Thursday, June 30, 2011

I'm Pretty Sure Switzerland Is Messing With Me

Sorry about the lack of posting for the past few days: wasn't a whole lot to post about, just a really relaxing day in Salzburg and an epic tour of the Augustiner Brewhouse.  Maybe I'll write about it later.  For now, Switzerland!

We spent about 7 or so hours today on trains, moving from Salzburg to Munich, Munich to Zurich, then finally from Zurich to Lucerne.  Train seats are better than airplane seats, but not by a whole lot:
The situation also dictated that I watch Eurotrip while on the train.
"Mi scuzi, mi scuzi!"
As you could probably guess, this long trip was not without its difficulties.  We had to hop trains in Munich, with only 10 minutes to run across the entire train station to our next train.  With 7 pieces of carry-on luggage, and 7 rolling bags all pushing the 50-pound checked bag limit, plus a scattering of souvenir bags and coats, this move was quite a project.  My dad and I laid out a game plan, establishing lines of attack and points of exit and luggage transfer, all of which quickly went to hell as soon as the train stopped and we had to contend with the fact that, oh wait, there are about a thousand other people trying to get off the train at the  same time. So it was fun.  But we made it, just barely, and got everyone to their destinations, with my grandparents stopping in Zurich to stay for their flight home tomorrow, and my family moving on to Lucerne.

Ground-kissing would have happened if the floor of the
train station wasn't so nasty.
So, Switzerland.  Swissy-Swiss-Swiss-Switzerland.  This place is a bit of a conundrum.  Lucerne is honestly one of the most spectacularly beautiful cities I've ever been to, and even all the amazing sights from this new trip have not been enough to change that opinion.

This was the sight that greeted us as we got of the train.
I mean really, come on now.
However, despite all this glorious beauty, there is one big problem with this city.  You pay for that damn view.  And you pay hard.  The prices for everything, and I mean everything in this city are absolutely insane.  It makes Disneyland look like a damn Wal-Mart!  Walked into a Starbucks...latte? 7 Swiss Francs.  In 'merrcan?  Somewhere around $8.50.  For a freakin' grande latte.  Just the plain latte.  Who are they kidding here?

Also, our room at the hotel.  And really the hotel itself.  It really just feels like they're playing a practical joke on us.  Look at this thing:

That's the "quintuple" room.  I'm currently sitting on the bed you can see in the far right corner while I type this...and we're paying in the range of $350 a night for this room!  This is in a tiny, tiiiiiny hotel that is supposedly notable for it's outdoor pool.  And by "outdoor pool" they mean the glorified jacuzzi that's set in the alley behind the building.  It's not much to look at.  The hotel itself is rather ludicrous as well, with only 6 rooms per floor, an elevator so small it has a capacity of 4 people, and actual keys for the room...not card keys, but put-them-in-the-lock-and-turn keys, of which we get only 2, and if we lose one, it's an charge of 250 francs to our room.  But then again, it's a damn beautiful city.


Also, the place we ate at was an Irish pub with this happy guy printed all over everything:
So you know it's legit.

Lots and lots of swans, too.
And a good picture with the sisters:
And creepy lights on the mountain, that you just know are alien spy cameras:

And a cool night-view shot of the town:

And a GODDAMN HUGE SPIDER on the bridge thing!!!!


Now it's time for sleep.  Sorry for the abrupt ending, I'm tired.
Wheeeee-zzzzzzzzzzzz
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Monday, June 27, 2011

Fly Like An Eagle

(Note:  Back at the hotel in Munich which won´t let me upload pictures, so they´ll have to wait until we get to Zurich in 2 days.  Sorry!)
Today was the point in this vacation which I've probably been looking forward to most: our trip up to the Eagle's Nest, the mountaintop hideout built for Hitler during the Nazi control of Germany.  First of all, let me be clear that when I say "mountaintop", I'm not talking about a small hill, or up in the higher areas of a nice skiing town.  I mean on top of a goddamn mountain:

This is the view from our tour bus as we drove over from Salzburg.  In order to get up to this ridiculously high spot, we first needed to disembark from our tour bus at the sort of "base camp" about halfway up the mountain.  From here, we hopped into these red buses which looked a bit large for sneaking up a tiny mountain road.
Various reactions to the beginning of the ride.  I don't trust other people to
drive me up ridiculously windy, narrow roads.

