Germany & Austria Trip: Vienna

The very last stop on our Germany & Austria trip was to Vienna.  We heard wonderful things about the city, and it really was gorgeous!

As with many of these european cities, the cathedral is at the heart of the city.

There are a few architectural buildings in town that hold a lot of importance - every tour book will tell you about all the classical buildings, but thankfully I knew of two modern buildings in Vienna that we took detours to see.

The first was the Adolf Loos building.  He was revolutionary because he thought that "Ornament was Crime."  When classically designed buildings with gilded columns and cornets and superfluous decoration were all the rage, Loos made a statement with his plain and simple buildings.  In the 1920s, this was really forward thinking, and I enjoyed getting to see his work.

We also saw the Secession Building - another important work in for Modern architecture.  It was created to house forward thinking artwork - much of it Art Nouveau, but other design work as well.

Vienna is known for it's dark and brooding coffee houses - so we found one, and enjoyed sitting for a few hours eating and drinking while we escaped the crush of people in the streets.

Found another christmas market in front of town hall!  But by this time, we were pretty christmas market-ed out.  We quickly strolled through a couple of them here, but didn't spend much time eating, drinking or exploring any of them in Vienna.  They were so full of people we could barely get through, which made it hard to enjoy.  We were really glad for our other experiences in more calm markets earlier in the trip.

I will mention one very important classical building - the Vienna Opera House.

This building is not only important for it's architecture, but primarily for how many operas they put on in a year, and how successful it is at performance.  

Amazingly, one can get into a world-famous opera house for the low low price of 4 euros!  It's standing room only, but when the standing room is on the ground floor with a direct view of the entire stage (when you're directly behind thousand euro seats and directly underneath the King's box) it's completely worth it!  We saw a really weird opera, but it was still cool to get to be part of the whole opera going experience.

Of all the places that we visited on this trip, Vienna was the most completely overrun with tourists, and large annoying tour groups.  It is a beautiful town, and I realize I'm a tourist too, but it really got to me in this city!  I was ready to head home after being in Vienna, which was a good thing, I think.  Once we got back, we started gearing up for Christmas, which as you've seen, was wonderful!

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Germany & Austria Trip: Salzburg

After Garmish, we headed to Salzburg, right over the border in Austria.

This is the view of Salzburg's Fortress & much of the downtown area.  We ate lunch at a mountaineers hut, and got some fantastic views. 

Our cute lunch spot.

Somehow, I managed to pick the ugliest hotel in the world.  This is only a quarter of our room - I should have gotten some photos of our lime and forest green bathroom...

Salzburg is primarily known to Americans because of 2 reasons - The Sound of Music was filmed there, and Mozart was born there.  The gardens above were in some of the scenes from the movies, but that's our extent of experiencing the Sound of Music.  We were not very interested in being tourists in this city.

This was a cool pedestrian street with special address markers for all the shops.  It was beautiful all lit up for Christmas.

We did successfully find another christmas market, where we again enjoyed hot mulled wine (Brian got extra shots in his) and some of the local fare.

Our last major stop in Salzburg was a giant monastery that also housed a traditional beer hall.  You took your own mugs from a shelf, paid for your beer, rinsed the mug, then brought it to a monk to be filled with beer.  I was picturing guys with brown robes & their heads shaved, but these were more like Rich, wearing an apron and a sweatshirt, happily serving beer up.

There were probably 6 rooms this large full of people eating, smoking, and drinking liters of beer.  No live music like at the Haufbrau Haus, but probably more realistic as to what a beer hall would have been like in the past!


Salzburg was a cute town, but totally overrun with tourists, and things to suck tourists in with.  The weather was also really nasty (cold, raining, and windy) the whole time we were there, so I don't have the warm fuzzies towards Salzburg that some might.  Still, we had an enjoyable time there.

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Germany & Austria Trip: Garmish-Partenkirchen

After Munich, we headed to the small boarder town of Garmish-Partenkirchen, which lies in the southern heart of Bavaria.  It's primarily known as a ski town, but we arrived to early in the season for any outdoor sports.  But, we really enjoyed the laid back setting of a very small town.

Tiny, dark restaurant that had such great food that we went there both nights we were in town.

The Partenkirchen part of the town is known for it's charming downtown lined with beautifully painted houses.

There isn't much to do in this little town, but there was a nice hike into the mountains that could be done.  We opted for a cable car ride up and a hike back down.

It was snowing those big beautiful flakes when we started... but by the time we finished a lot of it had melted off.

It was a gorgeous hike.

The main attraction was this very thin gorge - we're at one of the widest points in the picture above.  There was a walkway carved along the river's edge, so we enjoyed the crazy rock formations and tight walking conditions.

In 1936, Garmish-Partenkirchen hosted the ski jump part of the olympics.

