Guttentag from Deutschland!

An Overseas Report by Shad

Hallo again! I'm back in Bayreuth, after visiting Salzburg, Austria and
Munich, the second (or argubly the third) largest city in Germany. I spent
about a day and a half in each city and saw many wonderful things.

Salzburg: A beautiful little city with lots of culture and history.
Conveniently located within breath-taking distance of the Bavarian/Austrian Alps, Salzburg is a great place to see some of the more quaint and lovely sights near Bavaria. Also famous for its setting in The Sound of Music, there's all kinds of tourist attractions at little booths and tours relating to the musical. My favorite part of Salzburg was the long river that runs straight down the middle, separating the old town from the new town, and also a large bastion called Hohensalzburg Fortress, whose construction began in 1077. It was pretty high up on a mountain, and overlooked the whole city. On a clear day, I imagine you could see Vienna, but I found its main purpose when Nikki and I walked through the cannon room; to watch over the city and protect the river from opposing forces. It was pretty cool, and we had to take a little railcar at a steep incline to get up there. We also saw the birthplace of Mozart, several beautiful cathedrals, some festival in a small courtyard featuring some musicians in classic bavarian lederhosen, and other historical sights of interest that I'm too tired to go into detail at the moment. We had dinner at Nordsee, a seafood chain restaurant featuring tastes from the North Sea, and had a huge Bavarian dessert at Cafe Glockenspiel which was pretty filling.

Munich was pretty cool. One of the largest cities in Germany (Berlin, Hamburg, and Frankfurt would be the other three major cities), it celebrated its 800th anniversary the same year it celebrated its one millionth citizen. In Munich we saw a Residenz, a statehouse for many of the kings and queens
of old dating back to the Ottoman Empire, holding many treasures and tapestries and all kinds of interesting historical factoids. There were also many cathedrals, one of which had some marionettes up high in the center, sort of like those little clocks you see where the figures dance around and rings bells at the top of the hour. But Nikki and I never caught it as we were wanding past the Marketplatz. We ate at the Ratskeller, a town hall and meetingplace of old converted into a restaurant. It's been popular for quite a while too. I had some roast pork with potato dumplings and bread dumplings, and Nikki had weinerschnitzel. We had a kind of strawberry shortcake for dessert. Afterwards, we headed to the Hoffbrau Haus, a huge beer hall which is famous all over the world for its delicious one liter mugs of beer. Pretty rowdy atmosphere inside, but Nikki and I found a comfortable spot out in the biergarten in the courtyard at the center of the HB. This morning we had a pretty well-rounded traditional breakfast at the hotel and headed for the old Olympia Park, used for the Olympics in Munich in the 70s. Still maintained, it was very shiny and neat looking, but took forever to walk around. We headed to the old home of Ludwig II, the last king of Bavaria, still loved by the people and still considered king (mostly because he was the last and the people loved him so much).

We came back to Bayreuth this afternoon and have been taking it relatively easy. We had chinese food for dinner which was pretty good, and had italian style ice cream for dessert, which wasn't reall soft serve, but not really hand dip hard ice cream either, it was a heavenly meeting someplace between the two which was pretty satisfying. Well, tomorrow we go to Frankfurt, where I'll be flying home from. We plan to take it easy, maybe take in a few sights and do some shopping. I'll make my final updates when I get home, and I'll reveal some other stuff I've seen during my time here in Germany. Until then, ciao!

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