But sneak up the road we did, coming to quite a few areas where there was about 4 feet between the window of the bus and a sheer cliff face, protected only by a small, clearly-not-strong-enough-to-stop-a-moving-bus railings.
Pictured: not enough space for this bus to safely fit through.
This bus brought us to the base of the facility, which was essentially a brick-lined tunnel blasted into the side of the mountain.  We wandered into this tunnel, shivering at the icy cold breath of the Grim Reaper (or just really strong air conditioning), and walked about 200 feet into the mountain before reaching a brass-lined elevator, in which pictures were verboten due to the highly reflective walls.  By this point, we were all pretty unsure if we were at a historical site, or just the most elaborate Disney ride ever, a feeling not at all helped by the fact that our tour guide was dressed like a stocky German innkeeper from the 17th century.
Into the tunnel...of DOOM!
The elevator brought us and the 40 other somewhat scared, less-than-rosy-smelling members of our group up to the actual facility of the Eagle's Nest.  Quick history lesson:  the Eagle's Nest was a facility built by the Austrians for Hitler in the time leading up to World War II (possibly during it, can't remember for sure), and was meant to be used as a meeting place for foreign diplomats, not as a living quarter.  Therefore it's pretty small, and has little more than a few rock-walled rooms, though there is apparently a very extensive bunker network built into the mountain under it.  The facility, having been bombed and looted extensively by allied forces at the end of the War, is now home to, oddly enough, a nice German restaurant.
I bet their Wienerschnitzel is excellent.
I'll stop talking now, and just let the pictures speak for themselves.
Apparently the restaurant is sponsored by Hofbrau House?

View from above the facility...from a real estate perspective,
the building's not much, but you're really paying for the setting.

Guy's pic in front of a steep cliff.  Manly.

There's a surprising amount of shrubbery up there, all tastefully arranged.

THE MISSSTTTT!!

Down the mountain...that's a town in the middle-right-hand side.
Like a whole town.

"Hmmyes, Sir Hummel, that does look remarkably like a new,
unexplored territory, just ripe for a flag-planting!"

Somewhat more impressive  retake of an earlier picture from Pismo Beach.
I would post the older picture for reference, but facebook sucks
and I can't get download any pictures, even of myself.  Wtf.

Little stair path down the side, found a cool little arch and random
bench at the bottom of it!

Epic scenery photo.
So yeah, as you can see, it was a pretty cool place.

Sunday, June 26, 2011

Salzburg - A Cool Place With Lousy Hotel Internet

So we got to Salzburg today, and while the city itself is awesome and super fun to wander around in, the damn hotel doesn´t have free WiFi in the rooms.  I got spoiled by these past few, but now it looks like we´re close enough to Germany for the dang pay-for-internet thing to kick in.  Therefore, I´m forced to write this from a little kiosk in the main lobby, and can´t upload any pictures until tomorrow at the earliest, when we get back to the other stingy internet hotel in Munich.

Most notable thing from today?  I learned that Europeans aren´t as immune to traffic as they´d like us all to believe.  After making a detour to a small German town called Gmunden (that´s not a typo, that´s how it´s spelled, pronounced "gu-moon-den") where we stopped to take a ton of pictures of a beautiful, absurdly picturesque lake in the Austrian Alps, we attempted to squeeze our far-too-large-for-small-German-towns tour bus out of the city, only to find ourselves stuck in a single lane of PARKED traffic.  Like, not even slightly moving, people-getting-out-of-their-cars-to-see-what´s-going-on traffic.  Apparently, there was some major accident in the tunnel that was the main way out, and no one was getting through for a while.  So our bus driver, Claudio, the Italian Stallion, decided to take an alternate route out; unfortunately, we weren´t the first to think of this.  We soon found ourselves in another line of dead-stopped traffic, this time on a street so narrow that even the small sedans in front of us couldn´t turn around to escape, leaving no hope for our giant tour bus to backtrack.

