Bacharach & Brugge

31 May & 1 June

Our second day in Bacharach also happened to be our wedding anniversary. As we had been to see castle ruins the day before, we decided to go and see an intact castle. We were tossing up between two near the little town of Trechtingshausen south of Bacharach, Burg Rheinstein and Burg Reichenstein. We decided on Reichenstein as it was a shorter walk from the town.

We actually ended up being a bit disappointed with it. They seem to be more interested in attracting functions, especially weddings, than tourists, although they do put out tourist promotional material, so I'm not really sure what their target audience is. There was absolutely no interpretive signage, printed or audio guides, although they had photos of weddings everywhere on the lower level. It was also poorly lit- although we saw electric lights everywhere, none were turned on. Daylight could still get in but lighting would have made the place look better. To our surprise, we were also the only ones there.

We still enjoyed getting to go inside a castle, especially as there was access to the top of one of the exterior walls with a good view of the valley. It also didn't cost very much so we didn't feel ripped off, although we did wonder if our time would have been better spent at Rheinstein, or even at one of the castles near Koblenz, a 40 minute train trip down river.

We decided then to take the train down to Bingen and get the ferry across the river to Rudesheim. Once we got to Bingen though, it began to rain, and didn't look like it was moving on anytime soon. We decided it probably wouldn't be worth paying for the ferries to and from Rudesheim just to spend only an hour or so there in the rain. So, back on the train we got to Bacharach, after first buying our onwards tickets to Belgium for the next day.

We chose a little cafe overgrown by climber vines for dinner. We chose a cheaper place as we had already had a few more expensive meals in Germany, and decided we would have a fancier anniversary meal in Belgium. However it was very good value, and André had a rabbit dish. We also got very German desserts- apple strudel with ice cream, and a black forest (schwarzwald) ice cream sundae (vanilla and chocolate ice cream with cherries, chocolate sauce and cream).

The next day it was time to move on to Brugge (or Bruges) in Belgium. Our trip required a few change overs - first 40 minutes to Koblenz, then on to Köln (Cologne), then a high speed train to Brussels in Belgium. We had a bit of a break in Brussels before catching a regional train to Brugge.

Our pension ended up being a very short walk from the train station, just inside the old town. We got there at about 3pm so after we checked in we had time to wander into the town square and investigate the shops, including taste-testing the fries that Belgium is famous for. Not terribly impressed, and the whole eating fries with mayonnaise is weird. They still offer you ketchup though (I don't know why Europe has adopted the American term) which André liked, especially as Belgian ketchup seems to have more sugar in it than Australian tomato sauce, and a spice that I first thought was cinnamon but now think might have been nutmeg. For dinner we found a cheap little döner & kebab shop among the more expensive restaurants in our area with a friendly owner who lives upstairs from his shop.

The daylight hours in Brugge were crazy. It was the furthest north we had been in several weeks, and now that it's summer, it didn't get dark until about 10:30. This resulted in some late nights because it just didn't occur to us to get ready for bed while it was still daylight!

Munich to the Rhine Valley

29 & 30 May
We did not pre-book our tickets from Munich to Bacharach in the Rhine Valley as we had checked on a ticket machine previously and found the necessary trains ran reasonably often. So we decided we would take an afternoon train to give us a bit more time in Munich.

In the morning we first went to the hoptbahnhof, or central station, to put our bags in lockers. We also bought our tickets then so that we could make any necessary seat reservations. From there we went back to Marienplatz to explore the markets that had been closed the previous two days. We bought some cherries and a beer for André but before long it began to rain. We headed back in the direction of the train station, ducking into a few shops along the way to escape the rain and buy a few more presents and souvenirs.

Because the rain seemed to have set in, we went back to the Hoptbahnhof early, where we found a post office to send another parcel back to Australia. Lucky we did go back early, because there was quite a line up in the post office. After that it was pick up the bags, get some lunch and find our train to Bingen am Rhein. We switched trains in Bingen, to a local train that took us the last twenty minutes up the valley to Bacharach.

Bacharach is only a very little town, with one main street a few hundred metres long and half a dozen smaller back roads. It's filled with old half-timbered buildings and has vineyard-covered hills behind it, with a castle on top (which is now a youth hostel). Our pension was located down one of the side streets, and was a half-timbered building built onto the old city wall. The room was very spacious and was actually a triple room just for the two of us, and we got a private bathroom again! The first night we had dinner at a small restaurant just down the road from our pension, and sat by the front window which opened onto the cobble stoned street outside.

