Leaving On A Jet Plane

Traveling internationally by plane is not very relaxing. Crowded in a tiny capsule for 7 hours over the Atlantic Ocean with no way way to stretch out or get comfortable let alone sleep, it’s no surprise Jaggar and I are tired and cranky by the time we reach Munich. The 4 hour each layovers in New York and Frankfurt didn’t help either, but at least we have a room waiting when we finally get downtown and our AirBnB check in goes without a hitch. Actually, there’s no check in at all – we just walk up to the room and the key is in a red box next to the door.

Munich

After close to 24 hours of solid travel, we drag our jet-lagged asses across the street to Holy Burger – not highly reviewed on Yelp!, but a real organic beef burger and a genuine German lager really hits the spot. We drink in our first taste of international ambiance in the small, quaint establishment. The friendly waitress speaks German and English. As a matter of fact, everybody here seems to speak both languages.

Can you say ‘giant, old churches’? Well, Munich has them in spades. While I’ve seen my fair share of gothic and baroque architecture on previous European trips, Jaggar has not and is awestruck by the monumental structures. Mighty and ornate, there are just no comparable buildings in the United States so steeped in history that match such grandeur. I even got to see St. Mundita, the jeweled skeleton, in . They wouldn’t let me take a picture though, because mass was in session. Dammit.

As it turns out, today is national holiday in Germany and most of the shops, including the Viktualienmarkt (and a pastry shop I wanted to visit) are closed. Maybe it’s a blessing in disguise because the streets are not crowded with tourists and we feel like locals (kind of). It’s brisk, overcast and a little chilly. After walking the city all morning, we stop and get a sausage, mashed potatoes and sauerkraut (and a beer, of course). Delicious. Again, we’re struck by the freshness and wholesome heartiness of the local cuisine. Maybe it’s my imagination, but I can’t taste any GMOs or gluten fillers. I hope my American digestive system can cope.

After making sure we visit the sacred Michael Jackson monument, we circle by the Residenz Museum (without going in) and head for the just to the north. The clouds break and instantly it’s sunny and warm. Suddenly, Germans everywhere are outside and enjoying the open spaces. There are a lot of young families with little children all enjoying this beautiful park. We find a bench and sit for a while silently watching all the people.

Tired as all hell from walking all day, we take a tram back to the hotel and crash for a few hours. While Jaggar is still asleep, I get up and walk around the neighborhood, finding a McDonald’s (which I forego entering) and a lovely gelato place a few shops down. Of course I get 2 scoops, one chocolate and the other mint. When I get back Jaggar is still sleeping.

Tomorrow, Salzburg.

There are a lot of young children on the train, so the atmosphere during the 2 hour trip is noisy and chaotic. Jaggar and I have to snicker more than a few times because there is clearly one rambunctious child that is exasperating the chaperones. Not surprisingly, the child’s name was “Maxi”. Every 5 minutes we hear someone frustratingly exclaim, “Maxi – nein!”. Reminds me of my son Maximilian, who was quite a handful when he was an inquisitive (and quite naughty) young child. I must have exclaimed “Maxi – nein!” more than a few times myself.

We picked a bad weather day to see the Salzburg tourist sites because it rains most of the afternoon. We skip the Fortress but check out the churches and cemeteries and the rain creates an eerie, surreal mood. I can see that during summer and with good weather old town Salzburg would be more obviously picturesque, but today it is just rainy and cold and the tourists that are here are all crowded under the stone passages leading in and out of the alleys and narrow streets trying to escape from getting wet.

