I heart Washington state smoking laws!

We're in Geneva, Switzerland today. I’d never imagined how different two places in the same tiny country could be until we left German Switzerland and came to French Switzerland…the language is different, (which is proving a hard adjustment after a couple weeks of trying to figure out German), the buildings are different; the culture is different; it‘s just hard to remember we‘re still in Switzerland!
We took a late morning train from Interlaken and it was only a little over 2 ½ hours to get here. The Lake Geneva region is beautiful as we passed through it on the train…vineyards sloping down to the blue lake and it looks like some low mountains on the other side. Very pretty. One of Switzerland’s guidebooks called it the Riviera of Switzerland :) . Geneva is a cool city…lots of twisting little streets and stairways, a big, old city wall, lots and lots of “green space.” It was really a pain when we were trying to navigate it, but once we’d found what we needed to find and just started to explore and wander, it grew on me :). Our goal here is to see the Reformation-related sights in town and we found most of them this afternoon before dinner. We started with the Plainpalais Cemetery because it’s just across the street from our hotel. It’s a little cemetery that’s old but still pretty empty…it’s now reserved for city and state figures, but John Calvin was buried there in 1564, a very plain grave in a cemetery of fairly elaborate headstones. We kind of stumbled upon the Reformation Monument or Mur des Reformateurs in Bastian Park. It features four huge statues of the major figures in Geneva’s Reformation history…Guillaume Farel, John Calvin, Theodore de Beze and John Knox. The rest of the wall features prominent figures in the Reformation history of the other countries where Calvin’s teachings were spread, as well as telling the story of the Reformation in relief carvings…pretty cool, but only partially in English so we figured out what we could and decided we would have benefited greatly from some translation :). Next we found the Auditoire de Calvin…a tiny little church dwarfed by the St. Pierre Cathedral next door where John Calvin would teach daily at 7 am for anyone who wanted to attend before they started their work day! He did that for two years until his death and then other reformers, including John Knox, continued the tradition. The Auditoire also became a refuge and worship center for Reformation-related religious refugees in the early years, nursing an international church body. Today, the building hosts Scottish, Dutch and Italian congregations in Geneva. We’re planning on attending the Presbyterian Church of Scotland service there tomorrow morning and are really looking forward to that. A nice gentleman at the Auditoire directed us to the Reformation Museum which wasn’t on any of our maps, but by that time they were closing so we plan to see that tomorrow.
Instead, we wandered down to the lakefront, saw Geneva’s famous flower clock (all decked out for the Euro-Cup), and the Jet d’eau, a fountain out in the lake that shoots a jet of water into the air (yeah, that translates “jet of water,” romantic name, eh?) By that time, we were ready for dinner, so we found a restaurant near Geneva’s Fanzone (yep, the Euro-cup is here too!) and watched the Spain vs. Sweden game on the big screen while we ate. We would have stayed for the Greece vs. Russia game because the restaurant had a nice “local hangout” feel, but it was also very smoky! We can’t wait to get back to Washington state smoking laws! Now we’re trying to pack for our night train tomorrow, listening to Spanish fans celebrating in the streets below, and catching up on pictures and internet. There's two new blogs for me today if you're trying to keep up :). Thanks for reading, it's fun sharing this with all of you!

A day in the Alps!

