Are people from Bavaria lederhosen wearing beer swizzlers?

 This city we’re staying in, Augsburg,was founded in 15 BC by order of Roman emperor Augustus. It was conquered by the Huns, Charlemagne. Cant say I know much about them. There was war between the Catholics and the Protestants (who always seem to be fighting each other).

It is part of Bavaria and the area is led by a political party called the Christian Social Union. They have been referred to as “lederhosen wearing beer swizzlers”. They espouse family values based on catholic teaching but are forward thinking in many others area such as the environment.

Maybe the Christian part of the Christian Social Union explains why nothing here is open on Sunday. Grocery stores, most restaurants, malls, you name it. I guess everybody is in church.

After church they came to the Augsburg Plaerrer, a 2 week folk festival, and partied like it was 1999.  Many wore lederhosen and the gals wore traditional dresses and drank from huge beer mugs. There were jaunty hats.

They ate schnitzel (what a great word), brats and very large pretzels. There were six large horses hitched up to pull a wagon of beer kegs. Fun was had by all.

So are people from Augsburg lederhosen wear beer swizzlers? No. They are proud of their traditions and like to have fun.

Train travel sucks everywhere

 These train days are gonna kill me. So this morning we took U Bahn (sort of subway) to Westbahnhoff station to get on the West Bahn train to Munich. Found platform fine. 

We get on train and you can check in automatically with a QR code on seat in front of you. It takes you to the train site, you put your seat number in and you are checked in. No ticket check necessary. Pretty cool.

It’s a four hour ride . It is so quiet on the train. On Ireland and English trains it was party city with people drinking and carrying on. Beautiful mountains along the way. 

We get to the German border crossing and the police come on to check passports and IDs. Takes a long time. Put us behind schedule. 

On to Munich. Now we thought we could go to Augsburg, where we are staying, from that station. We buy the tickets and look for the platform. We don’t find it. Of course we don’t.

So we go to the information and are told we have to go to another station for that train about 6 miles away. We need to take the subway to the new station. So we find that. Get to the station, find the platform, almost get on going the wrong way. Get on right train and get to Augsburg. It is a 20 minute walk to the hotel. We could have taken the tram but who wants to try and find that at this point? 

So just before we get to the hotel we find a carnival going ona bock away. M refuses to go on a ride with me. 

Another travel day in the books and ten more grey hairs.

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September 03, 2022 at 08:25PM

Top ten highlights of year long journey so far

Here are top ten fun takes on the trip so far:

1) Best looking men: Dublin hands down and I’m not saying that because I’m Irish.

2) Best transport system: Vienna. Its fairly cheap, easy to understand, clean, rarely jam packed. 

3) Best Mexican food so far: Pablo Picante, Dublin. It has become our mission to find good Mexican food in every city.

4) Best country so far: …and the award goes to Scotland. Scotland is beautiful. It is moody and dark. It really seems to celebrate its culture. I mean where else does a street performer get himself out of a straight jacket and chains? I loved it. 

5) Most interesting place: Ireland. It has such an interesting history and the history is all around you if you look for it. It haunts Ireland.

6) Most surprising place: Cardiff, Wales. We hadn’t planned to go to Wales. It’s not a place you hear much about. I really enjoyed how down to earth the people were. Not fancy.  Wales is beautiful and has a rich history. It is unappreciated.

7) Most diverse: London. It is a city filled with all different kinds of people . It felt like more people spoke foreign languages than English. The neighborhoods are diverse and interesting.

8) Grandest city: Vienna. The architecture is beautiful. It has hosted Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart. It has 450 balls a year. This fills like a city made for rich people. If you have money, you can live the high life here.

9) Funnest place: London. From its packed underground to its grand palaces to its funky neighborhoods like Camden town, it is just a lot of fun. So much to see.

10) Where I want to go back to: Scotland. I would like to see the rest of this beautiful country. I would like to return to Litlingow and the gorgeous Loch there. I just love the culture, the nooks and crannies and stories in Scotland. 

The end.

Is Vienna too good for mere mortals?

 

Vienna is a place that leaves you awestruck. It is one beautiful building after another. Even the big apartment buildings people live in are elaborate. 

In the central part of Vienna there is an area called the Innere Stadt. It is a sort of oblong circle. It is the place where the Roman’s originally made a settlement. It was surrounded by stone walls, like many ancient towns, for defense. 

As the city grew outside the walls into the the mid 1850’s, the walls were destroyed but a wide boulevard remained now called the Ringstrabe. Elaborate buildings were built in the baroque style of architecture, many were museums, government buildings, libraries along the boulevard.

So many of the opulent buildings of central Vienna were built in the last part of the 19th century. Looking at them, you would think they are much older but they aren’t. The architects built them in old architectural styles like Baroque.