We find respite in a Rick Steves recommendation “Wilder Man”, a cozy restaurant with only 9 tables nestled off the beaten track and run by an actual mom and pop (in real lederhosen). I counted three separate groups at different tables all with Rick Steves guidebooks in tow. During our meal, a charming Swiss woman vacationing with her mother is seated with us (all the tables are picnic tables) and we ended up talking with them in broken English and Swiss for over 2 hours. Without ever exchanging names, we converse about our respective backgrounds, we a father and son from desert Arizona and they, a mother and ex-professional company ballet dancer (one of triplets, no less). Coincidentally, the pair are from St. Gallen, a city we will be visiting later this week. Funny that they were surprised that, as Americans, we were not eating hamburgers (meat) at McDonald’s (they were both vegetarians). We are not offended and laugh at the American stereotype.

After a shot of Schnapps at Spore full of old men drinking brandy standing up, we head for and the cemetery at St. Sebastian. Another beautiful park made even more mysterious by the misty, afternoon drizzle. The weathered tombstones are covered in moss and today’s rain. We can barely see the Fortress up on the hill over old town Salzburg through the foggy chill.

We were advised by our Swiss friends to go to the the Sacher Hotel for famous Austrian (a rich, chocolate cake), which we do and after coffee and a loop back to Mirabell to take pictures with the garden gnomes, we head to the train station and back to Munich.

Dachau

It is a cloudy Wednesday morning and we are at the . The bus ride from the train station is crowded and the mood of the tourists is somber. At the camp entrance, we are all silent as we enter through the iron gates into the main compound. All we hear is the soft wind through the trees and the shuffle of the tourists footsteps over the white gravel.

It is hard to describe the feeling as we walk past the empty foundations of the barracks, the guard towers and the crematorium. Photographs alone do not do the experience justice and what you can’t get vicariously from a pictorial portrayal is the overall veil of fear and horror that is visceral. You can feel death looking over your shoulder. There are many German school groups here, mostly teen-agers. Perhaps this country’s citizens are reminding themselves that they are the beneficiaries of an infamous heritage they have to continually remind themselves of in the hope of something like this never being able to happen again.

We take the train back to Munich and briefly tour the English garden before heading back to the old town for a Schnultnoodle pastry, a stroll past the (both open today) and St. Peter’s Church where I’m finally able to get my picture of St. Mundita, the skeleton in a box. would be proud.

I drop Jaggar back at the hotel and take the tram up to to see the collection of rare, museum-quality artifacts. A lovely German woman with long, blonde braided hair (who reminds me of what I imagine the fairy tale Gretel would look like) walks up to me and, as we are the only two people in the gallery, she proceeds to give me a personal guided tour of the gallery’s cabinet of curiosities. I tell her I was able to acquire one of Georg Lau’s out-of-prints books on eBay and she seems suitable impressed enough to give me a complimentary gallery edition of the newer works because I’m such a fan.

Jaggar and I get hungry around 9:00 PM and so we hike over to the , the oldest bierhaus in Munich. Down some dizzying circular stairs to the cellar and we are seated next to a thirty-something Austrailian couple who we make interesting conversation with over a pint of the local beer and some schnitzel. We lose track of time talking about the Grand Canyon and the Great Barrier Reef and after saying our good-byes, we go back to the room and crash.

Füssen

Good heavens, there are a lot of Asian tourists on this train! Mostly they are female, young and very cute, though. Odd.

So far this trip, the geography mostly reminds me of Michigan or Ohio – flat, some rolling hills and very green with large trees and thick foliage. Very rural, with cows and horses grazing on the steep pastures. Now, as we are getting closer to the Alps, the countryside is taking on a much more European flavor, at least the flavor I imagined it would have. Grassy hills with Alpine cottages (which all look very similar) and jagged, snow covered mountains in the background. Most houses have solar panels on their roofs. I’ve seen a lot of solar panels since we’ve been here.

Not much more that can be said about King Ludwig’s castles that hasn’t already been repeated in numerous guidebooks. Suffice to say, are awesome in every way and we were blessed with a beautiful sunny day to drink in the unfortunate king’s opulance. We didn’t know we’d be walking as much as we did, though as the castles are a good distance apart on opposite hills. But the sights make the climbs rewarding. We were there later in the day so we follow most of the early crush of tourists who were on the train with us in the morning. I couldn’t get Jaggar to walk out to the middle of Mary’s Bridge so he missed a high point of the day, in my opinion. The view is spectacular and the bouncy wood planks lend an air of danger to the experience.

