Venedig, Venezia, Venice

There are two distinct sides to this famed city: the one that everyone knows with the beautiful canals and romantic views and ancient ambiance, and then there's the dark, scary side where you're lost in a literal maze that you'll never get out of. Let me just tell you how we came to be in this predicament.

I flew back to Munich the day after Christmas and then almost immediately hopped on a night train to the town just before Venice, where Katie and her family picked me up. They were staying in a very nice "villa", aka the top floor of a guy's house, about an hour outside of Venice. We went to the super fancy outlet mall there and looked at all the things we couldn't afford and took a little trip to the beach. It was wet and misty and the beach town we drove through looked deserted for winter, some of the windows were boarded up and it was Sunday so everything (FOOD) was closed until 6 pm. The beach had a small playground and we had a nerf football, so it was still fun.

The not fun part (other than the no-food situation) was the explosion of roundabouts in Italy, which combined with our super slow GPS to create an almost sure recipe for disaster. I think we only drove in circles/the wrong way four times :)

The next day we ventured into Venice on the train. The view from the bridge was really neat. The city is literally just an island of buildings with canals in between, it changes immediately from water to cement foundations and city blocks, aka the maze part. The main square that we were going to, St. Mark's (Piazza San Marco), was on the opposite side of the city. Luckily, every corner you come to has an arrow labeled with the direction you have to go to get to the Piazza, so we walked along about halfway there, passing all the tourist shops of Venetian masks and glass, then veered off for some food (surprise!).

This is down the alley from the pizzeria we ate at, which is on the right:

It was super sunny outside during the middle of the day, but since the buildings are all so tall and close together, it doesn't ever reach the ground, except in the bigger plazas.

This was the GIANT calzone I ordered:

It was delicious, but so massive I couldn't finish it. I think our waitress was a little confused at our surprised exclamations when she brought them out. 

After lunch we wandered along towards the Piazza, through all the alley ways and sudden open plazas and over numerous canals until we emerged in the Piazza San Marco. It was dusk at this point, but here is most of the Piazza:

Behind this frame is a church, but they were doing construction on most of the dome so you couldn't see much. To the left of this picture is the water front. We walked along this for a few minutes, then wandered through a small park (the first grass we found!). Here's the waterfront, my most favorite part:

And me with some mint gelato, courtesy of Katie :)

The waterfront is what got us into trouble. We walked up the road from the Piazza and were deceived by this romantic looking, cute little alley way along a canal:

Beware! A sure trap for all people not raised on Venetian ground. I'm convinced they all have a weird magical ability that allows them to get around without getting completely lost, which as you might have guessed, is exactly what we did. At the time, we seemed to be following a group of other tourists on a main pathway back to the center section of the city. 

Some shots from this time, while still in my starry-eyed, romantically lost state:

This semi-lost meandering changed to us walking around alone in the dark in an obviously non-tourist section of the city. We even passed a butcher and a fruits and vegetables shop, which were noticeably absent from our wanderings earlier. After running into multiple dead ends at canals, we took up the strategy of walking into every single corner shop we came to and asking which way the main path was. This eventually led to the back of this church:

The front of the church was next to the main path, which we were able to follow back to the train station with only a little hesitation. A victory shot of the canal in front of the train station:

We caught our train with four minutes to spare! Pretty successful, I'd say. Overall, it was a marvelous day spent in a beautiful city. Venice is definitely still on the list of cities I loved, though it appears nowhere on the list of cities fun to get lost in. Munich still holds that distinction, and probably always will. Vienna might be a close second, but I'll get to that later :)

Münchner Christkindlmarkt

This was the last time I went to the Munich Christmas market, so I actually took pictures this time :) However, it was after I had been in class, so they're just with my phone :/ mrrr.

Here's a blurry picture of the sign:

We made our way down this street and snacked on gebrannte Mandeln, which are deliciously candied almonds. Then we got some heisse Maroni (roasted chestnuts) and stood by a (tiny) trashcan while eating them. They have them on literally every corner, but I had never had them before. They were wonderfully warm, good for my hands, and weirdly mushy. They were very...meaty, but I did like them. Anything is better than walnuts, bleck.

The Rathaus, City Hall:

We meandered around the stands for awhile, which after visiting so many Christmas markets I realized had mostly all the same stuff, but we did find cute little Munich themed ornaments and a kiosk that was selling cutting boards that you could get a phrase or your name carved into. I decided to buy one for the family and told the lady I would like "Schaefer" carved into it, which she spelled "Schäfer" ;) succeeeess. 

Then we got these:

That's some sort of cheesy cream spread, with bacon and onions. Magic.

