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Vacationing in Germany: Part 4 – Salzburg, Lake Chiemsee and Rosenheim

Our third day in Germany saw us heading out of the country, to Salzburg, Austria. Salzburg is where they filmed The Sound of Music and Rose read that it is one of the most beautiful cities in the world and wanted to see it.

Our rental car agent told us we would need to buy a toll pass sticker to drive on Austrian higways after Rose mentioned to her we would be going to Austria. Without the sticker, we could have faced hefty fines. On the way there we stopped at a convenience store. Since I didn’t know how to ask for it in German, I asked the clerk, “Sprechen Sie English?”

“Ein bissien” was her replay so I said “Toll pass?” She said, “Oh, vignette?” I said, “Ja bitte,” then added, “zehn Tage,” before she could ask how many days. The shortest option, a ten day pass, was about ten euros.

Before I left she asked if I wanted coffee or anything else. I said, “Ja, zwei Kaffee bitte und Eine pretzel.” I didn’t know how to say “pretzel” but she knew what I wanted. I added the only thing I could to the coffee, which was lowfat milk, and then dumped both cups into a Yeti mug. It tasted so bad neither one of us could drink it.

On the way to Salzburg we noticed a long traffic jam in the opposite direction. We hoped that by the time we drove back it wouldn’t be as bad.

I was expecting some type of border crossing. I thought they would stop us and perhaps check our passports but we didn’t see anything like that. In fact, if there was a sign announcing that we were entering Austria, we missed it. I think that when we entered Salzburg, I checked Google Maps to make sure that we actually crossed the border.

Even though Salzburg was said to be one of the most beautiful cities in the world, when we got there we couldn’t find any of that beauty. I thought maybe there was more than one Salzburg and we were in the wrong one. We drove around for awhile but if there was beauty to be found, it was hidden well.

I didn’t take many photos there, mostly because I didn’t see anything worth photographing. I’m sure if we looked harder we probably would have found something interesting but after a half hour of driving around we decided to head back to Munich. On the way back I tried to find places to go along the way But the phone signal was intermittent so it was time consuming to search the internet. 

On the way back we hit the traffic jam that we saw earlier. We noticed that drivers were inching along on the far side of their lanes, leaving a gap in the middle. I assumed there must be a law requiring drivers to leave space for emergency vehicles. If there is, it is a good idea because 30 seconds after Rose took the photo below, a police car with its lights and siren on cruised past us in the gap.

After we go out of the traffic jam, we stopped near a lake called Chiemsee where we parked and got out for some photos.

We then we drove around the area for a while and ended up at Aldi’s. I was hoping to get real heavy cream for our coffee but the didn’t have it. They also didn’t have light cream or half and half. We ended up buying some weird artificial liquid coffee creamer.

We then found a cute little town called Rosenheim. We drove around for a while admiring the small town charm.

I noticed corn fields, which we don’t see in Florida, but Rose was not impressed. She told me they are everywhere but I don’t pay attention. For that, I had to put up with her pointing out corn fields for the rest of our trip.

We then found a restaurant that was attached to a hotel. The place was called Hotel & Landgasthof Happinger Hof. This looked like real German food, which we had not yet had on our trip, so we decided to have lunch there. Our server asked us, in German, if we wanted to eat here or in the beer garden. The dining area we were in was covered but outside. The beer garden was nearby and also outside. We told her we wanted to eat here and sat at a table overlooking the beer garden and a small playground.

Our server did not speak English but we managed to communicate with her pretty well. I actually liked that she didn’t speak English because I needed to practice my German, but it was obvious that I needed more practice. Rose asked me about potato pancakes so I asked her, “Haben sie kartoffelpuffen?”

She laughed at that and quickly stopped laughing when she realized she was being rude and said, “kartoffelpuffer? Nein.”

I wasn’t offended buy her laughing at me. She was, after all, very nice. Who knows, maybe kartoffelpuffen is slang for “stupid tourist.” If that’s the case, that would have been very funny.

It was a very good meal, perhaps the best or at least one of the top three meals of the entire trip.

Our lunch was also reasonably priced. We paid 45 euros for two meals that included drinks and desert, and that was including a good tip.

