal.  It was a nail biter waiting for our tickets to arrive, which I bought 2^nd hand online (for a lot of money) and only arrived the day before the match after some unexpected shipping delays. 

Anyhow, there was a lot of excitement for this game considering FC Bayern needed at least 2 goals to advance to the semifinals and most people expected them to fall short.  In the end this match was truly unbelievable.  You know that moment in a basketball or football game where one team just starts dominating for a few minutes causing the opposing team to stop the game with a timeout?  Well imagine that level of domination for about 45 minutes straight because in soccer there are no timeouts.  Bayern Munich ended up scoring a touchdown worth of goals and winning 6-1, which meant Nate and I witnessed the most wild and exciting match we could have imagined.  As I write this, however, that game feels less meaningful since FC Bayern was just eliminated in the semifinal by Barcelona (Julie back-dated this blog which is how I know the future).  But still that was one of most entertaining and exciting sports games I have ever witnessed. 

We ended our week with Nate by celebrating in the traditional Bavarian style by going to Frühlingsfest, our favorite beer festival of the year.  Ashley and Logan, back from their other travels, joined us as well.  We started out by cruising around the fairgrounds a bit and then taking a ride in the Ferris wheel.  Later we played a round of that ski ball horse racing game, where you nudge along your toy horse forward along the race track by rolling a ball into holes at the end of a ramp (makes sense right?).  It was a pretty tight race between all 5 of us, except for Ashley’s defected horse that was not moving at all.  To everyone’s surprise Logan, who is not known for his talents throwing a ball, ended up winning and taking home the obnoxiously big orange stuffed dragon.  We then settled at our table in the Hippodrome tent, toasting our giant beers (and Ashley her water) and dancing on the benches for the rest of the evening. 

Nate rocking it in Rüdiger's old Lederhosen!

The following day we said goodbye to Nate and the four of us (Julie, myself, Logan, and Ashley) took off on our Scotland vacation.  We had a really great time spending quality time with my cousin and it was nice to learn more about the Hoff side of my family.  Thanks for coming Nate and good luck in medical school!

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.

Welcome to the Hotel Weiss (such a lovely place....)

Last week, Hotel Weiss officially opened for the 2013 season with our first visitors this year – our friends from Phoenix, Stacy and Adam (though none of us live in Phoenix anymore as of 1 week ago).  They are the first of 11 total guests over the next 3 months – or at least those are what we know of today.

They landed around lunchtime on Tuesday, so I took them for some tried and true good jet-lag lunch food – döner kebap over by Rotkreuzplatz.  This is the same place we have taken a few other guests – including my mother, who took this awkward photo of one employee with the döner:

Noah made it home early from work, so we picked up some chicken from the Tuesday chicken cart and headed over to Hirschgarten’s biergarten for dinner and beer.  We all Noah lucked out in that Hirschgraten was showing the UEFA Dortmund vs. Real Madrid semifinal game on the big screens.  Stacy and I started with our backs to the screen, but had to eventually turn around - it just became too creepy to have all those faces staring our way.  

The next day the pups got to join us for a pizza picnic in Hofgarten followed by bocce ball in the Englischer Garten.  Sadie became obsessed with a woman riding horse around us – I had to keep her leashed up or she would have tried to become friends with the horse – and most likely fail miserably.  And while I kept her from that danger, it might have been my fault one of the bocce balls hit her in the face.  I have never felt so guilty in my life – I think I was more upset about it than Sadie was.

We spent the evening over at Frühlingsfest for more chicken and beer, and again… Noah was able to watch the UEFA FC Bayern vs. FC Barcelona semifinal game in the beer tent!  The place definitely had a different atmosphere with the game playing (as we were there the Saturday before with some international friends… and 1 authentic German), but it was a very happy one with FC Bayern winning 3-0 and clinching a Germany vs. Germany UEFA cup final.  We also got surrounded by a German boy band ‘flash mob’ – but not sure how flash mob it really was when there isn’t much room between the tables for their few dancers.  And a huge shout out to Stacy and Adam for partaking in the traditional Lederhosen and Dirndl!  Now they really need to come back for Oktoberfest to get their money’s worth out of it!

Thursday we stayed in the city center spending money… what else can you really do in bad weather?  We continued our theme of daily German food at Zum Franziskaner – this time treating our guests to an eclectic combination of Weißwurst, authentic Wienerschnitzel, and Kaiserschmarrn.  While all three authentic German/Bavarian food on their own – I don’t think they really go together.  But no one complained.

We switched things up for dinner and went to a Greek restaurant.  Our old Munich friend Laura joined us, so Noah and I were able to toast her goodbye (again) at dinner.  She found a job in Cincinnati and was here in Munich to finish up her last 2 weeks at Intel.  That just means her and her soon-to-be husband need to come to Munich on vacation, instead of business trips.

