Saturday, June 23 – Thursday, June 28 2012
So, our original dream plan for after our work contracts
came to an end was to take a few months off of work and extend our European
adventure in style—after all, we still needed to explore the Scandinavian
countries + Turkey and Croatia! But as
the job offers came in, we realized it was probably best to make the ‘adult’
decision (whatever), accept the offers and head directly back to work at the
Expedia headquarters in Bellevue rather than taking a long multi-month break
and then starting a job hunt thereafter.
Expedia was gracious enough to give us 3 weeks
of leave to close things down in Geneva and de-register (yes, you have to
‘de-register’ with the Swiss authorities), get ourselves moved back and settled
in before starting up with work again. As
we got closer to our end date and the impact of traveling almost every weekend
in the past 6 months caught up to us, we came to realize how nice it was going
to be to - wait for it - relax! And while we compromised on our original dream
of traveling for a couple of months—we did decide to use part of our down time
to take one last trip before flying back to the USA. While we still had several places on “the
list”, our plans had to stay flexible because of the uncertainty of our
move-out dates; we figured a road trip would be our safest bet. When we looked down the list of places to
road trip, Germany was on the top of the list – specifically the Romantic Road and the Black Forest.
On our way to Germany we checked off a few
other unvisited Swiss sites as well. The
route plan was to take as many back roads as possible over the most beautiful
Alpine passes we could fit in. We’re
happy to report that plan proved successful.
The first was Grimselpass. The pictures
speak for themselves but we’ll help with some obvious explanations…
Dramatic peaks…
A couple dams holding back serene alpine lakes…
And an ice-filled lake at the top of the pass…
Next was Furka
Pass, which switched things up a bit with greener mountainsides and distant
alpine peaks.
 |
| Yep, that winding road was our route! |
Soon enough we ended up in Andermatt, a village we drove through with Ang’s uncle Orman and
cousin Tami last July (although this time we avoided the traffic!).
One part of Switzerland we hadn’t visited yet
was St. Moritz in the southeast
corner—known to be a very ritzy ski destination. After about 7 hours of driving it was well
into the evening by the time we arrived.
Because it was so late we didn’t have much time to enjoy the town so we
had a quick dinner, snapped a few photos and continued on.
 |
| We were bummed to be a couple days too early for "Schwingfest" :) |
As part of our trip planning process we did a
little price shopping for hotels.
Average price for St. Moritz - $300.
Average for nearby Livigno, Italy -
$70. Hmmm, what to choose? :) We finished our evening drive to Italy over
another scenic pass, Bernina Pass, and
made it in time for a glass of wine before bed.
Even though Livigno was just a stopover for us,
we did enjoy some of the surrounding scenery as we left town the next morning. We passed another huge dam on our way toward
Austria as well as some great scenery and an assortment of castles resting on
the surrounding hillsides.
Our next destination? Meeting up with a couple of last minute
visitors – Brian and Megan Baumann. Brian
is Ang’s brother’s (Nick) wife’s (Kate) brother. (Did you get that? Brian and Kate are siblings; Kate is married
to Nick, Ang’s brother. Basically, Brian
& Megan are family to us.) They were
on a 5-6 week trip across all sorts of European destinations and luckily we
were able to coordinate a meet up! We
picked them up in Füssen, Germany (yep,
we drove through 4 countries in 24 hours), which we already visited with Ang’s
dad Gavin last May. We were shocked
to see that for many weeks of travel all they needed was one backpack each! Nicely done guys.
We started off our tour of the Romantic Road
right away by visiting Linderhof Palace. Quick side note on the Romantic Road - if
you’ve never heard of it before then you’re in good company. Every time we mentioned the Romantic Road to
anyone that asked us about our travel plans, we got blank stares… but it’s
actually one of the more famous stretches of road in all of Germany (we swear!). When Dave told Brian and Megan about it, he
originally thought it was “a stretch of road with, like, 100 castles.” Yeah… he was way off. The Romantic Road definitely has as few
castles, but it’s more accurately a stretch of road that has a taste of
medieval-style towns and sites. While
Dave will never live down the 100-castle-promise, we had a great time over
those few days exploring the highlights with Brian and Megan.