For our first full day in Bacharach we walked up the hill behind our pension to see the castle Burg Stahleck. It wasn't a long walk, and along the way we also saw the ruins of a gothic chapel. Once we got to the castle we couldn't go in to see too much, as it's a youth hostel, but they did have a courtyard we went into. It gave a good view of the valley below and part of the castle exterior.

We didn't spend long there before catching a train north to the little town of St Goar. We explored the idea of taking a ferry, but it was so slow, didn't run often from Bacharach and even less often in the direction we wanted, and was a lot more expensive than the train. We went to St Goar primarily for the complex of ruins of the castle Burg Rheinfels which stands on the hill above it. Part of the castle has been restored into a 4-star hotel now, and part into a restaurant and gift shop. Otherwise it stands in ruin, but when you purchase entrance (only 4 euros) you are given a leaflet which outlines two routes around the complex, explaining what each area was. The directions on it weren't always easy to follow, but we did both paths around the castle and ended up with a good understanding of how the castle once was. The ruins are in pretty good condition, with a lot of rooms, tunnels, towers and passageways still intact.

We spent most of the day at Burg Rheinfels and watched ferries go by on the river while we waited for the next train back to Bacharach. Dinner was at a restaurant with an open courtyard surrounded by half-timbered buildings where we were appropriately German and André had pork roast while I had what I think were pork sausages and fried potato. We finished the day with gelato! I had mango and lemon which was very good, but still not quite Giolitti's!

Palaces & Concentration Camps

27 & 28 May

The problem with Munich is that it's catholic. And the problem isn't theological (although there's that too). Because it's catholic, everything closes on Sundays. The main tourist attractions are open, as are the restaurants in the main tourist areas and the public transport. But grocery stores, souvenir shops, bakeries, markets, snack bars, restaurants outside of tourist areas are all closed. This is also the case on catholic public holidays. Of course, we were in Munich on Saturday, Sunday, and a catholic public holiday Monday. Fortunately on Saturday we bought pre-made sandwiches at the grocery store and kept them in the fridge at home for our explorations on Sunday. But it made finding other food a bit harder, especially cheap meals.

On Sunday morning we decided to visit Hofbrauhaus to actually go inside. André got a beer and we bought a large heart-shaped gingerbread biscuit which we saved for lunch. The inside of the building is entertaining to see too, as the ceiling is covered in murals and they often have oompah bands playing, such as when we were there. It's also interesting to see the stamptisch signs hanging over certain tables. Stamptisch is a permanent reservation for locals, which gives them the right to kick out whoever may be sitting at their table. To gain a stamptisch in a beer hall, a local must drink in the same establishment three times a week for fifteen years. Then you get a sign with your name on it to hang over a table as a permanent reservation!

After the Hofbrauhaus we caught a train out to see Schloss Nymphenburg. This was the palace the famous 'mad king' King Ludwig the second was born in. We had our sandwiches and gingerbread for lunch in the gardens before we went inside. The gardens are enormous, we saw only a fraction of them, but they were very pretty and the weather was wonderful for being outside.

Inside the palace actually ended up being a bit of a disappointment. There was an impressive elaborately decorated entry hall/ ballroom and two or three other fancy, beautifully furnished rooms, but otherwise it mainly displayed art collections (and not many) of the various kings who lived there. Our combination ticket also got us into another section of the palace to see a collection of carriages, sleighs, and horse equipment and one of the mini-palaces out in the gardens (a summer hunting lodge of one of the queens). On the whole I think someone would be better off, if they had the time, to take a daytrip out to one of the palaces Ludwig built himself in the Bavarian forests and mountains.

After Nymphenburg we took a tram back to one of the train stations to get a train to the Englischer Garten (English garden, or park). Here we took a walk and spent half an hour in a paddle boat on the lake in the middle of the (very large) park. The Englischer Garten is Munich's equivalent to central park in New York. We saw lots of ducks, geese and swans, but no squirrels to André's disappointment.

We returned back to Marienplatz to find dinner, and ate at the Augustiner beer hall, as we had been informed Augustiner was Munich's best beer and André had tried it once already and been very impressed. I has pork escalopes (scallops) with chips and side salad while André had venison with mushroom sauce and potato dumplings. My side salad was excellent (Germans and austrians know their salads!) but the pork was a bit average, but André said his meal was excellent.

