I’m On My Way

On December 10, 2012June 6, 2014 By StevenIn The U.S.4 Comments

This post is being written at 37,000 feet. In-flight Wi-Fi is a nifty, nifty technology. I’ll write up a proper trip report after I’ve gotten back home to Regensburg, though- I haven’t yet sorted my pictures or my thoughts from the last two and a half weeks.

In another five hours, I’ll be back in Munich. Another two hours after that and I’ll have collected my luggage, taken the 635 bus from MUC to Freising, and hopped a train from Freising back to Regensburg.

After that, I just have to try to stay awake until around bed time to stave off jet lag. Maybe I’ll finally get around to doing the homework from my German class that I’ve been putting off all vacation long.

Longer posts coming up, now that I’ll be back in town, and it’s snow and Glühwein season!

Still in the US.

On December 3, 2012April 11, 2014 By StevenIn The U.S.8 Comments

I’ve been back in the US for a week and a half now, with one more week to go before I head back to Deutschland. I’ve been making the most of my time, visiting with as many friends and family members as possible. In the first four days of my visit, I refilled the gas tank of the rental car twice from criss-crossing the lower three counties of Florida. I had Thanksgiving dinner at my sister’s place, and there were lots of dinners and brunches over my birthday weekend.

The rental car isn’t too bad on gas consumption. Since I was going to be in Florida, and away from the cold and damp of Germany, I opted to go topless for my choice of rental car:

…however, Florida is doing a pretty good job of making me want to leave again. I worked a week in the Florida office to stretch out my trip a little bit, and my commute to and from the office each day looked pretty much like the photo below. Lots of stopping, with an average top speed on I-95 of about thirty miles an hour.

Once I get into the office, though, things get better. I missed the sense of humor of my Florida co-workers though. It’s a really fun group. Here’s a small example… this is the hot-n-cold water dispenser in the office. In case it’s not clear, the little post-its say “Health” and “Mana.”

Speaking of things that I missed, there were tater tots. Oh, such tater tots. Despite the very wide variety of potato offerings in Germany, I haven’t ever seen tater tots there. Whenever I try to explain tots to a German, they always get this blank expression, and the always suggest rosti, croquettes, and making my own… it’s just not the same, though, and my culinary to-do list for this trip included proper tots. These little beauties are from a joint in South Florida called Charm City Burger.

Getting back to my birthday, I decided that I wanted to start my new year on the ocean, so I snagged a hotel room on Ft. Lauderdale beach. This is the view I woke up to on Sunday morning:

When I get back to Germany, it will probably be snowing. Oh well, at least the Christmas Markets are open now.

Sorry, Sorry…

On November 26, 2012November 26, 2012 By StevenIn The U.S.1 Comment

I neglected to prepare a post for today. I assumed that after four days back in the States, I would have a lot to talk about. However, I forgot to account for the fact that I would be so busy catching up with friends and family that I wouldn’t have time to actually sit down and write something before the very last minute. Oops!

I’ll get back to writing new material as soon as humanly possible. For now, however, I’ll just be over here eating this awesome cookie that was given to me as soon as I stepped off the plane on Wednesday.

So You Want To Visit Germany

On November 19, 2012November 19, 2012 By StevenIn Life In Germany7 Comments

I posted a while back about Dining Out In Germany, and I realized recently that whenever someone I know visits Germany, there’s a bunch more stuff that I tell them. As I prepare to head back to the US this week for my first visit home in over a year, I have some observations from my first year here that I think might help an American visitor to Deutschland.

The Bathrooms Are Different.

Not the plumbing. A toilet is a toilet is a toilet. The basic size and shape are pretty much the same. The differences are in other areas. Here’s what I know:

There are almost always stairs to reach the loo. I’ve been in perhaps three restaurants in all of Germany that didn’t involve a quest down three flights of stairs to reach the bathroom. I’m pretty sure I saw the guy from Pitfall in one of them.
The labels are a little different. This stands to reason, since it’s not English, but if you don’t know that Damen is Ladies and Herren is Gentlemen, your first trip past that door can be mildly embarrassing. Sometimes the doors just say H and D, which is even less help if you don’t know the labels ahead of time. At least the little silhouettes that some places use on their doors are pretty universal.
When traveling, hold on to your fifty cent and one Euro (1 €) coins for your bathroom needs. Europe is very fond of the pay toilet. Restaurants and airports and trains usually have cost-free restrooms, but pay-to-pee is the norm in lots of other places. In some train stations, there’s a chain of attended restrooms called McClean which has very nice, well maintained restrooms for a per-use fee. There are also street level restrooms in many cities that involve fees to get in. Sometimes there’s a coin plate near the door as if to suggest that a donation would be a good idea.
Don’t be surprised if a restroom attendant of a different gender than your own comes in to clean the place, especially in train stations.

Getting Around An Unfamiliar City.

Most cities around Germany have a nice public transit system. If you’re lucky enough to be in a larger city like Berlin or Frankfurt, you might even have a variety of modes to choose from. Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, and Nuremberg all have underground metro systems, referred to as U-Bahns or Untergrundbahn. Most cities have a form of S-Bahns, or Stadt-Bahn. This is just a basic above-ground rail system with trains tying locations together. Some places have Straßenbahn, or streetcars. And of course they all have bus lines.

In most instances, your best value is going to be a Tagesticket or day ticket. These are typically good for use on all the forms of public transit in a city, so you can hop between them. For example, to get from the Berlin HBF to my favorite hotel in Berlin, you need to take the S-Bahn (S5, S7, or S75) to Alexanderplatz, then switch to the U-Bahn (U8) to go one more stop. Every Bahn station will have kiosks where you can buy tickets for the local transit system, and a full day of unlimited rides is generally more cost effective unless you’re only planning on one or two journeys.

Here Are A Few Words You Might Need To Know.

Entschuldigung – Apology/excuse me. You’ll hear this when someone wants to get past you in a hallway, for example.
Ist hier frei? – Is this seat open? Useful in crowded trains and restaurants. German pronounciation note: ‘frei’ is pronounced like fry.
Geöffnet – Open. If a bar or restaurant has this word in front, you can go in.
Geschlossen – Closed.
24 Uhr or 24 Stunden – 24 hour.
Tankstelle – Gas station. If you’re driving, you’ll need to know this one.
Apotheke – Drug store. If you need aspirin, paracetamol, cold medicine, skin lotion, or pretty much anything you would get in a pharmacy back home, this is where you’re going to find it. Unlike the US, aspirin and other pharmaceuticals are generally not available in other types of stores- you’ll have to find an Apotheke.
Eingang/Ausgang and Einfahrt/Ausfahrt– These are entrances and exits. When you’re on foot, eingang means entrance and ausgang means exit. When the suffix -fahrt is attached, it refers to cars. This leads to one of my favorite jokes, “Ausfahrt must be the largest city in Germany- there are signs for it all over the Autobahn!”
Besucher – This means visitor. Some form of this word usually appears on visitor’s entrances.
Einbahnstraße – One way street. I thought these were all pointing to a specific highway for my first two months in Germany, and I couldn’t figure out why they all seemed to be pointing in different directions. I’m not always the sharpest tool in the shed.

Short Trip To Vienna

On October 8, 2012January 26, 2020 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.