Day Trip To The Zugspitze

On October 14, 2013May 30, 2020 By StevenIn International Travel - Inside Germany7 Comments

The Alps are just a few hours away from Regensburg by car or train. Nestled within the Alps is the Zugspitze, Germany’s tallest mountain. The Zugspitze is 2962 meters (9718 feet) high. From the summit on a clear day, you can see mountain peaks in four countries.

Since I love tall places, of course I had to go and see it. There are trains between Munich and Garmisch-Partenkirchen almost once an hour, so getting there is pretty easy. As you approach the mountain from Garmisch-Partenkirchen, you can see a ski jump. The 1936 Winter Olympics were held here, opened by Adolf Hitler.

Once you arrive in G-P, you walk from the Bahnhof to the Zugspitzbahnhof right next door, to pay for your ticket up the mountain and back. The first part of the journey is by cogwheel train, until you get to Eibsee. From there, you take the Eibsee Seilbahn cable car up the side of the mountain.

When you reach the peak, the views are amazing. On one side, you have a separate cable car that goes to and from the Schneeferner glacier below.

There’s an observation deck at the very top, with the highest beer garden in Germany.

This weather monitoring and research station helps to monitor climate change.

There are cable cars coming up from both Germany and Austria, since the mountain sits on the border. Part of the summit faciliites is on the Austrian side- I walked in and out of Austria twice before I realized it was a border crossing.

Despite it being t-shirt weather at the base of the mountain, there was snow and ice at the top.

The wind at the summit does very interesting things to the ice formations. This is on a bit of metal stairs.

The actual peak is accessible to people who want to climb up to it. It’s set aside from the main facilities and does involve some climbing up in snow.

At an altitude of 2952 meters (9685 feet), the Gipfelalm is the tallest restaurant in Germany. Their food was not over-expensive, but it was kind of mediocre in flavor and quality.

The lake on the left is the Eibsee, and the little town to the right of it is Garmisch-Partenkirchen.

After you take the cable car from the summit down to the glacier, you can also choose to eat at Sonn Alpin, at 2600 meters. We stopped here for dessert.

…and shared our dessert with the aggressively snackish birds. One of them actually stole some of our kaiserschmarrn right out of the bowl when we didn’t offer it to them. Cheeky little bastards.

While we were at the Sonn Alpin, I got to see a small avalanche first-hand. The snow falling down the mountain here was tremendously loud.

Where there is snow, there are snow-people.

Have you ever been to the Zugspitze? What’s your favorite mountain?

Paddington Bear in London

On October 10, 2013January 26, 2020 By StevenIn International Travel - The United Kingdom5 Comments

If not for Bevchen of Confuzzledom, I would not have known there was a statue of Paddington Bear inside Paddington Station. I’ve been in the station many times, and I even knew about the Paddington Bear store, but I didn’t know there was a statue until Bev mentioned it.

I was in London over the last few days, so I made sure to find the statue for myself. Here it is, the bronze Paddington by sculptor and artist Marcus Cornish:

Do you have any favorite statues to visit when you travel?

s’Baggers: A Rollercoaster Restaurant in Nuremberg

On October 7, 2013May 30, 2020 By StevenIn Life At Home, Life In Germany6 Comments

Quick edit in February 2017: I just learned that the restaurant in Nuremberg is no longer open to the public. It’s being used as a training site by the parent company. http://www.rollercoasterrestaurant.com/ has a list of other locations.

There is a restaurant in nearby Nuremberg called s’Baggers where you order your food on a touchscreen and the food is delivered to your table automatically on metal rails. Apparently, Rollercoaster Restaurants are a growing industry. The company behind the design of s’Baggers is making one of these in Dubai, and there are also restaurants like this in Hamburg and Dresden.

I love restaurants with gimmicks. I’m a huge fan of revolving restaurants, for example. Needless to say, I wanted to try this place as soon as I learned that it existed. I contacted my favorite Nuremberg resident, Heather from Heather Goes Deutsch, to see if she and her boyfriend wanted to try the restaurant as well. They did, and we made plans to try the place out.

The front entrance is bright and friendly, as a family friendly restaurant ought to be.

Inside, the rails that lead from the kitchen to each table are looped artfully around the room.

There’s a center column that goes to the downstairs tables, and a fast track where the occasional container would loop upside-down for a moment. The rope-lighting would change colors and flash on and off to let you know the fast dishes were about to come through.

There are no waiters. At your table, you order via a touch screen. The menu is quite huge; there’s a wide variety of food available.

Once your order is selected, you put your meal card into the attached card reader. This card is given to you when you walk into the restaurant, and anything you put on it is paid for when you leave. Vapiano uses the same type of card system, so if you’ve ever eaten at one of those restaurants, you’re familiar with this setup.

The kitchen staff is amazingly fast. Our beverages were out no more than three or four minutes after concluding the order, and the food came out very quickly after that. Main dishes often had terrifying sparklers attached as they came down the rails. A little colored flag attached to each dish lets you quickly spot whether it’s yours or not.

Most entrees came out in one or two little pots like this one. I had a chicken and rice dish with vegetables in a nice peanut sauce. The rice came in one of these pots, and the chicken and vegetables in another.

I was a little worried that the restaurant would rely on their novelty and that the quality would be mediocre, but I was very pleasantly surprised. The food was amazing. From their website:

“Our chef and his team of 11 cooks place great value on a fresh and careful low-fat preparation of all dishes and never use glutamate, preservatives or colouring additives. They only buy fresh, high-quality ingredients from selected suppliers of the local region, including organic produce.”