When we got back to Munich, Rose wanted a real German pretzel from a vendor that made them fresh. So far, I could only find them in gas stations or small markets. We had a hard time finding pretzels, or any German food, within walking distance of our hotel. Not only could we not find a German restaurant, we also couldn’t find a stand that sold sausages or fresh pretzels. We walked to Karlsplatz looking for a place that Google said sold pretzels but it wasn’t there. We then walked past Karlsplatz until Rose’s foot started bothering her. She stopped to rest and I continued for a hundred yards or more but found nothing. We ended skipping the pretzels and went to a place called Ruff’s Burgers for dinner.

The next day we checked out of our hotel in Munich and checked into our hotel in Stuttgart. I will write about that next.

Vacationing in Germany: Part 3 – Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Oberammergau, and More

Rather than explore Munich on our first full day in Germany, we chose to take a road trip. My wife and I are not big fans of crowds and prefer quiet and peaceful over hustle and bustle. I suppose it was not very smart of us to book all of our hotel stays in large cities instead of small towns but that is a lesson learned for our next trip.

On this day, our plan was to head to a town called Garmisch-Partenkirchen at the base of the Bavarian Alps. At one time, this was two separate towns but they were combined in an effort to snag the 1936 winter Olympics, which they did.

We awoke at around 7:30, which was much later than I wanted to get up. We wanted to get in the car and explore so getting an early start was relatively important but I guess it didn’t hurt to sleep either.

The parking garage is closed on Sundays so we needed a hotel employee to walk down there with us and let us in. We then walked down to the car where I eventually figured out how to get the navigation system to use English. It was British English but it was English.

When we got to the exit of the garage, we had to put our parking ticket in a machine where we could pay for the parking but it was having trouble reading my card and kept giving me an error message. After a few minutes of trying, the same hotel employee drove up behind us but we were blocking his exit. I asked if he could help and he tried but he could not figure out what was wrong so he went back to the hotel and got their pass to let us out. We just had to pay him 25 euros. I think the machine would have charged us 20 euros and he seemed apprehensive charging us more but we were just happy to be out of the garage and gave him 30 for his trouble.

Rose drove this time and we headed south. She stopped at a gas station and I was surprised to find out that the pumps don’t take credit cards and also that you pump your gas first and then pay. Apparently, people are more trustworthy in Germany. I put in less than eight euros. I thought she stopped because we needed gas but I think she didn’t understand the gas gauge. I also learned that gas station employees are less likely to understand English than hotel employees.

I have been learning German for a while but I probably understand only about 35-40 percent of what I read and less of what I hear, especially if they speak fast. Because of that I felt uncomfortable trying to communicate in German but surprisingly, I felt more comfortable speaking German to non English speakers. I don’t know why. Maybe I felt less judged.

As we got closer to our destination the landscape became very beautiful with rolling hills and lush green grass. We also came when the leaves were changing color which made it even more beautiful.

When we got to Garmisch-Partenkirchen we parked in a lot, paid the fee, and then went looking for a bathroom. The first place we went to was a little café. The guy said they were closed. It was 10:50 and they closed at 11 but Rose made the mistake of asking for a bathroom before ordering. Since it was Sunday, most businesses were closed and the only place nearby was a Pizza Hut so we ended up having pizza for lunch so we could use the bathroom even though we were not yet hungry and we were looking for German food.

We walked around town and found a small shop open where Rose bought some post cards and a couple of other little things. It was a very pretty town and I felt like we could have spent more time there if it wasn’t Sunday.

Many people that come here continue on to Zugspitze, Germany’s highest peak. I would have liked to do that but we had other plans for the day. Rose wanted to visit Neuschwanstein Castle but that wasn’t set in stone. We thought we would decide when we left Garmisch. Our decision was to go instead to the less extravagant but much closer Linderhof Palace. It was also on the way to Neuschwanstein Castle in case we wanted to go to both.

I assume many homes in the area are heated by fireplaces which would explain why we saw so many firewood storage areas like these as we were driving toward Linderhof Palace.

