Germany day I – Munich

After our crazy Saturday of re-booking our trip we were all too happy to catch a crazy early flight to Munich.

Our coach to Europe (note: not a train)

We checked into our hotel by noon – and then headed out to find a good lunch.  We ate at Weisses Brauhaus, where Steve had his first pork knuckle and I had my first spatzle.  (we were both very happy)  Unless you are dead set on visiting the Hofbrauhaus, we would recommend this place over that for a more low-key, somewhat less touristy experience.  (most people we talk with have the same dominant memory of the Hof – the Asian tour groups!)

In the afternoon we took the S-bahn then had a nice walk to the Bavarian National Museum.  (which I’ll cover in its own post tomorrow)  We walked through the Hofgarten.  Gorgeous on a clear snowy day.

Yikes…some objects (people) in this photo are not as large as they may appear…

Right before we got to the museum I saw what will probably be the most unusual photo-op of the trip.

As we approached this bridge we saw people gathered watching over the side.  I thought ‘No!  This can’t be that surfing spot that I saw on the travel show a few years back.’  Yep, these nutcases were surfing in central Munich on a zub-zero day with ice on the banks…

After the museum we caught a catnap before meeting our friends Alan and Megan for dinner.

Steve and Alan are co-workers, and we’ve gotten to know Alan and Megan in London as they moved there shortly before we did.  (and more so now that Megan is expecting a baby just a few weeks after me)  They were here with Alan’s parents, and they had just as much trouble getting to Germany from London as we did.  Their flight got cancelled because of the snow we had in London on Friday so they didn’t arrive until Saturday evening.

We went to Spatenhaus (just opposite the Opera house) for dinner, on the recommendation of another of Steve and Alan’s co-workers and it was fabulous.  Steve had the most wonderful veal goulash.  I have never had veal so tender.  It was nice to get to go out with friends – a nice bonus considering we weren’t planning on being anywhere near Munich.

When we emerged from dinner the snow was really coming down, and the walk back to the S-bahn was beautiful.  I love how quiet even a large city becomes with a blanket of fresh snow.

Over the English Channel and through the woods…

…on our Christmas holiday we tried to go.

(or Germany day 0)

Steve and I were 2 of the 31,000 people whose Eurostar trips were cancelled on Saturday.  Friday night several trains got stuck in the Chunnel.  Apparently they don’t really know why but they are speculating electrical failure due to condensation from the current cold weather (~-5C). 

We later found out this was due to melting snow getting into the power compartment and taking out the electrics.

We were booked to leave St Pancras station, London for Brussels at about 1pm Saturday.  We got to St Pancras about 11am, as the website said trains would be running after noon.  When we got there they said everything all day was cancelled. 

Lots of angry/confused people milling about.  We headed upstairs to a small cafe I knew about and got a coffee to discuss our options.  We decided pretty quickly to find an alternate way to the continent and that we could cope with pretty much anything in Germany as our rail passes would then allow us to catch up to our original itinerary and the hotel we had booked for Christmas.  I did entertain the possibility that we’d have to scrap the whole trip, but thinking about this being our last chance to travel without the little man coming in February we were determined to make a go for it.

2 hours later we had booked flights to Munich, booked a hotel in Munich, a hotel near Gatwick (to allow us to catch our crazy early flight) and had figured out how to get to Gatwick from central London. 

All tolled we probably spent 4 hours re-planning (including probably 2 hours to get my pregnant self cleared to fly).  A drag, but I’m certain we ended up with much less disruption than most – as we only had to adjust the first 48 hours of our itenerary.  AND BONUS!  Our friends Alan and Megan are in Munich and we knew we would possibly get to meet up with them.

We are really thankful that we weren’t on the trains that got stuck, and that we have FABULOUS friends who went to great lengths to help  us get our new plans sorted.  We wouldn’t have gotten over here without them!

Now, we would have to figure out mid-week if we’d be able to catch the train back home – but that is for later:-)

**all the gory detail

After deciding to find an alternate way to the continent we got online and found the number for Expedia.  The travel websites were too bogged down to function, but a call to Expedia was magic – got a really helpful girl who helped book tickets for the next morning to Munich for a not-unreasonable amount of money. 

But there was a big snag, the whole reason we were taking the train is because I’m pregnant enough that flying is a hassle.  I had called one of my colleagues to get a reccomendation for a hotel at Gatwick, and his lovely wife, knowing I was pregnant, looked up all the pregnancy requirements for me online.  This ended up being a lifesaver as I was just assuming it would be enough for me to show them my pregancy notes (here in England you keep them with you, not at the doctor’s office).  Aer Lingus requires a doctor’s note after 28 weeks, and I was  32.  Luckily we have a good friend who is a GP, so I called him and he wrote me a note, which his fabulous wife walked down the street to scan at a neighbour’s house and e-mailed to me so I could e-mail to Aer Lingus by their 5pm cutoff.  3 phone calls with Aer Lingus to sort all this out and confirm and we were cleared to fly!

