Women's World Cup

The day after we got back from London we had tickets to go see the Women's World Cup game, New Zealand Vs. Mexico, with our friend Christian.  We've met up with Christian and his girlfriend, Sabrina, a few times.  Shanna works with Christian, and they are both really nice people.  They are German, and Sabrina isn't entirely comfortable speaking English, so it's nice to practice with her.  She practices her English and we practice our German.  Neither Shanna nor I are into soccer, but we both wanted to see a game live since we live here now and soccer is so huge in Europe.

That day, while Shanna was at work, I ran around getting things ready.  I went to the Commissary to get sandwiches for the three of us, as well as ice & drinks for the cooler.  You can't have a proper Soccer experience with out doing some tailgating first. :)  That afternoon I picked both of them up from work and we hit the road.  Sinsheim is only about an hour away, but we were worried about what traffic might be like.  Thankfully there was none, so we got there around 4:45, and the game started at 6:15, so we had time to eat our dinner and tailgate a little.

When it got closer to kickoff time, we started to walk to the Arena.  We weren't sure what to expect in terms of fan turn out since neither team playing is European, but there were a TON of Mexico fans there.

  Rhein-Neckar Arena is relatively new, having been built in 2009.  Since it was so new, we were surprised about how small it was.  We're used to American Football stadiums, where they typically hold between 70,000 - 90,000 people.  This stadium held a max of 25,000 people.  The nice part of that was there weren't really any bad seats.  We got the cheap 30 Euro seats and had a great view.  When we got up to the stadium, Christian had to pick up his tickets from the Will Call booth, so I took the time to snap a few pictures of the Arena.

I was a little disappointed with our seats.  From the diagram where I picked our seats, it made it look like we were picking the two seats closest to the aisle.  In reality, the section we were in merged with the section next to us, so instead of being on the end, we were in the middle, seatwise.  It ended up not being too big a deal, though, since there was plenty of leg room.  Before the game started Christian, who was sitting behind us, took a picture.

The game was a lot of fun.  I've tried watching it on TV, but unless I have a vested interest in a team (like we did with the US during the World Cup last year and the Women's World Cup this year), I just can't get into it.  While I don't have any vested interested in Mexico or New Zealand, that rule doesn't really apply when you go to a live game.  I can get into any sport when you're in a crowd that's going nuts.  Based on people dressed up, it looked like there were more people supporting Mexico.  Mexico was the favored team and scored the first goal fast, less then 2 minutes into the game.  They scored again right before half time and it looked like it was going to be a 2-0 blowout.

The second half was a completely different game.  New Zealand's defense showed up, but their offense was still sputtering.  With 10 minutes left in regulation, it was still 2-0 and people started leaving the stadium.  This game is the reason you NEVER leave before the game ends when a comeback is realistic.  With less then a minute left in regulation, New Zealand scored.  For those not familiar with Soccer rules, when regulation ends, they add "extra" time.  The clock never stops, so when there are penalties or other reasons that would stop a clock in other games, they take note of the length of time, and add it to the end.  So now New Zealand is down 2-1, and they add 2 minutes of extra time on.  With less then 10 seconds left in extra time, New Zealand scores and ties it up.  That's how the game ended, in a tie.  Normally a tie wouldn't be that interesting, but the fact that they scored all their points to tie it with less then 3 minutes left in the game made it interesting.  We found out later that Mexico had to win to advance to the quarter finals round...if they lost or tied, they were out, so with this being a tie, they were going home.

With how excited the New Zealand team & fans were, you'd think they'd won the World Cup.  They were only playing for pride at this point, having lost all their previous games.  After the game was over, as we were filing out, the New Zealand team ran around the stadium waving to everyone, and the New Zealand fans in the crowd went nuts, waving their flag & cheering.

Overall it was a lot fun.  I wish we could have gotten tickets to Germany or the US, but it was still a lot of fun.

We didn't take enough pictures to warrant a full picture page, so click any pictures above to see a higher resolution version.  The next post probably won't be until early August.  There's not much planned until the last week in July when two of our friends, Kimber & Josh, are coming to visit and staying until early August.

London

I can't believe I completely forgot about posting about London!  Sorry for the delay. :)  For July 4th weekend, Shanna & I did something called a "blind booking" with German Wings, a local airline.  You pick a group of cities, and you don't know where you're going until you finalize the booking.  The major reason we did it was because the fares are dirt cheap...60 Euros for a round trip ticket.  Our friends Adam & Penny also booked with us.

The flights were cheap for a reason, we flew out Friday evening at 7:30pm and were flying home at 8am on Monday.  But with how expensive London is, plus the exchange rate which is even worse then the dollar to Euro rate, we were ok with only spending 2 full days there.

