Beerfest!

The first thing everyone from the US asks us is did we go to Oktoberfest in Munich since it was October.  In Munich, Oktoberfest takes place the last two weeks of September and the first weekend of October.  So no, we did not go.

After arriving in the afternoon, we decided to go for a quick walking tour of the city since the forecast for the next two days was rain and it wasn't raining when we arrived.  First stop, Neue Pinakothek, a museum housing 19th and 20th century artists.  On Sunday's admission is 1 euro per person, and it was worth the price.  We only spent an hour or so at the museum before heading downtown.

Yay for Picasso and for being allowed to take pictures at a museum

Both the Opera house and Residenz were under construction  The main shopping street was neat, although we couldn't afford anything in the shops.  The most impressive building on this street was a huge church with a glockenspiel (but we didn't wait around to see it go off after our disappointment in Graz).  For dinner we ate at a good german beer hall that we later figured out was not the one we were looking for.

The next day was our day off which was good because it rained all day long.  For dinner we found Augustina Braustuben, the beer hall we tried to find the night before.  It was amazing.  There were a couple of barrels of beer leftover from Oktoberfest and it was some of the best beer we've had.  The couple sitting across from us (communal tables) was from Utah and we had a blast chatting with them and eating excellent food (I had kasespaetzle, Andy had roasted pork, pork ravioli, pork meatball and pretzel dumpling).  Dessert was apple beignets that were tasty.  Did I mention it was also our two year wedding anniversary?

On our last day in this area of Germany we took a train down to Fussen where the inspiration for Cinderella's castle came from.  We walked five kilometers from town center to Hohenshangwau, the tourist town set up as base camp for the two castles in the area; Hohenshangwau (now referred to as Hohne) and Neushwanstein (now referred to as Neush).

Hohen was the castle Ludwig II was raised in.  Ludwig II was the ruler of Germany sometime in the 1800s.  When he was king he decided he needed a new castle but loved the area of Fussen so he had Neush built higher up in the same valley as his birth castle.  The best view of this latter castle is from a bridge further up the mountain.

After we got our fill of the amazing castles and scenery, we walked the five kilometers back to the train station and once back in Munich went out for Mexican, which we had been craving for a couple days.  It was really good considering where we were and met the owner who was from San Francisco.  The owner was nice enough to give us a small sample of their guacamole and it was fresh and tasty.

In the morning we took a train and a bus to get to Prague since there was no direct train from Munich.

The hills are alive...

From Vienna we caught the slow train to Salzburg.  If you are in this region of Europe (including Germany) and traveling by train, check out the regional trains which take twice as long to get somewhere but are less than a sixth of the price.  Again our hostel didn't have a kitchen so it was cold sandwiches for dinner. On our way back to the hostel there was a small court with several tents set up and from one of them we bought 2 thai spring rolls for a warm snack.

In the morning we had free breakfast at the hostel (score!) waiting for the rain and cold to let up.  Eventually we headed out to see a little bit of the city, walking through bio-fest (a festival in the center market area), an amazing cemetery, Mozart's birth house, and a famous street which in my notes is called "G-something."  For lunch we switched hostels and our second hostel had a kitchen which meant soup with bread!

The neat cemetery and G street

In the afternoon the sun peeked through a little bit and we headed up the non-castle hill (there are two hills in Salzburg, one has a castle and one doesn't).  The views were amazing.  We hiked 2 km to another lookout and the mountain started getting misty and cold and the path was a dead end and had to hike back out the way we came.

 Mozart's birth house

Musical instruments made from bread 

Dinner was an amazing chili we made in the hostel (amazing because it wasn't pasta and red sauce).  We chatted with some Canadians and Aussies over dinner and then went to bed.

In the morning we caught the train to Munich.

The drinking water on the non-castle hill

Please excuse this post if something doesn't make sense.  It was written while exhausted from a 36 hour transit from Helsinki to New Zealand.

Graz and Vienna

After being dropped off at the train station in Sezana, Slovenia, we took a train all day to arrive in Graz, Austria.  There were two reasons for stopping here.  One: it was too long to go all the way to Vienna in one go from Sezana.  Two: Graz's historic center is an UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Since the hostel in Graz didn't have a kitchen, and the restaurant that was suggested to us had a menu only in German, we picked up sandwich stuff for dinner from the grocery store.  But better than paying three times the price for mystery meals at the restaurant.

In the morning we headed straight to downtown historic Graz.  One of the sights to see, according to Wikitravel, was the glockenspiel, which went off at 11am and 5pm.  We waited around for 10 minutes to see the clock go off at 11 and it was very disappointing.  Wikitravel made it seem more interesting.

See that figure of a man and women?  They just spin around while the bells are chiming. I don't really know what more I expected though.