We get back to the hotel around 8:00 completely exhausted and head straight for the cafe/restaurant for some salad and spatzel with lentils. Next to us is seated another mother and daughter traveling tag team from Baltimore with a book in plain site. It turns out the daughter has just graduated from college and they are traveling in the opposite direction as we, towards Munich after their own castle tour the next day. The daughter Becky, has just received her degree in Mechanical Engineering and will be starting a job in Milwaukee when they return to the U.S. We tell them the weather was beautiful at the castles, but heard that it would be changing tomorrow when the would be visiting. We say goodnight and fall asleep minutes after hitting our beds.

On To Switzerland

Travel day to Bern via St. Gallen. Five different train changes. We stop in St.Gallen around 11:00 get a“sausage in a bag” and head for the . You have to wear felt slippers so your feet don’t scratch the floor. The library has some of the most ornate wood embellishments of any interior we’ve seen so far and contains manuscripts from as far back as 500 BC. We have a slab of Swiss chocolate and an espresso just outside of the church common grounds for 11 CHF and watch the children play amongst the business men and women soaking up the sun on their lunch hours.

St.Gallen to Zurich. We see cannabis ice tea for sale in a vending machine. Now that’s something new! Lots of children, teenagers and all other aged folks hurrying about their way at the train station. It’s rush hour on a late Friday afternoon.

We get to Bern and find our accommodations without any trouble. This is our first hostel of the trip and my apprehensions disappear when we find a homey, dorm-like room with bunk beds, wi-if and free transportation cards to get us up the steep hill by funicular to downtown. After dinner, we wander through the pedestrian streets, checking off all the mandatory sites – , the Bern Clock Tower and the child-eater statue. On our way back to the hostel, we pass by an immense gothic church under construction and enter to discover a choral group and orchestra rehearsing for an up coming concert. We sit in the nearest pew and watch as the only two spectators besides the musicians themselves. A sublime moment.

Gimmelwald and the Swiss Alps

The train from Bern to Lauterbrunnen winds through a narrow valley of sheer cliffs before stopping at a cable car station that whisks us up to the tiny village of Gimmelwald. The scenery is breathtaking – the only sounds are the birds and the numerous waterfalls crashing to the valley floor from across the canyon. There are tens of hang gliders all hovering over the valley floor like schools of jellyfish, floating on currents of cool air. We hike up the trail in Gimmelwald as far as our bodies will allow considering we are not used to the altitude and snap pics of snow covered peaks, farm animals and the quaint village engulfed in nature’s monumental majesty. We rest and relax the rest of the day, sipping coffee and drinking in the fresh mountain air. Tomorrow we travel to Lausanne, stopping for lunch in Interlaken and taking the Goldenpass Scenic train through the Swiss countryside to the lakeside city of Lausanne.

Lausanne

The train is a wonderful way to cross western Switzerland – mountains, hills, farm animals and the Alps all viewed through large panoramic windows. Jaggar sleeps about the half the way, but I take pictures so he can see what he missed later. As we descend out of the mountains into Monteaux, I start humming a familiar tune to myself and sing the lyrics to Smoke on the Water by Deep Purple under my breath – “…Frank Zappa and the Mothers were at the best place around…”. The Lake Geneva shoreline is much more populated and affluent than we’ve seen over the last few days, but it is a welcome site and as we pull into Lausanne, we start hearing a lot of French and little German. In fact, when we explain to out AirBnB host that we’ve just come from Interlaken, he says, without hiding any facetiousness, “…ah, Germany.”. Clearly, we are in the land of the arrogant French. Lausanne is a beautiful town nestled in the hills above Lake Geneva. They’ve got some awesome old churches, too…

