October 2011

October 5, 2011October 5, 2011

Swiss Banknote Series: 200 Franc Note

Charles Ferdinand Ramuz (1878-1947)

Information from Wikipedia:

Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz (September 24, 1878 – May 23, 1947) was a French-speaking Swiss writer.

He was born in Lausanne in the canton of Vaud and educated at the University of Lausanne. He taught briefly in nearby Aubonne, and then in Weimar, Germany. In 1903, he left for Paris and remained there until World War I, with frequent trips home to Switzerland. In 1903, he published Le petit village, a collection of poems.

In 1914, he returned to Switzerland, where he lived a retired life devoted to his writing.

He wrote the libretto for Igor Stravinsky’s Histoire du soldat.

He died in Pully, near Lausanne in the year 1947.

Today the note bearing his likeness will get a family of 5 (including three kids under the age of 8 and two adults with Half-Fare cards) from Füssen, Germany to Bern Switzerland on the excellent SBB rail system (with a little left over for snacks on the train).

October 2, 2011March 31, 2013

Legos and Castles

Once we got to Legoland, the kids were in heaven. We stayed at the Legoland Holiday Village where even our room number was made out of legos. There were things for kids to do everywhere — themed playgrounds in each suite of cabins, a ropes course, and a 4-wheel race track. A short 5-minute walk got us to Legoland, where even more fun awaited. We had lost most of our first day traveling, so we wasted no time getting over there to check it out.

Legoland has several themed areas with rides for kids, play areas, shops, and everything made out of Legos. One of our favorite areas was called miniland, where there were miniaturized European cities and landmarks made completely out of Legos, including Switzerland, the Netherlands, Berlin, Neuschwanstein castle, oh and, oddly, some famous scenes from Star Wars. It was my favorite area, but I was suprised that the kids also thought it was really cool.

We were lucky to have gorgeous weather while we were there, and since it was off-season there were no crowds or lines. So, even though we had limited time, the kids were able to go on every ride they wanted (several times in some cases). Unfortunately, Henry got bowled over by a teenage boy and face-planted into the pavement. But, other than that, the kids all had a blast. They also spent their hard-earned allowance money in the Lego store. And before we knew it, it was time to move on to our next destination.

We took buses and trains from Günzberg to Hohenschwangau, Germany, home of the international tourist attraction – Neuschwanstein castle. Hohenschwangau is incredibly beautiful, but it feels like a different world. We heard almost no German being spoken, mostly English, Chinese and Japanese. There are packed hotels, souvenier stores on every corner, and lots of huge tour buses. There are many South Asian staff at the hotels and restaurants wearing dirndls. Somehow, it doesn’t quite add up.

But, we had a very nice family suite in a hotel with a view of the castle, and our visit was still filled with several memorable experiences. Saturday morning, we took the kids up to Neuschwanstein on a horse-drawn carriage. We toured the castle with a lot of very friendly and patient English-speaking people from America, Australia, and Britain who all thought Henry was adorable and forgave his disruptions. After the tour, we hiked over to the Marienbrücke, a stunning footbridge spanning a mountain waterfall with a beautiful view of the castle. We descended back to town where we ate lunch at an outdoor restaurant on the Alpsee, the blue lake nestled in the mountains. It was idyllic except for the previously mentioned incident at the end of the meal.

The boys were a little castled-out and preferred to stay at the hotel to nap and play with their Legos. So, Emily and I visited the lesser-known

castle of Hohenschwangau. It is smaller than Neuschwanstein, but has more history as the summer and hunting residence of the Wittelsbach Bavarian royal family. We all watched the sunset over the lake and the castles, which was a beautiful way to end our German vacation.

We took so many pictures during this part of the trip. The best ones are in our gallery, which can be seen here.

October 2, 2011March 31, 2013

Oktoberfest

Oktoberfest.

Just the word conjures up visions of giant soft, chewy pretzels, liter steins of beer, and throngs of Germans clad in lederhosen and dirndls.

Well, it’s all true.

Sarah and I took the kids to Munich to experience Oktoberfest, since we had held an Oktoberfest celebration at our house every year for the past three years. Sarah wrote about how we took the kids for a day of carnival rides and cookies, but the next night, Sarah and I got a babysitter (a saint from Canada named Chantal who had just moved to Munich), dressed up in our best trachten and grabbed the U-Bahn to the Theresienwiese to experience Oktoberfest first hand. And let me tell you, the U-Bahn stop at Theresienwiese during Oktoberfest is wall-to-wall Kraut. You must lose all sense of personal space to brave this crowd.