Picture with me our setting for lunch today…sitting in a hiker’s shelter along a trail in the Alps. Our menu? Swiss cheese and salami sandwiches, carrot sticks, bruschetta chips, and swiss chocolate. The smell? Fresh mountain air. The sounds? A little brook to our left and from across the valley, the music of cow bells as they grazed for their lunch. The views? Wildflower-sprayed green meadows, cut by streams, dotted by cows and evergreens rising to greet the mountains and beyond the meadows…nothing. Clouds. As far as the eye could see, clouds! :)
Yesterday we decided that come rain or shine, we were going to hike in the Alps today. I’ve wanted to see the Alps since I was a little girl and we weren’t about to sit in town and not even try. So we caught a morning train up to Grindelwald and set out. We started by taking the gondola from Grindelwald up to one of the peaks, Mannlichen. It’s advertised as the world’s longest gondola track and we really enjoyed the ride up and the free Ricola drops that they handed out with the tickets :) . In Grindelwald, the bases of a few of the peaks were visible, but the gondola carried us right up into the clouds. We had planned to hike a ridge trail to one of the train stations cradled up in the mountains, but that trail was still closed due to snow. So we picked another station lower down and further away and started hiking. In the Alps! It snowed on us, hailed on us, and rained on us and it was still great! We had to watch our step pretty closely at first as the trail was alternately snowy, muddy, slippery, or a stream, but as we got below the snow line, we were able to enjoy the views of wildflowers braving that harsh environment, the unbelievable green of the high alpine meadows, the village laid out in the valley below us and occasionally, a rocky outcropping hinting at the huge mountains that stood above the clouds. I have decided that I will have to return to the Alps as many times as it takes to see them on a clear day! I can’t even begin to think how BIG the views are up there when the mountains are out. It was awe-inspiring just seeing what we could. After our lunch break, we finished the hike at Alpiglen, a little train station, and bought tickets down the mountain on the little mountain train. There’s a train that goes all the way up to one of the arms of the Jungfrau, the highest peak in the region (making it the highest train station in Europe), but tickets are around $200 (!) and it was only intermittently clear up there today, too. It was chilly up there today (around 1 degree Celsius). I had to buy a hat at the gift shop on Mannlichen (they didn’t gouge me too badly) and by the time we got down, we were ready to sit indoors and enjoy a cup of coffee.
We headed back down to Interlaken to plan our trip to Geneva tomorrow, use up our internet time at McDonald’s, enjoy dinner with Swiss wine (not at McDonald’s) and then head back to our cozy room to pack up. We’re watching Netherlands play France on TV now. Interlaken is quiet tonight because all the Dutch football fans are in Bern watching the game. Apparently a special “fan” train went out earlier today with over 2600 people on it! Just from Interlaken! And there’s still quite a bit of orange around town!
Well, I’d better get packing. We come home a week from today! Hard to believe!

Hup, Holland, Hup!

When I bought my orange Holland sunglasses in Salzburg, I had no idea that we'd be entering the Dutch fan zone in Interlaken. But all of the Netherlands games are being played in Bern (only 45 minutes away) so the Dutch have taken over this city. Even Interlaken has a Fanzone and the orange is painting this city like the Swedes painted Salzburg yellow! Abbey and I are getting used to the car horns blasted at us from Dutch fans expressing appreciation for my sunglasses and we no longer jump out of our shoes every time it happens :).

We arrived in Interlaken last night. Realizing that we had no address for our guesthouse, we called the lady who owns it who promptly insisted on coming to "pick us up." That meant walking to the train station and leading us to her guesthouse, an easy 3 minute walk from the station. It's a really nice place and I've concluded that guesthouses are the way to stay in Europe!

Interlaken is beautiful! We had our Swiss cheese and chocolate fondue last night for dinner and after exploring the town a bit we made an early night of it. This morning we'd hoped to head up into the mountains, but while it was a gorgeous day here in the town, the mountains all had their heads in the clouds and the live cameras in the train station didn't look promising. So we elected to chance it tomorrow and spent a leisurely day in the town instead. We started by walking along the Aare River that runs between the two lakes that Interlaken is between. We walked as far as the second lake before heading back to find a cafe for lunch. After lunch, we souvenir shopped and then dropped some stuff off at our guesthouse and headed up to the base of the mountains for a short hike. We found a little trail that headed up to a viewpoint overlooking Interlaken and then quickly navigated the slippery and rocky trail back down before the rain that we saw moving across the lake found us. So that was our "leisurely" day :).

And here I sit at McDonald's in Interlaken, Switzerland, watching Austria play Poland (go Austria) and catching up on internet business! Thanks for reading!! I've posted as far back as the 8th and added some albums on Picasa!

"How do you solve a problem like...your hostel being on top of a mountain?"

We’re settled in for a nearly 6-hour train ride today, so I went ahead and unpacked the computer so we can spend some time catching up on typing our blogs (even if we can’t post them) and downloading pictures. We’re heading from Salzburg to Zurich and from there to Bern and from there to Interlaken. We reserved three nights in a guesthouse in Interlaken based on our recent success with guesthouse accommodations.
We had a gorgeous and sunny day in Salzburg yesterday. All the mountains were out and what a beautiful city in such a gorgeous setting! This is a place I want to come back to.

We started our day with the Sound of Music tour. It was a small tour company, only 8 people in a VW van instead of a huge tour bus and we really liked that. Our whole group was American except for a sweet Australian girl. Australian, not Austrian. The Austrian’s don’t like Sound of Music and seem to only grudgingly accept the tourism money it brings them :). The tour was okay, but we really didn’t see that much that was Sound of Music related. If I did it again, I’d do the bike tour because several locations are not accessible with the van. The tour was worth it just to get out into the countryside surrounding Salzburg though. They took us all the way out to the lake district in the mountains…the lakes were turquoise and the mountains were green and the villages were ridiculously picturesque. So beautiful. But being in the mountains is starting to make us homesick and while we’re excited for what we have yet to see, I think we’re both getting ready to head home. We’ve elected to head back to Berlin after Geneva rather than squeezing in another city, because it sounds really good to just hang out with John and Kristen for a couple of nights. We’re looking into getting a night train.

