Das Europäische Mißgeschick 20.06.06
Thursday, 11 May
Can be summed up by the following:
•Finished Tech Writing Presentation, went 10 minutes over (the class, not me)
•Completed to an irritatingly high level of proficiency, one Dynamics Test
-State after finishing finals: Fubble. Possibly even wubble.
•With the assistance of one parental unit, promptly packed up, moved out, checked out, followed by selling back my Tech Writing book, signing up for summer housing, and finagling the bursar account to automatically pay the first check.
•Got home, went to Kohl’s, got some dress pants, and packed suitcases.
Friday, 12 May
After a quick breakfast, the family (consisting of yours truly, the mother and father, the older brother Andy, and his significant someone/bonus semi-adopted family member Sarah) packed up in ye olde minivanne to proceed to commence to Will Rogers to promptly stop in the security checks. And where to, but everyone’s least favorite vacation inter-stop destination, Chicago O’Hare! What better way to denigrate a tried and true WW Twice hero than to name a poorly run airport after him?
So, the Embraer puddle jumper we’re in notifies us that because of crummy weather in O’Hare (and because Chicago is run by wussy incompetent types) that we couldn’t take off for oh…an hour and twenty minutes. So, we get there, there’s no jetway, and we find out that they can’t just let us out of the plane, nah, that’d be logical, so first they just have to track down an official guide to walk us the forty feet to the door. Additional time on the clock: close to twenty minutes.
So, one hassle and two terminals later, we’re informed that the boarding passes we have for Chicago-Milan flight we have aren’t actually boarding passes (indicated by the small, hard-to-read printed text in the corner of the boarding pass which reads, “NOT A BOARDING PASS”). So, we backtrack to the Alitalia (Italy’s premiere lazy airline) ticket counter to find that oh, they’re closed. And that the airline was overbooked, and they took standby passengers, so they’ve closed the airplane. You should have been here earlier. [Cue Colorful Ivalice/Aufleuchten-ish comment here.] Next flight? There’s only one incoming and outgoing per day, kthxbi.
So, after a twittering dance of polite argumentation, we get standby tickets on the Air France to Paris; assuming we got on, we’d be confirmed on a follow-up flight from there to Munich, instead of our original Milan-to-München schedule. So, we stood in the Air France queue line of forever, which was literally half the terminal long, and moving at two persons per minute. So, we get to the line, get out passports confirmed, baggage tagged, and wait some more and…and…there was only one standby slot open…not five. Air France, bless their kind froggy souls, apologized deeply (unlike the rather apathetic Alitalia), and suggested that United might have something.
Primary Quest trail back to Terminal 3 to United! After another unexciting line of irritating and indeterminate length, we were told that there are flights to Europe, even some that end up in Munich, but Alitalia didn’t sign a voucher to allow United to substitute flights. So, the father finds a payphone and calls Orbitz and Alitalia for two hours. Results: Absolfrickly none. So, we end up getting a United Airlines discount to the Rosemont Embassy Suites. In a big moment of vujà dé, it was the same place I had stayed back in high school for the ASCN academic team nationals. (I’d also stayed at the Doubletree across the street) So, we get in, have a fanatically overpriced dinner, talk with Alitalia some more and find out that they really don’t give a flip about their customers and they said we’d have to talk to the counter again before cutting us off. Orbitz tried to help and one of the guys there noted that, (not verbatim, but close) “Alitalia suXorz”.
So, there’s a red-eye United Flight sequence that could get us to Munich, leaving 6:45 a.m. Alitalia counter opens at? 9:00 a.m., obviously.
Saturday to Sunday, 13-14 May
After an early morning brunchfest at the Embassy Suites, it’s back to O’Hare where we find that despite what had been posted earlier and said on the 1-800 number, the Alitalia counter decided to open at say…10:00 a.m. and then for office stuffs only. So, after more finagling, we received confirmed boarding passes for an American Airlines trip to Boston, at which point we’d catch the Alitalia flight there to Milan. Confused yet? We did just that, and after another two hour flight, we were in rainy Massachusetts. A nice hour layover, through security at the separate international terminal and then onto the Alitalia flight to Milan. Except for the Italian gentleman in front of me who didn’t understand about stowing items below the seat in front of you (not the other way around) and found it necessary to crush my kneecaps every hour or so, it was a tolerable seven plus hours. I couldn’t sleep, but then I didn’t really need to sleep, oddly.
So, after going through security again (the fifth time) we waited for a half hour (after passing even more Europeanly expensive airport shops, including the, I kid the not, Ferrari Shop) before taking a shuttle bus out to the tarmac to another Embraer microjet for the flight to Munich, just under an hour away. And Munich? Drizzly green-grassed, metallic, efficient, and shiny.
We’d arrived on the exact same flight we’d planned, just…twenty-four hours late. Which meant that the Thrifty concierge (who’d been notified that we hadn’t made the original flight) promptly wasn’t there at München. Sarah skipped off to purchase some Euros, which went into several bottles of Wasser mit Köhlensaüre (CO2). After one short wait, the concierge showed up (there wasn’t a Thrifty car rental counter at the Munich airport) and she and the dad-person went to the office (twenty minutes round trip away in Munich proper) to retrieve the vehicle. One seemingly long wait later, we had our rental car, with a free upgrade to a station wagon, a Mercedes 220 TDI turbo diesel. The last three suitcases went on our laps in the backseat. And dad’s smaller suitcase (a good forty pounds) found its way vertically on top of my toes for the hour and some ride to Garmisch-Partenkirchen.