And drank some Feuerzangenbowle here:

Feuerzangenbowle is a special form of glühwein, where they take a rum-soaked sugar cube, set it on fire, and melt it into the glühwein. It's even morrre delicious :)

Skiing in the Alps

In the middle of December, we went to the Austrian Alps for a day ski trip :) It was a really spectacular deal. I bought one ticket for 30 euros and it covered everything for the day except my ski rental, which was only 12. I got up at an ungodly hour and went to the main bus station, where all the buses going up there for the day start leaving at 6:50. You just give them your gear, if you have any, and hop on the bus. Once a bus is full it leaves and the next one pulls in and starts loading. On the bus they gave us all a coffee and a pretzel with butter :) They also gave us our lift ticket, which was like a credit card. It was a fun bus ride, even though it was so early, since there were so many of us together and we had some very nice views. What was odd was that the base of the resort was literally in the middle of a town. The i-club tutor took us into a ski rental shop that I assumed was part of the resort (cuz that's how it works in California) but it was just a local business.

Since there were so many of us it took AGES to get our gear, and you had to pick out your own skis, so I finally got to the desk and the guy told me I had chosen children's skis :/ bahaha, thankfully he was nice enough to go get a new pair for me. The main lift is a full gondola, instead of just a chair lift, and you go through a turnstile that automatically senses your ticket and lets you through. You slide your skis into a slot on the door and hop in the gondola and off you go! This is from the top, right side:

We stayed on this side for the most part, and in the middle. These were the medium runs; the left side had the hard ones. 

About half way down:

Most of the mountain was in shade by the time we got up there, at least on the right. The bottom of the middle runs was still in the sun.

From the middle:

That building is the mid-point for the gondola, that's where we got off the first time, while we were still testing it out :)

And me!

Rocking the sunglasses. And bossing it with a backpack, which I just stuffed with food, naturally.

At one point I pulled a noob-move and dropped my pole off the chair lift cuz I was too busy lounging all by myself. I had to brave the tiny winding path through the trees underneath the lift TWICE, as the first time I basically ran over my pole and only spotted it when going back up the lift.

There was also an awkward time when I thought I had gone the wrong way and cut back under the chair lift, uphill :/, only to discover that that actually led nowhere, and I had indeed been going the correct way to begin with. What a workout. 

The bus ride back was also nice. I got to talk to everyone that I hadn't been skiing with, and got a "free" glühwein for turning in my lift ticket :)

And contrary to my family's apparent belief, glühwein is delicious.

Nürnberg

I actually went to this city twice, the weekend before going to Salzburg and again the day after :) The second time was supposed to be with the i-club but they cancelled it because they only had 9 people sign up. Since you can get a train ticket for you and four friends to go anywhere in Bavaria for only $5 each, we decided to go anyways. Honestly, if any more than 5 people went it would have been dreadful. There were so many people (the Nürnberg Christmas market is the most famous) that even with only five we kept losing each other in the aisles of the market. Right across the street from the train station is this tiny, walled-in block of workshops with a medieval type tower. We stopped in here to look around and try the famous "Nürnberger Rostbratwurst."

This was the street to the Christmas market. Straight madness.

It was this packed everywhere we went, but it was also really nice. No wind chill. And the aisles of the market were full of Lebkuchen and Glühwein and ornaments.

Explosion of Lebkuchen:

Glüwein:

They have essentially every flavor of glühwein imaginable, and "Eierpunsch" is eggnog, which I stayed far way from.

and explosion of ornaments:

They also had a children's section with rides and a men's choir singing in front (or behind?) this church.

Since I had been there before I was in charge of navigating us to the Christmas market, a.k.a. follow the giant throng of tourists, but with all the zig-zagging back and forth in the aisles I couldn't tell you the orientation of the market to the rest of the city.

Instead of getting glühwein from one of the several at the market, we opted to go in a nice, warm cafe and enjoy it there, while thawing out our fingers, and faces. While in the cafe we started playing a game on my friend's phone where you have to identify company logos, which I'm a little ashamed to say I was remarkably good at. Then we hurried back to the train station so we wouldn't have to take the three hour long train back to Munich, but we did have to stand the whole way :/ 

Our "hurrying" that week though was nothing compared to the almost full mile we had to run back to the train station the week before, and then sprint through the train station with two minutes to go, ending with us successfully hopping into the bike compartment :) at least we didn't run for days and THEN still miss the train. I might have cried. The week before we also walked up to the Nürnberg Castle (always on a hill) and got to look out over the city, which was a very nice view and also had a massive Christmas tree that looked like it came directly from the forest.