CERN

From Lausanne, we travel around the lake to Geneva for a day of scientific discovery. We meet Jaggar’s physics professor from the University of Arizona, Dr. Kenneth Johns, who gives us a private tour of the collider facility and an invigorating walk around the compound. As the public tours were canceled just prior to us leaving for our trip, this was quite a lucky coup and the VIP treatment gives us insight into the facility we would not have gotten otherwise. That, and we had kangaroo stew at the cafeteria, which is something you don’t have every day. Dr. Johns says that the facility operates under “open science” so we are allowed to take pictures of everything we see and the place is buzzing with students and scientists. Definitely worth the side trip from Lausanne. We were not consumed in a black hole or liquid helium explosion either…

Switzerland is ridiculously expensive and we are paying an arm and a leg for everything from tram rides to coffee, so we are about ready to say goodbye and ride the TGV, France’s high-speed train to Paris.

Paris

We arrive in Paris at noon on a Tuesday. Our flat for the next few days is right above an adult bookstore/shop, so that tells you a little about the neighborhood. But it is right near the Metro, a few blocks north of Notre Dame and (oddly enough) right across the street from a church. We have decided to get some of the touristy stuff out of the way so we head to the Seine, and walk along the Champs de Élysées to the Arc de Triomphe. From there, we make a dash to the Eiffel Tower, take a few requisite photos and the head back ‘home’. We change our clothes and have our first (and only) fancy dinner in Paris. Jaggar loves the foie gras, but isn’t crazy about the duck.

Wednesday is museum day, but first we have to visit the final resting place of the Lizard King at the cemetery. I’ve been here before, but the cemetery has lost none of its surreal power. After all, where else can you visit Chopin, Balzac, Proust and Jim Morrison all at the same time?

Later in the afternoon, we cruise the Pompidou, eat some cheeseburgers and then make a night run at The Louvre. Rick Steves was right – going on a night when the museum is open late really makes a difference with respect to the crowds. We breezed through the greatest hits in a few hours. Note: the Mona Lisa is much smaller in real life than you might imagine and really doesn’t justify the enormous interest of the great majority of the tourists present when compared to the rest of the art on display. Personally, I liked the Venus de Milo.

The Paris Catacombs is a bust. We get here pretty early in the day, but the line of tourists wraps around the block and the wait is about two hours so we meander through the Luxembourg Palace gardens, browse at the bookstore (where Jaggar finds the second volume of Feynman’s physics books in French which he immediately purchases) and then eat some bread and meat at a sidewalk cafe.

Two highlights come later in the afternoon – the at the University of Paris Medical College and the , which is the famous Paris veterinary college. As a big fan of the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia, I can say that the Musée Depuytren does not disappoint when it comes to diseased and disfigured heads and limbs in jars. You can also get a photo with the Statue of Death around the corner in a garden alcove.

Fragonard, on the other hand, is a great place to see numerous types of animal skeletons as well as it’s crown jewel, the Écorchés, a display of flayed and preserved cadavers made in 1865 later to be the inspiration for Gunther von Hagens’ Body Worlds in the 20th century.

On our last day in Paris and two things are happening – it’s starting to get hot and all the summer tourists are beginning to inundate the city. It’s a good thing we’re taking the train south of Paris to Orsay to visit Jaggar’s new home come the fall, University of Paris Sud, where he’ll start his Masters study in Physics. Orsay is a charming, rural town that (again) reminds me a lot of Michigan or Ohio. Definitely a slower pace than Paris, but only a 30 minute train ride away.

One more turn past Notre Dame before we have our final dinner in Paris and then crash early because the trip back to the USA is going to be a bitch! Oh, I forgot – we need to see Montmartre. Packed with tourists and blisteringly hot, this was not the most memorable attraction, but we check it off the list nonetheless.

So long, Europe. See you later…