Category: Travel Posts

Ein Jahr

On By StevenIn International Travel - Europe, Life In Germany10 Comments

As of today, I’ve been in Germany for one year of a three year commitment.   It’s been a hell of a year.  When I posted about being here for four months back in March, I had a few items that I listed as to-do items.  Let’s see how I did:

Have basic conversations in German:  On a very basic level, I can do this.  I can introduce myself, ask where someone is from, and inquire about basic information.  I have the vocabulary of a two year old native, but I’ve learned a lot.

File my German taxes from 2011: I did this in late March.  In July, the Finance Authority sent me a letter asking for more documentation, and I returned the requested document right away.  In October, they finally sent me a followup, and a small refund a few days later.  I am now the proud owner of a German Steuernummer (tax ID number.)  It only took seven months!

More blogging: I’ve settled into a pattern of posting every Monday.  Coming up with ideas for new posts is difficult sometimes, but for the most part I’ve always got something new to say.  Sometimes I have a rush of ideas and I post a little bit more frequently, but I post at least one new entry every week, always on Monday mornings.   WordPress.com’s scheduled post feature is a tremendous boon for the frequent traveler.

More travel:  Holy hell, success!  Of the thirteen cities I mentioned back in March, I’ve been to seven of them.  This year has been an amazing year for travel.   Every new city is logged as a ‘Category’ on this blog.  There’s a dropdown on the right-hand column to view entries about them.  In 2012, I’ve gone to seven new countries and countless German cities.

  • Edinburgh, Scotland
  • London, England (Seeing London has been a goal of mine for more years than I can recall.)
  • Barcelona, Spain
  • Amsterdam, Netherlands
  • Prague, Czech Republic
  • Vienna, Austria
  • …and so much of Germany already:  Berlin, Bochum, Bruhl, Cologne, Erfurt, Frankfurt, Kempten, Mannheim, Munich, Nuremberg, and of course, Regensburg.

Eat Less McDonald’s:  Mild failure.  It’s still far too easy to slip into McD’s when I’ve been out late or have to eat something after German class.  I try my best to keep it to a minimum, but I still eat far too much of this because of the convenience.

Acquire a traditional Bavarian outfit complete with Lederhosen: Yup, I did this.

I originally wanted to list a whole lot of the things that I’ve accomplished this year, but I did that on the Four Months post and again on the Six Months post, so I won’t do that.   Here’s a few other highlights that I wanted to mention though:

I Went To WEBMU: WEBMU is the “Whiny Expatriate Blogger MeetUp.”  The rules for membership are that you have to live in Germany and blog in English.  The people in the group are a heap of fun, and we had a great weekend in Berlin.

I Met Other Bloggers: Expatriate blogging is a very social thing. Between WEBMU and my naturally social nature, I met many other bloggers (and their non-blogging spouses) in person this year. Here’s an incomplete list of them:
Riayn in Hamburg, Heather in Nürnberg, Mandy in Berlin, Sarah in Hamburg, Snooker In Berlin, Ian in Hamburg, CN in Heidelberg, and last but not least, Cliff and Sarah here in Regensburg.  (Alex, you’re totally on my “Want to meet this person” list for 2013.)

I Tried A German Theme Park: I went to Phantasialand, a pretty well known German theme park.  Living in Florida spoiled me for theme parks, but this was still a lot of fun.

I Listened To  A Percussion Show In A Cave: The header on this one is pretty self explanatory.  The cave, the Tropfsteinhöhle Schulerloch, is near Kelheim.

I Drank Beer Brewed By Monks:  The Weltenburg Abbey is not far away.  The dark beer is delicious,  the grounds are beautiful, and the boat ride up the Donau river from Kelheim is picturesque.  Not a bad way to spend a Saturday.