The next day we intended to go out to the Dachau Concentration Camp. We were tossing up whether to go with a paid Sandeman's tour or by ourselves. We ended up going by ourselves as the tour was 5 hours long and we could do it cheaper ourselves too.

We realised why the tour took five hours. It takes half an hour just for the train out there, and we spent three hours there until closing and could have spent a fourth. We got lunch from a little snack bar right by the train platform (I was amazed it was open on the public holiday, I thought we would be stuck with McDonalds for lunch) before catching the bus to the concentration camp. We got a bit of a fright when the bus sign said the memorial was closed on Mondays, but we confirmed on the website it was definitely open every day except Christmas Eve (which is what I thought).

Entry to the memorial is free, but it's a good idea to get an audio guide if you don't have your own guide. They are only 3.50 so not expensive. Many of the buildings are original nazi constructions, including the watch towers, although the dormitory buildings were demolished by the liberating forces, so two have been reconstructed. The Americans also used the other buildings for their own purposes after liberation, so in many parts layers of paint have been removed to return sections of the buildings to the condition they were in the 30s and early 40s. Aside from Nazism, modern German history and WW2 in general, the memorial also tells the stories of many individuals who were imprisoned at Dachau, which was the first concentration camp built by the nazis.

We spent the rest of the day there until it closed at 5. We had our last dinner in Munich at the Augustiner again where André had a platter of German sausages with mashed potato and sauerkraut and I had a grilled half-chicken with side salad. André was not impressed with their sauerkraut but everything else was very good.

Munich

26 May

Our first full day in Munich was a Saturday. For our first exploration of the city, we decided to take another Sandeman's New Tour like we did in Paris. On our way to the meeting place in Marienplatz, we got breakfast in a bakery and wow, I want to bring a German bakery home. We both got pastries and they were both excellent!

Our tour started off in Marienplatz in front of the new town hall just in time to see the glockenspiel go off at 11am. It's really just a bunch of bells playing an old song nobody really knows, with some wooden mechanized statues doing a simple performance. Again, contrary to the stereotype (myth?) of German efficiency, this is not yet automatic, and a man has to climb the stairs at 11 and 12 every morning to press a button for the glockenspiel to start. Our guide said once during Oktoberfest, he never actually turned up. What's more, the bells are actually out of tune, despite being sent to the Netherlands for tuning several years ago. The Dutch, who are supposed to know their bells, sent back all the 'C' bells playing C#. The Germans reckon this was on purpose.

Our tour guide took us round to many of the well known and some less well known sights in Munich, including the cathedral, Hofbrauhaus (the most famous beer hall in the world), the Munich Residenz, the opera house, the markets, the street of the Munich Putsch (google it) where Hitler was arrested, still as a near-nobody, and subsequently charged with treason (a charge that normally attracted the death sentence or life in prison -the nazi-sympathising judge sentenced him to five years, of which he served less than ten months) and she showed us many of the little, often unnoticed, signs of the nazis that still remain. An example is the nazi eagle which was put on everything the nazis built. The Germans have left the eagles there, but decapitated them, so all over Munich on buildings, bridges, monuments etc you can find headless eagles.

After our tour we decided to visit the Munich Residenz. It's the old residence of the Bavarian rulers -electors, dukes and kings, whatever title they had at the time. It was very damaged during the second world war and was reconstructed in a basic fashion, with the facade painted on, as they did not have the time or money to reconstruct an elaborate facade. The real facade is only now being rebuilt, slated to be complete in fifteen years. Our guide suggested it would be more like twenty. Inside however, much was preserved, with paintings and furnishings removed before the war and returned afterwards. We spent several hours walking through the bedrooms, state rooms, dining rooms, etc of the old kings, who were only deposed in 1918 after the first world war.

Afterwards we did a bit of grocery shopping for breakfast food, fruit and chocolate (you know, the essentials), before having tea at a tavern-type restaurant down the road from our hotel.

Oh- funny story from our tour. A few hundred years ago, a new opera house was built in Munich. One day, a fire started inside as often did in theatres with all the candles. The architect said- never fear! I built in this great gadget that will save the day!

He had built an upside down dome into the ceiling with a hole in the roof above it. The idea was that it would collect rain water, and when necessary, you could pull on a rope which would open the dome, releasing all the water onto the theatre below. So he pulled the rope. Nothing happened.

You see, it gets very cold in Munich. The water has frozen, and was stuck in the ceiling.

