Oktoberfest 2013

Once again I find myself behind on the blog.  While we have a few topics to write about, I will start by skipping back to the end of last month/beginning of this month to write a quick entry about our 2013 Oktoberfest experience.

As mentioned in the prior post by Noah, we returned from our USA trip with colds.  He didn’t mention that we also returned to Oktoberfest in full bloom.  As it only lasts for 2 weeks (over 3 weekends), our colds would end up preventing us from partaking too much in this year’s festivities – our friend Angela can attest to this. 

An old college friend of mine (Angela) was able to book a last minute trip to come to Munich during the first week of Oktoberfest.  I told her we were glad to host her here, but we had work during the day.  I assumed we could join her in the evenings down at Theresienwiese (this was before the cold hit).  Well, instead all I was able to do was loan her my dirndl for the week while she connected with friends via Facebook to go to the festival with.  At least we were able to do one dinner with her before she left (at a restaurant, not a beer tent). 

Being sick that week also caused me to miss my 2 work outings to Oktoberfest, plus we weren’t able to join a group of Noah’s fellow DAAD friends when they went over the weekend.  Lame.

By week 2, however, we were feeling a bit better, and were determined to at least have lunch in one of the tents.  So the last Friday (a ‘brückentag, or bridge day, where Noah is forced to take vacation as the Thursday is a holiday), we geared up to go just for a few hours.  We’re pretty burned out on most traditional German food (meat and potato dishes specifically), so we picked the Fischer-Vroni tent where we could enjoy a nice steckerlfisch.  

After a maß of beer each along with our fish, we strolled the fairgrounds for a bit so Noah could buy his crepe.  However the weather wasn’t the best, and we didn’t want to catch another cold, so we called it a day and headed back home to enjoy our day off.   I think if this was our first year with Oktoberfest, we would have pushed ourselves much harder (and gotten much sicker), but luckily we were able to go multiple times last year.  Plus there is always next year! 

The BMW Leprechaun

Between the all the popular German car manufacturers (including BMW - Bayerische Motoren Werke or Bavarian Motor Works), the famous Autobahn, and various other car things I am clueless about, Germans are known for their love of everything auto.  While it is all pretty lost on me, I was intrigued when I heard about these rare concept cars you might chance to glimpse every so often on the Autobahn.

Basically car manufacturers will paint their next generation car models with all kinds of swirly paint meant to act as camouflage so that they can drive them in public without competitors or the media discerning what they are working on.  As you can imagine, these car manufacturers aren’t constantly driving these things on the roads– giving them an elusive quality, like a leprechaun.

As Noah and I don’t really spend too much time on the road, I was excited to spot one of these motor-leprechauns on our drive back from Dresden.  I urged Noah to rush to get closer after it passed us, but this thing was flying.  Below is the best shot I was able to get as it sped away.  I figured this would be the one picture I would get of a concept car, though it is hard to tell what it is.

So you can imagine our surprise when we stumbled upon a parked concept car just a few blocks from our apartment as we were walking the dogs.  I ran back home to grab our camera, hoping the car wouldn’t drive away in the meantime.  I quickly snapped a few shots – all the while afraid the driver would see the flash going off and run out and smash the camera.  Ok, maybe I have seen too many spy movies.   Noah told me to calm down, as I was simply taking photos in public, and I relaxed enough to pose the dogs next to the car (they weren’t impressed).

Thanks to car-people on facebook, it looks like I photographed the BMW 6 series Coupe concept car.  Though to me it will remain an elusive swirl-painted leprechaun car.

Well that went by too fast…

Our 9 days back in our motherland was over in a blink of an eye and left us recovering for an entire week while we readjusted.  We came back with many American items - luggage, food, new clothes, and a nice American cold.

We began our stay at my friend Scott’s new house just outside of Dallas, TX.  Although we are pretty seasoned travelers, we ran into a bit of trouble on our first day.  Long stories short: we thought our cellphones were unlocked and we could simply put in US SIM cards we bought on Amazon (nope – locked tight). And then a trip to the ATM led Julie to the realization that our ATM card expired 3 months earlier.  One cheap Verizon phone and a trip back to Wells Fargo to withdraw cash from a bank teller later and we were back on our feet.  Thank goodness this was our country where we could go a day without phones/cash, and not a new country where we couldn't speak the language!

Now we were really ready to jump head first into American culture, by going to a Texas Rangers baseball game.  After a few Miller Lights (with Julie finally realizing that they do taste watered-down… seeing as she didn't drink beer before we moved to Germany) and a churro, we finally started to settle in to the American way.

Sunday Scott drove us to meet up with my brother Seth and his wife Marty as we would drive with them out to their place in Austin.  We spent the rest of our time in Texas (except a quick day trip to Houston to say hi to Julie’s folks) binging on all the foods, television, and shopping we had the energy for.  Our favorite meal hands down was our BBQ lunch at Rudy’s, a place we had eaten at before but didn't really appreciate until now.  Perhaps the lack of BBQ in Phoenix (our prior home) and now Munich made it all the more delicious.

