Vienna, Salzburg, and Munich (From Jason)

Hey Y’all (Amanda and Katie, that’s for you). Upon Ashley’s request, I have undertaken the task of documenting our trip through the Alps and Bavaria for the blogosphere. I’m sure that I’ll be supplemented with Ashley’s comments and additions, but I’ll try to hit some of the highlights.

First, my new fiancé and I boarded a plane headed for Austria. Vienna, initially. This was a city that I was particularly excited to be visiting because; 1) of all the places Ashley has visited, Vienna, Austria wasn’t one of them, and 2) as a bit of a music geek (just a bit...), I had a strong interest in the Austrian capital. Added bonus: as a heavy tourism city, just about everyone spoke English, which meant that Ashley didn’t have to translate ALL of the menus for me! (Thanks for that though, sweetie!) We knew that we had to hurry somewhat, because we were only staying there for a night, so once we found the hotel, we headed right out into the city. Exiting the subway in the heart of the city, we headed immediately into the facade of St. Stephens Cathedral (Yes, before you ask, Mozart played there...) After gawking at the architecture and remaining artwork for a while, we walked on to the Vienna State Operahouse, the “Haus der musik,” and finally the Imperial Apartments. As I was taking a few pictures of the palace, Ashley sits in the grass and says: “Yeah, go ahead and take some pictures. I’ll just be sitting here in the grass. Surrounded by my palace... Blame my dad for me being a princess.” A nice (unintentional) romantic walk through Vienna (ok, really we got on the wrong bus...) concluded our night there. The next day we had a bit more walking time, and before getting on the train, visited a nice Australian grill for lunch. Next up: Salzburg.

Salzburg is picturesque Alps, plain and simple. This may be old hat for some of you world-travelers, but for someone who rarely leaves Ohio, the beauty of Salzburg really struck me as amazing. There was only one thing that was on our “schedule” for Salzburg, and so soon after arriving, we reserved our places on the “Sound of Music” tour. After viewing the sights from Ashley’s favorite movie, we took off once again to see what we could find. I can’t say that it didn’t please me to find site after site of either original or recreated Mozart buildings and artifacts. That evening, we decided to climb was seemed like a mountain (I’m not much of a walker...) to eat dinner at the Augustiner Monk beer hall. These were probably the best sausages we found, and add that to the one litre beers, and all was good at dinner-time that evening. Not in as much of a hurry in Salzburg staying for two nights, we just took it a little easier the whole time and enjoyed each others’ company. The next morning, I realized that we actually hadn’t climbed a mountain the night before... because we were going to this time, up towards the fortress at the top. The next day, we left to go back to Germany, but before heading back to Berlin, we had a two night engagement with the city of Munich.

Our first full day in Munich we left for just outside the city to the town of Dachau to walk through the infamous concentration camp. While I’m fascinated by WWII history, walking the grounds of a concentration camp are both eerie and humbling. For anyone needing a reality check, I recommend visiting a camp such as this one because it really helps one realize how good life is. Needing a bit of a upper activity following the camp, we headed to the center of Munich to the “New Town Hall” (you know, the one with the glockenspiel.) Being the day before Easter, the area was packed with people, which in turn brought out rally-goers and protesters of all sorts. The most interesting came late in the day when it seemed as though every Polizei in Munich was at the train station... not long later, we saw the National Socialist Party protesters headed directly for us. Needless to say, we walked quite a bit quicker back to the hotel to get out of the way of whatever was going to happen. After having a good experience with the “New Europe” tour of Berlin, we decided to take the same tour of Munich. Our guide (Jared, I think? (Ashley's note: Yeppers!)) was very knowledgeable and the tour was half history of Munich and half history of Munich’s role in the war. It was a good mix in my opinion. We had two separate trips to the “Hofbrauhaus” where Ashley had her “scrambled pancakes,” and insisted on getting her picture taken with a stranger... because he was wearing lederhosen. Easter Sunday got started on a rough note as we had to find an open Apotheke for a jaw issue that had one side of my face swollen, but Ashley’s maternal instincts kicked in and we got the thing taken care of. (Side note: never try to find an open doctor’s office in Germany on Easter Sunday... NOT easy!) Before we left to head back to Berlin, we took a walk through a park to eat some lunch. The most irony we found throughout the entire trip was at this point as we watched a GERMAN ‘Oom-Pah’ band playing ‘Don’t Cry for Me ARGENTINA’ inside a CHINESE Pagoda in the ENGLISH garden. Crazy, no? After this lunch, we started back towards the airport to get back to Ashley’s apartment in Berlin.

If you’re ever given the opportunity to see these parts of the world (for those of you who haven’t yet...) I certainly recommend doing so. If you choose to do it as we did, prepare yourself to be completely exhausted before all is said and done. It was well worth it though.

Back to you Sweetheart...