After our hike, we headed back to the center of town to enjoy a hot cheese fondue at the Christmas Market.  In Munich, there were hundreds of stalls selling all kinds of items.  In Garmish, I think there were about 15 stalls - but we liked that even better.  We're glad we spent some time in a village - so often, we head to the big cities when we travel because A. they are easiest to get to and B. there seems to be the most information written about things to do in big cities.  But little towns have charm & a quality of life that is appealing and enjoyable to be part of, even if it is only for a couple of days.

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Germany & Austria Trip: Dachau

About 15 kilometers outside of Munich is the town of Dachau, which formerly had a concentration camp within it's city limits.  It has been made into a large memorial which we took advantage of visiting while we were close.  I'm so impressed, and I highly respect that the Germans have chosen to acknowledge this dark part of their history openly.  All the sights relating to the holocaust have been made open, freely, to the public, and visitors are provided with extensive information about the realities of what happened in these awful places.

Example of the sleeping quarters.

I know my mother remembers when I was young - I used to read so much about the holocaust.  I don't know what it was that fascinated me about it, but coming to this place brought a new reality to all those books I had read.

The ovens.

This building was composed of a single long hall - which housed dissidents and played host to terrible things.

The entry gate "Work Will Set You Free"

The main entry hall for prisoners - now converted into a museum.

The gas chamber, which was never used.

This is the plaque at the main entrance to the entire memorial grounds.  There have been several memorials placed within the grounds of the former camp - a new church, statutes to those murdered, and plaques with quotes or names on them - all to remember and honor those who were here.

Although this is not a typically festive post as I usually prefer to do, I think it's necessary to show these pictures too.  It was a sobering day for Brian and I, but I was thankful to have the opportunity to see this place and try to wrap my head around the evil that took place here.

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December trip to Germany & Austria: Munich

For the first week in December, Brian had a whole week off due to holidays for the Constitution & for the Immaculate conception (I love Spanish holidays?), so we decided to head to Germany, Bavaria & Austria for the week.  We have loved Germany each time we've visited, and this trip didn't disappoint!  In the tradition of the last series of posts, I'll break it down and publish a new post every couple days.

First: Munich

Germany has Christmas Markets hosted in many towns' main square, and the one in Munich was pretty great!  There's lots of knick-knack type items, but you can find some cool things.  We mostly found food and drink, surprise, surprise.

{Munich Christmasmarket}

You can also find hot mulled wine everywhere, which is delicious.  They serve it in these coffee cups your grandparents would have had in their cupboard, and you pay a $2 deposit for them when you order the wine - so if you want to keep the cups, it's a cheap souvenir!  We found a couple of these boot cups and took them home with us.

The Haufbrau Haus is something of an institution in Munich - traditional Bavarian Beer Hall with food and drink, a live brass band playing, and lots of singing and shouting all day and night long.  We had such a wonderful time there, getting into the spirit of the Bavarians!

 A Liter of beer!

Pork Knuckle with Saurkraut and spicy mustard.

Can you tell Brian is in heaven after eating that? The glazed over eyes is not just because the picture is blurry...

Munich also is home to BMW Headquarters, so we thought we should check it out on our second day in town.

They have an architecturally important and very cool exhibition hall that was built just a few years ago - I remember reading about it in one of my architecture magazines and really wanting to see it.  I'm amazed that I've actually gotten the chance now!  While we were there, a group of Chinese tourists had arranged to have a guy on a dirt bike ride around the Welt - up and down stairs and around the whole inside of the building.  Kind of weird.

When we arrived at the BMW campus, they were just about to start a plant tour - so we got to do one of the COOLEST things I've ever done - we spent 2 hours walking through the plant, watching the cars start from sheets of metal, formed into panels, painted, components made, and assembled.  It was fascinating.  We weren't allowed to take photos - but you wouldn't believe how clean, organized, silent, and beautiful it was in there. 

We also went and spent a day at the Deutsches Museum - which is the technology museum of Munich. - AMAZING.  Exhibits on planes, electricity, boats, mining, communications... it's impossible to see everything in this museum, but I'd have to say it is the single coolest museum I've ever been to.  After seeing dozens of art museums (which are nice, but get boring after a while), it was really fascinating to get to see technology and understand so many different kinds of it up close.  I loved it!  (But you wouldn't be surprised how many women were wandering around bored, waiting for their husbands...)

The olympic stadium from 1972.

I loved the HaufBrau Haus so much that we went back a second time before we left Munich for Garmish-Partenkirchen.  It was great, again.

I realize I probably say this too much about too many cities, but I really liked Munich.  I didn't really expect to like it that much, to be honest, but with the Christmas Market, BMW plant, and the Deutsches Museum, we got to do things that we've never done before, and the city didn't feel overwhelmed with tourists (like some of the other cities we visited on this trip).  We took a more laid-back approach to tourism as well, as we were burned out on touristy stuff, and we had a whole week of sightseeing ahead of us.  It helped keep us in good spirits for the rest of the trip.

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