All in all, it was very Christmas-y and very cute. It was also cold and a little bit snowy at one point, the way I've never experienced Christmas before :)

Salzburg (Part 2, with Hannah)

The second trip to Salzburg was much more enjoyable, albeit MUCH colder, on account of the fact that we weren't walking around in a massive group literally blocking all the sidewalks and stopping traffic. It was just Hannah and I strolling along, hopefully not drawing too much attention to ourselves. We walked through the Mirabell Gardens, which were only half open since all the flowers were gone and the fountains were off due to winter, then went to the city center where they had a cute little Christmas market, which I dare say was better than Munich's but only because it had all the same things minus the giant throngs of people. It was also snowing on us, so that might have deterred many visitors. They ALSO had reasonable sized trash cans, as seen here:

Those are the largest trash cans I've seen in all of Europe. We checked out all the kiosks of ornaments, then tested all the olive oils/dips at a stand that had bread out (their mistake) and got ourselves some glühwein :) For lunch, I actually had dessert, as I decided to get chocolate sauce on my kaiserschmarrn (pancakes). Best choice I ever made.

After that we went on the Sound of Music Tour, which was in a little van with two other Brits and also two Americans, so Hannah and I were equally represented, haha. It starts at the Mirabell Gardens, where they shot the "Do-Re-Mi" scene and some others, then they drive past the theater where they shot the Von Trapp Family Singers scene, and since it was the first week in December, a few of these were standing outside.

This picture is from google; the ones standing outside must have been on break, because they didn't have their faces on, but you get the idea. It's like evil santa, children can get punished or even kidnapped by "Krampus" if they're especially naughty. They have whole parades of them on December 5th, the day before Saint Nicholas Day, where they ring huge cowbells and cause a ruckus. That night kids put a boot out and hope that St. Nicholas leaves them some presents. I believe it's only a southern Germany thing, in Bavaria, and Austria. There are a bunch of weird Bavarian traditions that don't exist in northern Germany; I'm gonna have to sort all those out, haha but for the most part if you think of a well-know aspect of German culture, it's actually just Bavarian, like lederhosen.

After this we drove out to the castle they used for the Von Trapp family home, which you can't really get that close to. They use it for seminars now (boringgg) and it's all locked up. We stopped across the lake from it. 

On the right there, conveniently above my hand. Also some swans.

Near there was also the gazebo where the "16 going on 17" scene was shot. It used to be on the castle grounds but people kept breaking in to take pictures, so they moved it and closed it off when someone broke their hip trying to jump from bench to bench.

Across the street from this was the road where all the children were hanging out of the trees, which we walked down for a bit, but then there was essentially a wall of snow blowing right at us, so we quickly ran back to the van. 

They stopped for a quick second back in town so we could get a picture of the top of Nonnberg Abbey, where the real Maria lived and where her and the Baron got married. It's the red dome(spire?) on the right.

After this the tour goes into the Alps for the panorama shots and scenery of the film on the way to the church where they shot the wedding scene. They point out three different lakes, but since it was so snowy we could only barely see the biggest one. At one point our tour guide said there was a lake directly to our left and you could literally only see white, haha. The church where they shot the wedding scene is in the tiny town of Mondsee (literally: Moon Lake). It's reallyyy small and really cute. They had a tiny Christmas market outside the church and a man building a small fire, thank the good Lord. 

We had an hour here so we took a quick walk through the church and the Christmas market, then sat down in the cafe for some hot chocolate and apple strudel :) it was deliciouuus. 

The tour was only about the filming though, so the main thing I learned was that Hollywood is dumb and got kicked out of everywhere, hahaha. First they got kicked out of the castle, for what I do not remember, but were allowed to have sketch artists go back in and then just recreated the rooms they needed. They also got kicked out of the Abbey, which is why the wedding was filmed in a tiny town up in the Alps, and eventually out of the whole city for putting up Nazi flags without permission. Smart move Hollywood, smart move.

When the tour was over we walked up to a beer hall our tour guide suggested. It was behind this tower, and even though our tour guide explained pretty well how to get there, we would have never found it if a group of middle-aged gentlemen weren't walking up there the same time as us. 

The table we were sitting at was against the wall and had a GLORIOUS heating pipe right under the bench, which I very gratefully warmed my feet on. On the way back to the train station I took this picture of the outside of the city center and the castle.

This was a much more adventurous day than the first (we actually stayed till after dark! unheard of with the i-club) and we both fell asleep on the train ride home, haha.

Oh, and this goat was in a corner of the Christmas market.

Schloss Linderhof

The weekend that I went to the U.S.-Germany hockey game, I was also going to go on a trip to Linderhof Castle, but I didn't pay early enough to reserve a spot and it sold out. My New York friend who went to the game with us was luckier, and he said it was a good trip (and that there was a monastery on the way, monastery=beer) so Hannah and I decided to make our own little trip there. The train ride was a pleasant one, with the Alps in view. However, our itinerary gave us only three minutes to get from the train to the bus that left from the stop outside the train station. Being a small town that was a very small distance, but our train was late and, also because it was a small town, we had an hour to kill before the next bus came. Hooray!

We meandered around the tiny town, then walked up a snowy set of stairs on a hill to an equally tiny church. It was still sunny at this point, so very pretty :) but still very cold, as it had just snowed.

