Bit belated, but I wanted to write up the trip to Germany before I forget everything! It was a pretty big deal, as it was the first real holiday I'd been on as an adult (trips to Bermuda for friends' weddings don't really count, however cool they might be). I was hoping to get a bit of practice speaking German, but primarily it was just me & Phil going on a trip. The two weeks coming up to it were kinda frustrating, as I really wanted to plan things and suddenly the pressure to do overtime at work increased tenfold - there was a lot going on. There were also a lot of other things going on that month (October), including my niece's Christening (which was cool). But we got there!
Day 1: Not really a day in Germany, this was mostly us driving to Stansted, flying to Dusseldorf, then flying to Munich. We stopped at an A&O hotel on Bayerstrasse, which was a fairly cheap but perfectly good hotel. The first night we adventurously ate in the local Burger King. They do speak English there, but if you talk to them in German they will do likewise. I never did manage to field the 'are you eating in or taking away' question, but otherwise it was fine.
Day 2: We headed down to the old part of the city, through Karlspatz and down to Marienplatz. There are quite a number of shops underground in Munich, especially around Karlsplatz and the central station. We briefly looked in St. Michael's church and had a look round the Frauenkirche. I also discovered that reading German menus is not easy - everything seems to be described by the way it's cooked, and even when I looked some of the terms up that night they seemed a bit vague. By the way, checking things in my pocket dictionary became a regular thing every evening in the hotel - I'm glad I took it.
From Marien platz we headed north past the Residenz to the Hofgarten, where a man was entertaining a crowd with songs and clarinet. Phil was given free hugs by a couple of girls - he couldn't understand a word they were saying, but they had a sign saying 'Free Hugs', and apparently he'd come across this concept on the Internet. That was the first time I wandered more than 10 feet from him. The second time another German girl asked him for direction to the English Garden - am wondering if maybe I scare people away or something... :) Guess Phil just looks friendly. We eventually reached the English Garden ourselves, and got as far as the temple of Diana (I think). There were lots of people lying around on the grass and stuff, it being relatively sunny for November. Then Phil started getting hungry, so we headed for more inhabited areas in search of food. It turns out that the people of Munich take All Saints' Day a little more seriously than we do - pretty much everywhere was closed. A small supermarket closed just as we got there - from the stream of German the shopkeeper directed at Phil, I got the impression that she was annoyed about having to close, so maybe it's a legal requirement? I may have totally misunderstood! Eventually we found a pub called 'The Life and Soul' which seemed open. I tried to ask the young lady inside if they were serving. I used 'Sind Sie servieren' which I'm sure my textbooks reckon is right, but this was the only time I was totally not understood. We asked our tour guide about it two days later, and she said the girl probably thought I was propositioning her. Thankfully Phil jumped in with less language 'skills' but much more communication skills (she spoke perfect English anyway) and we were soon sat down with English menus. We had Wiener Schnitzels, which turned out to be veal, and some beer. Both were good. May be the only time I have Wiener Schnitzels, as I wouldn't normally eat veal by choice.
Day 3: We started by heading to the Hirshgarten on foot. The name means "Stag Garden", and it's a beer garden with an enclosure containing deer. Lots of German kids were feeding the deer. There's a whole bunch of wooden tables with seats, and a long stall selling food, and a smaller stall selling beer. I never worked out whether the stallholders could speak English or not - I ordered a Weissbier (beer made from wheat), two sausages and chips each for myself and Phil, but did the whole thing in German. Sitting outside eating in the Hirshgarten has actually turned out to be my fondest memory of the trip, even though it was pretty cold. This was one of the few days when Phil wore his coat! Most of the time all the Munich residents and me were huddled in our coats while Phil strolled around in a T-shirt. The Hirshgarten also has a decent-sized park with an area where people are allowed to cook things outside.
From there we headed to the Nymphenburg, a big manor house (though they call it a castle) with an enormous park behind it. We spent over an hour walking to the far end of the park and back. Then we went north east to Olympia park (about an hour's walk). By this time it had got dark and foggy, and it was like walking through a Jack the Ripper film! The unsung hero of this story was 'Australian Bloke', Phil's satnav - despite my constant belittling of his abilities, he was invaluable in getting us to places. Olympia Park has a tower, and we decided to go up it despite knowing we'd be able to see nothing at all from the top - after all, we'd walked an hour to get there! They have a Rock Museum at the top, which contains paraphernalia from the world of music (not necessarily Rock). On the way back to the hotel we spotted a Russian shop, whose location Phil kindly stored in Australian Bloke's memory. We calculated that we'd walked over ten miles that day - not bad for a couple of guys with sedentary jobs!