In the middle of town is a hill where part of a fort still stands.  It had cool views of the city, and an enormous clock tower. And that is all there is to see in Graz.  We headed back to the hostel to catch the 3:30 train to Vienna.  The train ride was incredibly scenic and part of it is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Thankfully our hostel in Vienna had a kitchen (we were really sick of cold sandwiches) so we made pasta with gorgonzola tomato sauce and red pepper. If you see Barilla's gorgonzola tomato sauce in the grocery store, seriously try it. Amazing.

In the morning we walked around downtown Vienna.  There is a giant old church that dominates the downtown square and is free to enter (yay for free stuff).  We walked around Hofburg palace and it's surrounding gardens, which wasn't very impressive, presumably because it's in a city.

The most impressive part of Hofburg palace

For lunch we headed back to the hostel to make stir fry vegetable sandwiches with tuna fish.  In the afternoon we walked to a cute church just around the corner from our hostel and people watched in the park in front of it.

Dinner was again pasta and vegetables but for dessert we decided to splurge and bought a box of three mini frozen chocolate cakes that are heated in the microwave and drizzled with chocolate sauce. Excellent.

Bohinj and the Mines of Moria

Our adventure in Bohinj (pronounced bwah-HEEN) started out by being over zealous and getting off one bus stop before our hostel. Such is the life of a world traveler. After asking the information center where the hostel was we walked two kilometers (hooray for packing light!) to our hostel. It turned out to be quite a nice walk along the lake and got us oriented with the area. Once we arrived we were told the hostel didn't have a kitchen for making our own dinner, so we walked back into town, without backpacks this time, and ate at one of the few restaurants. Katie and I shared a vegetarian pizza and a pint of beer and then walked back to the hostel around dusk. A lot more walking than we had initially planned.

Bohinj just before dusk

The second day started with free breakfast provided by the hostel and a recommendation to hike up and through a canyon towards Mt. Triglav. A few kilometers from the start there is a hut that serves a few dishes for lunch. We each had a generous portion of barley soup with bread while overlooking Mt. Triglav, the tallest mountain in Slovenia.  The rest of our day was spent hiking back down and deciding how far into town we wanted to walk from our hostel for dinner.  Turns out, not very far.  The closest restaurant was a little grill and Katie had nutella pancakes while I had trout (served whole) with vegetables and salad.

Broken bridge and the hut where we had lunch

Checking things out towards the end of our hike

The following day we caught the bus (at the correct bus stop) to the Bohinj Bistrica train station, and then the train to Divaça. One of reasons we were headed to Divaça (via Most Na Soci) was for the train ride through the Julian Alps. The train actually consisted of a train to a bus to a train because a portion of the track was under construction and the bus transfer was a bit of a winding and harrowing cliffside ride.

View across the street while waiting for the bus in Bohinj

We didn't have reservations for a place to stay in Divaça but we had emailed a bed and breakfast a day or two earlier.  We hadn't heard back from the bed and breakfast before we left in the morning but figured since it was the off season we would be able to turn up and get a room, or at least a recommendation for a place to stay. Once we arrived we walked three kilometers on the side of a major roadway to the general area we thought the bed and breakfast was in and, after asking for directions, found it closed. Crap. Here we were in BFE Slovenia with no place to stay and we had just walked three kilometers from the train station. We weighed our options: go back to the train station and stay at one of two hotels (probably expensive), go back to the train station and try to catch a train to a more major city with a hostel, cry, or try to find some other place to stay near our current location. Just as we were about to pickup our backpacks and execute plan X (I can't remember what we decided) the door to the bed and breakfast opened. What a relief. Tamara said she had emailed us back that morning to say they had a room for us, but we never got it because we were on the train.

The room was lovely, breakfast the next morning was fantastic (orange juice, tea, yogurt with dried bananas and honey, toasted bread, cheeses, meats, homemade peach jelly, and honey on the front porch) and we were right by the caves.

To see the caves you have to be part of a tour.  This isn't Lurray Caverns to be sure (one of two caves I have been to before this).  In the main cave the distance from floor to ceiling was 100 meters (328 feet).  A river ran for two kilometers through the cave system.  And best of all, the walking path was halfway up the wall and illuminated every 10 feet or so by a small light, giving the illusion of being in a dwarf cave.  It was like we were in the Mines of Moria.  Amazing.

No pictures were allowed in the caves but that didn't stop me from snapping a few terrible ones. If you google for Skocjan Caves you're bound to find some better ones.

At noon our delightful B&B owner picked us up from the caves and drove us to Sezana where we could catch the train to Graz, Austria, our next destination.

Ljubljana and Bled

Slovenia, the final frontier. Oops, sorry wrong blog post.

It was an eight hour train ride from Budapest to Ljubljana (pronounced Lube-ee-yana), Slovenia but we stocked up on drinks, snacks and entertainment beforehand so it wasn't too bad. When we arrived at the hostel after being on the train all day we were informed it was free pancake night. Wahoo! We each had a couple of pancakes (what we would call crepes) with bananas and nutella.