On Friday afternoon I dropped the dogs off, and when Shanna came home from work, we took the train to the airport and met up with Adam & Penny.  The flight was smooth, and at 8pm local time we touched down in London.  The first thing I noticed when we got off the plane was how nice it was to see everything in English.  The money was also a bit confusing.  The bills were easy enough to figure out, but the coins didn't make sense.  The Euro coins are easy, the smallest coin is the penny, and the size increases as the value increases, with the biggest coin being the 2 Euro coin.  With the British coins, the size had nothing to do with the value.  The 1 pound coin was a fraction of the size of the 50 and 10 cent pieces.  Needless to say we paid with bills whenever possible and ended up with a ton of coins at the end of the weekend.  After going through Customs, we hopped on a train into London.  We eventually got to Liverpool Street Station, which is a major hub in London's public transportation.

We eventually made it to our hotel, but it had been a long day, especially for Shanna since she had worked that day.  We crashed as soon as we checked in, around 11pm.

The next day we arranged to meet up with Adam & Penny at our first stop, the British Museum.  The outside architecture of the museum was just as impressive as it's contents inside.

Inside they had treasures from civilizations long gone, as well as from relatively modern history.  The biggest draw had to be the Rosetta Stone, the tablet that broke the code of the Egyptian Hieroglyphs.

They also had artifacts from the Parthenon, Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, etc...  One piece that I found fascinating was the Chronometer from the HMS Beagle, the ship Darwin sailed on when exploring the Galapagos Islands.

We had arranged to meet up for lunch around noon after we had explored the museum, and headed to a Victorian pub I'd read about called the Princess Louise.  The inside of it was beautiful, by far one of the nicest pubs I've ever been in.

At 2pm we met up with a tour group I'd found that was guided by a person (instead of an audio guide) and it ran for 2 hours, showing some of the best sights of London.  We started off walking to the Tower of London as he gave us the history of it.  Next we headed to a dock on the Thames where we hopped on a boat that would take us to Westminster.  While we waited for the boat to arrive our guide pointed out the HMS Belfast docked across the river.  It's now a museum, and is noted for the fact that it was the first ship to fire on the beaches of Normandy on D-Day.

On the river we saw Tower Bridge, went under London Bridge, and saw the famous London Eye, the huge Ferris wheel that gives you a great view of the city.  Eventually we got to Westminster and docked next to Parliament and Big Ben.

After disembarking we continued our tour at Westminster Abbey.  On the entrance they had carvings of "heroes", and the only non-British person on there is Martin Luther King, Jr.  Next we headed to Queen Anne Street, one of the oldest in London.  Of course, the house on the street that got everyone's attention was Sting's.

We then took a stroll through Green Park where we saw Buckingham Palace, as well as a pretty view of London and the London Eye.

When the tour ended, it was around 5pm.  We didn't have anything else planned for the evening, so we headed over to Piccadilly Circus, the part of London that is modeled after Times Square in New York.  We grabbed dinner at a pub there, then walked over to the M&M store.  Shanna & I had really liked the one in New York City that we went to a few years back, so we all wanted to check out this one too.

After walking around there we decided to take a double decker bus back to the area where Adam & Penny were staying (they were in a different hotel) to check out some of the pubs there.  We had to change buses a few times, but the first bus we got on had the entire upper portion empty, so we got to sit at the very front and see an interesting view of London as we drove around.  We eventually got to their hotel area, found an Irish Pub, and ended the night there.

The next morning we all agreed we wanted to sleep in a bit.  We had a full English Breakfast at our hotel, then met up with Adam & Penny back at Piccadilly.  We walked through the shops, including the Apple Store in London!

Since we'd all had a huge breakfast, we skipped lunch and headed over to the discount show ticket booths.  Our options were limited since it was Sunday, but the decision eventually came down to Lion King and Shrek: The Musical.  Since Shanna & I had already seen Lion King, we decided to see Shrek while they saw the Lion King musical.  It was a lot of fun...we even bought the Shrek ears they were selling.

The acting was great, and we had a blast.  After we got out we all went our separate ways.  Penny & Adam wanted to explore Piccadilly more, and Shanna & I wanted to check out a brew pub in the area called Porterhouse Brewing Company.  The brew pub was a lot of fun.  They had great beer, good food, live music, and a festive atmosphere.

That was our last stop of the night.  When we left the pub, we took a cab back to the hotel.  The cab driver was friendly, and talked with us the whole ride back.  The next morning came VERY early.  We got up at 4am, and were checked out by 5:15am.  I laughed when I asked the hotel clerk if the Tube trains were running at that time.  He said "To be honest, I've never taken the train this early, so I'm not sure".  We didn't risk it, and just took the bus that stopped outside of our hotel to Liverpool Street Station.  Adam & Penny were there, and we all hopped on the train to the airport.

