August Break: Schloss Neuschwanstein

On August 12, 2013May 30, 2020 By StevenIn International Travel - Inside Germany15 Comments

I’m on an August Break from my regular blogging schedule. Here’s today’s pictures.

I finally made it out to Schloss Neuschwanstein this weekend, as a Saturday day-trip with Jenny and her boyfriend Robert. King Ludwig II’s famous castle was the inspiration for Disney’s Cinderella’s Castle. Roughly one and a half million people come to the castle every year, and I think about a third of them were present while we were visiting.

I encourage you to click through to the full sized pictures, because I purposely saved them to be huge and awesome. I may use one of them as my desktop for a while. The castle is nestled in the Alps, and it makes the views amazing.

When approaching the castle from the roadway into Schwangau, this is your first view of it:

Inside Schwangau, there are sections of roadway that are closed to cars- but open to bicycles and horse drawn carriages. I love that they have signs for this.

Where a heavy tourism market springs up, so must there be signs. Lots and lots of signs. This one tells you that there’s a bathroom 150 meters to the right, and points out ways to reach both castles, the Museum of Bavarian Kings, and the Alpsee (Alp lake).

This is the view taken from the castle ramparts. This scene includes the town of Schwangau, the other castle (Hohenschwangau,) and the Alpsee. Plus a small portion of the Alps themselves.

Most everyone who goes to Neuschwanstein walks around back to the Marienbrücke, a small pedestrian bridge that looks over the backside. On a crowded day, the bridge looks like this:

Fighting those crowds is worth it though, because then you can get these next three shots:

Have you ever been to Schloss Neuschwanstein? What’s your favorite castle?

August Break: Bad Timing In Wuppertal

On August 1, 2013May 30, 2020 By StevenIn International Travel - Inside Germany38 Comments

We started a fairly large project at work recently which has been eating a lot of my time. It’s a fairly complicated thing, and I’m the lead kitten wrangler for the whole shebang. For the last several weeks, I’ve been spending a lot of time working from home, and even doing conference calls from midnight to two or three in the morning a few nights a week. This schedule is likely to keep up until late September or October.

When I read Mandi’s post about taking an August Break this morning, the idea settled into the back of my head and wouldn’t shake loose. With the work stuff invading my time outside of the office, I’ve been a little concerned about my ability to keep up my usual two-post-a-week pace with worthwhile new material.

Enter Susannah Conway’s August Break 2013. I don’t usually do this sort of blogging community thing, but this one actually solves a problem for me. It actually solves several problems. Here’s Susannah’s explanation of AB13:

Each day, for the whole of August, take a photo and share it on your blog. You can add words if you want — or not. You can use any camera. You could share a series of photos, or miss a day out, or just post on weekends. There are no real rules, basically. This is all about being present and enjoying taking photos just for the hell of it. And perhaps reinvigorating your love for blogging, and/or taking a break from writing.

I can do 31 smaller photo posts much more easily than I can do nine full length posts in the month of August. As my friends are well aware, I take pictures of just about everything, constantly. I have tons of pictures that I thought were neat, or that I thought might be good for some future post that are just sort of languishing. This gives me a chance to show off some of those.

While I’m going through the month of August, I might have time to work on some longer post ideas that I’ve been back-burning for a long time. This would give me a head start on September’s blogging. Besides, a little variety might be a good thing for my creativity in the long term. I’ll start off the August Break photos with three pictures from Wuppertal, and a brief explanation of the photos.

The Wuppertaler Schwebebahn is the world’s oldest suspended train system, with public routes open as far back as 1901. It covers a route a little more than 13 kilomters (just over 8 miles), mostly along the river Wupper. (Of course I have to pause for a moment to reflect that Wupper is a fabulous name for a river. It’s awfully fun to say. Wupper! Wupper! Wupper!)