Garmisch, by the way, is a dual-town thing in far south Germany, near the Austrian border, that (as Iris should know) was incorporated into a combined township with neighboring Partenkirchen against the will of both the Garmischers and the Partenkirchers in 1935 by a certain A. Hitler for the 1936 Olympic Games. Oh, and the Zugspitz, Germany’s highest mountain (and one of Austria’s shorter mountains) is literally on the edge of town.
When I was done drifting back into consciousness and my feet were numb with pain, we pulled into a U.S. military installation staffed by local rent-a-cops wielding tonfers, CZ-75’s, polite demeanors, south-German accents, and ID-card scanners. Behind the identity check is the Edelweiss Lodge and Resort, one of the Armed Forces Europe’s little perks. We checked in, had an expensive dinner, and teetered our way back into town and into the Army Artillery Kaserne (where the other half of the Edelweiss is) to the Deluxe Cabin No. 4, since despite reserving it six months in advance, all the normal rooms in the actual main hotel were long booked. We then took it easy and hit the hay.
Monday, 15 May
A bright and too-early to-be-comfortable brunch (of tastiness +4, as Daniel would say) at the main lodge was followed by getting on a tour bus heading to the southern reaches. Our motor coach was helmed by one Heinz and guided by one Frau Inga Sharp, a wrinkled woman in her sixties with German style fake-dyed red hair, bright, cunning eyes, a heavy yet easy-to-understand accent, and a host of odd yet fun mannerisms.
After taking the Autobahn south and east through deep forest with Frau Sharp’s history lesson, historic violins, and livestock (including actual chamois) rolling along, we arrived for a rest stop on the European Bridge. The European Bridge. It’s freestanding, nearly a thousand feet over the Brenner pass and can take constant, heavy traffic. This bridge is not screwing around. Thank you.
With that, we were off to the Italian part of Tyrol (Tirol), wherein all signs are bilingual, German and Italian. After passing half-ruined hillside castles, strawberry fields, and a good two millennia of history loafing about (the Roman Via Alpina anyone?), we arrived in Brixen.
Brixen be a town of the medieval-meets-modern sort, complete with dual-clocktower Frauenkirche at the center of town. Big, tall, gaudy, Rococo, and complete with a gift statue for the Vatican (that the Vatican politely turned down; it’s an ugly Madonna statue). From there, to the private bored-out-of-a-fiskin’-rock castle of Riefenstein. It was, as they say, dark...and stony. The local Countess gives private tours, since well, the newer parts of it are her home.
It was then off to the town of Vipiteno for various shopping-esque excursions before returning home for the day.
Tuesday, 16 May
As a change of pace, the family visited downtown Garmisch after breakfast. This included taking pictures of the tulips on the pedestrian area, hitting a local bank for some additional Euros, and generally looking around.
One place of note was the Käthe Wohlfahrt, a mostly wood-based décor/gift shop internationally famous for its Christmas stuff. If you’ve seen a good nutcracker ornament, chances are it came from them.
We ate at a Konditorei for a light lunch, with a mix of almond-flaky pretzel, cake, beer, coffee, and tea, and after wandering until evening, we ate at a Bavarian restaurant called the Hofbräustübe (excellent, excellent food).
Wednesday, 17 May
Another Edelweiss Lodge bus tour, this time to Berchtesgaden in southeast Germany, in a little peninsula of land sandwiched between Austria. Our destination: The Eagle’s Nest, a brief previous residence of a certain A. Hitler. My parents were bummed to find that the General Walker Hotel (originally an SS barracks and where they stayed previously) had been torn down, with your average, soulless black parking lot now in its place. After that it was a winding single-lane special short wheelbase bus up to a long hallway to a single, large brass elevator (recently refurbished by the Otis elevator company) to a small mansion on top of a mountain, known in German as the Kehlsteinhaus. “Kehl” being the term for an eagle’s cry, but apparently “Eagle’s Cry Rock House” wasn’t as catchy to American GI’s.
It had recently snowed (a mere eight feet in some places) and we later found out that the day we visited was rather lucky; it was closed for the rest of our tour. After galumphing through the snow (past a sign that warned not to do so), we toured the building, the father unit purchased another history book concerning the place. Afterwards, we had lunch downtown and after an uncomfortably long bus ride back, we took it easy back at Deluxe Cabin 4.
Thursday, 18 May
You know that Disney’s trademark Cinderella castle had to come from somewhere (they’re not that original), and what better place to steal a fairy tale castle than from a “mad” Bavarian Crown Prince obsessed with Wagnerian opera?
The tour to “Crazy” Prince Ludwig II’s uncompleted palace of Neuschwanstein (“New swan castle”) was in order. Huge, with towers of spiral staircases, electrical lights/telephones originally installed (this was built in the late 1800’s), and lavish decorations from Swan Lake and other Richard Wagner operas, the palace was exactly as one might expect…right down to the exits leading through not one, but two gift shops.
After that, it was a long, steep climb to the Marienbrücke bridge (that’s being bilingually redundant) which offered high winds, Japanese and Chinese tourists, and a rather awesome view of the palace for free.
The Cinnamon/Sugar giant pretzel on the way down was awesome (I like them better than the usual rock salted kind), and from there it was driving through the Bavarian countryside to the Wieskirche near Fussen. Yet another (famous) Baroque/Rococo Catholic church. Fantabulous. And just like when my parents were there previously, there were diary cattle and goats in pens next to the church. And just after my dad convinced people to leave their jackets on the tour bus, it began torrentially raining.