We also had to find a hotel in Munich – one of the easiest bits as we had two guidebooks and Skype on my laptop to call.

We also had to find a hotel near Gatwick – because our flight was crazy early.

We also had to figure out how to get from central London to Gatwick (trains run from Victoria station, we now know).

As of Monday Eurostar was still struggling, so we decided to cut bait and book a flight home.  We found a flight from Luxembourg that was quite reasonable – and that would allow us to catch a day in Trier, Germany which was cut when we had to adjust the front end of the trip.

Happy Christmas!

 

Steve and I have had a really wonderful year, full of so many blessings.  We’re really thankful for each other, our family and friends, the time and experiences we’ve been so fortunate to have, and not least of all the fact that we’ll be having a new little person join our little party early next year.

Wishing you all the best in 2010!
Steve and Sarah

Can you spot the creepy man?

Seen in Krakow, Poland.

This one made me start when I saw it.

Halt!

I love interesting signs and placards – and we see quite a few on our travels.  I’ve been super busy at work, and need a little bit of a blogging rest, so breaking out some fun photos…

This one seen on the boat from Luzern, Switzerland.

Switzerland IX – Pontresina and St Moritz

When we were trying to book our hotel in Pontresina I was having a really tough time communicating with the hotel via e-mail and Steve had little luck on the phone.  He had his manager at work, a native German, call the hotel to make the reservation for us.  He was successful, but said ‘boy, they speak wierd German.’ 

We later figured out that Pontresina is squarely in the Romansh region of Switzerland.  The Romansh language can best be described as a mix of Latin and French.  Pontresina is a small village, so there were very few English speakers.  Some people spoke some German, so we used that some (like when we checked in at the hotel).  Our second night we were clumsily using our German at dinner, and I was mixing English with German, and after a couple of minutes the waitress said in very good English ‘you speak English?’  Ends up she was Czech, and came to the region to work.  It was nice to get to speak English for a while.

Anyway, enough language geek out.  We stayed two nights in Pontresina, which is just a few miles from the very posh resort village of St Moritz.  On our day in Pontresina we took a leisurely walk across fields, through forests and around a lake to St Moritz.  The walk was lovely.

One chilled out, but at the same time really mean looking bull.

St Moritz reminded us of Whistler.  I guess big fancy ski resorts are all sort of the same.  

We had lunch and coffee at a nice cafe, then headed down to catch the train for the five-minute ride back to Pontresina.  At the train station we decided we had done it all wrong…we should have had one of these to pick us up.

That gave us the afternoon to lay low, Steve took a nap but I decided to take a walk up to the interesting looking church on the hill above town.   The chruchyard had a wonderful wall with niches, where they had placed benches.  In the winter there is skiing on this hill and I am sure these benches provide rest to many a weary skier.

Switzerland VIII – The Bernina Express

The Bernina Express is another of the scenic rail journeys.  The full deal starts with a bus ride from Lugano, through Italy along the shore of Lake Como to Tirano, where you board the train, which takes you back into Switzerland, heading North to St Moritz.

The bus ride was, as the Rick Steve’s guidebook said, more scenic than relaxing.  You wind along on a very narrow road – glad that you aren’t the one driving the big bus.

(a corner we just navigated – the driver knew just where to honk before each blind corner)

The ride was enough to make me a little motion sick, so I was happy for a break halfway.  The baby’s first time in Italy.

The bus drops you off at the train station in Tirano, Italy.  There are actually two train stations in Tirano.  One for the Italian trains and one for the trains heading up into Switzerland.  We had the better part of an hour to kill before boarding the train, so had a bite to eat.  This was the only cheap meal we had the whole trip – with a half carafe of wine for about €4 that was fabulous.  (of course I only got a small sip)

Lots of groups of tourists – mostly our parents’ age.

I wisely purchased an ice cream cone before boarding the train.

Of the scenic train rides this was our favourite.  There were many twists and turns and interesting bridges, and the train was the nicest, with windows that curved right up onto the roof of the train unbroken by support bars.  (this is a major plus as when there is a support at the top of the window, before the sunroof it blocks prime viewing space)  We also found the overcast day to make for interesting and varied views.

A bridge we would cross in just a few seconds…

And sometimes the fog made for not much to look at at all.

We got off the train in the charming village of Pontresina, near St Moritz.  We”ll pick that up next time.

