The Post to End All Posts

Here's the story: I got back from my vacation on the Riviera but then my mother came, so I really didn't have much time to retell my adventures before we were whisked off to Berlin and Munich and wherenot. So this post should cover about 3 weeks of topics. I know I won't be able to pound all of that into one session of typing, so I'll briefly go over every day, then when I have time, go back and edit my posts to fill in details and fun stuff.

I hardly know where to start. Beyond retelling my adventures, I've also pondered hard and decided not to go through all the trouble of posting all my pictures from Switzerland and the Riviera, since most of you will simply see them soon enough anyway. I may change my mind later; we'll have to see. On the other hand, I will dig up some nice links to complement my narrative, for those of you with black-and-white imaginations.

Wednesday (July 27) night went okay, but there was a really low turnout, not much liquor, and nobody wanted to do very much since the ground was wet from a storm that had passed through earlier. Besides that, Geli, Valerie, and I (pretty much the only three people there I knew... well, okay, that's a lie, but there weren't a whole ton more) felt like going home and to bed since we had a train to catch at 7:00 AM and Valerie had a flight to catch out to Ghent I believe, where her dancing group will be performing over the next three weeks. So that's what we did.

Thursday, July 28: München, the city of cousinly love.
This morning we got on a nice comfy train with Chrissy, Tina, Nico, and Nico's cousin Timo to head out to Munich, or München as it is in the native tongue, pronounced something like MYOON-chin, but not really. Suffice it to say it's really hard to pronounce. We got in around 10ish, found the youth hostel quite close to the train station, and checked in. Basically everything there was English, including the people, which sort of struck me as odd at first but then I got used to it.
The six of us went walking through downtown Munich and to the Victuellenmarkt (I believe), ate some, saw some sights, and then we split, the guys wanting to go check out the Allianz Arena (soccer) and the girls wanting to go to the English Garden. We headed up there around noonish, or maybe a bit later, to find out that the tour we wanted to take didn't have an opening until about 5:30 that afternoon. We luckily had been provided with transportation passes by the company through which we'd booked our train tickets, so we hopped back on the S-Bahn (some sort of rail car thing) and went to visit Nico's (but not Timo's) other cousin Simeon. They chatted for a bit, we sat outside and drank liquids in the hot hot heat. I noticed on the thermometer there that it was topping 40 degrees Celsius (for those of you that didn't convert back in the 1970's, that's upwards of 104°F). Nico asked about nightclubs in the city, Simeon couldn't think of any, we sweated some more, then finally we left.
Back onto the S-Bahn with the intention of meeting the girls shortly before heading back out to Allianz. Note: a lot of our communication/planning is done on the fly via cell phones. So we got off the S-Bahn at Studentenstadt where they told us. We figured out which direction the garden was, searched around for someway to get there, got lost, wandered some fifteen minutes to half an hour, then got a call from the girls saying that they were actually at Universität, not Studentenstadt. By the time we got back to the S-Bahn station I realized we would have less than 15 minutes to spend with the girls were we to meet up with them before we needed to catch the S-Bahn back up to the Arena, so a phone call and S-Bahn ride later found us early at teh Allianz Arena. The interesting part here is that, as I mentioned before, the weather is upwards of 100°F, and the walk from the stop to the Arena is at least a kilometer long over an utterly flat stretch without any semblance of shade anywhere. It was planned this way to house (don't quote me on this) the largest parking garage in Germany underneath the ground close to the arena. We made this stretch a total of four times over the day (twice there and back to the stop). The tour itself was pretty good, the stadium is amazing and totally state of the art, covered with over 2500 air cushions which can be individually lit red, blue, or white (the colors of Bayern-München, TSV München, and the German National Soccer Team respectively, not purposefully America's colors), seating 66,000, retractable roof, all that jazz.
It was past 7 by the time we made it back to the youth hostel, where the girls already were, having also eaten in the meantime. I didn't really want to, but we went out to McDonald's for supper, the girls caught up to us a bit later, and then we went in search of somewhere/something to do for the night. We were engaged early on by someone handing out advertisements for Ladies' Night at a bar, which the girls really seemed to like, considering that they would've gotten quite cheap entrance and free vodka and longdrinks until 11. However, we passed it by, and headed to the Hofbräuhaus, a city landmark famous for, among many other things, being the site of the first mass meeting of the Nazi Party. There was a nice, comfortable German drinking atmosphere inside, with a wonderful authentic oompa-style band that played some John Denver and a haze of smoke that one could hardly see through. Unfortunately, they had, for some reason, restricted the drinking age to 18 and older. We left shortly after finding this out. Calling Simeon again, we got directions to a low-key cocktail bar. We hung out for a while in the oppressive heat, having cocktails and beer from the keg. Another one of Nico's cousins (but again not Timo's) met us there. He was a strange fellow but he knew a lot about the nightclubs in town when we asked him, and he bought an extra cocktail for Chrissy because she liked the taste so much. Eventually (around maybe 11:30) we left with him and found our way to a gas station somewhere. The guys (myself included, naturally) bought some beer. Now for an example of German alcohol policy: there are drinks called "alco-pops" i think, which are sweet tasting drinks in which you can't taste the alcohol, which are restricted to those 18 and above, an exception to the standard requirement of 16 years. Geli and Tina wanted to have some Smirnoff lemonade, which classified as "alco-pop." They were in the vicintiy of the counter when they noticed this, and simply turned to Nico's cousin (older, by the way, around 20) and gave him their drinks and money to pay for them right in front of the cashier. And he had no problem buying them either, although he did eventually give the girls back their money, being the cavalier he was.
We headed shortly thereafter (a little past midnight) to the English Garden. We found a park bench and the seven of us sat in the darkness drinking and chatting. I'd finished my beer, so Nico's cousin gave me another (I guess handing out free alcohol was his thing, I dunno) from the six pack he'd bought. It was a Beck's Green Lemon and was quite tasty. Eventually around one we headed back to the subway and split from our newfound friend, and navigated our way back to the youth hostel.