Back to Linderhof – this is another one of
crazy King Ludwig II’s havens. Besides Neuschwanstein Castle it’s actually the
most highly regarded of his royal collection.
While small in comparison, he spared no expense on making it grand. Unfortunately there were no pictures allowed
inside.
This wasn’t just a palace though; there were actually 125 acres of grounds, which included some amazing gardens…
Some highly ornate water structures…
A grotto, which is a man-made cave structure
that he designed as his personal theater stage.
He would have the composer Wagner
put on private shows for him here. Yeah…
the grotto was a bit over-the-top.
A couple of chapels. One featured his favorite animal – the
peacock. The other was constructed
entirely of wood.
And finally this building, called the Hunding's Hut, which has a life-like tree
built inside of it. The reason it was built
was to act as the backdrop for a scene in one of Wagner’s operas (he really
liked Wagner, can you tell?).
As we were walking around the estate, it
actually felt a little bit like church camp, being in such a wooded setting
with a bunch of small cabin-like buildings… until we made our way back to the
main palace area and were (extravagantly) reminded otherwise.
After Linderhof we continued on to see Wieskirche, described as “Germany’s most
glorious Baroque-Rococo church, beautifully restored and set in a sweet meadow.” The only reason we can think of why this
church was 1) built in the first place and 2) still so popular today, is
because of a legend involving a crying Jesus statue. The story goes that this statue physically
wept back in 1738 and in 1739 they built a small chapel to house it. Eventually it drew so many crowds that a
larger church was built here.
It was late afternoon by this point and we
decided to head to the town of Oberammergau
to check in to our hotel. Oberammergau
is described as “the Shirley Temple of Bavarian villages,” so we thought it
would be a perfect setting to kick off our Romantic Road trip. Oh, and for the record, the hostess at our
B&B did know what the Romantic
Road was (although to be fair she should know because her hometown is right in
the middle of it!). :)
 |
| Our B&B |
We walked into the old town area for dinner,
and while it was definitely cute, a lot of it seemed closed down for the
day. After dinner we grabbed some ice
cream (one of the themes of or our trip) and went back to the hotel to play
some cards (another theme of our trip) until bed. Brian and Megan love playing games as much as
we do—so we were in perfect company for the 4 days we spent together.
Another famous thing about Oberammergau is the
Passion Play (yes, similar storyline as the Mel Gibson film) that is put on
here every 10 years and has been doing so since 1634. We tried to squeeze it into our Oktoberfest
trip to back in 2010, but of course the tickets were sold out long before
we knew the play existed. This play
takes over the entire town – in fact out of the roughly 4,000 residents, half
of them participate in some way. They
take a lot of pride in this, too—they start preparations over a year in
advance. Our B&B owner had pictures
up of her family in costume – last time her son played adult Jesus and her
grandson played baby Jesus! She was
quite proud. Before leaving town the
next morning we made our way over to check out the large theater—unfortunately
we couldn’t go inside, but we wandered around the exterior.
There are plenty of places to visit when
driving on the Romantic Road. Luckily
our guidebooks gave a good description of each town so we could be selective
(otherwise you could spend weeks checking out all of these little towns). The first one that caught our interested was Nördlingen, described as a city built in
the center of a meteor crater! Warning:
this sounds a lot cooler than it actually was.
What we figured out is that this crater must be huge because there is really no noticeable outline of a crater that
we could see (we climbed the church tower to get a good aerial look).
Other than the promise of a crater, this town
was as cute as described. It was
completely walled-in and the buildings were full of character.
Another silly thing we saw was this stork
sitting on top of an old building. No
big deal right? Well it is to this town
– they have a 24-hour webcam on this nest so that people can view it any time
of the day they want (check out www.storch24.de - although if you are in the US, check it out at night or very early morning so that there's daylight where the camera is). We’re not sure we understand it – but if
that’s their thing, then hey, why not? :)
We traveled the Romantic Road in the right
direction (south to north) because each town we visited was just a little bit
more interesting than the previous. Our
next stop was Dinkelsbühl, which
greeted us with a castle wall and tower in front of a scenic moat. Perfect!