Our plans for Friday originally included walking through the Partnachklamm Gorge, as we had heard cool things about it.  We even pre-booked one of our car sharing vehicles for the day.  Unfortunately for us, they decided to ‘close’ the gorge for the week for maintenance, and it would open again Saturday.  But we had a car for Friday – not Saturday!  We decided to be resourceful and just find another place to visit with the car.  Solution: Eibsee and Zugspitze!  

We began with a nice 7km hike/walk around the Eibsee – a lake at the bottom of the Zugspitze mountain (which, by the way, is the highest point in Bavaria – the mountain, not the lake).  Here we made fast friends with the ducks, who clearly are used to people feeding them.  At one point we stopped to look at the lake on a small hill, and this little duck came walking all the way up the hill to try to beg.  Impressive little climber!  We also found a rock shaped like Texas, so naturally I had to stop and give it a photo shoot.

After the 7km hike/walk, we took the cable car to the top of Zugspitze, which left both Stacy and I rather uneasy.  The mountain is 2,962 meters above sea level – or an elevation gain from the bottom of 1,950 meters.  Whatever way you look at it – you are going very high, very fast.

Once at the top, you take an elevator up 3 floors to get to the actual summit.  It is amazing how tiny Eibsee looked from up here.  After stomaching all I could handle of the heights, we moved to Deutschlands höchster Biergarten (Germany’s highest beer garden) for lunch.  I can say I had a real beer at the top of Germany – no Radler for me that day!  

For our guests’ last day in Munich, we decided to focus on the biergarten experience (again).  We first went into the city center to hit up Viktualienmarkt – the large open market near Marienplatz – to pick up a nice lunch spread.  After a quick detour to see the Hofbräuhaus, we hopped on the Ubahn up to Olympiapark, where Rita and Sadie cuddled in the small space between the seats.

Once there, we somehow managed to hit up two separate biergartens.  We did split them by stomping around the park grounds and making it to the highest hill there for some nice views of Munich and the Alps.  It was also nice that Stacy and Adam had one day of beautiful weather in Munich – how we wish it was every day!  Sadly this marked the end of their Munich leg, and we woke up Sunday to an empty apartment.  Well, not too empty – we had two waggly little dog butts to greet us in the morning.

In 9 days, Hotel Weiss will welcome my parents, and we will do it all over again!

I am Dreaming of a White Easter…

As any of our avid blog followers probably have noticed (hi Mom(s) and Grandma!), we have not been very active this winter.  Partly this is because we burned ourselves out visiting 9 countries last year and we are saving up our vacation days to do it all over again in 2013.  However, another large factor of why we have not done much lately is that this winter has been very, very long and dark.  Julie and I had discussed that there just didn’t seem to be as much sun this winter as last year, and the German Weather Service confirmed our suspicions.  This winter was officially the darkest winter for at least the last 60 years (they have only been tracking sunshine records for 60 years). 

The temperatures have been relatively constant around the freezing point, which brought a lot of snow this year.  It seems the snow started in October (see previous blog) and has not let up since: except for Christmas of course when we had a freak period of warm, sunny weather.  We’ve had a few freeze/thaw cycles in March, but even this week, the first official week of spring, we had a little bit of snow.  So since our ventures began in Munich back in December 2011, there have been 0 white Christmases and 1 white Easter (last year, 2012).  And with just one week to go, the forecast has us dreaming of another white Easter.

So naturally we have spent a lot of time avoiding the darkness by staying inside where it is warm. But seriously, what have we been doing!?  We conquered a 5,000 piece puzzle, bought a Nintendo Wii, had Indian food delivered about every Friday, watched 3 seasons of Downton Abbey, and learned to play/became addicted to the strategy/conquer board game Die Siedler Von Catan (The Settlers of Catan, also available in the States).  Oh and I can’t forget the thrilling episodes of “Der Bachelor”, “Deutschland Sucht den Superstar”, and “Germany’s Next Top Model” featuring Heidi Klum.  Only a small price to pay so I can watch soccer once a week, and it’s good German practice…..don’t judge!  I went to the FC Bayern vs. Arsenal Champions League game...pretty much a soccer fan’s dream come true.  Meanwhile Julie was busy winning trophies beating her co-workers in Go-Kart races…..I’m just glad I wasn’t there to also be defeated.

I also spent a lot of hours this winter studying German and preparing for my B1 language exam in February.  Today I received my scores and found out I passed with 93% and received the Goethe Institute “sehr gut” (basically an A) stamp of approval!  Yay!  Now the Mt. Everest that is German grammar looks a little bit smaller.

But don’t worry; our blog is about to get new life because after Easter weekend we are booked for every weekend until July.  We are jet setting to Denmark and Iceland in early April, then we prepare for 12 visitors over the following 6 weeks while also making long weekend trips to Vienna, Dresden, and Hamburg.  And that doesn’t include the trip to Croatia in August we just booked.

It is bound to be an awesome spring and summer - we just have to get through the last days of winter/ our potentially “white” Easter.  Happy Spring everybody!