I Watched More TV and Movies In German:  I have been trying to learn German, and one of the things that helps this is to use German television, radio, and movies.   I’m quite fond of watching How I Met Your Mother and Futurama in German.  I also watched The Lion King, The Muppets, Men In Black 3, and Ice Age 4 all auf Deutsch.  I was even able to clearly follow the plots of all of them, even though I missed quite a few of the verbal jokes.

It’s pretty hard to sum up an entire year in a single post- that’s what the entire Blog has done.  It’s mind-bending to think that I’ve been here for a year already, and that I’m a third of the way done with my time here.

I wonder what my next year has waiting for me!

Short Trip To Vienna

On By StevenIn International Travel - Europe4 Comments

I went to Vienna for several days. For once, I wasn’t there to attend a concert. Instead, I was there to help Jenny with her competition in the Vienna Photomarathon. The Photomarathon was only one day long, however, so we had plenty of time to do some sightseeing.  Here’s a couple of things I really liked in Vienna.

Spanische Hofreitschule – The world famous Vienna Spanish Riding School, where the Lippizaner stallions have been trained since the main riding hall was built in 1729.  I took these photographs roughly ninety seconds before I found out that photraphy is strictly forbidden in the riding hall.  Oops!

Zentralfriedhof – This is Vienna’s Central Cemetery, established in 1863.  This cemetary is enormous- 2.4 square kilometers in size. It’s so large that it has three separate gates.  It’s so sprawling that there is a separate city bus line that runs entirely inside the cemetery!

There are many notable interments here-  I found the graves of Beethoven, Strauss, and Brahms, but I did not see the grave of Antonio Salieri or Falco.

The Wiener Riesenrad- The Vienna Giant Ferris Wheel, located in the Prater, is a 212 foot tall ferris wheel which was originally built in 1897.  The Riesenrad originally had 30 gondolas before the bombing during World War II destroyed most of them. It was rebuilt with only fifteen, and has become a very well known landmark, even appearing in a James Bond movie in the late 1980s.

Shmetterlinghaus-  Compared to Butterfly World in South Florida, Vienna’s Schmetterlinghaus is tiny, but it was still nice. This attraction is located just a few minutes walk from the State Opera Theatre.

Statues, Statues, Statues! While in Vienna, we saw statues of Mozart, Goethe, Gutenberg, and countless others.  Here’s two of my favorites.

For the rest of these pictures, I’ve decided to try a WordPress gallery-  if you click on any of the images, it will bring it up larger with some additional commentary, and then you can scroll through the rest of the gallery with your right and left arrows.  (Escape key to get back out of the gallery.) Ain’t technology grand?

The Donauturm is a tv tower with an observation level, a revolving restaurant, and a bungee jump.
This was part of the view from the Donauturm.
Leonard Bernstein’s tux in the very cool Haus Der Musik.
The Holocaust memorial in Judenplatz doesn’t look very much like a memorial, until you read the inscriptions on the stones around the base. There’s also a museum nearby with an excavation of a medieval synagogue.
St. Charles Church, or Karlskirche.
Stephansdom, the large church in Stephansplatz.
This is an art piece representing an explosion. I thought it was kind of neat.

Erfurt

On By StevenIn International Travel - Inside Germany5 Comments

I went to Erfurt two weeks ago for a concert.  I headed over on a Friday night  I wasn’t really sure what to expect because I’ve never heard much about Erfurt, except for a comment from Cliff of Regensblog who said that Erfurt was quite nice.

I will  agree, I found Erfurt to be absolutely charming.  Here’s the view from my hotel room when I first got into town:

There’s a lot about Erfurt that I did not know, however.  For example, the Erfurt Synagogue, which I did not see, was built around 1100, and it’s thought to be the oldest synagogue still standing in Europe.

I also did not know that Kika, the children’s television programming network, wsa based in Erfurt.  That explains this giant statue of Bernd das Brot in front of the town hall.  This statue was kidnapped in 2007- I didn’t know that until just a minute ago but it’s a fascinating and entertaining story.  Even if Bernd das Brot does creep me out.