Much like its predecessor on our journey, Dinkelsbühl was also completely walled-in
and the buildings were full of even more character, painted in all shades of
pastel. While lacking in historical
sites, we didn’t mind because it still gave us the opportunity to stretch our
legs and snoop around the walls a bit.
We ran across this sign, which we thought was
strange. Is it saying that tanks are
allowed to go 70 k/h and trucks 90? That
was our best guess until we looked it up and found out it had to do with the
weight capacity over the upcoming bridge.
Is it concerning at all that they
are still posting weight limits for tanks? ;)
Great side story—so in Switzerland, usually
fountains like these provide ‘potable’ (aka drinkable) water. Even though we were in Germany, not
Switzerland, Dave dove right in and grabbed a nice ‘refreshing’ drink of
water. It tasted a little odd, but
whatever, he didn’t think too much about it.
After we made our circle around the town and ended up back at the
fountain, he took a closer look at the sign next to it which was in German, of
course. After a quick search on our
Google Translate app—yep, not potable.
After a closer look at the water in the basin itself—yep, he wanted to
vomit (think used bandaids and dead bugs).
So far we haven’t noticed any long-term damage, but only time will
tell—and allow the parasites to set up camp and multiply. :)
Just outside of Dinkelsbühl was our hotel, Colmberg
Castle! If we weren’t going to see
100 castles, the least we could do is stay the night in one. :) We could tell from our approach that we were
in for something special. Upon arrival
we marveled at the views of the valley below and the general appearance of the
exterior. 
Inside was even better – it really had an old
castle feel and was decorated with medieval perfection (although we’re not sure
why the Nazi furniture is still on display (???) – check it out below). The old wooden stair cases were
fantastic. The castle was originally
built back in the 13th century and for most of the 19th
century it was the headquarters of the kingdom of Bavaria.
Not quite ready for dinner, we decided to check
out the beer hall that we drove by on the way up to the castle. It was just a quick 5-minute walk down. Upon arrival we weren’t quite sure if it was
even open, but we figured this is Germany, right? Sure enough it was open, but hardly anyone
was there to fill out the huge beer hall.
While the atmosphere was a little lacking, it was a great way to wind
down before dinner. Back at the castle
our dinner was excellent and we wrapped up the evening with, of course, a nice
game of cards.
On Tuesday we found that we saved the best town
for last – Rothenburg ob der Tauber. While the other towns on the Romantic Road
were mostly just nice to look at, Rothenburg had more substantial sites to
complement its quaintness. Our first
stop was St. Jakobskirche, home of
the Altar of the Holy Blood, which is
one of the most impressive wooden sculptures we’ve ever seen. The degree of detail was fascinating.
Rothenburg wasn’t without its overhyped tourist
sites, too – specifically the Councilors’
Tavern clock tower show, which draws a large crowd every hour. Really not that exciting – it consisted of the
two windows opening up and two mechanical characters lifting their beer
glasses. Our guidebook told us that the reaction
of the crowd (disappointment) is a better show than the actual routine. :)
We couldn’t pass up the opportunity for a
bird’s eye view so we opted to climb the Town Hall tower. It was a tight squeeze but oh-so-rewarding
with layers of red rooftops and greenery below.
Next we went to the highly-rated Medieval Crime & Punishment Museum. This quirky little museum was great, showing
everything from the gruesome to the ridiculous.
We’ll start with the gruesome – stretching tables, the wheel, and even
an iron maiden fit this category. All of
these were meant for an incredible amount of pain – the wheel being reserved
for the most painful of deaths. In case
you’re not familiar, the victim’s entire body would be crushed into pieces with
the weight of the wheel then their limbs and body were wound through the spokes
and put on display for public intimidation.
Yikes!
What we really enjoyed was learning about the
more quirky and ridiculous forms of punishment…
The double-neck violin was meant for two
quarrelsome women that couldn’t get along.