The Schwebebahn is an important part of Wuppertal’s public transit system, with regular routes every day. Since it’s a train suspended on arched rails over part of a city, I had to see it in operation. I was in nearby Essen with a friend for Star Wars Celebration Europe (more on that in another post), and we made a 46-minute S-Bahn ride to Wuppertal for the express purpose of photographing and riding on the Schwebebahn. I may have mentioned this before, but I love trains. Even weird hanging ones. Or maybe especially weird hanging ones.

If only we’d been there three days earlier.

The Schwebebahn was shut down for maintenance and improvements on the lines. From three days before we got there until about two weeks into August. There are handy shuttle buses that run the length of the Schwebebahn tracks to take up the slack during the maintenance. You can find them by looking for the signs with the adorable elephant in a construction hat.

The line is really very impressive. This is a section that runs along the river right near the Zoological Gardens.

We did finally manage to find one Schwebebahn car, hanging motionless at the Vohwinkel station. ::sigh::

Have you ever been on the Wuppertaler Schwebebahn?

Killing Time In Frankfurt: The Palmengarten

On July 25, 2013May 30, 2020 By StevenIn International Travel - Inside Germany5 Comments

The day before I went to Hamburg, I was in Frankfurt for a different concert. (Most of my trips start with a concert. Music is what motivates me.) On that trip, I got to meet up with fellow blogger Charlotte. Charlotte is a Brit who lives in Frankfurt, and it was fun hanging out with her for a little while before that night’s concert.

The next day, I had time to kill before my train to Hamburg, so I asked my friend Jenny, who used to live in the area. She suggested the Palmengarten, so I took a look. At 22 hectares, the Palmengarten is the largest botanical garden in Germany.

There are many, many types of plants. There are indoor sections of the botanical gardens, with greenhouse sections where they grow plants that wouldn’t fare as well outside.

It has a small waterfall. There’s a walkway that goes behind the waterfall, so you can look out from the other side of this.

There are pedal boats if you’re into that sort of thing.

There’s a very nice fountain there. I sat by this for quite a while, just enjoying the day. I like fountains.

The walkway over the water here was very Indiana Jones. There are large fish and happy ducks sharing the waterways.

Ok, I was wrong earlier. This path over the water is very Indiana Jones. It’s more than a little disconcerting until you notice that the stones aren’t just on the surface, they go all the way to the bottom. Very cool looking.

I went out of my way to find this when I learned it was in the Palmengarten- an Easter Island head! Apparently there are actually Moai all over Germany, and I’m only just now learning about this. There’s another one in Stuttgart, another city I have yet to visit.

Have you ever been to the Palmengarten? Do you have a favorite botanical garden? Is there a Moai near you?

Hamburg

On July 22, 2013May 30, 2020 By StevenIn International Travel - Inside Germany10 Comments

Back in June, I went to Hamburg for a concert. I decided to be adventurous, and get a hotel on the Reeperbahn. The Reeperbahn, sometimes referred to as “The Sinful Mile,” is Hamburg’s red light district. It’s also jam packed with bars, clubs, restaurants, and touristy things. It’s sort of like a distillation of Las Vegas, but with legal prostitution. All of my Reeperbahn pics are from the daytime, because I didn’t want to be that guy taking pictures there at night. And there’s a good chance I would have gotten my camera smashed if I had.

I chose my hotel based on ratings and reviews on TripAdvisor, and I wound up with the Pyjama Park Hotel und Hostel. It was affordable, and it was pretty decent considering the location. My only caveat: Don’t choose this hotel if you can’t sleep with a little bit of street noise. People who live in New York City will be fine here.

This picture is not the hotel, it’s just a place on the Reeperban that drew my attention enough to snap a picture. I think it’s a bar. They must really like their pigs.

After I dropped my bags off at the hotel, fellow blogger Scott met me there and we set out for lunch. On the walk between the hotel and the closest U-Bahn station, we passed this building. I immediately made the “Go home, building, you’re drunk!” joke because it’s all tilty.