I also found a random gnome on a bench, and couldn’t resist.

I wandered by the Krämerbrücke, a rather unique footbridge over the Breitstrom, a small tributary of the Gera river.  This bridge has buildings on both sides, so it doesn’t actually look like a bridge from inside it.  In hindsight, I wish I’d tried to take this piture in HDR so the tower in the background wasn’t so washed out.

I also wanted to check out Erfurt’s Domplatz, and I found it easily by following the sounds of a brass band.  Here’s how it looked at 9am.  You can see

…and here’s what it looked like less than a half hour later.  The brass band I heard was just warming up for a giant gathering called Bistumswallfahrt 2012.

This was a religions event held  on the Domstufen, the huge steps between the Mariendom on the left and the Severikirche on the right.  There was a procession with a bunch of flags and children in white robes.  I don’t really know specifically what they were celebrating, but the band was joined by a large chorus as well.

I watched the whole thing for perhaps forty minutes, and then I walked back to the Bahnhof to catch my train back to Regensburg.

Another Weekend In Berlin

On By StevenIn International Travel - Inside Germany10 Comments

On the second weekend in September, a group of people who live in Germany and blog in English descended on Berlin for WEBMU 2012.

WEBMU is the “Whiny Expatriate Bloggers MeetUp,” and it’s basically an excuse for a group of really fun people to get together, do a little sightseeing, and eat at a bunch of amazing restaurants.  Snooker in Berlin and No Apathy Allowed were the organizers and hosts, and they did a fantastic job.  I don’t want to do a lengthy recap of the entire weekend, but I took a some pretty neat pictures while I was in town, so here we go.

I didn’t join all of the tours that the group took part in, but I did go to the Friday morning tour of the Stasi Museum.  The original headquarters of East Germany’s Ministerium für Staatssicherheit have been converted into a museum and it’s pretty fascinating.

The picture below is a propaganda photograph of Katarina Witt, the German Olympic figure skater.  I didn’t fully understand the impact of this photograph until after I’d gotten back home and started doing my traditional pre-blog-post research, when I found this detail:

Following the dissolution of East Germany, Stasi files were found to show that the secret police had worked hard to keep Witt from defecting by giving her cars, accommodations, and permitted travel. Witt found 3,000 pages on her life from the age of eight.

A lot of the original furnishings are still present in the museum, including this cabinet reel to reel system and the rather large conference room table in the next two photographs.

One of the more interesting sections of the museum were all the examples of spy cameras-  buttonhole cameras, necktie cameras, bird-feeder cameras.  This one was large and obvious by comparison.

One of the display cases contained a selection of period music and pop culture that had been reviewed by the Stasi.  This section was fascinating to me.

While walking around Berlin all weekend, I saw a huge variety of street art.  This sort of thing rarely happens in Regensburg, but in the big city of Berlin, this stuff was kind of everywhere.

I’d like to take a moment to state that the Berlin Hauptbahnhof is just amazing-  the upper levels are S-Bahn trains that go around the city, the mid levels and there are a bunch of levels of other trains.  The Berlin Central Station is different than most of the Bahnhofs I’ve been to in that it the trains moving through it are East-West on one level and North-South on a different level- most train stations only have tracks running in one direction, not crisscrossed.

The Berlin HBF also maintains a healthy online and social media presence, as I learned when I asked friends on Twitter for a route and I got answered by @HBF_Berlin.

Most importantly for a nerd like me, though, is that the Berlin HBF is just cool to see.  The various levels are somewhat open to each other, and you can see many of the trains criss-crossing the station.

I’m not sure if this counts as street art, but it was at the top of the steps to the U-Bahn closest to the Stasi Museum, so it caught my attention.

One of the most common foods in Berlin is Currywurst.  I learned on this trip that Currywurst means an instant migraine for me.  Neat, eh?