Friday, 19 May
Linderhof in southwestern Bavaria was the only palace that Prince Ludwig actually managed to finish. And it’s a small palace, in palatial terms, since it was only designed for him and a guest or three. It’s still 6000 or so square feet, but even that is lavishly decorated. After touring the palace, we toured the more extensive grounds, including the fountain system on the north and south. There’s also a miniature “Moorish kiosk” and a to-scale Venus Grotto built into the side of the hill.
This was followed by a trip to the Ettal Monastery near Oberammergau (famous for their crazy big, once every ten years Passion of the Jesus-Dude Play). Ettal is literally about ten miles away from Garmisch, and besides having a large Baroque chapel (with of course, Rococo additions), it’s also the brewery for some of Bavaria’s best beers and schnapps (including one kick-ass blueberry liqueur). We had dinner at a local restaurant (“zum Wildschutz”) famous for its venison, boar, and other game.
Saturday, 20 May
Saturday was spent sleeping in and a trip to Germany’s tallest mountain, the Zugspitze. It’s also Austria’s nowhere-near-tallest-mountain. We took the normal train to a cog railway up, had lunchfest in the cabin at the top, watched as the fog rolled in and made things miserable, and then made our way back down via the cable car, which was both faster and much more scenic.
Sunday, 21 May
After driving to Munich proper, we visited the royal Nymphenburg palace in the center of Munich. Besides the huge, huge park around it, there are all sorts of pavilions and a hunting lodge (or three). The actual palace tour only takes you through the center part of the palace. It featured the “Gallery of Beauties”, and innumerable pictures of other palaces and castles, as well as various historical snippet displays.
A linner meal was at the Hofbräuhaus in Munich (where I had an asthma attack and got thoroughly sick on the tobacco smoke), followed by wandering to the central plaza, the Marienplatz, where the famous Glockenspiel (the giant clock, not the percussion instrument) resides in the Rathaus (town hall). The older brother and the Sarah got hazelnut and blueberry ice cream.
Monday, 22 May
The Partnach Gorge (Partnachklamm) is one of those things that points out that Europeans love hiking. There’s a hiking trail running through a two to three-hundred foot deep gorge, with a loud, torrential whitewater river at the bottom. The catch? The path is bored out of solid rock ten feet above the water, with one side facing the water. The path was usually wet (water dripping off the ceiling) and the ceiling in most places never got above six feet. So, after a two and a half mile hike, it was time to visit the hotel above the gorge.
My dad had lots of gear and pulled something-or-other in his leg, so we opted for a three-person, lozenge-shaped cable car up to the top for €3.50. The little thing was like a sauna. After almost melting, we got to the top and the rest of the group arrived. Spezi, a beer, and vanilla ice cream with raspberries were shared. After that, it was down the hill (past the mildly amused goats), across several rugged but solid bridges. The path was…muddy…to the extent I almost faceplanted once.
I had managed to get blisters on my feet, and I was burned out, so the others went on to the Ruins of Werdenfels, after which they had a cream puff the size of large dinner plate. I kicked back, had some blueberry schnapps and took a nap. Go me!
Tuesday, 23 May
The Edelweiss’s Three Country Tour (Austria, NE Switzerland, and Liechtenstein) was rather disappointing, since the vast majority of it consisted of bus ride with no real tour to it. We did stop at the Flüelapass in Switzerland and walk through downtown Vaduz. We joke about Canada being “America Junior”, but Liechtenstein, an honest-to-goodness microstate, is Switzerland Junior. It’s a like a canton that wanted to be a monarchy, so they kept that way. The entire country has 50,000 people, and better Swiss souvenirs than Switzerland. You know those stylized CK Calvin Klein logos? I got a hat like that for FL: Liechtenstein.
Wednesday, 24 May
If you’re from Oklahoma, you’ve probably been to the Omniplex Science Museum. If you’ve been to Chicago, you might have visited the Museum of Science and Industry. Now imagine that sort of museum, only have it be the largest one in the world. That’s the Deutsches Museum (on the Isar river) in Munich. It has two entire sailing ships, a dirigible, a dozen aircraft (not counting the aviation branch), including a Me-163 Komet, and a Me-262 jet fighter, and a V2 going up five stories vertically. Throw in some awesome stuff on bridges, engines (car, jet, submarine, nautical), science history, a huge hands-on Physics display that a high school science teacher would literally kill people to see, and you’ve got awesome. And all the displays were bilingual in German and in English.
We ate an early dinner at a classic part of the Bavarian tradition in downtown Munich: Mandarin Chinese.
Thursday, 25 May
Sort of a down day, we drove over to Bad Toltz on the tip of a good rollerbahn (or if you prefer, an alpine slide) at a ski resort there. A rollerbahn is a summer attraction in which you take a sled on a cement half-pipe. The sled has skids on the back and brake pads on the front, as well as a lever on the top. As you push the lever forward, it lifts the brakes and puts down a set of roller wheels, increasing your speed. Only Andy left the vehicle while in motion this time.
After two out of our expected three runs, we got through the line at the half-way lift to go on the ramp when…it started sprinkling. So after Andy got down, they closed down the line. After waiting, we had to ride up the lift to the top and then back to the bottom; it was rather cold. So, after a snack at the place’s Schnellimbiß and being sprayed with water from the errant RC boat game, we decided we’d had enough and headed back.
Only I got to drive this time. I found 140 klicks (about 87 mph) to be a comfortable speed on the Autobahn (though I was getting passed by most everyone), which is better than the best Interstate highway I’ve ever been on here in the US.
Friday, 26 May
The final bus tour was to Innsbruck, Austria. After touring the Imperial Palace (Hapsburgs slept here…and died here…and were born here), now a museum, we visited the Swarovski Crystal Store. I got a keychain with a faceted crystal sphere inset with an Innsbruck logo. It was €10.50, the cheapest thing in the store by far. It’s quite possible to spend several thousand dollars on the world’s finest binoculars, optics, or collectible sculpture. Down the street and to the right was the Goldenes Dachl (Golden Roof), actually made from gold-plated copper tiles that previously was a balcony for the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I.