As I told you before, with the Euro-Cup being in town, we weren’t able to book two nights in the same place, so our backpacks went with us on the SOM tour in the morning and after the tour, we were dropped off in the city center and had to get the backpacks to our next night’s accommodations. Small problem. Our next night’s accommodations were on the TOP of Monchsberg. We had thought we could just take the funicular up to the fortress and walk along the top of the mountain, but the only way to take the funicular was to pay for another entrance ticket to the fortress, which we didn’t want to do. Our next option was to haul our packs to the other end of the old city, take a lift up to the Modern Art Museum and walk back along the mountain to the hostel. Well, as we walked to the lift, we passed the stairs that we’d taken the day before. We looked at each other and laughed, because when we’d taken those stairs yesterday, we’d both said “Man, I’m glad we don’t have to do this with our packs on!” And now we decided we’d rather just head up than walk all the way across town and back along the mountain. So we hauled our packs up that mountain…all 335 stairs up that mountain…not including the steeply sloping grades in between staircases. When we finally reached our hostel, we dropped our packs and gaped at the views of the city from our room!

When we’d recovered a bit, we headed back down the mountain via the stairs so we could count them, and then found a café with wireless and booked rooms for Interlaken and Geneva…that’s all the reservations we’re going to need for the rest of the trip! That’s a good feeling! They didn’t have any outlets at that café and my computer battery died literally the minute that we’d finalized our lodgings in Geneva!

We wandered for a bit in the Mirabell Palace Gardens, which was refreshing. They had an arbor covered in blooming jasmine and the whole park smelled lovely, the roses were in full bloom and the landscaping was unique (each park has had it’s own feel which has made it really fun to see one in each city.) The park is in the “new” city (ca. 1600’s instead of 1400’s) and as we walked across the bridge back to the old city, we came across European football fanaticism at its most glorious! :) The Swedish fans that have been painting the city streets yellow with their shirts for days had all come together into a huge, police-escorted sea of humanity making their way to the stadium for the game against Greece. They were singing and chanting and waving flags and stretched down the street as far as we could see in either direction. I’ve never seen anything like it. I think the Greek fans were even a little bit in awe. I saw several Greek fans jumping into the crowd to get their pictures taken with the Swedes. :) After watching in amazement for a while, we headed to a quiet café and watched Spain beat Russia and chatted a bit with some New Zealanders who’d come up for the football. Then we decided to brave the Fanzone to watch kick off of the Sweden/Greece game on the big screens. The Austrian equivalent of Ryan Seacrest was hosting the events.

We had fun watching the huge crowds for a bit, but then we’d had enough of the noise and chaos and we hiked back up “our” mountain. Away from the crowds, on the back side of the mountain, we walked along the footpaths and paused to watch the lightning of an incoming storm light up the mountains in the distance. It was a beautiful night with storm winds gusting and thunder in the distance and when we reached our hostel, we sat on the tables outside and watched the lightning over the Hohensalzburg for about half an hour, I think. The night views of the city were amazing and the lightening even more so. It may be one of my favorite memories of the trip. And we must have had the “best seats in the house” for the storm, because after we’d watched for about 10 minutes, a police van pulled up to the hostel on the footpath and several police officers jumped out, pulled out their cameras and started taking pictures! :)

The hostel proved to be very clean, and I slept great with my earplugs in, though Abbey said the Euro-cup celebration noises went well into the night/morning and they were clearly audible up on our mountain from the city below.
Well, I’ve now typed a full page for this blog entry and should call it quits. The Alps dominate the views out both sides of the train and occasional castle and fortresses dot the lower slopes. Sometimes I can’t believe that I’m actually seeing these sights.

Romania has vampires. They win.

