1 October - 13 October 2013
We started in Garmisch-Partinkirchen. This town is a mountain resort in Bavaria, giving us a glimpse of times past with the cobblestone streets and fresh mountain air. In 1936 it was the site of the winter Olympic Games, the first to feature alpine skiing.
Here we go again!
Ready for the train.....
This is our home for the next few days.
We have an apartment on the second floor. An excellent place.
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We took a cable car up the mountain near the ski jump area for the 1936 Olympics. The car has the original wooden sides. There were great views from the lift and a subsequent several mile walk down through the meadows and the woods. We felt we were walking with E. T. through the forrest.
The moisture and conditions made for some great photo opportunities. The scent of the forrest was profound and lingered in our heads for quite sometime.
Interspersed in the woods are happy sheep.
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Out for a second traditional Bavarian Dinner and, as in usual situations, we shared a table with another couple. This is Diane & Jeffrey from Minnesota. If we were not facing Diane, we would think we were dining with Meryl Streep, as her voice and laugh were very similar. We even thought she resembled her...
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Today we took the Zugspitze Bhan. Since our plan was open for today, we decided to follow the advice of our Airbnb host, as she told us "You have to go to the Zugspitze summit TODAY because it is going to be sunny". The panoramic views were incredible.
Garmisch-Partinkirchen is at the bottom of the valley.
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"O'zapft is!" - "the barrel is tapped!" exclaims Munich's Lord Mayor after approaching the first cask of beer at noon on September 21, 2013, officially inaugurating the world-famous Oktoberfest. The special Oktoberfest beer brewed by Munich's six major breweries is served in fourteen beer tents, with a total seating capacity for 100,000 guests. The draft beer is the perfect beverage accompanying Bavarian treats such as pretzels, Obatzda (specially garnished cream cheese), roasted chicken and duck, sausages, and many more delicacies. The sauerkraut (or "kraut") is combined with a small noodle. The food and beer were delicious!
On 12 October 1810, the citizens of Munich were invited to attend the festivals held in front of the Munich City Gates for the wedding of King Ludwig I of Bavaria and Princess Theresa of Saxe-Hildburghausen. This happy tradition continues in late September- early October every year - now known as the Oktoberfest.
The Bavarian outfits the fellows in the right background are wearing are quite common this time of year. From what we've learned, many people, men & women, have Bavarian attire they wear to work and play...just for this 2 week Oktoberfest occasion.
We had to indulge in traditional Wurst (sausage) and Beer!
Here and in some places throughout Europe, it is quite commonplace to sit at empty seats at tables already occupied. People are typically most welcoming and willing to converse, even in sometimes difficult foreign languages. It's always a lot of fun.
One of our table mates, Andréa from Switzerland.
Karín came to the Oktoberfest with her friend Andréa from Switzerland. As it turns out, they drove a camper to Munich just to go to the Oktoberfest.
Andréa & Karín from Switzerland - this was their second beer (that we know of). They bought their dresses specifically for the occasion. They're here to have some good old traditional fun.
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The Newschwanstein Castle.
This is said to be the inspiration for Disneyland's Sleeping Beauty Castle.
We meet Elsie in the meadow in Füssen Germany, the town just below the Castle. This drive leaving the castle was beautiful - with deep green meadows, pastures, and leaves turning brilliant colors of red and yellow.
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Dachau - a Nazi Concentration Camp just north of Munich.
In the 1930s the camp was intended for political prisoners. Jehova’s Witnesses, homosexuals, and emigrants were sent to this Dachau prison after the 1935 passage of the Nuremberg Laws which institutionalized racial discrimination.
In 1937 the Nazi Regime, using prisoner labor, initiated construction of a larger complex capable of holding 6,000 prisoners. It eventually exceeded over 12,000 prisoners in this completely overcrowded space. The enlargement was for including the imprisonment of Jews, ordinary German and Austrian criminals, and eventually foreign nationals from countries which Germany occupied or invaded.
Prisoners lived in constant fear of brutal treatment and terror detention. There were 32,000 documented, as well as thousands of undocumented, deaths at the camp.
The camp was liberated by Allied forces in 1945.
The perimeter fence.
Memorial at the camp in 1997...depicting the humanness of the prisoners (in contrast to the prisoners being identified only by number).
The gate at the Jourhaus Building, through which the prisoners' camp was entered, contains the slogan:
Arbeit macht frei, or "Work will make you free".
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Although nearly all of our travels throughout Europe are by Bahn (Train), we decided to rent a car in Garmisch and drop it off about 2/3 of our way to Berlin, which is much farther north in the country. This allowed more mobility to see the countryside and visit some lesser accessible towns along the way.
This is the inside of our apartment in Ansbach Germany. It is owned by a delightful couple, Agnes & Dietmar. These seemingly retired folks spoke absolutely no English, and our 40 year ago contact with the German language is a little rusty. Challenging it was...but we all had fun trying to talk with just a few words, hand gestures and facial expressions.
Note the lace doily on the coffee table. These small lace mats are commonly found throughout Germany. Some of us possibly remember these decorative mats in our childhood:).
Agnes and Dietmar had a wonderful idea...to take their apple trees and put them on a vine, like grapes. Surely they started this from saplings, but now they have a great appleyard (like "vineyard").
A sight from walking around Ansbach. The vines are changing from green to a vibrant red as Autumn approaches.
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Rothenburg ob der Tauber - is a quaint town that is completely surrounded by a 16th Century wall. It is therefore well preserved and has some wonderful sights.
The irony.... Deborah has been living in Rothenburg with her husband for about 2 years. Guess what we learned? She and her husband are going back home to Safety Harbor, Florida in a couple months. What a small world it is, and Deborah living just 20 minutes from our Gulfport home.