We ate at a Wienerwald (“Vienna Woods”), a semi-fast food chain famous for its halves of grilled chicken. They also make good soup. After that, it was a tour to another Baroque/Rococo church, one whose name escapes me. >_< Interestingly enough, the full cemetery for the church is literally at the bottom of the Olympic ski jump. If that doesn’t inspire confidence, what will?
Saturday, 27 May
After packing up and out before our checkout time, we found that we short a key. Dad blamed me and then Andy, since we’d be charged a small fee…and we recently found the second key in the pocket of father’s pants. We met up with a family friend, Karl-Roman Berlinghof. We had Karl-Roman through an exchange officer program at Tinker; he had started as an enlisted man in the Luftwaffe who worked his way up to Lieutenant Colonel. He still had a red BMW sedan that he bought at the Hudiburg dealership in Oklahoma City. It was a two hour drive to his home in Stetton (on the far west edge of Bavaria) and after meeting with his wife, Monika for lunch, the whole group went to visit the Bodensee (Lake Constance), on the border with Switzerland and Austria.
We later toured the old NATO alert and nuclear strike base in Memmingen, which has since been cleared out and been converted into a civilian light aircraft flying club and airfield, of which Karl-Roman was a member. They even had an old Luftwaffe prop-trainer they were fixing up.
After dinner, we returned to the hotel in Mindelheim (the next town over from Stetton) that Karl-Roman had found, the Alte Post Hotel (http://www.alte-post-hotel.de/), a four-story hotel that was famously saved from destruction during the Napoleonic Wars.
Sunday, 28 May
After the rather large continental breakfast at the hotel, Karl-Roman, and our family went to the city of Rothenburg ob der Tauber, in Middle Franconia. The town was founded in 960, and still looks as it did in the 1400’s, right down to the red roofs and medieval city wall. Besides a touristy place, there was a lot of history floating around. For instance, the Ratstrinkstube, a building on the town hall square. In 1631, the invading Count Tilly (Johann Tserclaes von Tilly) was about to burn the town during the 30 Years’ War. On a whim, he challenged that if the mayor could chug a flagon of wine (about three liters/three-quarters of a gallon) in one breath, he’d spare the town. The mayor did it, Rothenburg was spared, and the event was known as the Meistertrunk.
We stopped at the Lutheran Church in Rothenburg, currently under reconstruction in some parts, and stopped for a coffee and pastry at a Konditorei. I got lots of great reference photos for my upcoming rewrite of A Midsummer’s Present.
Monday, 29 May
All things must come to an end, and when Chicago O’Hare is involved, they never go smoothly. We woke up at 3:30 a.m., our bags packed, and snuck downstairs to a mini-breakfast kindly laid out by the hotel staff. We dropped off our keys and drove to the Munich airport. Alitalia was in no particular hurry to leave, but we got to Milan.
Which is where the hijinx started. After going through security (again), we got to the counter only to find that Alitalia had given away our sixth-month reserved seats except those of my parents; they had no reason to give us, and in the process of giving new seats, they tried to put a block because my father and brother have the same first name (James) and they couldn’t understand the concept of middle names, or the concept of different passports and identifying information.
Once we get on the plane (albeit separated), things were again fine. Upon arriving at O’Hare, we get to the terminal only to find that that we can’t use the automated check-in, since we arrived on a non-United Airlines flight. And the check-in isn’t in the same terminal. So, after checking in, we walk to the opposite side of the United terminal (the one on the very end, and down an escalator) to get to the cattle car-err… “regional jet”. Oh, and there are five flights in the same spot before ours.
Needless to say, there are delays, delays, and after a tarmac-clearing brief thunderstorm, more delays. We get home to Will Rogers International tired, missing one suitcase (which after a claim arrives three days later), with our wine stolen, and beer steins broken. I’d been up for twenty-eight hours and yet had them occur in within calendar day.
So the stats to my trip at the End of May? Glad you asked!
THE STATS:
Countries Visited: 5 (Germany, Austria, Italy, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein)
Giant Pretzels (Salted): 7
Giant Pretzels (Sugar/Cinnamon): 2
Varieties of Getränke Sampled:
•Beers: 12 (2 Passable ^didn’t cause gagging reflex from bitterness)
•Sherries: 2
•Wine: 5 (Liked 2)
•Schnaps (Liqueur) 7 (Liked 3, especially the blueberry liqueur in Sprite/7-Up)
• (Non-Alcoholic) Beverage of Choice: Spezi
Castles/palaces visited: 4
Catholic churches visited: 7
•Monasteries: 1
•Percentage of those built in/remodeling from Baroque or Rococo: 100%
•Franciscan monks that brew their own beer: Yes, and liquor
Schnitzels ordered: 2
Keychains acquired: 6
Ceramic coasters acquired: 3
Rathauses spotted: 7
Meals in famous Hitler-visited beer gardens: 1, Hofbrau Haus, Munich
Crazy-fun wrinkly old German lady tour guides: Just 1
Dogs in restaurants, shops, and generally around: Yes (and well-behaved)
Cat ramps on the outside of houses: Indeed
Accordion street concerts that sounded out of an RPG battle: 1
Porsches: Lots
Mercedes-Benz’s: Even More
Max speed reached on the Autobahn: 206 kph
Asthma attacks: 1 (Heavy cigarette smoking in the Hofbrau Haus)
Liechtenstein baseball hats: 1
Can be summed up by the following:
•Finished Tech Writing Presentation, went 10 minutes over (the class, not me)
•Completed to an irritatingly high level of proficiency, one Dynamics Test
-State after finishing finals: Fubble. Possibly even wubble.