Heather ordered a pumpkin soup, and it came down the rails in this little jar.

Underneath the rail system on each table is an enormous lazy susan containing plates, bowls, napkins, silverware, and a bottle opener. The section visible to the right of the plates is also where you put empty pots, used plates, and so forth- staff from the restaurant would come by periodically to empty out that section.

While most of the beverages came down the rails, every once in a while somebody would order something that had to be hand carried, like this cocktail.

I ordered dessert after my main course, a freshly baked hot brownie with some vanilla ice cream. It came in a tall glass like the one above. It was the most delicious brownie I have eaten in more than a year.

Seriously, you guys, check this place out. You really won’t regret it.

Have you ever eaten at a rollercoaster restaurant? What’s your favorite type of novelty restaurant?

Seasons Change

On October 3, 2013May 30, 2020 By StevenIn Life In Germany2 Comments

One thing that is definitely different from living in Florida is having actual seasons. In Florida, we have eleven and a half months of summer and two weeks of winter each February.

Here, the leaves change and there’s a clear distinction between our seven months of winter, five minutes of spring, and two months of blazing hot summer, leading into a pleasant fall where the trees change colors and whatnot.

What’s your favorite thing about Fall?

Oktoberfest In The Rain

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

It’s Oktoberfest time!

Oktoberfest is the world’s largest fair, and it runs for sixteen days every year from late September to the first Sunday in October. (It runs for seventeen or eighteen days on years when the first Sunday in October is the 1st or 2nd of the month, because the 3rd of October is a holiday here, German Unity Day.) It was started in 1810 to celebrate the marriage of King Ludwig I to Therese

This year’s Oktoberfest started on September 22nd and runs through Sunday October 6th. In Bavaria, its often referred to simply as die Wiesn. This refers back to the name Theresienwiese (Theresa’s Meadow), the fairgrounds in the center of Munich where it takes place.

Many of my bloggy friends in Germany have written about Oktoberfest. LLMW wrote “Best Bets for enjoying Munich’s Oktoberfest & the Parade” and Alex wrote about how to get a seat at oktoberfest in munich.

Factoids for everyone!

Oktoberfest receives more than six million visitors each year. That’s more than four times the population of Munich itself.
In the first week of Wiesn in 2012, more than 3.6 liters of beer were consumed. This also led to an increase in Bierleichen, or “beer corpses” — a term referring to people who have drunk themselves into a state of unconsciousness . (I love that there’s a specific word for this.) According to the Red Cross, most of the Bierleichen were below the age of 30.
The price of a Maß (one liter) of beer in 2013 is €9,85. That’s more than $13 per liter.
For beer to be served at Oktoberfest, it must be brewed within the city limits of Munich. It must also conform to the Reinheitsgebot (the German Beer Purity Law.)

I went to Oktoberfest on a Thursday with Jenny. The day before, it had been sunny in Munich. Not so on our chosen day.

This is the Hippodrom tent, one of the first tents seen when you enter Theresienwiese. It’s very popular with the younger crowds.

Inside the Hippodrom tent, at around 4pm on a Thursday:

A percentage of the tables in each tent can be reserved. Often, companies reserve these tables and food is on standby for these reservations.

A job I would not want: Dishwasher at Oktoberfest. This is one of many racks of beer steins ready to be filled.

The Hofbräu Festzelt. (Zelt means tent.)

The Augustiner tent.

The Löwenbräu (Lion’s Brew!) tent. The Lion is mechanical- it lifts the stein and drinks, then roars. Highly entertaining.

The Paulaner tent.

Sekt is champagne. This was a wine tent. As a result, it was a bit more mellow than the other tents.

Theresienwiese is adjacent to the Bavaria Statue.

As with all festivals in Germany, there are places to buy Lebkuchenherzen (gingerbread hearts) on ribbons. They’re decorated with various phrases, and it’s traditional to buy one for your significant other. It’s not uncommon to see people walking down the street wearing these.

This carriage was pulled by six of the most enormous horses I have ever seen in my life.

This one had slightly smaller horses. Still big, though.

Jenny and I found a table for lunch in the Schottenhamel tent. The Schottenhamel tent is where everything begins- on the first day of Oktoberfest, no beer is allowed to be served until noon. That’s when the mayor of Munich taps the first keg in the Schottenhamel tent, proclaiming, “O’zapft is!” (It’s tapped!)

Prost!

Bavarian men always seem to have such jaunty hats.

Just one of these is heavy. This woman must have incredible upper body strength.

Children in Tracht (traditional clothing) are pretty much always adorable.

I do love the giant pretzels…

After lunch, we went back outside, to check out the rest of the fest. There’s a lot of rides. This is the view as you’re approaching the front of Theresienwiese. That ride with the airplane on top goes much higher and faster than we expected.

I’m still trying to figure out why a) this one has American flags all over it, and b) the breakdancer is a Gremlin.

There are several places to ride bumper cars, which is a great idea after drinking a few liters of beer.

The ferris wheel at the back seemed like a good idea, because the gondolas are covered.

These next two pictures were taken from the ferris wheel, during one of the many rain bursts.

You can just barely make out the white balloon with a red cross in this picture. That balloon made it easy to find the first aid tent from a distance- kind of ingenious, in my opinion.

While most of the locals went with traditional Lederhosen and Dirndls, a few people went with a more modern take on Bavarian garb. I like to think of the guy on the left as Bavarian Jesus.

Do you have any fun Oktoberfest stories?