Friday, July 29: German with an Australian Accent
We headed out around 9ish the next morning, which was quite early for most of the others; we had taken up in a 26-bed room (co-ed, but there weren't any gender-specific rooms at the EuroHostel anyway) and everyone but Geli and I complained of being kept awake by snoring or other sleeping-people-noises. Our first stop of the day was Das Deutsche Museum. It was absolutely huge, including five stories packed with exhibits and about every form of science or technology one could think of. An added bonus was that most of the information printed was also in English, being the big tourist point that it is. One of the most impressive displays/exhibits concerned electrical power and current; there were machines in there capable of delivering up to 800,000 volts, and they were put to action. Even outside of that, I could've easily spent at least two days wandering through the halls, doing the interactive experiments, reading about technology and its history and everthing there...
Unfortunately the rest of the group was quite tired and the girls wanted to do some shopping. Geli was still fairly interested, so we stayed and wandered and eventually left to meet up with the others at Subway (a German favorite) around 2:00. I've got nothing against Subway but I opted for the much more Bavarian course of Weißwurst, Breze, und Bier.
After meeting the others we agreed to go over to the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, which the girls had already seen but the boys still wanted to see, and it was pretty.
From there we headed out to the Olympiastadion, site of the 1972 Summer Olympic Games hosted by Munich. Unfortunately it was a short trek from the S-Bahn and, though there was some shade provided by trees, the heat was much like Thusday's in that it was unbearably hot. Reaching the grounds, I contracted a horrible nosebleed, and we noticed that most of what was there seemed to be the settings of a strange carnival of sorts. We essentially pulled two benches into the shade and a few of us fell asleep, too tired and heat-exhausted to move.
It may be an appropriate time to mention that the greatest thing about America, at least in summertime, happens to be water fountains. I have seen two free water fountains in all of Europe (not couting the Amsterdam airport). The more horrible thing is that the people selling drinks know this and tend to charge an arm and a leg for their products, i.e. 2-3€ for usually less than a half liter. This was especially noticed in München in the hot hot heat, where we often felt a need to consume said liquids. I'm sure the six of us bought over 100€ worth of beverages in about 30 hours.
We made our hot and tired way back to the youth hostel, where we picked up all of our stuff, and then Geli and I said our good-byes and headed off to meet up with her cousin Martina. We found their neighborhood easily, it was quiet and quite nice. She took us to the small apartment where she lived with her boyfriend, Simon. He's from Australia. We'd originally planned to grill, but dark clouds rolled in and we buckled down for a thunderstorm. Simon (who had worked for a time as a chef, though he was now employed as an English teacher in Munich) instead made curry, which was spicy but nonetheless good. We then played an interesting bilingual game of Scrabble, in which the native English speaking males played German words, and the native German speaking females played English ones. It was quite difficult because the bilinguality on the board significantly cut down opportunities for expanding on words. After this, as well as the storm, was over, we headed outside for a walk on one of Munich's streets. Geli and Martina chatted and walked ahead, while Simon and I also chatted and followed.
The interesting part about our chatting was that it was in German. Well, maybe that's not really the interesting part; I just needed a good paragraph starter. Simon had (has) been learning German since about 2000, essentially the same amount of time as I. At first in conversation, I didn't notice any mistakes, and it gave me heart that there's still a chance a native English speaker can become seemingly fluent in "That Awful German Language." Unfortunately as I heard him speak more, I noticed quite frequently errors in his speech, typical errors that someone coming from English makes: a wrong adjective ending here, mixed word order there, he used dative instead of accusative after that one preposition, he said "Hast du eine Entscheidung gemacht?" *wince*. Of course I expect that my grammar is no better and probably worse than his, and naturally I still understood him quite clearly in his "broken German" since it was broken in favor of English; the disappointing thing about it is that my prospective fluency in the German tongue seems to still float quite a few years and a bit of hard work away. Nonetheless, we had a nice chat about himself, foreigners in Munich, and the sad fact that Germans aren't proud of their country.
We stopped at an ice cream parlor, then went back to their place, where we slept that night.