The London trip was a lot of fun, and I'd like to go back again in the off season.  The only complaint we had was the ridiculous amount of people using the Tubes.  We were packed in like sardines with every ride.

You can click here or any pictures above to see all the pictures we took in London.

Ritterspiele and Concert

Over the past week we've done a few things, but nothing that, by itself, was post worthy.  But since the last post was at the beginning of June, and the next one won't be until the first week in July when we get back from England, I thought I'd make a post out of this past week.

Last weekend was a pretty relaxed one.  Saturday night we went out with our friends Jenny & Chris and saw the Hangover 2.  It wasn't bad...if you liked the first one, the second is more of the same.  Afterwards we found a small pub with live music to enjoy a few beers at.  The only other big thing of note for that weekend was our friends Kimber & Josh booked their plane tickets to come visit in late July...we both can't wait to see them again, and show them around.  It's going to be a travel packed two weeks with them, with Berlin, Switzerland, and Austria on the agenda.

This past Tuesday was a concert I've been waiting for a month to see.  Back home, in Springfield, VA, there was a small club that a lot of big name Metal bands used to play at, that I loved.  It was a small venue, so no matter where you were, you had a good view.  Ever since I moved here I've been looking for a place like that, and finally found it...Die Roehr.  Two bands that I really like were playing, so I got there about 30 minutes early and was able to watch practically right in front of the stage.  Below is a picture I snapped to give you an idea of how close I was.

It was a lot of fun, and I will definitely check their calendar out periodically to see who is playing.

The venue was located near the Hauptbahnhof (Main Train Station) and I saw it from the back side, which I'd never seen at night before.  I thought it looked kind of neat, so I took a picture of it.

Friday night was the birthday of a friend of ours.  Jesse was a guy I met the same night I met Shanna, at the Kickball pre-season meetup.  He, myself, and Shanna were friends in DC, but a year after we met him, he moved to Miami for work.  Fast forward two years later, and two weeks after we moved here to Stuttgart, he moved to Heidelberg for work.  That's a little over an hour away, so we've seen him a few times over the past year, but not too often.  Two months ago, though, he found out his contract wasn't being renewed and was able to find a job here in Stuttgart.  Now he lives less then a 5 minute walk from our house.  Friday was his bday, so he told Shanna & I about a get together he was going to.  Some friends from work were going, but the majority of the group consisted of an expat meetup group he'd joined.  Every week they meet up at a different restaurant for dinner & drinks.  Since I found out from Jesse about it, my assumption was it was a group of American expats.  While the majority were Americans, there were people from all over Europe in the group, including England, Ireland, Russia, Bulgaria, Poland, and Sweden.  It was a lot of fun talking with everyone and practicing my German with them.  I even made a few contacts with people working on base that might be able to help me find a job here.  I had fun at one point in the night talking about our favorite computer games from the 80's and 90's with two guys from Ireland.

Saturday was the Ritterspiele, a medieval festival / market in the nearby town of Horb am Neckar.  I have to admit, I was disappointed.  The website made it look huge and showed all kinds of jousting competitions and other events that they couldn't do this year because the fair grounds were in use by a garden show.  So this year was a smaller scale then previous years.  It's too bad, because that's what I was excited about seeing.  It was still fun wandering the old town area with the medieval vendors set up though.  We got to try this spiced honey wine called Met that was pretty good!  We even ended up meeting a friend from Shanna's work there.  He'd been in a nearby town getting some work done on his car and when he left, he decided to go for a drive.  He saw directional signs for the fest, and checked it out.  When he parked, he remembered Shanna mentioning something about a festival we were going to this weekend, and gave her a call...turns out he stumbled upon the same fest we were driving to. We found him when we got there and he walked around with us.

Murphy isn't the type of dog that likes to go on trips, but Milo loves getting out.  So we left Murphy at home and took Milo.  He had fun sniffing everything he could, but the horses scared him.  Every time they'd walk by, he'd try and bolt, so we eventually had to carry him whenever horses were nearby.

We stayed for a few hours, then drove home.

That's about it for the past week.  We finally nailed down our Thanksgiving plans today also.  We'd been talking about a few places, but decided we wanted to go far south when it's cold here, so we'll be staying in the Taormina area in Sicily, Italy.  Since it's off season, we got a great deal on flights & hotel from Thursday through Sunday.

That'll be it for awhile...the next anticipated post will be after July 4th weekend.  I took a few pictures of the Ritterspiele event, so you can click here or the picture of the medieval town above (not the concert picture) to be taken to the rest of the pictures.

30th Birthday

June 3rd was my 30th birthday, and Shanna went all out to make sure it was a great birthday.  Friday, the actual day of my birthday, she took off work and after finding out the type of cake I wanted, she spent all day putting together my favorite foods and the cake, as well as cleaning the house.  I should note that I helped a bit, but it was 95 percent Shanna.  She also gave me my birthday presents.  The first present she actually gave me before we left for Vienna because it was a cushioned carrying case we'd seen in the Sky Mall that's meant to make transporting bottles safer.  We used them to bring home some Slovakian wines last week.  On Friday she gave me a collection of The Walking Dead comics.  The big present, though, was a trip to a huge international beer festival being held in Strasbourg, France, in October.  It's a 4 day event over a weekend, and I am so excited about it.  It's still early, so they don't have a vendor list yet, but they have a list of the brewers from last year, and there were all kinds of fantastic American Microbrewers that came, as well as brewers from France, Belgium, Germany, England, South America, etc...  I can't wait for it!  In addition to beer sampling they'll also have workshops for brewing your own beer.  October can't get here soon enough...  That night was just a relaxed night with dinner & a movie.

Saturday morning around noon Shanna wanted me out of the house so she could set up all the things she had in store for the party without me seeing it.  Knowing that Shanna needed me out of the house, our friends Jenny & Chris invited me over to their place.  Chris & I played video games all afternoon and Jenny made us lunch...one of my favorites, grilled cheese with a large glass of milk.

Around 4pm I left, picked up a few things on the way home, and walked in to a great lay out.

Shanna had made her famous crock pot cheese dip, sausage balls wrapped around jalapenos stuffed with cheese, beer mug shaped cookies, sliced wraps, and more.  In the entrance hallway to the house she had placed beer mugs with name labels on it, as well as home made fudge on a stick in the shape of beer mugs.

Eventually people started arriving.  Jenny & Chris got me a large beer glass and inside they put slim jims (one of my favorites) as well as what I like to have the morning after having a few beers....Excedrin and Coke Zero.  I liked the personal touch there.  After that our friends Kate & Charles came over & brought their dog Pixel.  Pixel runs into the house and immediately starts playing with Milo.  They played all night last night and as I write this Milo is sacked out snoring next to me.  Kate & Charles got me one of the Lebkuchen (gingerbread) hearts they sell at Oktoberfest and Volksfest that says "Wake me in Stuttgart".  It's a joking reference to the train ride home debacle at Oktoberfest last year.  A little later our friend Katia came over and gave me a beautiful Stuttgart mug.  Every place we've traveled I've bought either a beer glass for the city, or a Stein for the country and/or city.  I realized when I opened her gift that I didn't have one for Stuttgart, so it'll be the perfect addition to my collection.  A few other friends, Craig & Adam, as well as a friend of ours who works with Shanna, Alton, came as well.

Once everyone was there, we played one of the first games Shanna came up with...guess the beer (do we see a theme here?).  Shanna had bought some beer during our most recent trip to Vienna & Bratislava, as well as a several beers from the base.  She went into the basement, poured them into unlabeled pitchers, and brought them upstairs.  She poured sample cups for everyone, then when you tasted it you got 5 points if you could name it right off the bat (you didn't say it out loud though).  Then she read off some hints, and with each hint, you deducted a point.  So if you figured it out after 2 hints, you got 3 points instead of 5.  You also got a bonus point if you could figure out the country of origin prior to hints being read off.  It was a lot fun, and while I came close, our friend Kate ended up winning and walking away with a bottle of Chimay Blue.

After that was dinner.  Shanna had soaked brats in beer over night, and I grilled them on the grill in the backyard.  They turned out great!  After dinner we played pin the beer on me.  I was WAY off, but our friend Adam got pretty close and ended up winning the other bottle of Chimay we had.

The rest of the night was just a relaxing evening with good friends and good beer.

Jenny, Chris, Kate, & Charles spent the night.  Since we knew they were going to prior to Saturday, Shanna got a bunch of stuff to make a breakfast casserole, as well as Cinnamon buns.  Jenny made blueberry muffins and brought those over.  Shanna put the casserole in the oven while we cleaned up, and when we were all finished, we dug in.  No surprise, it was DELICIOUS and hit the spot.  Eventually everyone headed home and as I write this, Shanna is taking a much deserved nap with the dogs.

I couldn't have asked for a better birthday, and I can't thank Shanna enough for all the hard work and effort she put in to making it a special weekend.  Thanks babe!

You can click here or any of the pictures above to see some of the pictures taken before & during the party.