Oh the lovely flower boxes!
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Check this out.... There are no speed limits on the Autobahn and we're going 140!
Actually, I guess that is a little fast. 140 kilometers per hour is 87 mph. It didn't seem all that fast with all the other cars blowing by us.
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Joey was drafted in the U.S. Army back in mid-1972. His permanent duty station, after basic and advanced training, was in Fulda, Germany in the 11th Armored Calvary Regiment (from January 1973 until July 23,1974).
The 11th Armored Cav's duties included monitoring and guarding the east-west German border in what is called the "Fulda Gap". It was determined if the Cold War was to escalate into Soviet advancement to the west by ground (more than the "not talking to each other" war that it was), any ground troops from the east heading west would come first through the Fulda Gap. We were there to watch and protect........... potentially becoming the first war casualties!
The logo of the 11th Armored Calvary Regiment was this Black Horse. Because the Cold War ended and the troops in this area of Germany have been disbanded, the military base has become what appears to be an office / warehouse complex.
Few recognizable signs are still available - the commissary / mess hall building is still there. The formation field where we would hold U.S. Holiday Celebrations under big tents reminds me of the guitar and singing collaborations I had with a friend, Jack D'amore. The sign in the above photo is on a building for local events. The main entrance to the base is a street now named "Black Horse Strasse".
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Next stop...Berlin.
We spent about 5 days in Berlin - sure didn't seem like enough. There is so much to see and so much to learn. We knew the basis for Hitler's Third Reich and for the later Cold War, but the amazing detail and clarity one gets by going and seeing while hearing and reading the details is fantastic.
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The Brandenburg Gate. After the divide of East and West Berlin on 13 August 1961, this iconic monument ended up just inside of the Eastern Bloc Zone. Westerners could see the monument but could not get to it. Now, of course, all that has changed.
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One of the subway / train stations.
One of the stories of the U-Bahn (Subway) was about the Ghost Train. When Berlin was divided and the wall was erected, the Communist Regime blocked off all of the U-Bahn stations in the east part of the city. There were underground trains that would leave a station in the west, with free westerners on them, that needed to travel on tracks under part of the east blocked city. The people in the east, completely cut off from the west, would hear these trains below their city knowing there were westerners just below them as they heard the train under their feet.
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This memorial is to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust. It consists of a 4.7-acre site covered with 2,711 concrete slabs or "stelae", arranged in a grid pattern on a sloping field. The stelae are designed to produce an uneasy, confusing atmosphere, and the whole sculpture aims to represent a supposedly ordered system that has lost touch with human reason. Quite the experience to be there.
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Our tour guide - Barnaby with Berliner Insider Walking Tours. He is quite the scholar, to say the least, with a remarkable sense of humor. We referred to our tour as "Barnaby's Classroom".
Before our arrival in Berlin, parts of the Cold War and Third Reich history had become somewhat stale in our minds. What is amazing is that the occurrence of this part of history was in ours and our parents' generation. Being in Berlin with Barnaby's presentation made this history come alive, in a much more real sense. It was truly an amazing experience.
We took a "Cold War Tour" on one day, and because we so enjoyed Barnaby's presentation, we returned the next day just to take his "Third Reigh" Tour. Both of these tours gave us an incredible journey into much of Berlin and Germany's history.
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This is the Berlin Cathedral. Although the site of a cathedral since the 1500s, this was built in 1894.
The sight of the old and the new....the Berlin Cathedral with the Radio Tower in the background. The first regular television program in the world was broadcast from an aerial on the top of the tower in March 1935. In 1962, after the divide of Berlin, the tower was stopped being used for West German television transmissions.
In the Berlin Cathedral courtyard...memorial for some of the many Berlin musicians, writers, and artists.
The Eastern Bloc claimed that the Wall was built to protect their people from the fascist elements conspiring to "prevent" the will of the people in building the socialist state in East Germany. Wow! What a load of propaganda.
To westerners, the Wall served to prevent massive emigration and defection from the east to the west.
After a series of events and blunders by the Eastern Bloc Regime, on 9 November 1989 the East German Citizens were allowed to pass through...thus starting the events that lead to the demise of the Wall.
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Remaining signs of the war...columns of the Neuces Museum. Below is the magnificent archway of the Museum.
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Waiting for U-Bahn (subway)...
There is so much construction going on in Berlin that we had to take this picture. The number of cranes we saw were uncountable...literally hundreds.
We walked by the Mini Cooper Dealer. That's a real car hanging on that wall.
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We're making it a tradition to go to Hard Rock Cafés wherever we can. We've seen lots of good Rock & Roll memorabilia.
Cheers!
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There's a new tradition in Berlin (we hear it is in full swing in other European cities) that young lovers will engrave on a padlock and affix it to a bridge in the city. We saw these all around.
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Our last night in Berlin - out for Sushi.
This concept was great! There was a little moving belt (like an airport baggage belt) that plates of all sorts of sushi came around, and we were able to pick whatever we wanted as it came by. Different sushis would be on different colored plates (each with their own price). At the end, the number of each color would be counted for determining payment. The atmosphere and this baggage belt concept made it our favorite sushi restaurant.
A preview... On 18 October we head out again, this time to Venice, Italy. We have a reservation for lodging in a nun's monastery. We'll be there for a few days then return through Switzerland with a train ride on the Glacier Express.
Let us know how we're doing with the pics and blog info when you get a chance. We love your coming along with us on this incredible journey.
travelers@chica-joey.com
Wow, what an adventure! Love your pics guys. Makes me want to come back to Europe and travel around.
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