Hot Air Ballooning Over Bavaria

On June 23, 2014May 30, 2020 By StevenIn Life At Home, Life In Germany17 Comments

We interrupt this barrage of travel posts to bring you a post about something that I did a little closer to town. Thanks to my partner-in-crime Jenny and her fiancé Robert, I had the opportunity to go hot air ballooning. They wanted to try this, and if enough people joined in, the balloon company would come to us instead of us going to them. Arrangements were made, weather was checked, and on the very last Saturday in May, the balloon company traveled to us in the afternoon.

The first order of business was setting up. We were all enlisted to help set up the balloon and basket. The actual balloon was packed into a giant canvas bag. Most of the material is a very lightweight nylon, but the material closest to the hot air burners is a slightly more flame retardant canvas blend.

First the balloon has to be inflated. It’s connected to the basket, and pulled out over a large field.

I large gasoline powered fan is used to begin the inflation of the balloon chamber. Two of us had to hold the mouth of the balloon open at first.

After enough inflation is done with the fan, the flame jets can be used to heat the air inside to give it lift.

The burners actually have very fine control- they can do hotter blue flame or cooler (but more visible and thus cooler looking) yellow flame.

Lift off was quite subtle- there’s no acceleration like an airplane. One minute you’re on the ground, and the next you simply aren’t on the ground any more. Once we were aloft, the navigation was simply based on which way the wind was blowing. The blue vehicle with the white trailer is the balloonist’s partner following along from the ground. They kept in contact via nearly functional radios.

Once we were fully aloft, the view was pretty spectacular. There was, surprisingly, no wind noise at all because we were moving at the speed of the wind. It was very quiet, except for the occasional use of the burner to adjust our altitude. It also wasn’t cold, to my surprise, because of the burners. Incidentally, the plume of steam coming up from the ground in the far distance is a nuclear power plant.

In this part of Germany, there are really only a few larger cities. Most of Bavaria is really just villages of various sizes surrounded by fields of crops. This was only fifteen or twenty kilometers outside of the center of Regensburg. I’m not actually sure what village we’re looking at in this photograph. From above, they all kind of look alike.

This field, I am told, is where the Battle of Regensburg took place in 1809. This is where Napoleon was shot in the ankle, apparently.

Fields of solar panels are a common sight in Germany. I didn’t realize until we were directly above one that sheep sometimes graze in between the panels. Much easier than using a lawnmower around the solar panels, I imagine.

Just after we passed the field of solar panels and sheep, two trains passed, one in each direction. The first one was a longer Munich to Prague commuter line, and the next was a shorter commuter train which probably only went from Landshut to Munich. The furthest wagon to the left is the engine, and the second from last is a two level wagon with upper deck seats. The other three wagons all contain compartments of six seats each, which is much less fun than the double-decker wagon, but is much much quieter.

After a while in the air, we had to look for a place to land. This is the tricky part- you have no steering other than the wind, and you want to avoid crops and powerlines. Ideally, you need another field of just-grass. While we were looking for a place to land, we passed fairly low over this village. Lots of people came out to wave at us and shout things. Most people are kind of fascinated to see a hot air balloon, particularly one this close.

As we approached an ideal landing spot, the sun was low on the horizon and we got some pretty neat perspectives.

After landing successfully at the edge of a crop field, we were joined by some neighborhood children who wanted to watch us break down and pack the balloon.

Once the enclosure was completely deflated, the balloonist scrunched it together to prepare it to go back into the canvas bag.

Last, but certainly not least, our wicker steed was ready to be disassembled and put back into the trailer. This is the point at which a carload of random dudes wearing Lederhosen pulled up and helped us muscle the thing back into the trailer. Bavaria is a ridiculous and hilariously fun place at times.

Have you ever been up in a hot air balloon?

On June 21, 2014May 30, 2020 By StevenIn Dining Out, Life At Home

Roasted Knödel with egg at Cafe-Restaurant Gutenberg near Stephansplatz in Vienna.

In Bruges

On May 5, 2014May 5, 2014 By StevenIn Life At Home10 Comments

I’ll be breaking up my Belgium and Luxembourg posts into smaller chunks and posting them out of sequence, because I took almost a thousand photographs in four days. I’m not going to post more than 20-30 pictures for any one post, but I still want to space it out a bit so that it’s not too overloading. So, onward!