Switzerland VII – Lugano

At the end of the William Tell Express we found ourselves in Lugano, Switzerland.  It is in the Italian-speaking region of Switzerland – and it sure felt quite different from everywhere in Switzerland we’d been to date.  We’ve only been to Rome in Italy, so are not Italian experts, but I do think that the city and the region felt more Italian than Swiss.  The diversity of Switzerland is really incredible, considering its compact size.  This is largely due to the mountains.  Regions that might only be separated by a small number of miles are quite separate if there are treacherous mountain passes.  In times gone by these areas got quite cut off from Switzerland in the winters, and turned to their Italian neighbours – and the flow of people and goods left its mark.

In Lugano we stayed at a really great hostel, Hotel and Backpackers Montarina,  It was well organized, very comfortable and the other guests were older and more quiet than those we encountered in Germany (were we said we’d never bother with another hostel).  The location is great – right above the train station.  And our terrace had a beautiful view over the city. 

After arriving in the late afternoon we  headed into the city to walk around and find dinner.  We ate at La Tinera (Via dei Gorini), a wine cellar, hole-in-the-wall sort of place.  Really yummy homemade pasta.

As we walked after dinner we saw ominous dark clouds approaching – and also spectacular lightning.  (something we see very little of in England)  We then decided we needed to get back to the hostel before getting caught in it, and just as we reached the funicular they put up a sign stating they were shutting it because of the storm!  Yikes!  We had to hoof it back up the steep slope to our hotel (thank goodness we’d mostly recovered from Ebenalp by this day).  We got back and continued to watch the sky from our balcony.

Then it let loose.  Boy did it ever.  Most people had caught on that it was getting bad, so not many people were caught out but the ones that did resigned to the fact they were drenched and just calmly continued on…

Switzerland VI – The William Tell Express

This was the first of 4 scenic train journeys we took in Switzerland.  All the trains we took in Switzerland were scenic to some extent, but these are four of the maybe dozen or so marketed to tourists as particularly scenic.  The William Tell Express goes from Luzern to Lugano.  It starts with a boat ride across Lake Lucerne, then you transfer to a train to complete your journey.  The boat is uber relaxing – beautiful scenery.  Many stops at villages to let passengers on and off.  (Bauen looked especially great as a sleepy village to rest, relax and hike.) The train ride is not very scenic to be honest, and the train is unimpressive by Swiss standards.  But, you do get to go through the famous Gotthard tunnel, one of the longest tunnels in the world.  (our friend Bob from chapel has told us stories about going through the tunnel into Switzerland when he was in the Army shortly after the WWII armistice)

Let’s take you on a little photo journey of the day…

Leaving Luzern…

Amazing cloud formations.

This was a fabulous station at one of the many stops on the lake.

The boat was a cool old steamer (click on photo for a couple more boat shots if you’re a boat geek)

Enjoying the peace and quite of the boat after the school kids got off at Rutli, the ‘birthplace’ of Switzerland where the Swiss Confederation was formed when the original 3 cantons joined forces against the nasty Hapsburgs.

The boat.

An ugly statue – but love the metaphor for stuff falling out of my brain…how I have felt more times than usual during my pregnancy…

Two photos of the three passes we made by the Wassen church that the train famously passes three times on its winding climb up to the tunnel.  In the second photo see if you can spot the track we had been on previously. 

And you can compare the view to the model that we saw at the transport museum…

…click to see full size image and pointer to the chapel.

Visit from Justin

We were lucky to have a short visit from Justin last night.  He was travelling in Europe on business and was able to swing through our neck of the woods for the weekend.  Justin is one of my oldest friends, we met in second grade and went to school together all the way through university.  Conveniently he married Sarah, my very best friend from growing up.  (yes, my best friend and I had the same name)  She is also expecting a baby so wasn’t able to join Justin this trip – we were all sad that she couldn’t be here (Sarah probably saddest of all). 

He got a cab from Heathrow to our place - which he enjoyed as he had a talkative taxi driver who was, like Justin, a keen Chicago Bears fan.  Also, winter clothing was a hot topic of conversation, as the taxi driver was very interested if jumpers (sweaters) were thicker in Illinois than they are here in England.

We went out for dinner at our village pub where we had good food and the guys had good pints.  We got home after final call, and watched the Illinois-Clemson game that we hadn’t got to see yet.  Justin gave us the play by play that Sarah had sent via text during the game – which added quite a bit of excitement.  It was almost like she was here:-)  It was great to get to watch an Illinois game with a fellow fan.

This morning, after breakfast, we took a walk along the river.  Justin was wishing his dog Joey could have been there too, as it is dog heaven in the open fields along the river.  We walked up to Shiplake Church, which dates back as far as the 12th century.

We put Justin on the train into London shortly before noon and he is hopefully having a great sightseeing day in the city.

Thanks for making the effort to come out to Shiplake, Justin.  Hope you and Sarah (and the baby) get to come again soon!