For lunch, we went down to the Port of Hamburg. The harbor is the largest port in Germany, and the third busiest port in Europe, after Rotterdam and Antwerp. (Note to self: I need to get to Rotterdam next year. I really want to see it.) In addition to being a massively busy shipping port, it’s also a nice place to go for lunch. The Landungsbrücken area is kind of touristy, but full of restaurants. The boat on the left in this picture is in front of a nice restaurant. Naturally, I had the fish.

Many of the boats that stop here, like the two level blue boat above, and the two level red and blue one below, are ferries that you can ride between established docks in much the same way that you would use a bus inside the heart of a city. Based on the recommendation of the Internets, I took the number 62 Ferry from there to Finkenwerder and back. The journey takes about an hour and a half to get there and back, but it’s a very affordable way to get a nice mini-tour of the Elbe river in this area.

These crane things were busily moving containers around. It was neat to watch.

I was a little taken aback to find the Louisiana Star paddle-boat in Hamburg, Germany.

Directly across the harbor from Landungsbrücken is the auditorium where they show Der König Der Löwen (The Lion King.) Some of the ferry boats advertised this. Note to self: I’ve gotta see this musical! I’ve managed so far to miss it every time I’m anywhere near it.

Before the concert that evening, I went to another nice area in Hamburg to meet Sarah after she got out of work. We walked over to a Balzac Coffee and caught up for a bit. I’d just like to say for the record that Balzac Coffee is kind of awesome. I’ve been in Balzac shops several times before, and I wish we had them in Regensburg.

The concert was in an open area auditorium called the Freilichtbühne on one side of the city’s amazing Stadtpark. I got to see the entire Stadtpark, because Scott gave me bad advice on which public transportation stop to use to get there, and I wound up on the opposite side of the park. This is ok, though, because it was a nice walk through the park and I got there in plenty of time to catch the main act, Lindsey Stirling.

The following morning, I did a small amount of touristing on my way back to the train station to head back to Regensburg. On the walk back out of the Reeperbahn, I spotted this place where you can get cheap sex right next to a place where you can get a cheap hamburger. (Ok, in reality I had spotted it the night before, because I grabbed some chicken nuggets after the concert. Despite being on the Reeperbahn, this is the quietest McDonald’s I’ve ever been inside. Amazing!)

Walking into the city center before leaving town, I found this pillar in the courtyard in front of the Rathaus, in front of the canal. I haven’t been able to find any information on what this is called, but it was neat looking.

Finally, there’s Hamburg’s iconic Rathaus, the Hamburg town hall. I didn’t go inside, but I’ve found that for many cities, the Rathaus is just as interesting inside as it is outside. This pretty much wrapped up my short hop into Hamburg. I arrived on Tuesday morning and left on Wednesday morning, for a total time in the city of less than 24 hours. I’ll have to go back sometime- I quite liked Hamburg.

Have you ever been to Hamburg? Have you partied on the Reeperbahn or taken a ferry on the Elbe? What’s your favorite harbor?

BMW World

On July 11, 2013May 30, 2020 By StevenIn International Travel - Inside Germany6 Comments

I visited BMW Welt (World) with Jenny and her merry band. BMW Welt is a tourist attraction in Munich, at the entrance to the Olympiapark. It showcases the company’s cars and a lot of people bring their children there because there’s a lot of interactivity. There’s also a full service restaurant upstairs.

I found it all to be kind of underwhelming. It was an interesting way to kill an hour, but I can’t imagine spending much more time there. I think this is a place for people who love cars. I’m not their target audience.

There’s some random kid-oriented stuff like this stilted police-woman.

In the kid’s section, there was a giant contraption with balls on tracks racing around the wirework in the center. I watched this for quite a while because it was kind of fascinating.

There’s a giant Mini section. (LOL, I said “giant Mini.”) You can sit in most of the cars- only a few are behind ropes like this.

For no reason I can adequately explain, there were a bunch of little girls in yellow and black facepaint on inline skates.

The facility is kind of like a giant showroom. The deck on the top right in this photo is brand new BMWs which are awaiting pick-up from their new owners. BMW-Welt is right next to the BMW headquarters, so picking up your new car here is something of an honor, I think.