Saturday, July 30: Flight into the Mountains
Anyway, Manfred and Frank came earlier than expected (around 10-11) in the morning, though we did end up staying there so that they could visit - well, Manfred could visit with Martina and Frank could play Xbox with Simon - until about 2ish. We took off in the car, drove in basically a big circle around Munich, then found our way out. We hit some slow traffic heading back westards toward Baden-Württemburg, since it's the first weekend of summer vacation in both Baden-Württemburg and Bavaria. Nonetheless, we made a short pass through Austria and saw a tiny bit of Lake Constance before heading through Zurich and eventually ending in Lucerne, Switzerland. We set up camp in the rain after about 5-6 hours of driving and went out to eat. We had to change money, since the independent Swiss don't use Euros, and even beyond that everything was more expensive in Switzerland. However, it was in the mountains, on a lake, and it was totally beautiful.

Sunday, July 31: William Tell, William Tell, Shoot your arrow, Aim it well
In the morning I accidentally rolled up my sleeping bag and deflated my air matress, thinking we were leaving. Not the case. Instead, we went into the city proper, looked around the old part of town, and called Marina on the cell phone to wish her happy birthday. There were some really old things in the town like a big wooden covered bridge that went across a river, and the old stone city walls, with towers that we could climb and look out of and take big beautiful pictures of the lake and town and mountains out of. Gorgeous. After this, we voted largely against going to an automative/car museum, and instead took a drive around the Vierwaldstätter See, the lake (I don't know its English name) on which Lucerne sits. Geli and Frank slept for quite a bit, but the scenery was beautiful. Road construction in Switzerland unfortunately tends to be tunnels as often as not, and the inside of mountains tends to block the otherwise great view.

Monday, August 1
Onward. It happened to be the equivalent of Switzerland's Fourth of July, so there was much festivity that we saw as the mountains got higher the farther south we went. The views were breathtaking and we ended up on a lake in northern Italy for the night. Upon arrival we learned there were no places left for tents, leaving us to rent a nice small house-like structure for the night.