•With the assistance of one parental unit, promptly packed up, moved out, checked out, followed by selling back my Tech Writing book, signing up for summer housing, and finagling the bursar account to automatically pay the first check.
•Got home, went to Kohl’s, got some dress pants, and packed suitcases.
Friday, 12 May
After a quick breakfast, the family (consisting of yours truly, the mother and father, the older brother Andy, and his significant someone/bonus semi-adopted family member Sarah) packed up in ye olde minivanne to proceed to commence to Will Rogers to promptly stop in the security checks. And where to, but everyone’s least favorite vacation inter-stop destination, Chicago O’Hare! What better way to denigrate a tried and true WW Twice hero than to name a poorly run airport after him?
So, the Embraer puddle jumper we’re in notifies us that because of crummy weather in O’Hare (and because Chicago is run by wussy incompetent types) that we couldn’t take off for oh…an hour and twenty minutes. So, we get there, there’s no jetway, and we find out that they can’t just let us out of the plane, nah, that’d be logical, so first they just have to track down an official guide to walk us the forty feet to the door. Additional time on the clock: close to twenty minutes.
So, one hassle and two terminals later, we’re informed that the boarding passes we have for Chicago-Milan flight we have aren’t actually boarding passes (indicated by the small, hard-to-read printed text in the corner of the boarding pass which reads, “NOT A BOARDING PASS”). So, we backtrack to the Alitalia (Italy’s premiere lazy airline) ticket counter to find that oh, they’re closed. And that the airline was overbooked, and they took standby passengers, so they’ve closed the airplane. You should have been here earlier. [Cue Colorful Ivalice/Aufleuchten-ish comment here.] Next flight? There’s only one incoming and outgoing per day, kthxbi.
So, after a twittering dance of polite argumentation, we get standby tickets on the Air France to Paris; assuming we got on, we’d be confirmed on a follow-up flight from there to Munich, instead of our original Milan-to-München schedule. So, we stood in the Air France queue line of forever, which was literally half the terminal long, and moving at two persons per minute. So, we get to the line, get out passports confirmed, baggage tagged, and wait some more and…and…there was only one standby slot open…not five. Air France, bless their kind froggy souls, apologized deeply (unlike the rather apathetic Alitalia), and suggested that United might have something.
Primary Quest trail back to Terminal 3 to United! After another unexciting line of irritating and indeterminate length, we were told that there are flights to Europe, even some that end up in Munich, but Alitalia didn’t sign a voucher to allow United to substitute flights. So, the father finds a payphone and calls Orbitz and Alitalia for two hours. Results: Absolfrickly none. So, we end up getting a United Airlines discount to the Rosemont Embassy Suites. In a big moment of vujà dé, it was the same place I had stayed back in high school for the ASCN academic team nationals. (I’d also stayed at the Doubletree across the street) So, we get in, have a fanatically overpriced dinner, talk with Alitalia some more and find out that they really don’t give a flip about their customers and they said we’d have to talk to the counter again before cutting us off. Orbitz tried to help and one of the guys there noted that, (not verbatim, but close) “Alitalia suXorz”.
So, there’s a red-eye United Flight sequence that could get us to Munich, leaving 6:45 a.m. Alitalia counter opens at? 9:00 a.m., obviously.
Saturday to Sunday, 13-14 May
After an early morning brunchfest at the Embassy Suites, it’s back to O’Hare where we find that despite what had been posted earlier and said on the 1-800 number, the Alitalia counter decided to open at say…10:00 a.m. and then for office stuffs only. So, after more finagling, we received confirmed boarding passes for an American Airlines trip to Boston, at which point we’d catch the Alitalia flight there to Milan. Confused yet? We did just that, and after another two hour flight, we were in rainy Massachusetts. A nice hour layover, through security at the separate international terminal and then onto the Alitalia flight to Milan. Except for the Italian gentleman in front of me who didn’t understand about stowing items below the seat in front of you (not the other way around) and found it necessary to crush my kneecaps every hour or so, it was a tolerable seven plus hours. I couldn’t sleep, but then I didn’t really need to sleep, oddly.
So, after going through security again (the fifth time) we waited for a half hour (after passing even more Europeanly expensive airport shops, including the, I kid the not, Ferrari Shop) before taking a shuttle bus out to the tarmac to another Embraer microjet for the flight to Munich, just under an hour away. And Munich? Drizzly green-grassed, metallic, efficient, and shiny.
We’d arrived on the exact same flight we’d planned, just…twenty-four hours late. Which meant that the Thrifty concierge (who’d been notified that we hadn’t made the original flight) promptly wasn’t there at München. Sarah skipped off to purchase some Euros, which went into several bottles of Wasser mit Köhlensaüre (CO2). After one short wait, the concierge showed up (there wasn’t a Thrifty car rental counter at the Munich airport) and she and the dad-person went to the office (twenty minutes round trip away in Munich proper) to retrieve the vehicle. One seemingly long wait later, we had our rental car, with a free upgrade to a station wagon, a Mercedes 220 TDI turbo diesel. The last three suitcases went on our laps in the backseat. And dad’s smaller suitcase (a good forty pounds) found its way vertically on top of my toes for the hour and some ride to Garmisch-Partenkirchen.