My mom flew in from San Francisco to join us on all of our ventures except the food binge, of course.  Unfortunately I was restricted to the suburbs because I caught my cold pretty early on and didn't have the energy to really explore our old college town.  Luckily suburbia had all we wanted – shopping malls, Kerbey Lane, HEB, and Target.

We flew out on Thursday to Chicago for my cousin’s wedding weekend.  By then Julie was now playing host to my cold virus.  Although it was a new city, the routine on Thursday was pretty much the same - shopping, eating, shopping.  Though now we had the added company of my Grandma.  Then the wedding festivities began and the rest of the trip was over in a flash.  We had the rehearsal dinner on Friday, the wedding on Saturday, and farewell brunch on Sunday (for the newlyweds… not for us).  It was so great to see all of the Weiss family, who we have dearly missed since we last saw them for Seth’s wedding in 2011.  Plus Eric and Allyson booked the best wedding band ever – the Becca Kaufman Orchestra.  Seriously – they are awesome.  

Before we knew it we were on our lonely way back home to Munich, thankfully on a direct flight from Chicago.  But we will be back in our motherland in February for round 2 to see my brother-in-law get married.

Photos from the wedding weekend (yes, we were a bit obsessed with the photo booth):

Rehearsal Dinner

Before heading to the wedding

We are pros at walking Grandma down the aisle

Pictures from our first two photo booth sessions

From left to right: Brothers + wives + Grandma; Seth, Mom and me; The ladies who married into the Weiss Family, aka the Mrs. Weiss'

By the end of the night I turned into a creeper

Before Coming to America (for a visit)

It’s been 20 months since our arrival in Germany and we are preparing for our first trip back home.  We both think that such a long interval of remaining in Europe was critical in order to beat the homesickness as well as establish Munich as our new home.  And even though we have succeeded on these fronts, we could not be more excited for this trip to see our family, friends, and have that warm fuzzy feeling of our home country.  There is nothing else we would rather be doing (including another romantic European getaway or an exotic trip to Thailand) than having an American cheeseburger and milkshake amongst a room full of people speaking our language. This might be the vacation of the year!

The 'American' diner in Berlin didn't live up to our hopes

Nowadays we pretty much only blog about travelling or having visitors, but there have actually been lots of other important things going on this summer too.  Although it may not seem like it, we do work to live here and thus comes all of the mundane, but not insignificant activities which go along with it. 

For instance, Julie has successfully started (with help from her previous colleague Laura) a “new employee” social group at work.  This was amongst some pretty strong opposition from long standing German employees who are not able to understand the struggles of a newcomer or foreigner trying to find their way at a new company.  Thankfully there are now enough non-native team members who could give her the votes and support she needed.  Now the next generation of Julies will have a much easier time adjusting to Intel.  Also, Julie is still making her 36 hour trip out to Karlsruhe every quarter for work.  Although she doesn’t exactly look forward to the trips, I know she is enjoying her binge of English language TV ( BBC 1, BBC 2, BBC 3) and room service dinner!

Even in Karlsruhe, Julie is trying to find that American flavor

My German is still getting better!  I’ve started meeting a tandem language partner once per week, where we spend about 30 minutes working in English and 30 minutes in German.  Together we both learn how awful the idiosyncrasies of a language are.  This is in addition to my weekly German lessons at work.  I’ve reached a pretty high fluency level, which allows me to speak, read, and listen a lot easier than before.  The only problem is now I notice all of the mistakes I make in real time, which adds a bit more hesitation in speaking compared to the “fluent but ignorant” stage I was at before.  For example, I just finished reading the first of the Eragon fantasy series in German; whereas 6 months ago I was reading Goosebumps stories (yes R.L. Stein!).  Also now I can use my German in more advanced situations such as writing the Munich tax office to change our tax class, applying for jobs (most difficult cover letter ever), and avoiding $25 cleaning penalties on our rental car for dog hair.

My work at Roche has been going really good lately.  I’ve been supporting the development of the next generation Vitamin D test (one of Roche’s top-selling products).  I’ve produced some very important, but unfortunately confidential, results which have been creating a lot of positive attention for me.  In addition, I attended a scientific Roche forum in Mannheim where I spent a very long day interacting with Roche colleagues (entirely in German).  We had scientific/networking meetings until about 5 p.m., then a tour of the Carl-Benz museum (very cool!), and then a 3+ hour dinner (fine German cuisine). 