I can’t believe where I am sitting as I type this. Our guidebook suggested a privatzimmer, a room in a private home, kind of like a bed and breakfast, outside of Salzburg. We made reservations there, but when we arrived, the lady met us and said she had no rooms, but her friend down the street did. So she loaded us into her car and drove us about a mile down the road. We were disappointed, because the first house looked so cute. And then we saw our room here. We’re on the top floor of a Bavarian home. We have a HUGE room with a breakfast nook, and a huge bathroom tucked under the eves. There’s even a skylight in the toilette! But the best part by far is the little balcony out back. I’m sitting on a Bavarian balcony, with red geraniums in the flower boxes watching the sun set over the Alps(!) on a lovely summer evening! Wow. And we got a deal on room because the other gal had overbooked! Our hostess is super sweet and there’s even a washer/dryer across the road where we are currently doing a much-needed load of laundry.
So that’s our introduction to Salzburg! Salzburg is gorgeous. I really like this city. It’s kind of a crazy time to be here because the Euro-Cup soccer finals are going on right now and Sweden is playing Greece tomorrow in Salzburg, so the town is overrun with soccer fans from across Europe, but especially the Swedes. The Mozartplatz, the main town plaza, is fenced off with three huge screens set up to show all the soccer games. It gives a really fun, international feel to the city.
We got in to Salzburg at about 1:00 this afternoon, and after dropping off our bags at the guesthouse, we made our way back to town. We had no schedule for this afternoon, so we just wandered around the old city. We saw the house where Mozart was born, Mozartplatz (big screens and all) where we took pictures of the outside of the Dom (huge church) and St. Peter’s church and monastery. St. Peter’s had a beautiful, flower-filled cemetery in the churchyard. Seeing a staircase that seemed to lead up the mountain, we took it and ended up following a beautiful path to the top of Festungberg where the Hohensalzburg, the fortress that dominates the city, is located.

We had a few hours until they closed, so we went ahead and got tickets to see the fortress. You really don’t get to see much on the tour of the fortress, but it’s all about the views of the city and mountains really. And they were breathtaking views. We headed back down the mountain and ate Weinerschnitzel and Apfelstruedel in a little courtyard café with views of the fortress and watched the France vs. Romania game (the title of this entry is from our discussion of who we would cheer for in the game). We found some souvenirs, a café that has wireless for tomorrow, and booked a Sound of Music tour. Yep. We’re going to be that touristy! :) And we decided to declare some loyalties for the Euro-Cup so Amy bought orange Netherlands sunglasses, and Abbey is going to cheer for Sweden, since she can blend right in with the blue-eyed, blonde-haired crowd!
And now we’re trying to decide where we are going to stay when we get to Switzerland, so we can book a room tomorrow.

Leavenworth's Report Card

Well, I’ve officially been to the real Bavaria now and have prepared a report card for Leavenworth to see how the tourist trap theme-town compares with the real thing.
Natural Setting : A The mountains here are gorgeous and they actually remind us a lot of home. We kind of miss that place :) .
Touristy gift shop selection : A- Much of what we saw here could easily have come from Leavenworth
Town appearance : B+ Window boxes? Check. Shutters? Check. Decorative details? Check. White and Brown color scheme on building? Check. May pole? Check. Church steeple? Nein. Cows? Not nearly enough. Castle? See below. Horse-drawn carriages? Check.
Castles : F We’ll go with a pass/fail here and since Leavenworth has none…they fail.
Store Music : D In Leavenworth, all stores play German-y type music. In Bavaria (and Germany in general) they play American music…especially ca. 1980’s American music.
German Bands : A- We miss you, Jeff and Crystal, every time we see a German band here :) Leavenworth gets an A- because the band can’t possibly consume as much beer as the bands here did :) .
Climate : Well, it rained on us, so we’re going to say that Leavenworth’s climate is superior. Judging by the ferns and moss, it rains quite a bit here.
Other outer tourist activities: A- Lots of hiking, white water rafting, etc in Bavaria and Leavenworth!

Here I sit in by far the nicest hotel that we will stay in on this trip. We’re in Fussen, Germany in Bavaria. We’re staying at a lovely hotel set in a park-like area of town. The path to town from our place meanders along the Lech River until it comes to the old city wall and then you find yourself in a ridiculously picturesque German village with huge mountains towering over it. As the train climbed the vivid green rolling foothills to this town, you could see the white form of Neuschwanstein Castle on the mountains above the neighboring town. We had a bit of time before the first bus headed out to the castles, so we hefted our packs to our hotel, about a 10 minute walk, got a map from the extremely helpful gal at the desk and then took the path (described above) back to town. We arrived just in time to cram onto a bus with the hordes of other tourists (and this isn’t even peak season!) and take the 10 minute bus ride to the neighboring town. Neuschwanstein actually stands on a mountain directly across from the castle that King Ludwig II (who built it) grew up in. We started by touring that castle: Hohenschwangau (which means Highpoint of Swanland--the swan is the signet bird of the Bavarian royal family). Hohenschwangau was beautiful. It’s current structure and furnishings date to the early-mid 1800’s when it was rebuilt after Napolean had destroyed it. It’s still owned by the Duke of Bavaria and all the furnishings are original which was unique to the castles we’ve seen. It was pretty elaborate, used as a “retreat” home for the Bavarian royal family. The family history is quite interesting. Ask me about it if you want to know more, but I won’t bore those who don’t care with details. :)