Tuesday, August 2: Scenes from an Italian Highway
We headed even farther south today. The first part was an ugly flat stretch through Italy that reminded me almost of Iowa. My first glance of the Mediterranean was greeted alongside a 3 to 4 hour traffic delay upon a highway (a literal highway, as in hundreds of feet above the ground, rather than a freeway as in Minnesota) due to a huge accident up ahead. We eventually made it through and got to an okay campsite, although the toilet and shower facilities were, well, not good to say the least. We lounged on the beach, Frank and I swam a bit, and we went out later that night to see the Italian nightlife.

Wednesday, August 3: C'est la vie
We started towards France along the Riviera. Around noonish, we took a break at a beach, did some swimming, some napping, some sunbathing. It was a stark contrast to my own family vacations, which tend to include a lot of running around and doing stuff. I didn't mind it one bit. Unfortunately, as we got to the campground we'd intended to stay at (on the French side, now) we learned that we wouldn't be able to camp there. This was followed by at least an hour of wandering around the area trying to find a campsite to stay at, most of which were full. We went through Monte Carlo and saw some of Nice from the car, two things we hadn't planned to do until tomorrow, but whatever. We ended up finding a real nice place, although it was some distance from the shore, and camped there for the night.

Thursday, August 4
We didn't take down camp, but instead went back towards the coast for the day, stopping and checking out Nice and Cannes, very nice and expensive cities on the French Riviera. We went back to the campsite and had a good time, played some cards; it was a very nice place to stay, and an added plus was that they had kittens there.

Friday, August 5
We took the Napoleon Route, the way the French emperor took coming back from Elba after his banishment. I believe he deliberately chose the most winding and turbulent route possible through the region, because most of us were quite carsick and had to stop fairly often along the stretch. Not to mention that it wasn't very pretty at all. We drove essentially the whole day, ended up at a nice site in Geneva, played with a giant chessboard, and saw Lake Geneva.

Saturday, August 6
Earlier we went into Geneva, which was essentially dead, even the marketplace at noon was lacking. Also, being in the French section, little was in German, so I was lost. We left lacking things to do after seeing all the banks and large lakeside buildings. It was then a decent way through all of Switzerland (again nice scenery) and back home to Ludwigsburg.

Sunday, August 7
Church in the morning followed by some chillin'. We were basically just preparing for my mother to come.

Monday, August 8: Meine Freiheit wird verloren
My mother came at 10:45 or so, really tired since she hadn't slept. We met her and brought her home, she unpacked and laid down briefly, we had lunch, chatted, she met some folks, and we went into town for a real German supper.

Tuesday, August 9
We went through all of Ludwigsburg, starting from the Marktplatz (which was busy with the market, but nothing compared to Saturday) and going to the bank, the train station, my school, and ending up going by the Bärenwiese and through the palace grounds. Somewhere along the wayon the 8th or 9th (can't remember) we took a tour of the palace itself as well.

Wednesday, August 10
Got up early and jumped on a train to Berlin. My mom was covered with poison ivy when she arrived and it had been spreading with little resistance, so she wanted to find a doctor. We also got some schedules for tours and whatnot and walked around parts of the city, the Potsdamer Platz and other areas. It was a cool place but fairly old and dirty.

Thursday, August 11
We finally found a clinic that would take my mother, so we waited there for a long time, and then she was able to get a prescription. The other important part of the day included a long long time spent at the Checkpoint Charlie museum. It was interesting but at the same time really long and drawn out. I was constantly caught in the mix of choosing between reading English and German explanations.

Friday, August 12
We got a bus tour around some of the bigger sites of the city like the Bundestag (house of their parliamentary body) and other parts of the city, some of which we'd seen back on Wednesday. After that we waited a long time for our train to Munich, which was delayed. We finally got it, finding our seats right behind the driver, except for when the train changed directions, at which point we were in the back car facing backwards. We arrived at our hotel by 9 and found a really nice Italian restaraunt.

Saturday, August 13
This day was full of fun fun fun as I took my mom around parts of Munich that I'd seen before. This basically included most of what I did the first time around, I may elaborate on this when I feel like it, but for the short version just read the first few days' worth of entries. Also met up with the group from the Diocese of Duluth at the hotel, really good to see a lot of those guys again.

I'll get on with the rest sometime later, most likely after I'm back in the States...
Auf Wiedersehen.