Eventually, we made our way through, discovering that the source of the traffic was little more than too manz people trying to drive on one single-lane road.  Honestly, though, it wasn´t that bad.  If I could post pictures, I could show you that we were stuck on a road in one of the most gorgeous pieces of forest/lake scenery you´ll ever see, and I was able to comfortable nap for the rest of the ride to Salzburg.  All in all, not too bad, but I still felt a slight sense of smug satisfaction knowing that it isn´t just us Southern Californians who have to deal with gnarly traffic.

That´s about it for today, hopefully I´ll be able to get some pictures up tomorrow night, especially since myself, Becky, and my Dad and Grandpa are all heading up to the infamous Eagle´s Nest tomorrow, hiiiiigh up in the Austrian Alps.  Might need some of those famous German schnapps to get me past inevitable vertigo, but it´ll be worth it!  (Look up the Eagle´s Nest if you don´t know what it is, it´s good trivia knowledge if anything.)

Auf wedersehen, ya´ll.

Saturday, June 25, 2011

Vienna - It's A Classy Place

It's the end of our second and final day in Vienna, Austria, and I must say I'm pretty impressed!  It's definitely a different kind of impressive than Budapest or Prague, though Vienna is still loaded with the obligatory giant cathedrals.
Not bad.  Not bad at all.
Apparently this is the guy who designed the cathedral...
I guess this is the architectural equivalent of a photobomb?
Probably the most significant difference between Vienna and the other cities that we have visited is just sheer population.  While Munich, Prague, and Budapest were all very densely populated cities, Vienna is just straight up packed full of people.  Germans, Austrians, Americans, other Europeans, they're all just crammed in there like Japanese commuters on a subway.  And the worst part?  It's freakin' impossible to tell who is who. Everyone looks and dresses exactly like you would expect to see in New York or San Diego, so you have no way of knowing if the person you're about to ask for directions is a visiting American, friendly Austrian, or angry tourist-hating native person who will stare at you like you just stepped on her dog when you just wanted to ask what kind of beer they serve at the little restaurant in the farmer's market that you went to with your family...stupid mean waitress...
This farmer's market.  That story was about me.  If you couldn't tell.
Anyways, this is confusing, though it also leads to some extraordinarily random situations.  We came across a major example of this yesterday, while checking out one of the main shopping areas.  As can be expected, this street was filled with people, animals, and street performers
Also, for some reason, the "human statue" people in Europe
all use a squeaky-dog-toy sound, instead of the American
boardwalk-staple robot whirring noise
And lined with really expensive shops and cafes:
Even window shopping here is expensive.
Desperate to find some place where we could sit and drink things loaded with either caffeine or alcohol, we got ourselves a seat at one of the street-seating cafes that are ridiculously common in Vienna.  We passed the time talking and people watching, taking particular interest in the large number of dogs that walked past with their owners.  When confronted with a giant fluffy dog being walked next to a tiny little runt of a pup, my grandma decided to ask the owners what kind of dog it was.  Turns out, it was an Akita, and the little one was a mutt, but that's not the important part of the story: the important thing was that not only were the owners Americans, but they actually turned out to be from Solana Beach, about 10 minutes from where I live! The guy with the Akita apparently works at the US embassy in Vienna, and the other couple they were with were visiting from San Diego...probably the second most ridiculous "small world" moment I've ever experienced, only topped by the time that I ran into a high school friend while walking through St. Peter's Basilica in Rome on our last Europe trip, 5 years ago.

So yeah, that was pretty crazy.  As for the rest of our time, we got to stay at a suuuper nice hotel, with a stocked, FREE minibar and a whole room and fold-out couch to myself!

Found these weirdos wandering the street outside.
This morning was spent touring the huge Shonbraun (sp?) castle, historic home to the Hapsburg family...yes, that Hapsburg family, for all of you who took AP Euro.  The castle was really cool, despite a rather awkward moment on the walk in when I got this unfortunate angle on one of the big fountains out front:
Yeah...and my dad was the one who pointed this out.
The castle was great and all, but really the highlight of the whole thing was this cheeky-ass duck:

He just rolled up to us and was siting right at our feet, staring us right in the eyes and daring us to try to go swimming in his fountain.  I knew when to back down, so we survived the day.