Garmisch, by the way, is a dual-town thing in far south Germany, near the Austrian border, that (as Iris should know) was incorporated into a combined township with neighboring Partenkirchen against the will of both the Garmischers and the Partenkirchers in 1935 by a certain A. Hitler for the 1936 Olympic Games. Oh, and the Zugspitz, Germany’s highest mountain (and one of Austria’s shorter mountains) is literally on the edge of town.
When I was done drifting back into consciousness and my feet were numb with pain, we pulled into a U.S. military installation staffed by local rent-a-cops wielding tonfers, CZ-75’s, polite demeanors, south-German accents, and ID-card scanners. Behind the identity check is the Edelweiss Lodge and Resort, one of the Armed Forces Europe’s little perks. We checked in, had an expensive dinner, and teetered our way back into town and into the Army Artillery Kaserne (where the other half of the Edelweiss is) to the Deluxe Cabin No. 4, since despite reserving it six months in advance, all the normal rooms in the actual main hotel were long booked. We then took it easy and hit the hay.
Monday, 15 May
A bright and too-early to-be-comfortable brunch (of tastiness +4, as Daniel would say) at the main lodge was followed by getting on a tour bus heading to the southern reaches. Our motor coach was helmed by one Heinz and guided by one Frau Inga Sharp, a wrinkled woman in her sixties with German style fake-dyed red hair, bright, cunning eyes, a heavy yet easy-to-understand accent, and a host of odd yet fun mannerisms.
After taking the Autobahn south and east through deep forest with Frau Sharp’s history lesson, historic violins, and livestock (including actual chamois) rolling along, we arrived for a rest stop on the European Bridge. The European Bridge. It’s freestanding, nearly a thousand feet over the Brenner pass and can take constant, heavy traffic. This bridge is not screwing around. Thank you.
With that, we were off to the Italian part of Tyrol (Tirol), wherein all signs are bilingual, German and Italian. After passing half-ruined hillside castles, strawberry fields, and a good two millennia of history loafing about (the Roman Via Alpina anyone?), we arrived in Brixen.
Brixen be a town of the medieval-meets-modern sort, complete with dual-clocktower Frauenkirche at the center of town. Big, tall, gaudy, Rococo, and complete with a gift statue for the Vatican (that the Vatican politely turned down; it’s an ugly Madonna statue). From there, to the private bored-out-of-a-fiskin’-rock castle of Riefenstein. It was, as they say, dark...and stony. The local Countess gives private tours, since well, the newer parts of it are her home.
It was then off to the town of Vipiteno for various shopping-esque excursions before returning home for the day.
Tuesday, 16 May
As a change of pace, the family visited downtown Garmisch after breakfast. This included taking pictures of the tulips on the pedestrian area, hitting a local bank for some additional Euros, and generally looking around.
One place of note was the Käthe Wohlfahrt, a mostly wood-based décor/gift shop internationally famous for its Christmas stuff. If you’ve seen a good nutcracker ornament, chances are it came from them.
We ate at a Konditorei for a light lunch, with a mix of almond-flaky pretzel, cake, beer, coffee, and tea, and after wandering until evening, we ate at a Bavarian restaurant called the Hofbräustübe (excellent, excellent food).
Wednesday, 17 May
Another Edelweiss Lodge bus tour, this time to Berchtesgaden in southeast Germany, in a little peninsula of land sandwiched between Austria. Our destination: The Eagle’s Nest, a brief previous residence of a certain A. Hitler. My parents were bummed to find that the General Walker Hotel (originally an SS barracks and where they stayed previously) had been torn down, with your average, soulless black parking lot now in its place. After that it was a winding single-lane special short wheelbase bus up to a long hallway to a single, large brass elevator (recently refurbished by the Otis elevator company) to a small mansion on top of a mountain, known in German as the Kehlsteinhaus. “Kehl” being the term for an eagle’s cry, but apparently “Eagle’s Cry Rock House” wasn’t as catchy to American GI’s.
It had recently snowed (a mere eight feet in some places) and we later found out that the day we visited was rather lucky; it was closed for the rest of our tour. After galumphing through the snow (past a sign that warned not to do so), we toured the building, the father unit purchased another history book concerning the place. Afterwards, we had lunch downtown and after an uncomfortably long bus ride back, we took it easy back at Deluxe Cabin 4.
Thursday, 18 May
You know that Disney’s trademark Cinderella castle had to come from somewhere (they’re not that original), and what better place to steal a fairy tale castle than from a “mad” Bavarian Crown Prince obsessed with Wagnerian opera?
The tour to “Crazy” Prince Ludwig II’s uncompleted palace of Neuschwanstein (“New swan castle”) was in order. Huge, with towers of spiral staircases, electrical lights/telephones originally installed (this was built in the late 1800’s), and lavish decorations from Swan Lake and other Richard Wagner operas, the palace was exactly as one might expect…right down to the exits leading through not one, but two gift shops.
After that, it was a long, steep climb to the Marienbrücke bridge (that’s being bilingually redundant) which offered high winds, Japanese and Chinese tourists, and a rather awesome view of the palace for free.
The Cinnamon/Sugar giant pretzel on the way down was awesome (I like them better than the usual rock salted kind), and from there it was driving through the Bavarian countryside to the Wieskirche near Fussen. Yet another (famous) Baroque/Rococo Catholic church. Fantabulous. And just like when my parents were there previously, there were diary cattle and goats in pens next to the church. And just after my dad convinced people to leave their jackets on the tour bus, it began torrentially raining.
Friday, 19 May
Linderhof in southwestern Bavaria was the only palace that Prince Ludwig actually managed to finish. And it’s a small palace, in palatial terms, since it was only designed for him and a guest or three. It’s still 6000 or so square feet, but even that is lavishly decorated. After touring the palace, we toured the more extensive grounds, including the fountain system on the north and south. There’s also a miniature “Moorish kiosk” and a to-scale Venus Grotto built into the side of the hill.