You can probably guess what it’s for – the two women were tied together
until they got along with each other.
There were all sorts of shame masks for a
variety of punishments. The most
interesting shame device was the “Shame Flute”, which was attached to the neck
and fingers of bad (as in unskilled) musicians as they were forced to stand in
public. Hey, musicians have to start
somewhere… give them a chance!
The Bakers Baptism was for bakers who made a
loaf of bread that was too small or too light.
They would be placed in a cage and dunked underwater in public. For each half-ounce missing in the bread’s
weight, the baker was dipped into the water. Quick question – why would you ever become a baker?!? :)
We also learned about some ridiculous
policies. Here are a few:
- Dance ordinances were put into place to prevent “jumping” dances (whatever those are), dances that involved turning of females, and dances between strangers. Those that broke these laws would need to see the judge the next day and pay a fine.
- Proof of an honest family was really important back then as it allowed you the permission to learn a rewarding trade. Dishonorable families were those including the following professions: executioner, gravedigger, exterminator, and actors & musicians (interesting how times have changed).
- Marriage disagreements were serious matters. When a couple fought, a heavy wooden club was placed outside their door until they came to an agreement (hopefully ‘coming to an agreement’ didn’t involve the club?). The best part was that their neighbors were given a few liters of wine as compensation. :)
- Finally, an old office policy was on display, which included the strict “dos” and “don’ts” for this particular company. One rule states, “If there’s a good reason, everyone is expected to work overtime.” Another, “It is not allowed to talk during office hours. An employee who smokes, drinks alcoholic beverages, visits billiard, pools or political rallies, shows that his honor, thinking and sense of order will be doubted.” The best rule was #10, which stated, “Since this is a much better policy than the last one, we want to emphasis the generosity of this policy. For this reason, more work is expected.” Amazing.
After the museum we toured a famous Christmas
store – why not, it was the middle of June, right? Apparently we weren’t the only ones with this
idea, because the store was packed. We weren’t too
surprised by this though, especially considering what we know about a German
Christmas from our trip last December.
We spent the rest of the afternoon walking
through and enjoying the town before dinner.
Our walk included a detour out to the castle garden, which offered the
best views of the outside walls mixed with the valley below.
After a delicious dinner, we headed to check
out the Night Watchman’s Tour. We didn’t know quite what to expect and toyed
with the idea of just heading back to the hotel—but the tour was highly rated
and Ang was insistent on going. It
turned out to be the perfect mix of humor and history and even though there
were about 200 people on the tour (no joke), it didn’t feel too big or crowded. 
He shared many stories, but the following was
perhaps the most notable. Toward the end
of WWII there were a ton of Nazi soldiers being housed in Rothenburg, which was
known as one of Germany’s most Nazi-friendly towns. The U.S.’s original plan was to completely
level the city in order to give a crushing blow to the Nazis. However, U.S. Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy, knowing the historical
importance and beauty of this town (because of a painting of Rothenburg that
his mother purchased there and hung on the wall of his childhood home), called
off the aggressive attack. Instead he
urged the Nazis to surrender, which was surprisingly accepted (this was unheard
of at the time as Hitler ordered all towns to fight to the death). It’s crazy to think that the reason this town
was spared started with a painting, preserving this wonderful city for
generations to enjoy. All in all, the Night
Watchman’s Tour was well worth it; the guide did a great job and was quite
entertaining.
We returned back to our fancy-looking, but very
affordable, hotel for our final night to hang out and enjoy Brian and Megan’s
company (and of course to play some more cards).
We woke early on Wednesday morning to get Brian
and Megan on their train to Denmark. We
couldn’t believe how quickly the time went by and were glad to be able to spend
it with them and share in part of their crazy adventure. Great memories to reminisce about for many
years. :)
Our trip wasn’t over though – we had a couple
more days to make our way back to Geneva while experiencing even more medieval
magic. The rest of Wednesday morning was
filled with a lot of driving as we made our way through the final stretches of
the Romantic Road and started our tour of the Black Forest.