Ludwig II modeled Neuschwantstein after the stories told in Wagner’s operas, pretty much a literal “fairy-tale castle“. Wagner was a friend of his. Only 1/3 of the castle was complete when Ludwig was deposed and he only lived there 172 days. What was completed is unbelievable though. It was built in the mid-late 1800’s and again, everything’s original. I’ve never seen anything like the throne room. Throughout the castle, the moldings and floors and furniture and doors all required more man-hours than I can imagine and there’s even a room that looks like a cave, including stalactites! Everything is very grand and every inch of wall space is painted with murals and designs. And the incredible interior cannot compare with the magnificent views! I think I took a picture out of almost every window, but the best views were from the throne room and the king’s living quarters, looking towards Hohenschwangau, Alpsee Lake and the peaks beyond. So beautiful! I was kind of expecting Neuschwanstein to be disappointing, since I’ve wanted to see it since I was a little girl…but it was really, really cool! :)

We headed back to town for dinner and after dinner the sun was actually shining, so we sat at the edge of a fountain in the town square and ate lemon sorbet in the sun. As we headed back to our hotel, we heard music coming from the courtyard behind the Rathaus (city hall) and stumbled upon a free concert. We didn’t stay long as the sun had disappeared and clouds threatened rain again, but it was another lovely and unexpected moment. And now the birds are singing outside our window, I hear the fountain in the pond nearby and I’m going to go take a shower and settle in to this really inviting bed!

Euro-cup=lodging difficulties! Uh-oh.

We've returned to the San Fransisco Coffee Company this evening. We bought a full day's worth of wireless access and are making full use of it, so sorry if the huge number of pictures and sudden influx of blog posts is overwhelming to you all! :) We spent quite a while this morning attempting to make reservations in Salzburg. Turns out we are going to be there the same day as a Euro-cup game between Greece and Sweden. This means rooms are HARD to come by! We ended up finding two very different lodging experiences for the two nights we wanted to stay...first we're renting a room in a private home out in the countryside. They call them privatzimmers, and the home we're staying in belongs to a sweet-looking old couple. They only had one night available, so our second night is in a hostel right near the heart of Salzburg's old city and we're in the dorm there. With a soccer game that night, we're guessing that means no sleep, but the place looks pretty cool. Just collecting experiences, I guess :).

In between internet binges today, we climbed the tower of St. Peter's church here in Munich (another recommendation of our friend at the Wittenburg station). It had amazing views of the city (at least as good as the views from the Eifel Tower.) It also had a platform about two feet wide with only one eingang/ausgang (entrance/exit) door! That led to lots of shimmying around people! From there, we headed to the Frauenkirche (women's church). Nothing spectacular, but I was wondering why this church had so many mentions of the current pope...then I learned he's not only German, but born in Bavaria and was archbishop of Munich. Ah-ha.

We still had a bit of time to kill before the famous Glockenspiel display, so we wandered around, got milkshakes and then joined the throng of tourists heading towards Marienkirche to watch the Glockenspiel. It was pretty cool...not overwhelming, but not underwhelming either. Therefore, I guess it was "whelming." It's mostly cool because it's something I'd heard much about, but never thought I'd actually see myself...and here I am in Munich, watching it! Neat-o.

It started to rain as we left, so we pulled out the umbrellas and headed to the Residenz, the former palace here. It was almost entirely under refurbishment on the outside, so nothing much to see. We wandered into a couple of the various courtyards, but nothing spectacular. I think we saw the prettiest part of the palace yesterday when we wandered through the Royal Gardens and saw the back side of the Residenz.

And now I'm sitting in a barstool in front of a window facing the entrance to that same garden, highly enjoying the people-watching, which has included many soccer fans in their team colors (Germany's playing tonight), several bachelor and bachelorette party groups in their crazy clothes and (apparently a requirement for such parties here) their matching t-shirts, umbrellas of all colors and sizes, and lots of people walking their dogs (dogs are everywhere here and allowed in stores, restaurants, and on public transportation!) It's been a fairly lazy day, which has been nice and we both feel good about catching up a bit on e-mails and blogs. Thanks again for comments and e-mails. We miss you all!