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!

Rome

When Shanna & I first moved over here, we had a list of various places we really wanted to visit while we were here.  Italy was on the list, but for me, it wasn't high up there.  I wanted to visit, but it wasn't something I was super excited about.  That was still the case until I booked my trip to Rome...then I got excited.  Our friends Jenny and Chris had a friend of theirs from Wisconsin, Heather, who was visiting for a few weeks, so they decided to do an 8 day tour of Italy.  They started in Venice, then went to Rome, and finished in Florence.  Shanna had been to Rome, but not Florence or Venice.  Since Shanna couldn't get the time off, I decided to fly down to meet Jenny, Chris, & Heather in Rome and then fly back home when they left for Florence.

I've heard from people that Rome is like any other major Metropolitan city...it has it's dirty parts, it's ritzy parts, etc...  I can definitely agree with that assessment...a lot of it reminded me of New York City.  The major difference, though, was in Rome you could walk down a street, turn a corner, and be looking at a building that has been there for 2,000 years.  Rome may not have been the cleanest or prettiest city I've ever been too, but the historical part of it was absolutely stunning.

I had no delays or problems on the flight to Rome, and got in around 7pm.  After collecting my bags, I hopped on the train, and rode for 30 minutes into the city.  While sitting I ended up talking with the couple next to me who were visiting from England.  Apparently there was a tennis match going on and they were in town visiting.  Finally we pulled into Roma Termini, the main train station in Rome.

That night was relatively uneventful...it had been a long day travelling and Jenny, Chris, and Heather didn't arrive until the next morning.  I found my hotel, checked in, grabbed some dinner, and went to bed.

The next morning at 8am I met the group in their hotel lobby.  It was only a 10 minute walk from my hotel, so I had breakfast first, then walked over.  They were all pretty beat since they had taken an overnight train from Venice, but since check in wasn't until 2pm, they dropped their luggage off and we hit the town.

First up was visiting the Tourist Information office in the train terminal.  They have something called a "Roma Pass".  It got you entrance into two museums or ruins of your choice, discounts on all the rest, and unlimited use of the Metro for 3 days.  The metro alone was worth the €24 we paid for it.  With that purchased, we headed to the Colosseum.

 

Even realizing that the Colosseum was smaller now then in it's heyday, it was still an impressive sight.  We initially walked around to see it from outside, then headed inside.  It was incredible to think of all the stories & movies I've seen that took place here, and now I was in the actual Colosseum.  I didn't realize that underneath where the main arena part was there was an intricate system of rooms and pathways where the gladiators prepped before their fight.

After the Colosseum we took out the guide book to see what was close by.  Trevi Fountain and the Spanish Steps were both close to each other, and only 1 metro stop up, so we headed there next.  I'd never heard of either one, so I had no idea what to expect.  We first got to the Spanish Steps, and I have to say...they were a little disappointing.  All it was was a set of...steps.  It's been there for a long time, but I didn't get what the hype was.  At this point we were hungry, so we stopped & got lunch.  I got an awesome 4 Formaggi pizza and we ordered a liter of the house wine to share.  It was pretty warm at that point, so the cold white wine tasted great.  Next up was Trevi Fountain.  Now THIS was impressive.  It was also crowded, so I couldn't get a real close shot, but what I got captured the size & scope of this fountain.

At this point it was around 2 o'clock, and Jenny, Chris, & Heather were really started to drag, so we headed back to their hotel so they could take a nap.  I was fine, and not much of a napper anyway, so I headed to a local cafe and had some Italian beer and people watched for 2 hours while they slept.

It wasn't the most complex or interesting beer I'd ever had, but after walking around for hours on a hot day, it sure hit the spot.  I even got to play translator for a group of Germans sitting next to me.  They were older, and didn't speak much English or any (as far as I could tell) Italian.  They ordered a beer, and when the bartender said "On tap"? they just stared at him.  He repeated it, and they still didn't get it, so I asked them "vom Fass"?, which they understood, and said yes.  They then tried to speak to me in German, and while I was able to speak a little with them, the conversation didn't last long.

Later on I headed back to their hotel, and they were ready to go out.  That night was a relatively quiet night.  We had dinner, sat & drank wine, then found a beer hall I had read about that had over 500 beers on tap.  They had some delicious beers there that I'd never heard of, including some strong ales from Denmark that were fantastic.

Wednesday we got up early because that was the day we were visiting the Vatican.  We got really lucky with the timing.  The Pope was doing Mass at St. Peter's, so we went to the Vatican Museum first.  With everyone at the Mass, there was no line for the museum and we got right in.  They had a large section of Egyptian treasure that I wasn't expecting, but made sense when you think of how closely intertwined Rome & Egypt were 2,000 years ago.  They even had the Sarcophagus of Imhotep.  The artwork and architecture on display was stunning to say the least.  It took us approximately 2 hours to walk through it and that's with only stopping occasionally to read the inscriptions.  If we'd read everything, we'd have been there all day.  At the end of the museum was the thing that everyone comes for...the Sistine Chapel, with the famous ceiling painting by Michaelangelo.  I have to admit it surprised me...I didn't know much about the painting, but had always seen the famous part of Man reaching out with this finger and there being a cloud with God on it, also reaching out with a finger.  I had thought that image was the entire ceiling, but it's actually just a really small part of a much larger painting.  Pictures weren't allowed in there, so I had to be discreet with this picture...that's why it's a little blurry.

After the museum, we headed over to Vatican City and St. Peter's Square.  I went to Catholic school from 2nd grade until 6th grade, and we were raised Catholic, so I've seen images of St. Peter's Square and the Basilica a million times, but I never imagined I'd actually be there.  Pictures don't do it justice, it's awe inspiring when you walk in to the square.

After taking some pictures, we got in line for the Basilica.  This had a bit of a line, but wasn't too bad.  Our timing couldn't have been better...after being in line for 5 minutes or so we looked behind us and the line stretched forever.  Once inside the Basilica, it was beautiful.  I didn't know that St. Peter was actually buried there.  His tomb was found long after he died, and they built the Basilica around it.  The sculptures and paintings inside were incredible.

Once we left the Basilica we walked around the square for a bit, then got lunch.  At this point it was 3pm and we'd been on our feet walking around since 9am and we were all beat.  We took a two hour break at our hotels, and met back up for dinner.  That night I decided to try something different and got the Gnocchi...it was DELICIOUS.

After dinner we started walking.  Remember how I said earlier that in Rome you can pick a direction, walk and stumble upon a building that was thousands of years old?  Well that happened to us here.  We left the place we had dinner at, walked in a random direction, and stumbled upon a huge building.  I looked at my tour guide on the phone and it said it was St. Mary's Basilica.  In 420 AD construction started on it, and legend says the location was picked after someone (the current Emperor I think) had a vision where Mary appeared to him and told him to build where ever he found snow the next day.  He went for a walk, found snow on this particular hill, and had the Basilica constructed.  We kept walking after taking pictures, and just picked random streets to walk down.  I had my GPS, so we weren't concerned about getting lost.  We eventually came to another huge building.  I went to the front of the building to read the inscription, and it said it was the Basilica of St. Mary...now I was really confused.  Later on, though, when walking back to our hotel, we figured out that we had first come to the back of the Basilica, then we discovered the front of it.  Due to it's massive size and the fact that we had walked down random streets after seeing the back, we hadn't realized that we had back tracked to the front of the building.  We also came upon something we called the "cat ruins".  It was a fenced off section of some sort of ruins with a park surrounding it.  We sat in the park to take a break and eventually noticed a cat walking around the ruins, behind the fence.  Then we noticed another cat...and another...and another.  Just sitting there we counted 5 cats.  We decided to walk the perimeter of the ruins, and counted over 20 cats walking through the ruins.

When it started to get dark, we headed back to their hotel and found a wine bar to sit at.  It was our last night in Rome, so we decided to just relax, kick back, and drink wine.

The next day we had some time to sight see.  I had to catch the 3pm train to the airport, so we had plenty of time.  We all agreed we were beat from walking around, and decided to sleep in instead of starting early like we had been.  At 10am I met them in the train station and we headed to the Pantheon.  The Pantheon wasn't near any metro stops, so we got off at the closest one then walked the rest of the way.  Once there, it was an impressive sight.

It's the largest unreinforced dome in the world.  It has a hole at the top that provides the only lighting inside, so you'd think it'd be really dark, yet amazingly it was very well lit.  It also had a big surprise...the tomb of Rafael.  I had no idea he was buried there.

We had time for one more place.  We all wanted to visit the Catacombs, but they were open until noon, then closed down until 2pm.  It was a bit out of the city, so there was no way I was going to be able to see the Catacombs and be back in time for my train, so we decided to visit the Roman Baths instead.  The Baths were, unfortunately, a major disappointment.  I'm sure it was an impressive accomplishment 2,000 years ago, but over the years it had been largely stripped for materials to be used for other things.  The result was just a shell of its former self.  It cost €6 to get in, but thankfully we were able to use the Roma Pass to get in without paying.

After that we headed back to the train station and said our goodbyes.  My trip home was uneventful, but I do want to point out the temperature shock I had in Amsterdam.  The entire time we were in Rome it was in the low 80's, so when I flew out I was in shorts and a t-shirt.  I had a layover in Amsterdam before heading to Stuttgart, and the plane that took us to Stuttgart was a small one, and we had to be bussed out to the plane.  In Amsterdam, at 9pm, it was 50 degrees out.  I couldn't get on that plane fast enough.  And yes, for those thinking about it, it was definitely ridiculous that to get to Stuttgart from Rome, the flight went through Amsterdam.  I went the same route on the way to Rome.  If you're not familiar with the geography, it's like being in D.C. and wanting to fly to Miami, Florida, but your layover is in Boston, MA.

Overall I had a great time, and after hearing how much Jenny, Chris, & Heather loved Venice & Florence, I can't wait to visit there.  The next trip is coming up next weekend for Memorial Day weekend when Shanna & I visit Vienna, Austria and Bratislava, Slovakia.  For the 4th of July weekend we are doing a blind booking with some friends.  The way that works is you pick a group of cities that you could potentially visit, you pay for it, then it tells you where you are going.  The prices are dirt cheap, and it's exactly the kind of spontaneous traveling we like to do.  The cities are narrowed down to Zagreb, Croatia, Budapest, Hungary, Barcelona, Spain, Istanbul, Turkey, or London, England.

Clicking here or the pictures above to go to the page with all the pictures.  Jenny & Chris took more pictures with me in it, so when I get it from them I'll post them.

Queens Day 2011

This past weekend Shanna & I drove to Maastricht, NL, to celebrate Queens Day.  We had been in Amsterdam a few years back for Queens Day, and figured Maastricht wouldn't be as wild but was within driving distance, so we decided to make a weekend out of it.

Friday morning we dropped the dogs off at the kennel and hit the road.  The drive up, with the exception of some traffic, was pretty uneventful.  When we got to the hotel we unpacked and hit the town. We've been to Maastricht three times over the past three years, and it's not a large town, so I'm starting to become somewhat familiar with the area.  There wasn't much going on Friday night, so we took the time to just walk around town.  We knew on Sunday we wanted to hit the Limestone caves outside of town, so we started off by heading to the tourist information center to get tickets.  While there I noticed a brochure for a Beer Specialty shop.  It was hard to tell if this was a store or a bar, so we decided to head across the river to take a look.

It didn't take long to find the place, and it turns out it was a bar.  We sat down, had a few drinks, and talked briefly with the bartender.  She made it a point to describe every beer we ordered, which was interesting...she definitely knew her beer.  After that we found a place nearby that had GREAT kebobs for dinner.  We wandered around for a bit, but it quickly became evident that Maastricht was going to be a lot more quiet on Queens Day then we anticipated.  We eventually made our way back to a bar right next to our hotel where they had live music playing that night.

The next morning we got up early for breakfast, and then hit the Vrijthof Square, which was right next to our hotel.  The Dutch have permits for EVERYTHING...including selling things on the street.  The one day a year they allow anyone to sell anything they want without a permit is on Queens Day, so the Vrijthof Square had every day citizens out there, and was basically one giant garage sale.

They also had some opening ceremonies, which included them firing off a HUGE cannon.  We were close to it, and on the pictures page there is a video of it, but it doesn't do it justice...it was so loud you literally felt the pressure of the cannon shot all over your body.  Once the opening ceremonies concluded, it became a giant fest for kids.  At that point we decided to walk around town to see what else we could find.  We came across   what appeared to be a small wine shop, but Shanna said she recognized it and that they were actually a tiny vineyard and they gave tours.  We walked inside and asked about the tours, but the guy said since it was Queens Day they weren't doing them.  Then he said, jokingly, if we promised to buy a bottle of wine he'd take us around himself for a short tour.  We said sure, and it ended up being fascinating.  They import their wine from France in plastic barrels so no flavor is passed to the wine, then they put them in wood barrels and age them.  They bottle it when it's ready, and sell in their stores.  In their backyard area they do have a tiny vineyard, but it only yields about 100 bottles a year.  He said it was more for hobby then anything else.  He showed us that part, where they bottle it, and took us down in the cellar area to see where they barreled the wine.  Apparently a lot of local businesses have them store their wine in their cellar since they don't have the space in their hotel.

Once the tour was over we bought a few bottles of wine, approx 40 Euros worth, and gave him a 50, telling him to keep the change because we appreciated the tour.  He was grateful, and told us to come back later that afternoon.  That's when they open their sampling room up.  Normally people pay to sample the wine, but he said he'd let us do it for free.

We left the wine store and headed over to the Market Square.  The Market Square area is where we stayed the last time we were in Maastricht, and it had shops all over the place.  We spent part of the afternoon walking around the shops, and stopped occasionally to try some local beer.  We eventually headed back to the wine shop for sampling.  The way it worked is they give you what appears to be a hotel key card with however much money you put on it stored on the card.  Then you walk up to the sampling machine, put your card in, put your glass in front of the bottle you want to sample, push the button, and it gives you a sample and deducts the cost from the card.  The sample prices ranged from 25-80 cents, and he gave us a card with 5 Euros worth on it.  It was really neat how it all worked and the wine was delicious.

After we were done there we found a place for dinner where we could watch some of the dance shows going on.  By this time it was starting to get dark, so we decided to head back to that specialty beer bar we had gone to the night before.  We had gone earlier in the day on Friday, so with us going a little later this time, it was a little busier.  We still were able to get a seat right at the bar, though, and ended up having a great time.  The bar was filled with regular locals who were in a talkative mood.  The bartenders turned out to be the owners Peet and Mery.  They were both extremely knowledgable about beer, so we would tell them what we liked and they'd surprise us.  Each one they brought was delicious.  We eventually called it a night and headed back to our hotel.

The next morning we checked out around 11, but our scheduled tour of the caves outside of town didn't start until 2pm.  The last time we visited Maastricht we'd accidentally stumbled upon a town nearby called Valkenburg.  We had seen the ruins of a destroyed castle there, but hadn't gone to it.  This time, since we had 3 hours to kill, we decided to check it out.  The castle was first built in 1160, and was destroyed in battle in 1670.  It is the only castle ever built in The Netherlands.  These days you can take a tour and walk around, with pictures posted everywhere of what the section you were in would have looked like before it was destroyed.  The city of Valkenburg was first settled by the Romans 2,000 years ago because of the large deposits of something called Mergel, which is a type of stone used back then in construction.  Mergel is extremely easy to carve and shape, so inside the ruins they had a workshop for kids to make things out of the Mergel.

As you'll see from the pictures page, they must have had small feet back then...the steps literally only came out to half my foot.  After we'd seen the ruins we walked into town a bit and found an area called Lourdesgrot.  It was the side of a large rock, and had statues of Mary, an altar, and seats in front.  We didn't know what it was at the time, but I looked into it when we got home.  It's actually a replica built of the area in Lourdes, France, where Mary is believed to have appeared.

By this time it was 1:15, so we headed out to the caves area.  This tour was fascinating.  The caves were first opened in the 11th century.  The stone they had down there was extremely soft because of how much moisture was in the cave air.  It made excavation easy.  When the stone was brought to the surface it had no more moisture and hardened considerably.  The buildings of Maastricht back then were built using the stone from these caves.  About 100 years ago modern technology created more reliable building materials and the caves were no longer necessary.  The farmers that owned the land suddenly lost a large part of their income, so they decided to open it up to tours.  There were various paintings all over the inside of the cave that they did with charcoal.  Due to the high moisture level, paint wasn't an option.  The guide also told us that because of the coldness and dampness a human being could only survive for 40 hours down there before succumbing to hypothermia.

The guide also told us about a group of farmers who survived for three weeks in the tunnels during a French invasion a few hundred years back by building an oven.  They would constantly keep it lit, which kept them warm.  Eventually the French soldiers found them, but did not kill them.  Instead they just took their livestock that they had kept down in the caves with them.  They eventually were taken in by monks in the area, which is why their story is known.  The farmers were not educated, but the monks were and they recorded their story.

During the entire tour we had three lamps we carried around.  There were no lights at all built into the caves.  At one point the tour guide stopped and told us to put our hands on the left wall.  He said he was going to collect all the lamps, and was going to walk a distance.  He said when the lights went out and we could no longer see anything, start walking with our hand on the wall.  He said it would lead us to him.  He also said that anyone who didn't want to do that could just walk with him, but everyone stayed behind.  I've never seen such darkness in my life.  It was literally a complete absence of light.  We eventually all made it back to him though and it turned out to be kind of neat.  He had us do that to illustrate how much trouble you'd be in if you were in the caves without a light source.

Once the tour was over we hit the road and headed home.  Normally I'd leave it at that, but we did see one interesting thing on the drive home.  We passed a car on the road that had Texas license plates.  I don't mean on display in their rear window, I mean it was attached to their car and was the only license plate displayed, there were no European plates.  I don't know why they did that, but it was definitely not something I ever expected to see.

Despite Queens Day not being anywhere near the celebration it was in Amsterdam, we still ended up having a great time.  While Salzburg was by far our favorite city that we visited, our favorite country is The Netherlands.  The Dutch people are the friendliest people we've met, from the Wine store employee who gave us a guided tour just because to the locals who wanted to talk about beer, America, and anything else that came up in the Take One bar.  If you ever have a chance to visit The Netherlands, do it...you won't regret it.

My next post won't be until next Friday at the earliest because I'm leaving for Rome on Monday.  I'll have pictures and a blog post late next week or early the week after.  For pictures, you can click here or any picture in the post above.