This was followed by a trip to the Ettal Monastery near Oberammergau (famous for their crazy big, once every ten years Passion of the Jesus-Dude Play). Ettal is literally about ten miles away from Garmisch, and besides having a large Baroque chapel (with of course, Rococo additions), it’s also the brewery for some of Bavaria’s best beers and schnapps (including one kick-ass blueberry liqueur). We had dinner at a local restaurant (“zum Wildschutz”) famous for its venison, boar, and other game.
Saturday, 20 May
Saturday was spent sleeping in and a trip to Germany’s tallest mountain, the Zugspitze. It’s also Austria’s nowhere-near-tallest-mountain. We took the normal train to a cog railway up, had lunchfest in the cabin at the top, watched as the fog rolled in and made things miserable, and then made our way back down via the cable car, which was both faster and much more scenic.
Sunday, 21 May
After driving to Munich proper, we visited the royal Nymphenburg palace in the center of Munich. Besides the huge, huge park around it, there are all sorts of pavilions and a hunting lodge (or three). The actual palace tour only takes you through the center part of the palace. It featured the “Gallery of Beauties”, and innumerable pictures of other palaces and castles, as well as various historical snippet displays.
A linner meal was at the Hofbräuhaus in Munich (where I had an asthma attack and got thoroughly sick on the tobacco smoke), followed by wandering to the central plaza, the Marienplatz, where the famous Glockenspiel (the giant clock, not the percussion instrument) resides in the Rathaus (town hall). The older brother and the Sarah got hazelnut and blueberry ice cream.
Monday, 22 May
The Partnach Gorge (Partnachklamm) is one of those things that points out that Europeans love hiking. There’s a hiking trail running through a two to three-hundred foot deep gorge, with a loud, torrential whitewater river at the bottom. The catch? The path is bored out of solid rock ten feet above the water, with one side facing the water. The path was usually wet (water dripping off the ceiling) and the ceiling in most places never got above six feet. So, after a two and a half mile hike, it was time to visit the hotel above the gorge.
My dad had lots of gear and pulled something-or-other in his leg, so we opted for a three-person, lozenge-shaped cable car up to the top for €3.50. The little thing was like a sauna. After almost melting, we got to the top and the rest of the group arrived. Spezi, a beer, and vanilla ice cream with raspberries were shared. After that, it was down the hill (past the mildly amused goats), across several rugged but solid bridges. The path was…muddy…to the extent I almost faceplanted once.
I had managed to get blisters on my feet, and I was burned out, so the others went on to the Ruins of Werdenfels, after which they had a cream puff the size of large dinner plate. I kicked back, had some blueberry schnapps and took a nap. Go me!
Tuesday, 23 May
The Edelweiss’s Three Country Tour (Austria, NE Switzerland, and Liechtenstein) was rather disappointing, since the vast majority of it consisted of bus ride with no real tour to it. We did stop at the Flüelapass in Switzerland and walk through downtown Vaduz. We joke about Canada being “America Junior”, but Liechtenstein, an honest-to-goodness microstate, is Switzerland Junior. It’s a like a canton that wanted to be a monarchy, so they kept that way. The entire country has 50,000 people, and better Swiss souvenirs than Switzerland. You know those stylized CK Calvin Klein logos? I got a hat like that for FL: Liechtenstein.
Wednesday, 24 May
If you’re from Oklahoma, you’ve probably been to the Omniplex Science Museum. If you’ve been to Chicago, you might have visited the Museum of Science and Industry. Now imagine that sort of museum, only have it be the largest one in the world. That’s the Deutsches Museum (on the Isar river) in Munich. It has two entire sailing ships, a dirigible, a dozen aircraft (not counting the aviation branch), including a Me-163 Komet, and a Me-262 jet fighter, and a V2 going up five stories vertically. Throw in some awesome stuff on bridges, engines (car, jet, submarine, nautical), science history, a huge hands-on Physics display that a high school science teacher would literally kill people to see, and you’ve got awesome. And all the displays were bilingual in German and in English.
We ate an early dinner at a classic part of the Bavarian tradition in downtown Munich: Mandarin Chinese.
Thursday, 25 May
Sort of a down day, we drove over to Bad Toltz on the tip of a good rollerbahn (or if you prefer, an alpine slide) at a ski resort there. A rollerbahn is a summer attraction in which you take a sled on a cement half-pipe. The sled has skids on the back and brake pads on the front, as well as a lever on the top. As you push the lever forward, it lifts the brakes and puts down a set of roller wheels, increasing your speed. Only Andy left the vehicle while in motion this time.
After two out of our expected three runs, we got through the line at the half-way lift to go on the ramp when…it started sprinkling. So after Andy got down, they closed down the line. After waiting, we had to ride up the lift to the top and then back to the bottom; it was rather cold. So, after a snack at the place’s Schnellimbiß and being sprayed with water from the errant RC boat game, we decided we’d had enough and headed back.
Only I got to drive this time. I found 140 klicks (about 87 mph) to be a comfortable speed on the Autobahn (though I was getting passed by most everyone), which is better than the best Interstate highway I’ve ever been on here in the US.
Friday, 26 May
The final bus tour was to Innsbruck, Austria. After touring the Imperial Palace (Hapsburgs slept here…and died here…and were born here), now a museum, we visited the Swarovski Crystal Store. I got a keychain with a faceted crystal sphere inset with an Innsbruck logo. It was €10.50, the cheapest thing in the store by far. It’s quite possible to spend several thousand dollars on the world’s finest binoculars, optics, or collectible sculpture. Down the street and to the right was the Goldenes Dachl (Golden Roof), actually made from gold-plated copper tiles that previously was a balcony for the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I.