When we arrived, we paid four Euros to park and then walked up some stairs and then a short way to gift shops and a restaurant. From there it was a bit of a walk to the Palace, perhaps a quarter mile or more. That was tough on Rose because her foot pain flared up again on the way there but she held up like a real trooper. We rested a couple of times but made it there okay. At least it was a beautiful walk.

I didn’t notice it at the time but the map shows a much shorter route from the parking lot that avoids the restaurant and stores.

We didn’t pay to go inside. We just wanted to see the outside. Unfortunately, the palace was covered because of renovations or repairs so maybe paying to go in wasn’t an option anyway. We were able to see the bath house though.

On the way back to the car, on an area map posted by the washroom, I saw a town called Oberaumagau that I thought it would be interesting to see.

The town is famous for the Oberammergau Passion Play which has been performed once a decade since 1634. I had heard about this before but didn’t make the connection at the time. In 1633, the residents of the town asked God to spare them from the bubonic plague. If he did, they vowed to produce a play every 10 years for all time depicting the life and death of Jesus. The town was spared and the citizens have kept their vow for almost 400 years.

We decided to make the short side trip and we were glad we did. It was a very picturesque town, like we would expect of old world Germany.

Like many buildings in Germany with artistic paintings, we found one in Oberaumagau. This one was of Little Red Riding Hood.

We drove around for awhile admiring the town and the surrounding landscape.

We then stopped at a store and Rose went inside. She bought an Alpine hat for her son, Nick, and a few other things while I tried to figure out how to pay for parking. I had to download an app, register my car’s license plate number and the tell the app the parking lot number. There was no charge, perhaps because it was Sunday. I don’t know.

We then parked closer to the center of town near a cool looking fountain where Rose found another store that was open.

We went inside and I was impressed that they weren’t just selling tourist junk. They had a lot of stuff that I think was made by local artists. Rose bought some ornaments for Christmas. On the way out I noticed some hand carved canes and walking sticks. I looked into buying something like that online a month or two earlier without success. We found a nice one but they all had a pointy metal tip that would make a great weapon, which is why we couldn’t bring it on the plane. It was also too long to pack in a suitcase. We brought it inside and one of the clerk’s was able to remove the tip.

We then drove back to Munich and went out for dinner. It turned out that finding real German food in Munich was quite difficult so we got something at a Middle Eastern restaurant that slightly resembled a gyro but with a different kind of bread. The weather was nice and there were plenty of tables set up outside so we ate there. It was nice sitting outside and the food was actually quite good.

I will talk about our trip to Salzburg, Austria on my next post.

Vacationing in Germany: Part 2 – Our First Day in Munich

After finally getting to Munich, we had been awake for over 24 hours and were exhausted. We slept for about three hours and got up around 4:30. We didn’t have time to explore the city so we just decided to go out and look for a place where we could have dinner.

There was a coffee shop across the street which we were happy to see but it was not what we were looking for at the time. After traveling thousands of miles to Germany we wanted real German food.

We walked down to Karlsplatz, which was about two blocks from our hotel, maybe three at the most. We passed the Italian restaurant in our hotel, a Middle Eastern Restaurant, a burger place and another hotel bar and restaurant. We then passed through a sea of people and made it to Karlsplatz.

After passing the large fountain we could see a coffee shop and a very large McDonalds but no German food. We were thirsty so we went to McDonald’s and bought a bottle of water for three and a half euros.

I wanted to continue on toward Marienplaz but by then Rose’s foot was hurting. It was an old injury that comes back to haunt her occasionally and it chose this time to come back.

We decided to just have dinner at our Hotel’s Italian restaurant. Our German waiter was very friendly and not only spoke excellent English, he did so with a bit of a Scottish accent. We found out later that he spent a lot of time in Scotland and the UK.

The food was very good and it was nice that we didn’t have a long walk back to our hotel when we were finished. The only drawback was that it cost us 100 euros. In comparison, the second most expensive meal we had on our vacation was $65 euros. We learned later that Munich was more expensive than anywhere else we visited.

That night jetlag caught up to me and it took about three hours for me to fall asleep. It was probably because we went to bed around 4 p.m. Florida time.

