German Adventure: Back to Blogging, my mom's visit

Hi everyone! Did you miss me?

I created this blog and promptly spent two months and a week not updating it. That was not very kind of me. So I am going to try to make it up to you by adding pictures to this post (see below!) and by posting something each weekday till I come home (since I am still traveling every weekend, normally without internet). I have plenty to write about but I'll begin with this past week since it is, of course, freshest in my mind.

Last Thursday I skipped work and left in the early morning to travel to Frankfurt International Airport because my mom was coming to visit! Rather than doing what I do every time I travel, taking the trains, I decided to go for something new, Mitfahrgelegenhiet. It's a German word meaning Carpooling Opportunity. People post online where they're driving and you can tag along and give them a few bucks for gas. The main reason I did it was to try it out, since it was only €5 cheaper than the train, but I really liked it. I met up with a guy in Cologne and he drove me on the Autobahn to Frankfurt. For those interested, he was a Civil Engineer and had a new BMW. There were a lot of construction sites along the way (poor economy in Germany, too, so the government offered money now to rebuild roads so they could offer more jobs), but he still managed to get it up to 240 kilometers per hour (kph) at one point, and we were going over 200 kph on average. That means I was in a car going 150 mph, the fastest I have ever traveled in an automobile. It really didn't feel that fast and the car handled quite well, but it was still exciting. Okay, that's what the mechanical engineer in me wants to talk about, but I should probably talk more about the rest of the trip.

While my mom was here we did a lot. A whole lot. I definitely can't type everything because of how long it would take. When I did the planning for the trip, I meant for my mom to see Germany and relax. We got one of those two accomplished...

Mom was only here for 7 days and she was in each of the 4 largest cities in Germany and was in the west, east, north, and south of the country at some point during the trip.

She did get a lot of relaxation in Aachen while we were here, including waking up late, getting a tour of my workplace, two massages during our time at the spa and a pleasant barbecue at my boss' house (Oh, mom, it turns out we were lucky with the rain. Though it rained a little at our barbecue, some of the surrounded cities really got poured on and had high water problems). But except for that day in Aachen, I have to admit that her vacation was all high-adventure. Not what I meant for it to be, actually.

Her first day here involved climbing the 509 steps (103 m) to the outlook point of the tower of the Cologne Cathedral and then we walked around a bit of the city, including a local brewery's malt beer version of Kölsch, before sitting down and enjoying a meal at a great local restaurant. We saw the town hall and looked at some of the German-Roman historical sites before heading to Aachen for the night.

The day at work and in the spa came and went all too quickly.

Then Saturday we spent all day walking around Aachen (the Cesna plane ride I had planned didn't work out because of the foggy and rainy weather). Note: if you come to Aachen, don't bother with the English tour. It's not at all worth it. We went through the Cathedral Treasury, which was excellent. It had a wealth of relics and interesting items to see. We went to a brewery that is no longer brewing beer for our dinner. It has specialties from the Aachen region available. I tried out the Blutwurst. The English translation is "black pudding" but those of you who know German know that the German word is much more descriptive in telling you what you're getting. It took a lot of effort for me to go through with the decision to try it. It is a meal formed from cooking coagulated blood. It wasn't awful, but I don't think I'll be trying it a second time. After dinner we got ready for our overnight train to Berlin. My mom cleaned my apartment (thanks mom!) and I packed and then we were on our way.

The overnight train was nothing special, and got us to Berlin at a bright-and-early 5am. We put our luggage in a locker and went outside, used the nifty Call A Bike option to rent some bikes from DeutscheBahn for the day and we set off. (You call a number and get the code for the lock and call when you're done riding and tell them where you left the bike and then they charge you based on time. It was only €9 per 24 hours, which was better than most the other bike rental places that wouldn't even have opened up until 10am.) We happened to be by the Reichstag by chance right as it opened, so we went in. It's the German version of the U.S. Capitol. We walked to the top and around the glass dome with a great city view with an awesome audio guide (all for free) that told us what we were seeing and the history of it all and then we got back on our bikes to see a few more sights. Normally the Reichstag has a 2 hour wait but we only waited 15 minutes because of our timing. It was great! We took a 5 hour bike tour through the city starting at 11am and then went to more sights on our bikes after that. We saw all three major sections remaining of the Berlin Wall, not to mention almost all of the major sights of the center of the city. Quite a successful day! Finally at 10pm we returned the bikes (thanks mom for putting up with so much bike riding) and got back on a train to head to Munich overnight since the cheap guest room didn't work out.

We had a 3 hour layover from 1-4am in Hamburg so we walked the whole time (street cars and subways weren't running) to get to the famous harbor and back. It was dark in the middle of the night in Germany's second largest city and it made my mom very nervous no matter how safe it actually was. And I can understand that feeling. I certainly wouldn't want to do that through Cincinnati or many of the other large cities in the US, for example. It was her least favorite part of the trip. We made it to the harbor, took the wrong streets a few times coming back and ended up seeing more of the city than planned, and made it back completely safely, without incident, to the train station in time for our train to Munich. From there we dropped our luggage off at our hotel and took an hour train to the Ammersee and hiked an hour uphill to the Andechs Monastery and Brewery (the best beer in all of Germany) and spent the whole day there drinking beer and eating German food till we couldn't anymore. We hiked back down and went back to get to bed.

So the next morning was already Tuesday and we were originally planning to buy a transportation pass and head to Neuschwanstein by ourselves (it requires a train and a bus and 3.5 hours one way) and then buy tickets to the castle there and figure everything out ourselves, but we had a place recommended to us by our great bike tour guide in Berlin for trips in Munich. So we signed up for their tour in the early morning. We got a luxury tour bus there, a very informative DVD, and didn't have to wait in line for tickets. Good thing, too! It was the busiest day in 5 years at the castle. Had we gone ourselves we wouldn't even have made it inside! We had a leisurely bike ride around Swan Lake (I got to swim in it, cold but clean and fed from the glaciers in the alps) during the time we would have otherwise had to wait in line for tickets. We hiked up to the castle through a waterfall gorge and saw Mary's Bridge before going inside for the incredibly short 30 minute tour. Only 16 of the 70 or so planned rooms were completed before King Ludwig II's "death under mysterious conditions" at age 42. You can read a short bit about the tour we took here if you're interested. That evening we got back to Munich and walked the city, seeing the sights and enjoying the Biergarten at the Hofbräuhaus. I did my best to be a tour guide for my mom, telling her everything I could remember from the historical Munich tour that I had taken a month earlier.

On our final day we slept in, had breakfast, tried some Italian Gelato (this ice cream can be found all over Germany and is really tasty) and took a train to the airport. Nothing exciting.

A lot done and seen in a week, and it was very good. She was in the largest German cities during her time here and got to see a lot of the country. I could have been a better host on quite a few occasions and I have to beg her pardon for that, but I am very happy with how it went overall, how much of what we planned we were able to accomplish, and I know she enjoyed her week-long workout short vacation in Germany.

If you're planning your own vacation to Germany, I'd add 5 days in each of the cities mentioned above to give yourself time to really see them and enjoy what they have to offer. I'd also suggest you add Dresden to the list as a place not to be missed. When there, check out The New Green Vault. I found it fascinating. I was there 3 months ago... and the post on that will be coming soon!

And now for the pictures!

That's me at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin