Our Visit to Germany and Austria

Andrew and I have been married for over five years and during this time we have been fortunate enough to be able to travel a great deal to many different countries. The trip that we both rank as probably our favorite getaway was when we went to the Bavarian region of Germany and then to Austria in June 2004. Andrew loves the mountains, we both love castles, eating and beer, and I must confess that I had always wanted to visit the filming location of my all-time favorite movie, The Sounds of Music, so this seemed like a trip we just HAD to do together.

We started out in Munich, Germany and spent some time in the city and also outside the city in the Alps region. We would have liked to have been able to ski while we were there, but skiing stops in May and resumes in September, so we happened to plan our trip during the summer hiatus. Oh well! Andrew would have had no problems, but I'm not sure my "beginner to intermediate skill level in the Poconos" would have been quite advanced enough for such a feat since the Alps are just a little bigger than Jack Frost and Big Boulder!

We did, however, make it up the Alps via ski lift (sans skis of course) and what an experience! Unfortunately we did not have the clearest day when we went so our visability could have been better, but the views were spectacular nonetheless. Supposedly, on a clear day you can see Italy, Switzerland, Germany and Austria all from one peak on the Zugspitze, one peak that we ascended.

Feeling on top of the world!

That's one heck of a ski lift!

What a view! It makes you feel like...oh, I don't know....yodeling! :)

One of our favorite places to spend time at night in Munich was the Hof Brauhaus, a famous beer hall with song, dance and ample flow of supersized beers and pretzels. What a fun atmosphere and it's pretty safe to assume that one drink here will last you all night!! Of course Andrew needed to take home a souvenir mug for himself...

Our last night in town we arrived at the Hof Brauhaus late and weren't able to snag a cozy table for two so we sat down on one of the long tables for, oh maybe 20 or so. After a few moments a group of American businessmen sat with us and being the friendly folk that we are we struck up conversation with them. Now this is where our usual overseas coincidence occurs (as you may have read about in some of our former trips). One of the men was an alumnus of our alma mater, Lehigh University, and had had many of our same profs. Being that Lehigh has 3,000 undergrads and is a small private college that is most well-known in the northeastern US, we found this to be quite a coincidence since we ran into a fellow Engineer in Munich! Here's a photo of the three of us.

My birthday fell during our time in Germany so I decided that for my birthday I wanted to go to a nearby city called Rothenburg ob der Tauber. It is a quaint, "gingerbread"-esque village that got rave reviews from the travel experts so we decided to make the trek. What a pleasant surprise! Rothenburg had fabulous food and shops and such an old-fashioned Bavarian feeling to it. It was a perfect birthday!

A view of the gingerbread town:

Here I am in front of the Kathe Wohlfahrt store in which we purchased two wooden German boy and girl Christmas ornaments. We have a tradition of buying a Christmas ornament in every ciy in which we travel, so we couldn't resist!

After our time in Munich, we headed out for Salzburg, Austria and decided to stop at the famous Neuschwanstein Castle en route in Bavaria. In case it isn't obvious, Cinderella's Castle in Walt Disney World is directly modeled after this famous German palace. It was absolutely amazing and we took photos that looked like postcards.

Here is a bridge that we crossed in order to take picturesque photos of the castle. The bridge was very high off of the ground and quite scary to cross, and I don't even usually have a fear of heights! It was actually built specifically so that vain King Ludwig could go out there to admire the castle that he had built by embezzling Bavaria's public funds.

Here we are approaching the castle, which, as you can see if you look closely, is nestled amongst the mountains.

A bridge with a view.

The view! I swear that this is not a postcard and is actually a photo!!

Our next stop was Salzburg and what a wonderful, intimate city! We decided to splurge during our time here and to spring for (the low end) hotel room in the beautiful Hotel Sacher Salzburg, home of the decadent chocolate sacher torte. This hotel was beautiful and made our stay unforgettable. We had a lovely room, dined in the hotel restuarant twice and spent every night after we got back from our nightly activity in the hotel piano lounge. One night, I even requested "anything from My Fair Lady", my favorite show music, and the pianist proceeded to play a 30 minute medley of the entire score just for me!

Salzburg at night:

A view of the entire city from the top of the Hohensalzburg Fortress.

Here we are in the lobby of the Hotel Sacher dressed up for a night on the town, starting off with a Mozart dinner concert.

Some photos from around the town. We bicycled all through Salzburg one day and also took a Sound of Music tour another day to see some of the filming locations for the movie.

So Austrian!

The Sound of Music commemorative cow. Talk about commercialization!

Some Von Trapp sights...

"I am sixteen going on seventeen..."

The front and back of the Von Trapp's villa. They used two different houses to film the famous Rodgers and Hammerstein home.

"Do-Re-Mi..." We visited the famous Mirabell Gardens where the Von Trapp kids pranced around with Fraulein Maria leaning to sing. Here's a beautiful photo of the gardens followed by one of myself posing as Fraulein Maria at the garden entrance.

Our final stop on our vacation was in Vienna. This is certainly a much larger city than Salzburg so it had an entirely different feel to it, but the history and musical presence here made for some great sightseeing. We took a carriage ride around the city and then ate dinner at the Hotel Sacher Wien on our last night in town since we had enjoyed our stay at the Sacher in Salzburg so much and wanted to give its Viennese counterpart a try. What a wonderful way to say Auf Wiedersehen to our trip!