One of our tours was walking around an urban area and we stumbled across a Saturday morning street market. Interesting stuff.

Walking around on that same tour, the tour guide pointed out that there’s a bar in this building.  Can you spot it?

The neighborhood also had its share of what we’ll consider ‘eccentric’ residence.  For example, the owner of this charming van.

And sometimes, you just have to ask your neighbors to trim their building.

These signs were all over the city in green spaces.  The literal translation is Green Investment Scheme, which makes sense in the marked green areas.   There’s a Green Investment Scheme aspect of the Kytoto Protocol for environmental benefits, but I’m not sure if this GIS and that GIS are directly related.

During our walk, I kept getting distracted by little tiny things.  For example, this little guy:

Getting My Roller Coaster Fix In Germany

On By StevenIn International Travel - Inside Germany4 Comments

It’s safe to say that the few years I lived in Orlando kind of spoiled me for theme parks-  Disney and Universal are the gold standard for theme park crowd control, ease of navigation, and kick ass rides.  That doesn’t stop me from trying other theme parks though.

Since I was already in Köln, it seemed like a good idea to spend a day in nearby Brühl to visit the 45 year old Phantasialand theme park.  I stayed in Brühl the evening before going to the park, but I could just as easily have stayed in Cologne-  you can get to Brühl Mitte from the Cologne Bahnhof in thirty minutes or so via a streetcar, and from there, a bus runs to the theme park every so often.

The entrance area was chaotic and not very well organized, which led to the quote of the day: “I hate this park.”  Even though I had a lot of fun in Phantasialand, this was said at least a dozen times throughout the day.

Phantasialand is broken up into several separate lands, none of which are very clearly marked.  We got turned around several times and had trouble finding our way repeatedly throughout the day.

One thing they did right, but in a strangely frustrating way, was their version of Speedpasses.  You can buy them in packets of four, but the entrances aren’t always easy to find or follow.  Still, the Speedpasses made it possible for us to ride a lot in a single day that we wouldn’t otherwise have managed.  They turned 70-90 minute waits into ten minute waits on several of the rides.

I posted some pics from the theme park to Facebook, and a lot of my friends commented that it looks a great deal like EPCOT back in Florida.  I can understand why though-  Phantasialand has a golden geodesic dome over one of its attractions.  This was built after EPCOT’s Spaceship Earth, but it’s still an easy comparison to make.

The park has an often fantastical look about it.  For example, this ride is called the Würmling Express, and it’s a sort of single car slow-moving monorail.

There’s a 3D animated shooting ride called Maus Au Chocolat, in which you shoot balls of chocolate at animated mice to score points.  You compete against your seatmate for highest total- it’s pretty fun.

Not so fun, in my opinion, is Talocan, seen in the picture below.  I don’t like getting held in inverted positions or getting flipped around in that sort of scenario.  Especially when you can see far around you.  It was popular though.  There’s no accounting for taste.

The best part of the park was the roller coasters.  The Colorado Adventure had an old west mining-train theme to it, and that one kept banging us against the sides of the car. I spent some time before we went on that one trying to figure out why the sign had Michael Jackson’s name on it.  I learned when I was preparing for this post that he actually opened that ride, and there are photographs of the man himself on the coaster, trying to hold his hat in place.

The others coasters were better at keeping us from swinging around so much in our seats.  Winja’s Fear, an indoor coaster, had a lot of fun spinning action.  There’s a relaxing all-dark coaster called Temple of the Night Hawk.

And then there’s the Black Mamba.  It’s smooth and fast.  Really fast.  According to The Internet, the ride hits 4.5G at points.  There’s one particular corkscrew that is amazing to ride.  We briefly considered going back to hit the Black Mamba again, it was that good.

It turns out that there’s a metric pantload of theme parks in Europe.  I get the sense that Phantasialand is one of the three best known though.  Now that I’ve been to Phantasialand, I need to check out the other two-  Europa Park and Disneyland Paris.