Month: December 2008

Took a train an hour east to the Chiemsee / Chiemgau area, where we met up with Chris’s uncle Andreas to be escorted on a whirlwind tour of the area. After lunch with Andreas and his wife, Monika, we headed off. We passed through the tiny town of Mietenkam (where Chris had spent time as a teenager) and the slightly larger town of Grassau on our way into the Alps, on the hunt for snow. Andreas said we must have a “real winter” and he wasn’t going to take no for an answer.

Alas, wherever we went we found just steady rain that had washed away any remaining snow, and so we headed deeper and deeper into the Alps. Reit im Winkl, Ruhpolding, past Salzburg and into the Austrian Alps … finally in Obertauern we got past (above?!) the rain and into heavy snow … three feet of it! We trudged through the ski town to a favorite restaurant of Andreas’s where we had a traditional fare — a soup with dumpling and meatball, and a pastry dish called Kaisersomething.

Then we headed back down out of the Alps and into Salzburg to explore the city there a bit. More Christkindlmarkts and impossibly old architecture, and finally we stumbled completely randomly on … a Krampus/Perchten parade! This is an ancient Alpine tradition that occurs around St. Nicholas day and is a way to punish bad children and ward off evil. Sharon had resigned herself to missing the Munich event, but there was one happening in Salzburg that we completely lucked into! Sharon took a zillion photos and is still beside herself! Exhausted and thrilled, Andreas then took us to get some gluhwein from a nearby restaurant that had been first established in 803 (not 1803, 803).

A quick drive back on the Autobahn in Andreas’s Phaeton and a short tour of Traunstein where Andreas’s electronics company, Municom, is based and we were back on the train to Munich and soon back in bed.

We had an uneventful 9 hour flight, which Chris passed watching Wanted (fun eye candy), Ghost Town (rom/com that was actually enjoyable) and Hancock (predictably dull Hollywood product) on the seatback video system. Sharon smartly slept so she could arrive at 8am as if nothing had happened.

After arriving in Munich and meeting up with Chris’s aunt Renate, we headed over to the apartment of cousin Connie and her boyfriend Holger for a nice German lunch (sausages, cold cuts, cheese, bread, champagne, beer) followed by some wandering around the cobble-stoned city. We went to some Christkindlmarkts and saw sights like the wildly baroque Asamkirche and the bleached white intricacy of the Theatinerkirche. It was cold and drizzling but we stayed warm with roasted chestnuts, and occasional gluhwein stops (hot spiced wine) — or better yet, feuerzangenbowle. We collapsed into bed early in the evening to catch up on missed sleep. Renate was kind enough to let us stay in her apartment in the Prinzregentenstrasse area while we were in town and she spent the nights out at Sabrina (her other daughter) and Marcy’s home on the edge of Munich.

On Friday we depart for a trip to Germany and Paris.

We’ll fly direct to Munich, where we will spend 3 days with relatives exploring the city and the area. Then we all head up to Mainz where the entire extended family (~20 Germans and ~10 Americans) is gathering for a reunion over Christmas.

Then we spend a day in Annweiler, a small town that I spent a year in as a teenager.

Then we’ll take a series of trains to Paris, including a TGV bullet train, and begin 3 days of our patented whirlwind touring technique of that city for the first time. On Tuesday the 30th, we fly from Paris direct back to Atlanta.

I don’t know how much time we’ll have to post here, but we’ll try!

[Depending on how you reached this post, to see the next post you either just scroll up OR click on a link at the top of this page. The link to click on will be to the RIGHT of “Main” above — in this case it’s titled “Germany / Paris: Sat Dec 20th”. Click on that to see the next post …]