2006 Vacation In Europe, Part Five

(Hey, my very first blog entry was posted just over a year ago. Who knew?)

Day Seven (10/10): River, River Have Mercy

In the end, with the kids' known attention span, and Sarah's discomfort with water travel, it was just Lydia and myself that went on the cruise up the Rhine. We took the Eurail from Landstuhl to Bingen am Rhein (those of you familiar with medieval music will recognize the connection with Hildegarde von Bingen), and we boarded the riverboat. The full tour goes all the way to Koln, but that would have taken a very long time; we ended up disembarking at Boppard, south of Koblenz.

This day, I bought tickets rather than use the Eurail pass; since I'd accidentally wasted a day by writing the wrong date on the pass, I simply left the pass at the hotel and bought one-way tickets to Bingen, then from Boppard back to Landstuhl.

The weather was gray for most of the day, overcast with only the occasional break in clouds. The cruise ship wasn't overcrowded; bustling, yes, with Chinese tour groups, but not rail-to-rail people. So, I had plenty of opportunity to move between sides of the ship to take pictures of everything that caught my eye, which was a lot. There are many small towns on the Rhine, most of which are loomed over by the castles that sit farther up in the hills.

There's not much that I can write about the Rhine that hasn't already been examined in exacting detail in the past; it's one of the most important waterways in Europe (the most important in terms of trade), and has been for centuries. The castles that overlook it served not only as defense against ship-borne invaders, but also as impromptu tax collectors on early merchant traffic, the raubritters being a notoriously sword-happy bunch. But I was in history-geek heaven. Are any of you surprised?

One non-castle-related sight caught my attention (indeed, it was noted for doing just that): Lorelei. Named after one of the Rhinemaidens (or vice versa), it's an enormous rock on the eastern bank of the river, in a tight bend known for causing many river accidents because of the strong current and hidden rocks. It's also one of the alleged hiding places of the treasure of the Nibelung. And it's also the name of a song by The Pogues.

I was also amused, in a juvenile and unjust fashion, by a small village on the Rhine called Assmannshausen. Home of the ass man. Yes, I know that's not what it means, but how can you possibly not think that?

Brain buzzing, I disembarked at Boppard, a beautifully scenic village. Lydia and I headed to the train station, only to discover that the train we needed to board was delayed. The delay continued, with regular updates, until it was cancelled entirely. Despite this, we managed to catch another train heading in the correct direction and, with a couple of extra stops, managed to make our way back to Kaiserslautern, where Garrett picked us up.


Day Eight (10/11): You Can Check Out Any Time You Like...

The morning was spent packing and saying our goodbyes to the wonderful, helpful (and in some cases extremely cute) staff at Hotel Merkur. We then walked to the station to catch the first train on the six-hour trip back to Brussels. I was done; I barely even took any pictures this day, except while having lunch at an open-air cafe in Brussels near the train station. Some shopping was done, some eating was done (after much confusion with the French-speaking waitress; when I'm the only one with even a modicum of French language, you know you're in trouble).

After that, it was back on the Eurostar train to London, and thence to the Underground to the hotel where we would spend our last night in Europe. They hate travelers on the Underground; it's the only explanation I can think of for the utter lack of escalators or visible* elevators. And when you've got a lot of luggage and three kids to watch, that's a real damn problem.

The Hilton next to Gatwick airport is nice enough. I don't know too much about it, having been in a state of utter exhaustion when I arrived. Unconsciousness was both welcome and swift in arriving.

Day Nine (10/12): How Will You Make Your Way In The World

Breakfast had to wait until we'd gotten through security at Gatwick airport, and it was a madhouse. They were having some issue or another, and everything was backed up. Navigating the tightly packed crowed was an exercise is claustrophobia and frustration. I have it on good authority that it's not always like that; me, I don't trust it. We finally made it through, having assured them that we were not mad bombers (OK, not bombers), or carrying dangerous bottles of water through the checkpoint, or attempting to smuggle badgers or some such.

We had an adequate breakfast at a restaurant in the duty-free zone. The clock was ticking, so we wolfed it down and headed to the shops to buy cheap booze and expensive souvenirs. We rearranged our bags to hold everything, given the weird baggage restrictions we were under, and walked down to the gate.

A stroke of good fortune! Sarah got upgraded from Business class to World Club (the step between Business and First Class). Good on her. We boarded the plane, only to discover that Business class had been overbooked, and several British tourists were looking askance at the obviously deranged American** in one of their precious seats. Flight attendants were summoned, lines of charmingly accented communication were opened, and it was eventually determined that I should also have been upgraded to a World Club seat.

They lean all the way back.

And there are little TVs to watch, with a selection of programming. I finally got to watch Over The Hedge, Cars (again), and a series of short claymation bits from Aardman Studios, the same folks who brought us Wallace and Gromit.

Free booze. For me, a surprisingly good red wine. But the food was still crap. How, by damn, do you make a bland curry?

So overall, a pleasant flight experience, but not so much better that I'd be willing to pay the extra cost to upgrade beyond Business class. I can see where an international flight would be very difficult in coach. If it were just me, it might not be too bad; I just sort of curl up and hibernate on long flights; but for this sort of trip, with other travelers, and kids, and all that, Business class was the way to go.

We landed in Atlanta, struggled through baggage claim, went through Customs, checked our bags again, went through Security again, picked up our bags again and, finally, drove home.

*(Or functional elevators. They hate travelers, I tell you.)

**(Me.)

The Horror

I'm at work right now, on a call, and the customer is eating and chewing while talking to me. It's fucking nasty and I want to scream at him. But I can't.

Overreacting? Maybe. But still...damn.

2006 Vacation in Europe, Part Four

Day Four (10/9): Holding Still

On Monday, we decided not to do anything; finally, enough train travel was enough. We spent some time walking around Landstuhl, which is a neat little town; it's probably best-known for being home to the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, which is one of the primary locations providing care to U.S. soldiers wounded in Iraq.

We didn't really do much. I slept in, read for a bit, and ate. Exciting world traveler, I am.

Days Five and Six (10/10-11): Dude, I Was So High

After a day of downtime, Tuesday was spent on the train to Garmisch-Partenkirchen, down on the border between Germany and Austria. On Eurail passes, ones you've purchased for use for, say, six days, there is a place for you to write down the dates on which you've used the pass. The pass is validated by the train conductor, and you ride to your heart's content. If you write the wrong day on there, perhaps as a result of forgetting you didn't ride the train the day before, well, you're just out of luck, and you get to write the correct date and use up another day on the pass. But after the embarrassment of doing just that, I was able to sit back and enjoy the ride. The mountains just get more and more impressive the closer you get to Garmisch. And there were gnomes.

Garmisch is situated at the base of the Zugspitze, the highest peak in Germany, and is a popular tourist and ski town. It reminded me of a less-kitschy, rather larger, version of Gatlinburg. And with much higher mountains. We walked around the town until the sun set, and then we returned to our five-star hotel (which still failed to be as nice as the Hotel Merkur) for an expensively disappointing dinner. Oddly enough, they had a French theme at the restaurant at the time we were there, and it seemed like things just weren't coming together for them. The food was slow in arriving, the servers were harried and dashing in every direction, and it was just difficult to get anything. The food being slow is kind of to be expected; dining is a social event in Germany (and in most of Europe), and you shouldn't be in a hurry. If you're in a hurry, you shouldn't go to a restaurant. But this place was very slow, and you could tell that it wasn't supposed to be that way.

The rooms were comfortable enough, though. The way they do the beds in hotels over there is interesting. There's a sheet over the mattress, but instead of a blanket covering the entire thing, there's a narrow (three feet?) but heavy comforter on each half of the bed. It works surprisingly well and I guess it makes the washing easier as well; less material in general, and you don't have to wash a whole big blanket for a bed that just one person slept in.