Look I'm in a picture! Happy days.

We caught our bus up to the next town where the Monastery was, on which there was a very friendly little boy who kept walking up and back between us and the bus driver chatting away. Luckily Hannah could understand him enough to ask him questions; I understood enough to know when he asked what my name was, but he looked very confused at what kind of name "Ashley" was (a VERY American one, that's what kind). We then had to wait for another bus to Linderhof. We were waiting on the correct side of the street (my directional skills are FAIRLY decent) when a bus pulled up on the other side of the street with "Linderhof" on the reader board, so we (read by motherly and aunt-types: very safely) ran across the highway to get on the bus. The bus then went up the street to its next stop, TURNED AROUND, and went back the way we had come to the stop we were waiting at originally, bahaha.

Since it had just snowed, the grounds to the castle were closed and the castle itself was pretty small (by castle standards) so it ended up being more of a nice stroll throw a snowy meadow. Here's Linderhof:

and supposedly a fountain:

my favorite view from the whole trip:

After traipsing around in the snow for a bit we went back down to the town to visit the Monastery, also covered in snow:

Another picture of me!

The inside. There was singing coming from under that archway, possible from angles.

And the beer! This is a Dunkel, or "dark beer." I've decided I like them better than the Helles, "light beer." We also had lunch here, and no blog post would be complete with me telling you about it :) SOMEHOW, I did not take a picture of it. Maybe because I ordered the dish I like the most, and I'm sure there's a picture of it in here already, I think when we went to the Alps. Anywhooo, this one came with blaukraut, which is made of red cabbage and it not sour but instead suuuper sweet and delicious, like candy. That is all. 

On the way home, our seriously transportation challenged minds continued to fail us. The train station in that tiny town had only TWO platforms and somehow we picked the wrong one to wait on. You think it would be logical that if the train goes on one track there it would return on the opposite track but nooo, it came back on the same one. No one waiting on the other platform bothered to tell us this, even though they were close enough that two 10-year-old boys thought it was a good idea to use us as snow ball target practice. Their aim was not very good. We saw the train approaching on the other track and took off running like total noobs, but since there was only one set of tracks there was no nice stairwell/underground tunnel to get to the opposite platform; we had to go running down the street half in the snow to the railroad crossing and were almost to the back of the train when it left. We celebrated our misfortune by walking back into "town" and sitting down to enjoy a nice hot chocolate...for another hour :)

Paulaner Brewery

Another weekend in the middle of November, on a foggy Saturday morning, I ventured over the Isar River to a part of the city I had never been to for a tour of the Paulaner Brewery. After waiting outside in the extreme cold (and extreme smell) for an hour :// (I hadn't yet bought my big furry jacket and the club tutor was late) we finally went inside to start our tour with a video of the brewing process, in which the guy had the strangest almost American?? accent I had ever heard. Then we were herded back outside to the well the brewery draws their water from. It was very new-agey and looked basically like that glass pyramid in front of the Louvre, except much smaller and had few intertwining pipes inside in it that went down into the ground. They showed us the giant silos where they store the malt and barley and then took us inside to the origin of the awful smell. The boiling room:
(disclaimer: I'm sure this isn't the actual name)

There were about eight of these contraptions. I think they were boiling hops? and it smelled dreadful. Inside there were also these giant mixer whisk things that went it a giant circle to mix it all up.

I had to climb up a step ladder to be able to see into this window, which was also massive. I probably could have curled up into a ball on top of it. It was also gloriously warm standing next to it.

This was the control panel along the wall of the room. I had a major nerd out moment (perpetual? ...nobody answer that) and was following all the pipes and symbols and control switches. I think that was my favorite part, other than the food at the end (:

After this we went into a long tunnel that goes under the hill "Nockherberg" to the giant storage tanks they have and the bottling room. Background note: All the beer bottles at the store are glass, and I had noticed that most of them have rings worn into them on the bottom lip and where the neck starts to curve in. I never really thought about it, but alas, it's because they reuse the bottles. They get all banged up on the conveyor belt, so you can tell how old your bottle is by how worn the ring is. The tour guide said they can generally reuse them 12 or so times.

They use temperature controlled metal tanks to store the beer nowadays, but they have the old barrel lids on display:

The second one is for Hacker-Pschorr, another one of the famous six Munich breweries, which joined with Paulaner. None of the six breweries are privately owned anymore, but they still use the original brews.

And last but CERTAINLY not least, the lunch:

Special "Brew Master" Edition, pretty gooood.

That is the majority of a pretzel (Brezn), Leberkäse, and Kartoffelsalat. I guess it's kind of like Spam but is made of actual meat and tastes infinitely better. "Leberkäse" literally translates to "liver-cheese" but it is made of neither, thank goodness. It was a magical lunch, and it was freeee. Well sorta, it was included in the tour price :)