So everyone panicked because their opera house was still burning down. Then someone realised- hey, we don't have much water, but we have lots of beer! So they formed a line from the nearest beer hall to the opera house, and started passing the barrels of beer along. But Munichers are very much like australians, in that they really like their beer. So as the barrels got passed to each person, they took a swig before passing it on. The barrels reached the end of the line empty.

They still threw the wooden barrels onto the fire. The opera house burnt down.

From Cesky Krumlov to Munich

25 May

We initially had some problems with arranging transport from Cesky Krumlov to Munich. Two days prior, about the time we would normally book our onwards travel, we heard from Michelle that Vietnam airlines had changed the time of her flight and nobody had told us. We didn't know if they had notified Flight Centre and Flight Centre hadn't told us, or if they just hadn't told Flight Centre. As a result, Michelle had missed her plane out of London back to Australia. For the rest of the day, if we weren't actually doing something in Cesky Krumlov, we were in contact with her or other people about the issue and kind of forgot to plan our transport to Germany.

When we realised this the day before though, we weren't too worried. We contacted Daniel to see if he happened to be free to drive to Munich the next day, or possibly Linz in Austria. Our Plan B was to get one of the regular trains from Linz to Munich. Well, he wasn't going to Munich, but he did have a car going to Linz. At 8am. We decided that was too early for us at this late point of the trip and said no thanks. There were other shuttle companies in town that we would try in the morning, or otherwise get the train out. We knew we would have a few changes, but we'd get there.

Well, none of the other shuttle companies were running cars or buses to Linz or Munich the next morning, although one said they would be able to take us to Munich at 3pm, getting us there close to 8pm. We decided that was a bit too late, and the price wasn't any better than getting a train. (At this point we realised we should have just booked Daniel on the day we arrived in Cesky Krumlov, but because we weren't familiar with the exchange rate at that stage we weren't sure if he was offering us a good price.) So we decided to take the train. We got a taxi up to the train station (would have been a 20 min walk, minimum, uphill, and the taxi was about AU$6) and found a ticket office to buy tickets into Munich. No ticket machines in Cesky Krumlov station, and even if there had been, ticket machines often can't handle more complicated international connections. The lady was able to sell us tickets no worries, and even printed us an itinerary with the stops and changes we needed to make, including listings of the other stops we would pass through. We had good timing, as the train we needed out of Cesky Krumlov came along about ten minutes later.

The Czech regional trains were the oldest trains we travelled on for the whole trip, and the stations were the least technologicised (yes I made that word up). No LED displays on the platforms telling you where the next train was going, no ticket machines, the train carriages were the old-school ones with slide-down windows and had the destination printed on an A4 piece of paper stuck to the inside of the carriage window in a plastic slip. The train took us to Cesky Budojivice (home of Budweiser), where we got off at a deserted, unmanned, closed-looking platform for our connecting train. Double-checked our itinerary, yes, this is the right one. Ten minutes later, along came another train with the familiar Austrian QBB on the side. On we got, and it took us on to Linz, back through Salzburg. At Linz we had an hour to kill before our next train, so we found a cafe to have lunch. Before we knew it, it was time to get our final train which took us in to Munich, arriving about 6pm.

Once we got off our train in Munich, we realised we needed to take a city train to get us closer to our hotel. So we visited the Info Centre to get a rail map and some other info about the town. Munich rail defies the stereotype of German efficiency. There are two rail operators who run the two services, the U-bahn and S-bahn. Their platforms are in different parts of each train station, and directions to the platforms are not clearly marked, especially considering how large many of the main stations have to be to deal with several lines from two different rail services.

Then there's the ticketing process. If you are using a single trip ticket, you need to validate it by date-stamping it in a stamping machine before boarding. No magnetic strip tickets like you get in Paris, London, or even Sydney, and that's not new technology. We didn't notice any NFC passes being used, or the technology for them (like London's Oyster cards or Brisbane's Go card). There is something wrong when Brisbane out-technologies a German city of equal size. Day passes don't need to be validated from what we could tell, because they have the date already printed on then.

Fortunately the guy in the Info Centre told us all about this, so we got to our hotel fine. We were quite impressed with the hotel too. It's the only real 'hotel' we have been to the entire trip, a 3-star establishment with a rather spacious room, nice bathroom, mini-bar (with free beer and mineral water) and even a little stove-top. Remarkably, it was the cheapest place I could find in Munich without going too far out into the suburbs (booked via a hotel booking site, so cheaper than the normal advertised price). It is still the most expensive place place per person that we stayed the whole trip. And it didn't even include breakfast!