I got up bright and early the next morning, and Bill, Roan, and I took the train up to the Zugspitze. The train meanders around some low cattle pastures for a little ways before starting up the side of the mountain. About half-way up, you have to switch to a cog-wheel train; they add an additional, notched, track in the middle of the normal tracks, into which a cog on the bottom of the train car fits. It's to keep it from rolling backwards, and I'm all about that. The train passes through a 14km-long tunnel through the mountain on its way to the last station.

That station itself is quite high, and we were able to clamber around on the rocks, look out over the Alps, and throw snowballs. There's a small chapel up there; while I couldn't read the plaque associated with it, I can only assume it read "Thank God we don't have to climb any more." One tourist had a huge fluffy dog with him, and it was just ecstatic to be up in the mountains; it would bark very quietly, fling itself to the ground to wallow in the snow like Java wallows in the grass, and pick up chunks of snow, toss them, and then chase them. Unfortunately, it was shy and I didn't get a chance to play with it.

From the train station, we took the cable car to the observation post at the peak itself. It's a combination weather station, restaurant, and tourist trap, none of which diminishes the awesome view from up there. We stopped at the restaurant to have a beer and enjoy the view; the beer, incidentally, was cheaper than the soft drinks at just about every place we went.

For the trip back down, we took the cable car which overlooks the Eibsee (Lake Eib). That's a ride, right there, plummeting about 6,000 feet in just a few minutes. That's the sort of thing I'm used to doing in an airplane, not a little gondola on cables. From there, we took the train back down to Garmisch, had lunch, and endured* another ride on the Eurail back to Landstuhl.

*(Yes, endured is the right word. However cool the Eurail may be, however great a way to see the country it is, you can get tired of it, especially when you're herding four adults, three children, and assorted luggage. I swear, the next time I go, it's going to just be a big ol' backpack and me.)

11/2-11/4: Chicago, IL

It's been, if memory serves, about eight years since I've been to Chicago. This trip has a little more advance planning, as opposed to the poorly-organized but brilliantly-executed road trip of years ago. Naturally, this one is also less fun.

But it does have it's moments. Well, moment. After two short flights, one to Cincinnati, one to Chicago, and a pleasant conversation with a single-serving friend (see Fight Club for that reference), I dropped off my bags at the hotel and went downtown to see the Chicago Blackhawks play the Detroit Red Wings.

The traffic here is insane. In what reasonable city does the afternoon rush hour cause gridlock when going into the city? Anyway, it took almost two hours to get to the arena, so I ended up missing the opening faceoff. I'll live.

The crowd was larger than I expected, given what I've heard about their attendance lately, but there's always more ticket sales when Detroit comes to town. They weren't the loudest bunch, not like Nashville fans, but it didn't have the mortuary silence of a Capitals game, either. Most of the crowd contribution consisted of chanting "Detroit sucks!", and booing every time Chris Chelios* touched the puck

It was a more contested game than I expected, given that the 'Hawks are generally among the league's bottom-feeders.** They scored one in the first period; Rene Borque took advantage of Osgood's poor positioning after a save. And that's where the score stayed, through the rest of that period and all through the second. The Wings kept putting shots on net, but were stopped by the Blackhawks blocking the shots, by Brian Boucher stopping everything else that came through, and everything that got past him ringing off the goal posts.

But they're down two of their best players (Havlat and Handzus) due to injuries, and they just couldn't keep it up. In the third period, the puck trickled out from in front of the net during a scramble, and Zetterberg flipped it over the goalie to score. Shortly thereafter, Lang casually fired a shot over Boucher's shoulder for another goal.

After that, there just wasn't much fight left; the Blackhawks got very few shots on goal after that to even try and tie things up, and the crowd wasn't doing so much chanting. Detroit won, 2-1.

Oh, and if it even bears mentioning, never trust arena food. The original plan was to eat before the game, but the delays in getting there necessitated eating at the United Center. This morning, my intestines justifiably feel betrayed, and are taking it out on me.

*(Chris Chelios was a very popular defenseman for the Blackhawks before he was traded to Detroit. His profile also bears a striking resemblance to the Blackhawks' logo.)

**(Not their fault; their management team sucks.)