Vienna & Bratislava, Part 3

Monday morning it was again beautiful weather.  We had decided the day before that today we were driving back to Vienna and making it a day trip.  It's only a 45 minute drive between the cities, so it made a day trip pretty easy.  We got an early start and were parked near Schloß Schönbrunn by 9:30.  This time we wanted to take a tour of the castle.  We got our tickets, picked up the audio guide, and headed inside.  This was one of those castle's (like a lot of them) that didn't allow pictures.  They did, though, allow pictures to be taken of the outside area from the windows inside, including some of the garden areas.

The tour was pretty interesting.  For example, I had no idea that Marie Antoinette was Austrian and born in this palace, where she was later married off to Louis XVI, and of course, everyone knows what eventually happened to her.  They had all sorts of paintings of her as a child with her brothers and sisters inside the palace.  One part of the palace was off limits while they were restoring it...the thing I thought was interesting was among other things, they were replacing the electrical wiring that had been there since Edison installed it.

After the tour we walked out back to the garden areas.  Now that it was a sunny day, it was much prettier here.  They had a beautiful fountain in the back and we were able to get someone to take our picture there.

Adjacent to the palace was the Royal Zoo.  When the first giraffe was sent there as a gift from Egypt in 1828, it caused a sensation amongst the locals who had never seen a live one before in person.  So much so that it inspired local fashion at the time, dubbed "à la Giraffe".  They also had a Giant Panda in the zoo.  The picture below is when he was having lunch.

The zoo had a Biergarten in the center of it, but the food menu was expensive and didn't have much on it, so we ended up just hitting a hot dog stand nearby.

The combo ticket we purchased not only got us into the zoo, but also on the famous Vienna Ferris Wheel.  The original was built in 1897, but burned to the ground in 1944.  In 1945 it was rebuilt and that one still stands there today.  It's slow moving, taking approximately 10 minutes for a full rotation, so when you're at the top you get a great view of the city.

The Ferris Wheel isn't all by itself, it's located in an amusement park where there are all kinds of rides, both roller coasters and water rides.  We had to laugh at the bumper cars...it was called "Chauffeur School".

After the Ferris Wheel we got on the metro and headed to the Belvedere.  It was formerly a residential palace, but today is an art museum.  It was a fairly impressive sight when you first got there.

Again, inside the museum, no pictures were allowed, unless we were taking pictures of outside through the windows.  Some of the more notable paintings were The Kiss, by Gustav Klimt, and Napoleon Bonaparte, by Jacques-Louis David.  I'd never heard of The Kiss before, but apparently it's pretty famous.  While I'd never heard of Jacques-Louis David before, I did recognize the painting as soon as I saw it.  We couldn't take pictures, but below is what the painting looked like.

After the museum it was fairly late in the afternoon, so we headed back to our car and drove back to Bratislava.  That evening we decided to try an Italian restaurant near our hotel since our feet were throbbing from four days of walking and it was near our hotel.  It was delicious, and like everything else here, cheap.  A glass of house red wine was 90 cents and the white wine was 80 cents.

The next morning at 8am Shanna went downstairs for the Massage she had scheduled.  The masseuse hadn't arrived yet, so she came back up to the hotel room to wait.  Unfortunately by 8:45, it was at the point where it was too late.  We had to pack, check out, and had a guided walking tour set up, and there was no longer time for a 60 minute massage.  After check out we walked around the shopping district since we had an hour to kill.

Shanna found some great deals on shoes & a hat, and I got a Stein for Slovakia.

We then headed back to the hotel.  Right at 11am on the dot our tour guide walked in.  She was really nice, and she took us all over the city showing us things.  She pointed out the street next to our hotel where, during the Baltic Revolution in 1989, 300,000 people (including herself) lined the streets, demanding the Soviet Union leave their country.  It's personal touches like that that make the walking guided tour so much more interesting then a generic audio guide or book.

The tour lasted about an hour, and it was finally time for us to head home.  Normally the adventures stop there, but not this time.  Before we left we decided to take a bathroom break in the McDonalds near by.  After we left, it was a 10-15 minute walk back to our car.  Because of pickpockets I've gotten in the habit of occasionally checking my pockets to make sure my wallet, phone, etc... are all still there.  Right before we got to the car I did one of those checks and noticed my passport was missing.  We checked the suitecase in the car and couldn't find it.  Shanna went to check with the hotel to see if I'd left in there while I went back to the McDonalds to see if I'd dropped it in the bathroom.  As soon as I walk into the McDonalds a cleaning guy sees me and asks if I was "Bryan Adams".  I said "Bryan Norton, yes" and he said "Passport".  Thankfully he'd not only found it while cleaning, he'd looked at the picture and recognized me when I came back in and they had it for me in the back office.