Like most things, Oktoberfest is now a mutated, bloated, exorbitant continuation of what once was intended as a commemorative celebration of the marriage of Crown Prince Ludwig (soon King Ludwig I) to his bride, Princess Therese of Saxony-Hildburghausen. The marriage took place on October 12, 1810 and the people of Munich were invited to participate in the festivities including horse races. As the horse race was repeated annually, the tradition of Oktoberfest was born.

Oktoberfest features only beer brewed by the six major brewers to brew within the city of Munich (known as the Big Six by me, if no one else): Hofbrau, Spaten, Paulaner, Hacker-Pschorr, Löwenbräu, and Augustiner. You can usually get Weizenbeir, Helles, and of course, the special Oktoberfest beers at the festival. Liter mugs (ein Maß in German) are mandatory and rarely is anything else sold (or tolerated).

Sarah and I found our way to several tents that all claimed to have reserved seating (though I argued that present paying customers were much better than customers yet to come). You see, at Oktoberfest they will not serve you unless you are seated. So it is not uncommon, if you have a table, for a waiter to escort a pretty young fräulein to your table, sit her down momentarily, exchange beer for money, and then she will get up and walk away. This works with one or two people, but larger groups must find a table to sit at.

Eventually we found our seats in the outdoor biergarten of the Schottenhamel tent, a Spaten establishment (one of Sarah and my favorites, and widely available in the U.S. in case you would like to try). We were seated with a group of biology researchers from Munich, across from some Italians from Rome, and a table from some highly inebriated Scots.

We ate, drank, and sang to our hearts delight. Eventually, two nice older couples from Rome were seated next to us. They spoke no German, but understood some of my Spanish. I almost had a seizure trying to translate their Italian into English, and back into German in order to help them order food for the night. They were very appreciative of our efforts, anyway.

After we drank a few liters we went on to the notorious Hofbrauhaus tent. It is known as the place where loud, obnoxious foreigners (i.e. Australians) go to party. I don’t know where these people were from, but as soon as Sarah and I hit the dance floor everyone seemed to want to take pictures with us. We felt like celebrities (but knew we weren’t).

We finally made it back to the U-Bahn and headed back home. We knew we had gotten the full Oktoberfest experience. If only King Ludwig himself could see the party he’s started.

October 1, 2011March 31, 2013

Lunch on the Alpsee

Sarah is going to kill me for posting this; I’m supposed to be writing about our time at Oktoberfest, but when something occurs like this, you have got to get it down before the moment passes.

We have moved on to very southern Bavaria where we planned to take the kids to see Schloss Neuschwanstein. The morning was decorated with horse-drawn carriage rides, a castle tour, and a lovely wooded hike, and will be covered in another post. We had decided to go to lunch on the Alpsee, and found the perfect little café with outdoor seating. We ordered delicious food, ate and drank in the shadow of King Ludwig II, and decided to let Emily and James go play on the shores of the lake.

Then we noticed Henry had a look on his face. This kind of look, when given by a two-year-old, is often accompanied by a smell. And this was no exception. Only parents will understand what I mean when I say that, what we noticed next indicated that the situation had gone from an unpleasant inconvenience, to an all out emergency. Henry had boiled over.

I raced him upstairs to the woefully unequipped bathroom by the idyllic shores of the Alpsee, stripped him naked and proceeded to bathe him in one sink while washing his clothes in the other. After a heroic effort of cleaning and drying him, he found his mother outside the bathroom with a warm jacket and lots of hugs. I proceeded to clean the walls, floors, and counters and we took him downstairs (strategically washing stairs along the way).

Back on the terrace we found, to our surprise, that we had forgotten about Emily and James. And now, they were nowhere to be found. Sarah scoured the shoreline while I raced Henry back to the hotel. Fortunately the cleaning lady found me in the hallway and told me that my two kids had come home early and she let them in.

I found Emily and James in their room playing with their new Lego sets, and they told me what happened to them. Emily said they thought we were coming down to the water to throw stones with them, but when they looked up, we were both gone. They talked about it, and decided to walk back to the hotel to find us (a very smart move on their part), but were stopped, “by a group of black-haired people who just wanted to take pictures with Emily.”

Asian tourists. They can’t get enough of blond children.