I guess the gardens were cool too.
After a return  to the hotel, and a trip up and down the stairs to try to work off our excessive breakfast buffet, we were ready to head out again.

These stairs.  This is actually how the stairs in our hotel look.
We found our way over to this giant flea market/farmer's market thing for some lunch...this was pretty cool, since it was quickly made clear to us that this was a spot frequented by real Austrian people, not just tourists.  Unfortunately, this also meant that a lot of them didn't speak much English, or were kind of annoyed when they had to.  Therefore, the story mentioned above with the waitress.  I did, however, manage to work in one short German-language conversation with a vendor at the flea market, which pretty much consisted of me asking how much a kitchen knife was, then nodding appreciatively while he rattled off a bunch of long German words, then walking away.  Good enough for me!

Also, I just need to note how ridiculous this flea market was.  The people there were clearly, in many  cases, just selling random crap that they had found or stolen: for example, there was one guy selling two obviously-not-legitimately-obtained car radios among an assortment of glassware and cups.  Another vendor had a box on his table filled with, I kid you not, metal nameplates peeled off the backs of cars ("ACCORD", "CIVIC", "CAMRY", those things).  And there were about a thousand similar vendors, all peddling their own brand of random shizer.

Apparently you would have loved this place, Noah.
After losing my Grandpa for about an hour, then finding him wandering through another part of the market, we decided it was time to get somewhere less crowded, and walked to a nearby park.  There was another giant church here, though the admission fee kept us from wandering in.  There were some pretty epic angel statues out front, though:
Also, definitely found the broken finger from this statue sitting
on the stairs next to it.  Left it on the ledge, figured someone
would fix it later, and I didn't want to risk getting cursed or
something if I had taken it.
A sudden, annoyingly unanticipated rainfall forced us to seek shelter outside a nearby cafe:

Where we waited until we could get back to the hotel.

Ok, I know, this story is going way too long.  So here, I'll just wrap it up with some pictures:

Becky, at a Starbucks that's slightly different from the one she works at.  Only slightly.
As Jess and Becky said, somehow this is a bit different from watching
street performers at Venice Beach.
We at here for dinner on Friday night.  Pretty sweet.
Welp, that's about it then!  Hope  you enjoyed these tales from Vienna, I'll try to keep the stories a bit shorter next time.

Auf wedersehen!

Friday, June 24, 2011

A Photo Tour of Budapest, a.k.a. I'm Too Tired to Post Much Other Than Pictures

Just finished our first day in Vienna, and I'm too exhausted to post anything poignant.  So here's a bunch of pictures from Budapest, with cursory explanations.  It's a spectacular city, probably my favorite of the trip so far!  Definitely a return trip if I can ever make it.

Just a cool looking city street, chillin'.
Fancy coffee!  I got legit Turkish Coffee, google it if you don't know what that is, can't explain in a caption.
Their parliament building makes ours look, frankly, pretty damn lame.
It's a freakin' castle.  In the city.  I know, right?!
Fans of the Eddie Murphy/Owen Wilson epic I Spy may recognize that bridge
support as the hiding place of the "Leafy Bug"
The former royal palace is, well, "royal".
View from the Danube, with a well-placed Hungarian flag.
Another view from the Danube, with more sweet huge buildings.
The lunch they provided on our Danube cruise.  These guys know how to party.
Kickin' it in the street.  No bigs.
Gotta work on my Goulash Gut a bit before I can properly pull this look off!
Look out, Noah, you've got competition!
Big church.
Inside big church.
Apparently they actually paint stuff on the inside of
those domes...who gets stuck with that job?!
Dad felt a bit like a bawse being able to drop a 10,000 Florent bill, until you
realize the exchange rate is 170 to the dollar, so each Florent is worth about
half a cent.  Still looks cool, though.
View of the "Pest" side of Budapest, taken from the "Buda" side...did you
know they were originally two cities, and the names
were just mashed together?
Mmmm, beer!
Hope you enjoyed your virtual tour, now it's time to sleep.  Please leave any tips at my apartment.