We ate at a Wienerwald (“Vienna Woods”), a semi-fast food chain famous for its halves of grilled chicken. They also make good soup. After that, it was a tour to another Baroque/Rococo church, one whose name escapes me. >_< Interestingly enough, the full cemetery for the church is literally at the bottom of the Olympic ski jump. If that doesn’t inspire confidence, what will?
Saturday, 27 May
After packing up and out before our checkout time, we found that we short a key. Dad blamed me and then Andy, since we’d be charged a small fee…and we recently found the second key in the pocket of father’s pants. We met up with a family friend, Karl-Roman Berlinghof. We had Karl-Roman through an exchange officer program at Tinker; he had started as an enlisted man in the Luftwaffe who worked his way up to Lieutenant Colonel. He still had a red BMW sedan that he bought at the Hudiburg dealership in Oklahoma City. It was a two hour drive to his home in Stetton (on the far west edge of Bavaria) and after meeting with his wife, Monika for lunch, the whole group went to visit the Bodensee (Lake Constance), on the border with Switzerland and Austria.
We later toured the old NATO alert and nuclear strike base in Memmingen, which has since been cleared out and been converted into a civilian light aircraft flying club and airfield, of which Karl-Roman was a member. They even had an old Luftwaffe prop-trainer they were fixing up.
After dinner, we returned to the hotel in Mindelheim (the next town over from Stetton) that Karl-Roman had found, the Alte Post Hotel (http://www.alte-post-hotel.de/), a four-story hotel that was famously saved from destruction during the Napoleonic Wars.
Sunday, 28 May
After the rather large continental breakfast at the hotel, Karl-Roman, and our family went to the city of Rothenburg ob der Tauber, in Middle Franconia. The town was founded in 960, and still looks as it did in the 1400’s, right down to the red roofs and medieval city wall. Besides a touristy place, there was a lot of history floating around. For instance, the Ratstrinkstube, a building on the town hall square. In 1631, the invading Count Tilly (Johann Tserclaes von Tilly) was about to burn the town during the 30 Years’ War. On a whim, he challenged that if the mayor could chug a flagon of wine (about three liters/three-quarters of a gallon) in one breath, he’d spare the town. The mayor did it, Rothenburg was spared, and the event was known as the Meistertrunk.
We stopped at the Lutheran Church in Rothenburg, currently under reconstruction in some parts, and stopped for a coffee and pastry at a Konditorei. I got lots of great reference photos for my upcoming rewrite of A Midsummer’s Present.
Monday, 29 May
All things must come to an end, and when Chicago O’Hare is involved, they never go smoothly. We woke up at 3:30 a.m., our bags packed, and snuck downstairs to a mini-breakfast kindly laid out by the hotel staff. We dropped off our keys and drove to the Munich airport. Alitalia was in no particular hurry to leave, but we got to Milan.
Which is where the hijinx started. After going through security (again), we got to the counter only to find that Alitalia had given away our sixth-month reserved seats except those of my parents; they had no reason to give us, and in the process of giving new seats, they tried to put a block because my father and brother have the same first name (James) and they couldn’t understand the concept of middle names, or the concept of different passports and identifying information.
Once we get on the plane (albeit separated), things were again fine. Upon arriving at O’Hare, we get to the terminal only to find that that we can’t use the automated check-in, since we arrived on a non-United Airlines flight. And the check-in isn’t in the same terminal. So, after checking in, we walk to the opposite side of the United terminal (the one on the very end, and down an escalator) to get to the cattle car-err… “regional jet”. Oh, and there are five flights in the same spot before ours.
Needless to say, there are delays, delays, and after a tarmac-clearing brief thunderstorm, more delays. We get home to Will Rogers International tired, missing one suitcase (which after a claim arrives three days later), with our wine stolen, and beer steins broken. I’d been up for twenty-eight hours and yet had them occur in within calendar day.
So the stats to my trip at the End of May? Glad you asked!
THE STATS:
Countries Visited: 5 (Germany, Austria, Italy, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein)
Giant Pretzels (Salted): 7
Giant Pretzels (Sugar/Cinnamon): 2
Varieties of Getränke Sampled:
•Beers: 12 (2 Passable ^didn’t cause gagging reflex from bitterness)
•Sherries: 2
•Wine: 5 (Liked 2)
•Schnaps (Liqueur) 7 (Liked 3, especially the blueberry liqueur in Sprite/7-Up)
• (Non-Alcoholic) Beverage of Choice: Spezi
Castles/palaces visited: 4
Catholic churches visited: 7
•Monasteries: 1
•Percentage of those built in/remodeling from Baroque or Rococo: 100%
•Franciscan monks that brew their own beer: Yes, and liquor
Schnitzels ordered: 2
Keychains acquired: 6
Ceramic coasters acquired: 3
Rathauses spotted: 7
Meals in famous Hitler-visited beer gardens: 1, Hofbrau Haus, Munich
Crazy-fun wrinkly old German lady tour guides: Just 1
Dogs in restaurants, shops, and generally around: Yes (and well-behaved)
Cat ramps on the outside of houses: Indeed
Accordion street concerts that sounded out of an RPG battle: 1
Porsches: Lots
Mercedes-Benz’s: Even More
Max speed reached on the Autobahn: 206 kph
Asthma attacks: 1 (Heavy cigarette smoking in the Hofbrau Haus)
Liechtenstein baseball hats: 1