On the way we made a short detour to visit the
city of Heidelberg. Heidelberg has mixed reviews – Americans love
it and Germans think it’s too touristy (along with Rick Steves… although he
isn’t always right, now is he?). :)
Regardless of the negative press we were just a short 15-minute detour away
so we pulled the trigger. While we were
only there long enough to find a bathroom and snap a few photos, we enjoyed
this scenic river town (but can’t really comment on the touristy factor).
Another couple of hours later we reached Baden-Baden, known as one of the
ritziest areas in Germany. 150 years ago
Baden-Baden was the stomping ground of Europe’s upper class, soaking in the spa
waters and enjoying the world’s top casino at the time. We didn’t have too much time to spare but we
wanted to get a feel for the town, so we did a walking tour from our
guidebook. We started off at the casino. While we weren’t dressed to gamble in this
fancy place, we still took a quick peek inside.
As fancy as it tried to be, it has nothing on Las Vegas. :)
Next we made our way up to the spa area. We even had the chance to taste the water,
which is supposed to be really good for you (but it tastes like hot
pennies). We didn’t actually go inside
the spas but we did walk past an ancient one built during the Roman times.
Because we didn’t have time to visit the spas
(the town’s main attraction), we wrapped things up and headed south toward Freiburg. The scenery on the way was fantastic and we
had the opportunity to see Germany’s highest waterfall (500 feet), in the town
of Triberg.
Finally in Freiburg we were able to relax a
little bit after the hours of long driving that day. We enjoyed some nice Thai food from a waiter
who liked to sing ‘Light Hits, Soft Favorites’ really loudly (seriously, those
of you in Seattle, think Warm 106.9—those
of you in Eastern WA, think 105.3). It was quite amusing. That week was also in the middle of the Euro
2012 soccer tournament, so after dinner we joined the locals at the town’s
brewery to enjoy part of the game.
Exhausted from a packed day, we called it a night.
Thursday was our final day of European travel
(we’re not sure it hit us at the time but looking back it’s sad to think
about). While we knew there was a lot of
driving in store for us to get back home, we tried to make the most of our
morning in Freiburg. We started our
morning with a city walk using our trusty guidebook. We learned a few fun facts about the city…
These unique little canals running down many of
the streets are called Bächle. They were built to prevent fires by allowing
the town to quickly flood an at-risk street as needed. Today they are just a pleasant addition to
this town’s quaint atmosphere – and a nice way to cool off our feet in the warm
weather. :)
We were surprised to look down and see
“Madison” written on the ground. Sure
enough, this emblem is the coat of arms of Madison, Wisconsin – one of Freiburg’s sister cities. Like Madison, Freiberg is a college town… the
only slight difference is that
Freiberg has been one since the 15th century. ;)
Freiburg has preserved some of its quirky
history as well. Check out these
hand-carved diagrams from the 13th and 14th century on a
pillar in the center of town – these were official bread size measurements so
people could tell if they were getting their fair share.
We couldn’t leave the Black Forest area without
getting a little hike in, after all that’s a big piece of what the Black Forest
is known for. We asked for suggestions
at the TI in Freiburg and came up with a few areas to check out. The first was Schauinsland, which offered majestic views of the surrounding hills. We walked around for about an hour and
stumbled on this tower for even better views.
On our way out we stumbled on this awesome
carved wooden goblin. When you think
about all the fairy tales that have come out of this region, this sculpture seems
to capture all of that perfectly!
We also drove by a couple of popular lakes – Titisee and Schluchsee on our way out of the region. They looked like the perfect place to relax
on a nice sunny day, but alas we needed to continue on our way back home.
We got back into Geneva late Thursday evening
and stayed with Travers and Megan for a couple of days before we flew out on
Saturday. We just had a couple other
errands to run before we left, like paying taxes (gulp) and doing the final
walkthrough inspection of our apartment.
Both of those ended a little roughly financially speaking (‘tis the
Swiss way), but nothing was going to detract us from enjoying our last couple
of nights in Geneva.
No comments:
Post a Comment