Zach and Kristin come to Germany / I become a celebrity!

Last weekend we had a visit from my brother’s old college roommate and his wife, who going forward will be referred to as Zach and Kristin (makes sense – those are their names).  This is the guy who almost 9 years ago opened my brand new copy of the movie Dodgeball, intended as a Christmas gift for Julie, so that he could burn a copy for himself.  Oh, and this was our first Christmas together.  Although I’m sure Julie would not put it past me to buy her a used DVD as a gift, I knew I found a special girl when she could laugh at the whole thing.  Otherwise, our two visitors might have found themselves staying in a hotel.

They quickly became one of our favorite guests when they showed up with macarons from the French “Weiss Chocolate Shop”.  I was lucky to try two of the ten – as before I knew it Julie had eaten most of them.

Anyways, all you need to entertain a couple of Texas State University graduates is the best beer in the world and perhaps a river to hang out on a sunny Saturday. Together we had an absolute blast while enjoying our long overdue “summer” weather. 

After work on Thursday we met them for an open-air concert to see the Glenn Miller Orchestra in the Residence courtyard.  I’m not sure what was better, the music which brought back classic jazz band memories of my years playing the trumpet or the ambience of sitting in the royal fountain courtyard with blue skies.  I know they enjoyed it too because they bought a CD and got it autographed by the band’s pianist and MC.  This was actually our first concert of this sort here in Europe, even though I’m sure they think we do cool stuff like this every week.

We spent Friday evening in Hirschgarten enjoying our first smoked Steckerlfisch of the year and the various delicacies Zach and Kristen picked up earlier that day from Viktualienmarkt.  It sounds pretty trivial, but considering this was just the second time I could wear shorts this year, it was really awesome to be able to sit outside and enjoy some nice weather.  Sorry, the redundant references to the weather are probably annoying by now.

Saturday we planned an all day ‘river event’.  This is essentially our code for hanging out, grilling, and swimming along the Isar river while trying to avoid the blinding images of naked men sunbathing on the other side of the bank (complete with sunscreen and oils too).  Despite (or because of?) the nudity, we were having a great time grilling some sausages and cooling off in the water.  Of course, I was the only one to get all the way in the water, which is quite cold and reminiscent of Barton Springs in Austin. 

Towards the end of the day we noticed a camera crew stomping around our base camp.  They had approached Zach and Kristen while we were sitting by the water, so we got up and went over to rescue them from any unnecessary German interrogation.  They asked us if they could film the sausages on our grill, and then it expanded to asking if they could film Julie and I eating a sausage.  They were from RTL TV network (think ABC, NBC, etc), and told us it was for the 15-minute update news at 6:45 that day.  We weren’t really expecting to make the cut amongst the many other, more probable German groups, which we saw them film after us. Regardless, we got back home in time to flip on the news and record the segment just in case.  It turned out we were the ‘feature stars’ at the end of the 2 minute segment, “Wurst in Deutschland”, and we all watched as Julie delicately fed me a bite of sausage to highlight just how wonderful and romantic grilling sausages along the river are.  You can see the video yourself here. I don’t know if it gets any more cliché than a couple Americans featured in the news eating sausages in Germany.  Thank God they did not broadcast our voices and stupid responses to the question “how did the sausage taste?”, because we were both regretting our “sehr lecker!!” and “unglaublich!!” broken German answers.

After our German television premier, we took Zach and Kristen out for Indian food for dinner, which is becoming a theme for our visitors and demonstrates our ever growing “burn-out” for German food.  It is no coincidence that the Indian restaurant is just a few blocks from the delicious Sarcletti’s Ice Cream shop.  We said our farewell to them the next morning as they set off for Vienna.

Meanwhile, I was asked to be interviewed for the DAAD (agency sponsoring my fellowship) quarterly magazine. My weekend of fame extended into the week as they sent a professional photographer to my lab for a photo shoot.  My efforts to schedule this while my coworkers were at lunch failed since we got off to a late start, and I was subject to everyone standing around making jokes and laughing at me while I tried to focus on not looking stupid for the camera.

All in one week I had a feature spot on the news, an interview, and a public photo shoot. Autographs are now available upon request. 

German Efficiency at its Finest

The other day, Noah and I went to the post office on a Saturday to mail a package.  When we arrived, we see the line is out the main section of the office, and into the ‘entrance’ hall.  To help show the length of this post office line, I took a few creepy photos with my phone.  The left photo is the front of the long line, and the right photo is further back. 

I feel I should also mention that the post office was closing in less than an hour when we hopped in line.  No worries – this is Germany!  Only here can you make it through a line that long at a post office, with only 3 open desks, and be in and out in UNDER 15 MINUTES!  Cheers to German efficiency! 

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.