I had been wondering why so many buildings had statues along the top edge and this is part of the Baroque style. Baroque is dramatic, has elaborate details. Doorways are often embellished. Architectural details are added to even simple, practical buildings like apartment buildings. 

If you could use a couple of words to describe Vienna , it would be dramatic, opulent. Everything is bigger here and more opulent. Ordinary stores, apartments are in beautiful buildings. This place is so grand it feels too good for mere mortals.

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September 01, 2022 at 08:14PM

Living that Vienna life

So I mentioned I am staying in the Wahring district of Vienna. I am in one of those tall apartment building that stand one after another in long rows.  The place I’m in is 125 years old. 

When you enter the building there is a cement staircase that is in a spiral that goes up as high as 3 stories. I’m sure it is the original staircase because of how it’s built and it’s appearance. At first it was kind of scary to go down, but now I’m used to it. 

What’s weird is that if you come in at night, there are no lights in the hallways or on the staircase. Maybe we don’t know how to turn them on, I don’t know. Kind of eerie. Especially in an old building. Probably ghosts of former residents wander the hallways.

On one level there is this wash basin thing (see picture) outside an apartment, obviously part of the original building. Maybe you washed your hands before you go in.

So the place itself is very decent. It’s weirdly designed in that there is a large room with a double bed and living room area. There is a kitchen. There is a small bedroom and a bathroom. The toilet is in its own small room. When you have to spend some time in there (!) it could be claustrophobic. 

The beds have very firm mattresses. Apparently Austrians and Germans like their beds firm.

Of course there is no air conditioning. A couple of good fans though. No screens on windows. Washing machine

is in the bathroom. No dryer. All of this has been standard with the trip except usually no fans.

To one side of the building is an outdoor market selling produce, flowers. There are a couple of restaurants that only have outdoor seating. One is fish. So smell of fish is strong. We aren’t on that side. 

There is a church about a block away that rings bells at 7 am, then at 7:45 am in case you didn’t hear it the first time. Then it ring at 6:15 pm and again at 7:00 pm. This is every day.

About a block away is street with groceries, coffee shops, clothing stores, restaurants, anything you need. Tram runs on that street. Train station couple blocks away. 

That is life in a Vienna neighborhood.

Tales from the Vienna church crypts

 St Stephens (Stephansdom) church in Vienna started being built in 1137 . Up until the 1700’s there was a cemetery surrounding the church. In about 1718 the cemetery

was closed and a crypt was built beneath the church. Between 1745 and 1783 over 10,000 people were buried in the crypts beneath the cathedral.

Well the crypts got filled to the brim and were walled off. Apparently this caused quite a bad smell. Only a small group of people were allowed into the crypts.

When the crypt got full, prisoners were sent in to stack the bones to make more room. There are cavernous ossuaries (container or room where bones of the dead are put) full of skulls and bones. 

The crypts have two sections. One part is for the bishops and in the past, nobility. In other words the rich and powerful. That area has caskets and urns. The other part is much darker and contains ossuaries where the skulls and bones are. This where the common folk ended up.

There is a tour where you can go down there and look at the whole thing, including looking down to see the skulls and bones. All for the low price of $5. Did I go down there? No. I’ll pass. 

Is Vienna public transport free?

Vienna has something that would probably never work in the U.S. its entire transit system is based on honesty. 

Vienna has commuter rail type train (SBahn), subway type train (UBahn), tram system, buses. You can use the same ticket for all of it. Same price. Here’s the thing: nobody is ever really going to check to see if you have a ticket.  There are no machines to put your ticket through, no ticket checks on the trains, trams or buses. It is entirely based on you doing the responsible thing of buying the ticket. Bazaar.

Hold everything!!!! They actually do spot checks. The conductor (driver) can decide to conduct a check. There are sometimes people who check at stops. There can be an inspector on the train. People are still RARELY checked.  You could probably easily get away with riding free. Fine for non payment: $105. A 2020 survey showed only 2% of people stopped didn’t have a valid ticket.

This is not the first city we’ve been in with this policy. In London you had to tap a card or ticket in and out. In Manchester we took the the tram. Nobody asked about a ticket. In Edinburgh there were random checks. In Belfast paid for bus like you would any bus. Dublin, nobody checked. Waterford and Cardiff we walked. 

Transport going from city to city is one of the more complicated things we figure out. What is the system? What part of it will we take? Where do we go to take it. It doesn’t take long to figure it out.  Now that we are in non English speaking countries it’s even more complicated.

But it’s part of the fun right? Har. It’s just part of the whole thing. Cant change it.

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August 29, 2022 at 06:07PM