The next morning we set off on our first road trip and it was an awesome day. I will write about that next.

Vacationing in Germany: Part 1 – Tampa to Munich

My wife and I wanted to do something special for our twentieth anniversary so we decided to finally book the trip to Germany that we had been talking about for years. Now that we are back from that trip I decided to write about it in segments because there is just too much to tell for one blog post. I should mention that the first 24 hours did not go well but please stick with me because the story does get better.

We got up early Friday morning, October 11th, and got ready for our trip. We booked an Uber because parking our car at the airport would have cost us around $180 but an Uber was only about $40 each way and that was with a tip. The driver picked us up a little after 8:00 a.m. He was a little older than us and moved here from Crete, Greece in the 70s. He also survived cancer by refusing chemotherapy and changing his diet. I know this because he was talkative. Very talkative.

Our American Airlines flight left for Charlotte just after noon. I sat in the middle seat next to a guy sitting at the window and Rose sat next to me on the isle. The guy had taken over the armrest so I felt squeezed in like a sardine. He also had both his windows closed, as did the people across the isle from us so I couldn’t see outside. That made me feel even more like I was in a sardine can. It was a very uncomfortable flight. Fortunately it was less than two hours. I don’t think I could have survived if the flight lasted much longer.

We arrived in Charlotte before 2:00 and our flight was scheduled to leave for Munich two hours later but it was delayed for two more hours because they found a dent in the plane and had to wait for another plane. Perhaps the pilot hit another plane while backing out and didn’t tell anyone. Whatever the reason, I don’t mind a little inconvenience in exchange for my safety.

The flight to Munich was a little better because we had bought the economy plus which had slightly wider seats, twice as much armrest room, and only two seats in our row. It was also a wide body plane so getting up to streath was a little easier but it didn’t have a lounge like a 747 so there was nowhere to go.

Every seat had a video screen but mine didn’t work right. I tried to watch a movie but had to restart it every two or three minutes because of an error that told me, “Where sorry. The channel is no longer available.” After restarting the movie more than ten times, I just gave up and turned it off.

The last few hours of the nine and a half hour flight were very tough. I was tired but couldn’t sleep and everything was hurting.

When we finally arrived in Munich I had to pee but everyone was blocking the isle and I didn’t want to wait until the line started moving out of the plan to use the washroom so I figured I would go when I got inside the airport. That was a mistake. Upon leaving the plane and exiting the jetway I noticed we were not connected to the airport. Instead, there were busses waiting for us. That did not please my bladder but I had to grin and bear it.

When we got inside the airport we were directed upstairs where there were no bathrooms in sight. First, we had to go through customs but there were no customs agents around. The room slowly filled with people and the ones in the front were waving trying to get the attention of someone on the other side.

Ten minutes went by before anyone came out but they were not customs people. Three or four walked past us pretending not to notice. Finally, after about fifteen minutes, someone said they were on the way but they didn’t say from where. I think a half hour went by before they started processing people. By then many people who came in late filtered around the line to the left and got ahead of us. By the time I got through and made it to the bathroom I was ready to explode.

We got our luggage and proceeded to look for the Avis car rental place. It was quite a long walk and when we got there and saw how long the line was we were not happy. Rose guessed we would be in line for a half hour but it was actually closer to 50 minutes before we got to the counter.

We preordered a Mercedes six months before but we were told they didn’t have any and we were given a Volkswagen SUV insted. They offered us insurance for $350 euros, which was more than the cost of the rental, but Rose said our insurance would cover it and didn’t buy it. We then had to walk what seemed like another mile to the Avis lot where we passed about 500 cars, including several Mercedes. When we got to the car Rose wondered if we shouldn’t have gotten the insurance. I suggested she call our insurance company, which she did, and they told her they did not cover cars outside of the United States. 

Now we needed to get the insurance but didn’t want to walk all the way back and stand in line again so we called them. The phone system put us in the queue but never answered. Since our phone company was charging 25 cents a minute we decided to hang up after almost ten minutes.