I wish I could say the adventure stopped there, but it didn't.  We left Bratislava, and were back in Austria, approximately 10 minutes outside of Vienna, when I noticed something didn't feel right in the car.  It was nothing overt, just a subtle way the vibration of the car felt that didn't feel right.  Shortly after I noticed it, the low tire pressure warning light came on.  I looked up the nearest gas station on the GPS, and it was only 3km away, right off the next exit.  When we got to the gas station, I didn't notice anything strange.  I don't have a good eye for tire pressure, though, so I decided to fill up the tires anyway and check the gauge.  The hose for the air was short and not retractable, so I was going to have to fill up one tire, pull up, fill the rear tire, turn the car around and repeat.  After I filled up one tire, I asked Shanna to watch to make sure I was pulling the car forward enough and lining up with the pump.  That's when she said we couldn't drive any further because the tire had a giant bubble in it.  I don't know how I missed it.  We moved the car to the parking lot area and while I changed the tire to our partial spare, she went inside to ask if they knew a tire place nearby.  The only one the attendant knew of was a small auto shop located right behind the gas station.

We took the wheel inside and the guy said immediately the tire was no good, it was not repairable.  This wasn't a tire shop, so he didn't have any way of replacing it.  Thankfully he did know of a tire shop in the town over.  He gave us the name, and it happened to come up in the "Points of Interest" section of the GPS.  Luckily it was only 6km away.  We drove over there, and this place ended up being a practical Tire Expo.  They had logos of all the major brands up on their wall, and they happened to have our tire size in stock.  It was a quiet day, and there was no other customers, so all 5 technicians on duty went to work on swapping our tire out.  It took them about 10 minutes.  Once they were done, we were back on the road, the tire pressure light turned off, and we were good to go for the rest of the trip.  A valuable lesson learned, though, was always make sure you have the local number of your insurance company when you leave the country.  I had USAA's number for Germany, but either you can't dial a toll free number in one country from another, or I don't know how to do it.  And the number is different in Austria then in Germany.  If the tire had blown out on the Autobahn, it could have been a disaster, especially if I couldn't get a hold of my insurance company.

So that was it for our trip.  Aside from the scare on the ride home, the rest of the trip was a lot of fun.  So much so that we wanted to stay for a few more days.  That's twice we've been to Austria now, and twice we've not wanted to come home when the trip was over.  Bratislava is also a beautiful city, so if you ever get the chance to visit, jump on it.

To see the pictures, click here or any pictures above to see the pictures from our trip.

Things coming up in the next month that I'll be posting about will be my 30th bday (technically tomorrow, but will be celebrated Saturday with friends) and our trip to London for July 4th weekend.

Vienna & Bratislava, Part 2

The drive to Bratislava was an interesting one. There were wind mills everywhere on the Austrian part of the drive. All other countries whose borders we've driven across have made the border fairly non-descript. At most you might see a bunch of gas stations around it, but more often then not the only way you know you're crossing a border is a big blue sign with a circle of stars and in the center, the name of the country in the local language of the country. Slovakia was completely different. You had to slow down from 130km/h to 30km/h (80mph to 18mph) over the course of 200 meters. The road had concrete blocks up along the side so once you drove past a certain point, you were committed. It looked like the over pass that you drove under that marked the border was built in the 80's based on the colors, so we were thinking this probably where they had armed guards when the Soviet's had control of the country back then.

Once over the border, and close to the city (but not quite in it yet) we started the see the old Soviet era apartment buildings.  Mostly grey, all uniform looking, and no sense of style or distinction at all.  This was a stark contrast to the actual inner city of Bratislava, though.  When crossing the bridge over the Danube into the city, it was a completely different experience.  It had an "old" feel to it, with the palace up on the hill, a large church, cobblestone streets, and plenty of historical architecture.

We eventually got to our hotel, got checked, and headed to the room. What we'd eventually come to realize was that things were extremely cheap here.  The hotel was 60 Euros a night here, was located almost in the heart of old town, had air conditioning (which is rare in Europe), a spacious room, and the bathrooms were separate, meaning you had one room for the shower and one room with the toilet.  Shanna found a sheet in the room with a list of Massage prices.  They had a 60 minute neck & back massage for 22 Euros.

After we were settled in, we went out to get dinner.  Our friends Kate & Charles had been to the city before and told us about a street they were on with a row of restaurants & bars for dirt cheap.  It just so happens this street was adjacent to the street with our hotel.  In doing research to find the name of some places they stopped at, Kate found a brewery that she emailed me about.  Turned out the brewery was literally located next door to our hotel.  I swear I didn't know any of this when I booked the place back in early April.  We decided to try the brewery for dinner and were not disappointed.  I had a delicious plate of Goulash, and Shanna had Duck Leg.  The beer was ridiculously cheap.  A half liter of their lager beer was 1.70 Euro.  Their dark beer was 1.90 Euro.  The beer was fantastic too.