One of a few photos taken in Ljubljana

Whoever wrote the wikitravel entry for Ljubljana probably said it best - Ljubljana doesn't have any must-see sights, it's just a pretty, medium-sized european capital. We spent the next day wandering around the old town; over the triple bridge, up to the castle and into Tivoli park in the afternoon. The next morning we caught a bus to Bled.

If you read anything about Bled before arriving your expectations will be set pretty damn high and Bled certainly doesn't disappoint. A picturesque town with a castle on a cliff overlooking a clear, bright blue lake containing a small island with a church.

After settling into our hostel and having lunch we took the walking path around the lake. About halfway around we rented a small rowboat and rowed around the lake and island for an hour. We walked around the rest of the lake and stopped for ice cream before heading back to the hostel for dinner. Dinner was ravioli with a jar of what we assumed was a white cream sauce with mushrooms - this cream sauce turned out to be mushroom gravy, but it was still edible.

Before heading off to Bohinj the second day we wanted to check out Vintgar Gorge. Our hostel had free bikes we could borrow so we took a couple of them and rode through the countryside towards the gorge. The ride to the gorge was just as beautiful as the gorge itself, which was a popular tourist spot even in the pseudo-offseason. After checking out the gorge and the clear blue waters below teeming with fish we rode back into town. For lunch we made delicious wraps with tunafish and sautéed red pepper and onion. After lunch we had just a thirty minute bus ride to Bohinj.

Vintgar Gorge

A Day or Two Off in Budapest

When we were in Chiang Mai, Thailand earlier this year a group of us were discussing where we had been, where we were going and long term travel in general. A german guy by the name of Tim probably put it best when he said: "You have to think of it like a job. You're not working five days a week any more, now you're traveling seven days a week. Sometimes you just have to take a day off."

A day off.

After an outstanding eight day tour of Italy with my parents, as well as a two day whirlwind side trip to Napoli it was time for a break. As luck would have it the hostel scene in Budapest is quite competitive and we were getting there just at the beginning of the off-season. We booked a private room at a really nice hostel with a lot of character for less than at many of the dorm beds we had stayed in western europe. We spent the first day or so just lazying about the hostel, catching up on the internet and resting.

Not a picture of us lazing around

Hero's square

The second day consisted of organizing our train tickets to Slovenia and some general wandering around the city on foot (as we tend to do). We checked out the old Hapsburg palace (see above picture) and Hero's square where there happened to be some sort of small time military presentation going on (involving a South Korean flag). On the way back from our walk we stopped at Eco cafe and shared a brownie and smoothie.

The staff at the hostel was extremely helpful and the woman that was working the first two days of our stay recommended some hungarian dishes to try and a general idea of where we could get them. Around seven we set off for the restaurant street and had a really nice hungarian meal which was lesco for Katie (tomato, onion and green pepper dish) and goulash soup and paprika chicken for me. All of our food was really tasty and relatively cheap.

Katie's lesco

Andy's paprika chicken over noodles with obligatory sour cream

Finally on the last day we were real tourists and spent most of the day exploring the city. We took tram 2 along the river (basically a tourist tram) and walked over the bridge onto the island in the middle of the river. The island is a big park with cycling and walking paths as well as a huge fountain that dances (sort of) to various classical pieces. There was a sign that listed the songs in the order and groups that they were played but neither of us were astute enough to be able to figure out where in the list we were.

On the walk back to the hostel we stopped at Budapest's big marketplace with the intention of getting sandwich ingredients but were side tracked by langos - a traditional hungarian sweet that the hostel staff had recommended to us. The best way I can describe it is fried dough with anything and everything put on top of it. There is also a heavy focus on sour cream in hungarian food, which is a big change from no sour cream at all in western europe. We got one langos with sour cream and cheese and a second with fired bananas and nutella.

Langos

After almost finishing both langos we grabbed our bread, meat and veggies from the market and headed back to the hostel. Later in the day we took the metro across town (to the Buda side) and walked up a hill to check out the castle/tourist area. This may have been the start of some minor oh-look-another-amazing-building-and-or-castle fatigue, but there were nice views of the city nonetheless. We hoofed it back to the hostel (extremely long walk) and had some couscous and leftover lesco for dinner.

If you read all of that, congratulations! That was extremely long - on to Slovenia!

It's that time again!

Fotodump Friday!  Hooray!

Andy:

I like the sky in this picture of the tower in Florence.

A view out of the colosseum in Rome

And more of the colosseum.

Katie:

An alternative view of the Duomo in Florence.

I love the stickers that people put on the signs in Euope.  Very creative.

A super cool t-rex.

What kind of roast bred should we have?  Or should we have the rost bred instead?