Carl-Benz Museum

Our dogs are healthy and doing well, though they both have been picking up a few ticks lately.  Julie discovered and removed the first two on Rita’s belly (two of the biggest we have seen) all by herself.  Thanks to the help of Sandy last summer, we discovered this method of lightly spinning the ticks in a circle (more of a gentle circular rubbing motion) which after a few minutes causes the tick to simply release itself in defeat (or perhaps dizziness?).  (No idea why it works, but it does – you just have to keep spinning the little bugger much longer than you would expect.  And don’t tug him out!)  But Julie got a big surprise when she smashed the fat tick in a paper towel and there was so much blood that it exploded through the towel onto the floor.  Gross!  More recently, Sadie has turned into a little devil at the Biergarten.  Both the dogs love to scavenge any scraps hidden in the stones beneath the tables, but Sadie has become obsessed with these hidden treasures.  We were having an after dinner stroll through the park side of Hirschgarten (off the leash), and she ran away from us back to the enticing scents of the Biergarten.  We had about a 30 second standoff, about 50 yards apart, where we using our ‘we mean business’ dog voice to call her back.  She had one eye looking at us and the other towards the tables.  The little devil on her shoulder won, and I ended up having to chase her down as she wormed her way underneath several different tables of people.  She then made a big dramatic yelp as I caught her and fussed at her, making me look like an abusive dog owner amongst the crowds.  Her punishment – we marched her back to the apartment, left her, and took our angel dog Rita back out for another stroll.    Wow….is this what having children is like!? 

She's lucky she is so cute

We don’t go out in Munich very often because of our busy travel schedule and commitment to the dogs at home.  But we made an exception this weekend and splurged on a rooftop dinner overlooking the old city.  The Mandarin Oriental hotel offers rooms starting at about $500 per night, so we weren’t sure what the damage would be for an evening spent on their rooftop.  We lucked out with perfect weather and a beautiful sunset behind the Munich skyline.  If the pool was not only for hotel guests, I think Julie might have just jumped in.  In the end, the cocktails are as pricey as they come, but the food is actually quite affordable.  I’ve purchased ice cream in Paris which almost cost as much as the Sushi Bento Box we ordered.  But for the views alone, this was definitely an awesome evening and something I would recommend to anyone looking for a special evening in Munich.  Of course, we took lots and lots of photos. J  

The only shots of us together were taken in mirrors.  We were hipsters.

It is exactly moments like this which remind us that we live in the most beautiful place we could ever imagine.  But even with all of this beauty and experience, we are still looking forward to that cheeseburger in our home country more than ever before.

King of the Lakes

The Bavarian summer season is quickly fading along with our chances to do summertime activities.  This weekend we took the opportunity to make a quick trip down to Königsee in the lower Alps (direct translation: Kings Lake, a translation which has bailed us out many times when we are struggling with the German phonetics).  We were also in this area with Logan and Ashley last year, but we scratched a visit to the lake because access by boat is restricted in the fall/winter.  After work on Friday, we packed up the dogs and headed out after for the 2 ½ hour drive to our Gästehaus Böhm. 

View from our Gästehaus 

We woke up early on Saturday to catch the first boat out at 8:00 (and the dogs licking our hands at 6:30am pretty much ensured we would not be late).  This turned out to be a critical piece of advice I received from a coworker.  We rushed through our hotel breakfast, packed up the car, and made our way down to the lake.  We were shocked to see that instead of these multi-tier, large capacity ships we are used to on lakes like Starnberg, we would be riding in a small ~50 passenger cruiser around the lake.  After securing tickets for all four of us (even the dogs had their own ticket), we awkwardly crammed in to what was already a packed boat.  Clearly this place was about to get very crowded.

The views on the lake in the early morning were absolutely spectacular.  The water was perfectly still and there was just a hint of lingering fog on the water, which of course means lots and lots of pictures. 

One of the highlights of the lake is the famous echo wall, and the boat guides play a trumpet duet to demonstrate.  It’s hard to make an echo sound really interesting, but this was definitely a pretty amazing echo and something you should go check out for yourself. 

We rode the boat straight across the lake to the end to get as far away from the surging crowds expected for the day.  We arrived at the Salet port to the most beautiful, calm scenery just as the sun was rising over the mountains. 

From there it was a 15 minute walk to the neighboring Obersee, where we then hiked for about an hour to the opposite side.  We had a nice picnic at this end before making our way back to the boats.  Lots of photos coming… 

As we got closer and closer to the docks, we started to encounter all the crowds.  We realized how lucky we were to have such a peaceful morning just by waking up a bit early.  We made a quick stop at one of the intermediate stops along Königsee (St. Bartholomä), which is famous for its picturesque church.  But the masses became too much for us after our very quiet morning.  Instead of lingering, we caught the next ship back, grabbed an ice cream cone, and made our way back to Munich. 

Crowds back at the main shore

Driving home we realized that having sights like Königsee just a few hours away is further proof that Bavaria will probably be the most beautiful place we will ever live…