After dinner, we walked along the street next to our hotel and stopped in various places.  We went to one bar where we watched a soccer game.  Soccer isn't really a sport I'm interested in, but just about any sport can be fun in a bar with a bunch of passionate fans.  It was Manchester United versus Barcelona.  We weren't sure who the locals would be cheering for, but it didn't take long to realize they were all rabid Man U fans.  We also ended up going to a Slovak Pub nearby that had a rustic feel to it.

Sunday morning we had tried to schedule a walking tour, but they didn't have any available.  We told the receptionist we were looking to schedule a tour for Tuesday morning at 10am, and she said she'd take care of it.  The only scheduled thing we had on Sunday was taking the 2:30pm boat trip up the Danube to Devin Castle, a 1st century Roman Castle ruin.  The castle had been in use by various people up until the early 1800's when Napoleon's Army destroyed it in a siege on the city.  There are other "reminders" of the siege that you'll see in the pictures, including a cannon ball still lodged in one of the buildings in town.  Since we had time to kill, we found the old town square, and walked around.  The city was absolutely beautiful, and we couldn't have asked for better weather.  Since we couldn't do the walking tour we decided to take one of the bus tours with the audio guide so we'd at least have an idea of where things were.  After the tour we walked over to the river front to buy our boat tickets and found a few memorials there, including one to the Soviet Liberators.

One odd thing we noticed was the plethora of free WiFi hotspots.  Every restaurant & bar had one, McDonalds had one, and there was even free WiFi all along the river front area.

One of the places we stumbled up while walking around was the Norton Cafe!

Eventually it was time to head to the boat.  One of the first things we noticed when looking at the Danube river was how fast it was moving.  To give you an idea, the boat ride to the castle we were taking was an hour & a half from the dock to the castle, but the ride back (same distance) was 30 minutes.  It was nice sitting back, feeling the breeze off the water, and watching the landscape go by.

Eventually we got to the castle and got off the boat.  It was a 5 minute walk around the castle to get to the entrance.  At the bottom of the hill that the castle was on there was a small town, and they had vendors there selling local wine.  We tried some of it and it was amazing, so we bought some later after touring the castle.  Once we walked up into the ruins, the view of the river was beautiful.

We also had great views of the small town below us.

We walked around for about an hour, exploring the castle ruins and the surrounding area.  We also came across a Christian Chapel that was found in the 1970's during excavation.  The chapel was from the fourth century and had a stone carving of Jesus on the cross inside.  Eventually we made our way back down to the bottom of the castle.  While down there we came across a monument that been erected in memorial of the over 400 people who were shot & killed trying to cross over the Iron Curtain that ran through the former Czechoslovakia (before the country split after the fall of the Soviet Union).  I'm not sure if the bullet holes depicted here are real (implying the material came from the Iron Curtain) or put here for effect.

We made it back to the boat, and from there it was a short ride back to the city.  For dinner we were so impressed with the food from the brewery that we went back & tried something different.  I got pork medallions in a cream sauce that was amazing, and Shanna got dumplings with sour cream & bacon.  If we lived in Bratislava, I think we'd be at this place fairly frequently.  After dinner we walked around the old town area and went back to a place we'd seen on the tour...the thinnest street in Bratislava.  To show how tiny it was, I stood in the street and stretched my arms out.

That's it for Part 2.  Click here or any of the above pictures to see all the pictures of the trip.  I'm breaking the posting up into 3 parts, but not the pictures.  The first part of the pictures are from Vienna (Friday/Saturday/Monday) and the second half are from Bratislava (Saturday/Sunday/Tuesday).

Click here for Part 3!

Vienna & Bratislava, Part 1

This past Memorial Day weekend was a long one.  Over a 5 day period, from Friday through Tuesday, we drove down to Vienna, Austria, then on to Bratislava, Slovakia.  It was a lot of fun, and a lot happened, so much like the post of our last trip to Austria in October, I'll be breaking this down into multiple parts so you can read all at once if you'd like, or in stages.  Part 1 will be about the drive down and the first two days in Vienna.  Part 2 will be all Saturday night and Sunday in Bratislava.  Part 3 will be about being back in Vienna again Monday and the last part of the trip on Tuesday.