Day 4: Trip to Neuschwanstein castle. This was a tour that Phil had spotted in the hotel, and we'd booked the previous day with a friendly Irishman, who had also told us about an Indian shop that sold PG Tipps, which Phil was craving pretty badly by this time. Said Indian shop claimed to open at ten, but in fact did not (unless our watches were fast). The tour itself was great - we got to meet some pretty cool people, including a Californian lady who wanted a picture of Phil's T-shirt for her website (he was wearing "Make Poverty Quieter", the shirt that always makes me think we going to get lynched). The castle itself was on a big hill - not actually as strenuous as climbing Pendle Hill, but still pretty exhausting. We weren't allowed to take pictures inside the castle. Actually the official guide in the castle seemed pretty young and inexperienced, and several people took pictures anyway without being stopped, but I didn't feel right about doing so, so I have no pictures of the interior. The rooms which had been finished were spectacular - basically really good pictures covering just about every bit of space, with like really elaborate chairs and beds and stuff.
That evening we actually went to the Russian shop. I was hoping to get a Russian DVD of a film I already owned, but there turned out not to be any. I also looked for any Zemfira albums, but couldn't find any. I did buy a random film though. The proprietor didn't speak English, and I'd somehow forgotten nearly all my Russian, only being able to manage "Hello", "Goodbye", "Please" and "Thank you". I think I was pretty focused on German. It was only outside the shop that I realised the guy would have been able to speak German - for some reason I hadn't even tried it. I then spent the next twenty minutes trying to remember the Russian for "to buy" - got there in the end, but it was pretty frustrating!
Day 5: Trip to Salzburg in Austria. There are two reasons why people visit Salzburg - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and The Sound Of Music. Phil and I aren't much into Mozart's music, and neither of us had seen The Sound Of Music, but as men who will pay to see the view from a tower shrouded in darkness and fog, that was hardly going to stop us! We were given a quick (hour and a bit) tour of the place, then left to our own devices for three hours. We had dinner in the oldest restaurant in Europe. The people of Salzburg use "Gruss Gott" ("Greetings of God") to say hello - I do remember this from school, but it seemed strange in real life. Guess I'm too accustomed to living in a predominantly atheistic country - I believe Austria is mainly Roman Catholic, at least culturally. We quickly checked out Peter's Church next door, then headed up to the fortress. This was really all we managed to do, and we didn't have much time to look round the fortress either - guess we should learn to eat faster! It's a pretty beautiful city though (as is Munich, of course).
Day 6: Shopping and chilling. We were considering visiting the Bavarian Film City on this day, but we'd packed a fair bit into the holiday and were pretty exhausted, so we decided to just chill. Visited the old part of the city again, walking as far as the river this time, which had bats. Phil was approached by a friendly drunk guy in the underground - another one of his T-shirts, this time the skeleton one. The guy was telling Phil that Halloween was over, but he had to switch to English to be understood. In the end we didn't really get any souvenirs, but we did send postcards to our families. We also managed to visit the park where they hold the Oktoberfest - pretty muddy, having just hosted the Oktoberfest, but also containing a fifty nine foot statue called "The Bavaria".
Day 7: We went home! That evening Phil bought The Sound Of Music, and we stayed up a bit late watching it. I did think it had a higher number of forgettable songs than most musicals I've seen, but overall it was still very good - much better than I'd been expecting, actually. Will get it myself when the opportunity arises.
And that was pretty much the German trip! I went to stay with Gary and Jennie for a few days afterwards, and somehow completely failed to take any pictures of them - went to see a play called "Alcetis" with Gary, which was pretty cool - hadn't been to see a good play in ages. Since then I've gone back to work, successfully changed a flat tyre entirely alone for the first time, and have just been getting back into normal life. Badly need to exercise more! Is pretty much time to be thinking about Christmas too... :)