Rose said she would wait in the car and I could go back. She told me not to wait in line but go right up to the person who helped us. I felt uncomfortable pissing off everyone in line but I went. When I got there the woman was busy with a customer but another woman was off to the side talking to a customer. I decided to talk to her when she was finished so I waited behind the customer. When she was done she ignored me and walked away. I took that as a sign that they were not going to help people out of line so I walked back to the car. 

Rose’s was pissed at me for not doing what she said. I told her we should could call the Avis corporate customer service and we got right through to them but we were told only the desk agent could issue the insurance policy so Rose and I both walked back to the counter. When we got there Rose butted right in behind the agent’s customer and when she was done the lady took care of us. I guess I should have listened to her.

When we got back to the car we wanted to put the hotel address into the navigation system but it was in German. Despite all the German I learned, there is still more that I don’t know than I do know. I tried to figure out how to change the language but the solution was far from obvious so I put in the address in and hoped for the best.

Once on the road the navigation system seemed to contradict the road signs on two or three occasions. I wasn’t 100 percent sure I programmed the address right so I decided to trust the signs and ended up adding ten or fifteen minutes to our trip. Normally that wouldn’t be a problem but at that point we were both very tired and ready for the trip to be over.

At home, Rose drives because she claims that I am a terrible driver but really she is a terrible passenger. This time I drove because she knew I would understand the road signs better. It was a bit stressful, especially driving through Munich because there was so much traffic and so many pedestrians. Add to that the fact that I didn’t know where I was going and it made for a less than pleasant drive.

When we finally got to the Excelsior hotel, we saw we couldn’t drive to the front of the hotel like every other hotel I have ever seen. It was a pedestrian only area.

There was an area relatively close but there were cars parked there so I drove past and found a parking garage. I was under the impression that the parking lot was owned by the hotel but this was a city garage that charged by the hour.

We pulled in and went down one level but there was nowhere to park so we went down another level and found a spot way in the back. Nearby there was an elevator and we took it up to the main level. When it opened we were looking at the inside of a department store. There we were standing there with two huge suitcases and back packs and needed to go through an entire department store. Rose was willing but I didn’t want to do it and talked her into going down one level and walking up the ramp. She was not happy with me, again, and complained that the garage smelled like piss.

We paid for a room that Friday night simply so we would be able to check in early Saturday morning because we knew we would be tired. By the time we got there it was so late that it wouldn’t have mattered. We got the keys to our room on the third floor and went upstairs with the sole purpose of going to sleep

We expected the beds might be weird but weird doesn’t begin to describe it. Essentially they were two single beds pushed together, each with a single fitted sheet, no top sheet, and two heavy comforters, one for each side. The pillows were also a bit weird with the main pillow being square instead of rectangular.

Our room also had a great view of more rooms.

The good news was that we had arrived and had many days of adventure ahead of us. Next I will write about our first day in Munich.

Our Vacation – Part 1: Miami

We drove to Miami early last Friday in a Ford Taurus that we rented. The reason we rented a car is because our car has an issue that nobody can seem to fix but they still manage to extract huge sums of money from us.

View from Miami Hilton

View from Miami Hilton

We booked a room at the Downtown Hilton and were able to check in early. We were in room 1423 which had a pretty decent view. After we arrived we were hungry so we had to find a place too eat.

We ended up taking the free Metromover or whatever it is called and got off near Baywalk or Baypark or something like that. It is a big shopping area with stores and restaurants. We walked there in the rain and had lunch at Trader Jack’s on the water.

It was a nice lunch but the walk back was long and very humid with no breeze. The only reason we walked was because the tram smelled like dirty ass. At least what I imagine dirty ass smells like.

We didn’t do much else while in town. We did go to the hotel pool which is on the roof above the parking garage. It was a good spot to watch the sunset.

The next day we just had breakfast in the hotel and then checked out and went to the cruise terminal where we were booked on the Carnival Destiny for a five night cruise to Jamaica and Grand Cayman.

We arrived 45 minutes earlier than planned, around 10:15 but it turned out to be a great time to get there because we did not have to wait in any lines and were completely checked in ten minutes later. They started boarding at 11:00 (not noon like I expected) and we were aboard at 11:15.

More to come…