We got an early start Friday morning.  The driving time was 6 hours, but I knew with a gas station stop and a stop for lunch, we'd be looking at closer to 7 hours, and we had to be in Vienna no later then 4:15pm because the reception desk at the hotel was not 24 hours, and closed at 4:30pm.  I left early to drop the dogs off at the kennel, came back, loaded the car up, and we were on the road by 8:15.  After a quick stop on base to top off the tank, we hit the road at 8:45.  The drive was long, but uneventful.  We filled up right at the German/Austrian border, the continued on and pulled into Vienna right around 3:45pm.  The hotel was an interesting one...it was small, and consisted of 10-15 rooms made up in the traditional Ikea decor.  But it was quaint, and the price was unbeatable compared to the other hotels in the Inner Stadt area.  The hotel didn't have parking, but I had looked up parking garages prior to us leaving, and saw several around the hotel, so I wasn't worried.  What I didn't know until we got there was how ridiculously expensive the parking was.  We've typically found over night parking in garages for between 15-20 Euros a night.  In Vienna, the cheapest I could find was 40 Euros a night, but I found a few that were as high as 60 Euros.  After unpacking & checking in, we hit the city.  It had been a long day, starting at 5am, so we weren't really up for a late night, but we did want to walk around.  We walked to the main area of St. Stephen's Square and found a company that offered bus tours of the city with an audio guide.  When doing city tours, a personal guide is the best way to do it, but we knew the weather was supposed to be awful the next day, so being in a bus was the way to go.  We bought our tickets and walked around shops.  Our friend Jenny and her friend Heather (two of the people I went to Rome with) had been to Vienna a few days prior, and told us about, in their words, one of the best Mexican restaurants they'd ever been too.  I know we were in Vienna, but with how hard good Mexican is to come by, we wanted to check this place out.  So we saw on the map it was maybe a 10-15 minute walk, so instead of taking the metro we decided to walk and see some of the town.  By the time we got to the place, we were excited about Mexican.  Unfortunately this was some of the worst Mexican we'd ever had.  There's a place here in Stuttgart that is MUCH better.  Even the Mojito Shanna ordered wasn't that great.  I did like the Zipfer beer they had though.

After dinner, it started pouring rain, so we metroed back to the hotel and called it an early night.

The next day it was cold, raining and just nasty in general.  According to the weather report, though, it was the only day of our vacation that it was supposed to be like that.  We checked out of the hotel and drove over to the main square where the bus pick up was.  Thankfully on the weekends there is free street parking in the city, so we were able to park near the pick up and leave the car there all day for no cost.

The bus tour was three hours, and was a "hop on / hop off" kind of deal, meaning we could get off the bus at any stopping point, tour where ever we were, then get back on the bus when it came back around again and continue the audio guide tour.  For the first two hours we just stayed on the bus.  We saw the old town area and the newer parts of town.  The third hour we got off at Schloß Schönbrunn.  It's the imperial palace in Vienna.  It was a pretty impressive sight.

We walked around but decided we'd come back at some point before we left when the weather was nicer.  In the back they were setting up for a large concert...it would have been neat if we could have stayed for it, but the concert wasn't happening until Thursday.  When we walked off the palace grounds, we checked the schedule and saw that we'd just missed the bus, so we decided to just take the metro to the next stop we wanted to see, the Military Museum.

When we got there, we saw that it had been built in what had formerly been the city arsenal.

It was interesting to see their pricing...almost all museums have strict rules about not allowing photography.  This museum said you could, but only if you paid an extra 1.50 Euro.  I paid the extra cost and we went in.  When you first walk in, it's impressive, they have columns all over the place with sculptures.  The audio guide said it contained life size sculptures of all the past famous military leaders of Austria.  Next we walked into the WWI section.  This is what I had wanted to come here to see...they had the car that Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated in which led to the outbreak of World War I.  You could even see the bullet hole in the side of the car from the bullet that killed his wife.  Next to the car was a glass case containing the uniform he was wearing when he was killed, and you could see the bullet hole in the collar of his uniform.

The rest of the museum was interesting, it had all kinds of artifacts from WWI and WWII, including part of a sunken U-Boat that was discovered at the bottom of the ocean floor in the '70's.

After the museum we hopped on the bus, finished the remainder of the tour, and were dropped off back at the main square.  By now it was almost 5pm, so we went to one last souvenir shop so I could get my Austrian Stein with the birthday money I got from Shanna's parents.

I liked this particular Stein because it had the flags of all the states, including Salzburg where we went last time, but hadn't gotten a Stein.  After that we got in the car and headed to Bratislava.

That's it for Part 1.  Click here or any of the above pictures to see all the pictures of the trip.  I'm breaking the posting up into 3 parts, but not the pictures.  The first part of the pictures are from Vienna (Friday/Saturday/Monday) and the second half are from Bratislava (Saturday/Sunday/Tuesday).

Click here for Part 2!