My first Belgium post was the city of Bruges in Flanders, the northern part of Belgium. I haven’t seen the movie by the same name yet, but I’m pretty sure that referencing the movie’s title in a blog post about Bruges is a requirement in the Expat Blogger Bylaws. Bruges is the capital of West Flanders, where Ghent is the capital of East Flanders. For a country with relatively small geographic boundaries, there are an awful lot of subsections of Belgium. There are also a great many languages, since Belgium is officially bi-lingual. The northern parts speak Flemish, which is a bit like Dutch, and the southern parts speak French. There’s also a small German-speaking community on the eastern side of Belgium, and English is prevalent as well.

The main export of Bruges seems to be pretty photographs from tourists. If you arrive on a bus from Brussels, as I did, you might start out near Minnewater, or “Lake of Love.” The story goes that you will experience eternal love if you walk over the lake bridge with your partner. There’s a legend attached, and it’s explained in great detail on this site. Regardless of its efficacy as an aphrodisiac, I can’t argue that it’s a really pretty lake.

Also seen in Bruges: A very large swan and duck community. I took other pictures of large quantities of lounging swans, but this picture just looked nicer.

Not all of my pictures have important captions or details. Some were chosen just because it shows how nice the city is, and how nice a day we were having.

This is a “House of God” where a bunch of nuns used to live. This is a fairly common thing in Bruges. There was a lot of detail about this from the tour guide which I missed.

This is the courtyard inside the House of God.

…and this is why I missed what the tour guide was saying. I was too busy stalking a bee with my camera, because that’s how I roll. I quite like bees.

We took a boat tour later in the day, because it covers three or four kilometers of city canal and it’s quite pretty. This was not the boat I was on, but it’s a good shot of the type of boat- they really pack people onto these things. They offer life vests, but most of the canals are only a meter or two deep, so if you fell in you would probably survive quite easily.

I don’t really know why there’s a random Bogey statue here, but I thought it was kinda neat.

Picturesque street, walking in the direction of the Markt, the main market square.

One side of the Markt.

The opposite side of the Markt. This is the Stadthuis, or City Hall. In Germany, they’d call this a Rathaus.

Flag time! The one in the center is the flag of Belgium. It has the same colors as the German flag, but vertically and in a different sequence than Germany’s horizontally barred flag. The flag on the left is the flag of Flanders, and the one on the right, not really clearly visible in this picture, is the flag of the city.

Ever seen a hang drum? They’re kind of amazing if played well. This dude was set up in the courtyard behind the Belfry, the Markt’s big tower visible a few pictures further down.

This video is not the same hang drum player as the one in Bruges, but you can get a sense of what the instrument sounds like.

This is also in the Markt.

Throughout the day, I kept seeing people on tandem bicycles. I’ve never seen so many two-person bikes as I did in Belgium.

This is a picture from across the Markt. It’s the only shot where I managed to get the entire Belfry tower into the picture because most of my other photographs were taken from the base of the Belfry. I did not get to climb this one- the line to get in was longer than the amount of time I had.

I did some wandering from square to square. The pointy buildings in the center of this shot are typical of Bruges architecture.

Many of the cities have these metal relief maps, with braille on them. It’s rather ingenious, even though I can’t even imagine how a blind person would find their way through the maze of the city to find the braille map without assistance.

In other news, the facial expression on the blonde girl eating in the background is hilarious. I didn’t realize she was making that face until I was sorting my photos.

City squares always seem to have “floating” dudes trying to make some cash. This one was a little different though- normally they’re seated. They all have the giant weighted base and the staff going up to the left arm- I’m positive that’s what’s supporting his weight. This one was different in that he kept swinging his legs back and forth. He may have had stirrups or something. In any case, it’s a pretty striking illusion. If I hadn’t seen this five different ways in five different cities, I might not have spent so much time thinking about how it’s done.

This dog was so very happy. They kept feeding him!

There were displays of lace all over the city and I didn’t make the connection to Brussels Lace until I saw this woman actually sitting in her doorway making lace in real time.

In hindsight, I should have gotten some video- she was moving her hands incredibly fast.

Of all the pictures I took from the canal boat cruise part of the day, this is the very best one. This dog was snoozing in a window that was canal adjacent. It looked like the perfect place to have a nap.

On the walk back to the bus, we passed through a sculpture garden containing sculptures of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, by sculptor Rik Poot.

I’ll give you a moment to stop giggling about the man’s name.

So the one in the upper right is obviously Death, but I’m not certain of which is which on the others. Clockwise from Death, I believe it’s War, Famine, and Pestilence. I could easily be wrong though, and I didn’t think to photograph their labels while I was there.