After visiting the Danes and the relatives, we headed south on a train and two more boats, eventually landing us in Siegen, Germany. My friend Kalina, who is a physics genius, was working for a university there over the summer, figuring out a way to use magnets to create super computers. But she took some time off from aiding our eventual species-wide submission to robots to show us around Siegen. We saw another castle, watched the absolute madness that is Europe during a soccer game, and hung with two Turkish guys, one Bulgarian and a handful of Americans at a bar called Bar Celona. Perhaps if you are working to be an ex-pat, university life is the way to go.
We bid Siegen auf wiedersehen and headed to Grassau, Bavaria to met another almost relative. Margrit is the cousin of my dad's ex-wife. Our relationship is thus: I am related to my half-brothers, they are related to their mom, Uthe, Uthe is related to Magrit. Another way to say this is "we got nothin". But regardless, Margrit welcomed us into her home, watched soccer with us and showed us a castle (I'm beginning to detect a theme), and facilitated our trip to Munich.
Munich was rainy and fascinating. In a plaza outside the former royal palace, we found a woman holding up a sign that said "Free Tour". Joining was inevitable. We learned about the guy who started Oktoberfest*, the subtle monuments to Nazi resistors, and the Munich Beer Hall push. We also saw the Toy Museum which was weird, the Glockenspiel which was full of gawking tourists, and the nearly invisible "monuments" to the White Rose. If your ever in Munich, go see them.
Then it was back on the road headed for Salzburg, Austria. That is a beautiful city. Yes, it looks just like the Sound of Music, which was largely influenced by the fact that we took the Original Sound of Music tour, where we saw the (movie) Von Trapp house, the glass gazebo, the wedding church, etc. If your ever in Salzburg, shell out for the tour. The small child inside you and your flamboyant tour guide will thank you. In Salzburg we also saw Mozart's house, which was yellow and swarming with people, and rode the "funicular" to the fortress that overlooks Salzburg (also available for viewing in The Sound of Music). But nothing puts the FUN funicular like gigantic Austrian preztels.
*Incidentally, the former King of Bavaria and I share a similar dream: to host an event as fun, silly and full of light-hearted debauchery as a wedding reception, only without pain of the actual the wedding. The difference between us to date is that he actually accomplished it.
No comments:
Post a Comment