Day 3 - June 11, 2006

Driving to Germany
We woke up early, ate breakfast again at the hotel, and then checked out to say goodbye to Switzerland and make the drive to Germany. We weren't sure how long it would take to get to our next destination town Fussen, Germany; Curt asked the man at the hotel who said it would be about 5 hours. It wasn't that far on the map but the drive from Zurich was pretty slow because of the mountains so we figured it would be the same going to Germany. After the GPS was set, we took off. Because it was the weekend, there was a lot more traffic and bicyclists on the road than before. Curt was pretty stressed driving the winding roads. Finally we got out of the mountains and on to the Autobahn.

The Autobahn
The autobahn is not just one highway, but it actually is the German word for Interstate. You can drive as fast as you want in the left lane, but the recommended speed limit is 80 or (130 kph). It's illegal to drive in the left lane if you aren't passing and I never saw anyone the whole trip driving crazy, weaving in and out of traffic. I'm not sure if it's a law, but all the trucks were in the right lane and went pretty slow. The trucks (just like the cars) are much smaller than our semi's and they have canvas sides. Curt did take the car up to 100 miles an hour but I told him please don't go that fast cause the car was shaking. We mostly drove between 80 and 90. Alot of the exits take you into round-about's instead of the "clover-leafs" like we have in the US. All the roads we drove on were in really good condition which we thought was strange since there is lots of snow and ice. The roads were also really clean; I never saw any truck tire shreds. Every 1/2 mile or so there is a police call box. We also got to drive through lots of tunnels which again are very well maintaned and well lit. We listened to a lot of German radio which mostly played American music, only a couple songs weren't in English. All the stations were like "Big Hits of the 80's-90's and today" stations we have. We would lose radio reception whenever we drove through the tunnels. I didn't think the roads were that scary (of course I wasn't driving) but it was strange to see cars passing leaving you way behind when you were drving 90 mph. The whole time we were over there, I never saw one accident or broke down vehicle.

When it got to be lunchtime, we were on the highway and didn't know where to stop and wanted something quick. Yes, it was sacreligious, but we stopped for gas and ate at McDonalds. There aren't any roadside restarants except McDonalds. Everything else if off the road in the little towns. The inside of the the McDonalds was connected to a Walgreen's type store and was very nice on the inside (I took a photo) with very expensive furniture and lighting. I ordered a Cheeseburger Deluxe combo meal which is the same as a quarter-pounder #2 meal. I looked around for ketchup, then asked the girl behind the counter where it was. She handed me one packet and said "fourty." I said, "You have to pay?!" She smiled and said yes. So I yelled to Curt that we needed to get out the Swiss Franks again to get ketchup.

During the drive to Fussen, we had planned on stopping at Lindau an island off the shore of Lake Constance (or the Bodensee) which is the 3rd largest lake in Europe. Curt was worried about how long the drive would be, so we skipped the Lindau stop and got to our hotel in Fussen about 2 o'clock.

Fussen, Germany
Our hotel, the Hotel Christine, was outside the center of town in a residential area. It was a very beautiful building, and they even had a red carpet at the front door. We walked inside and they German man that owned the hotel welcomed us with a champagne glass of mimosa. We picked it up and drank, and he said "Seet down and reelax!" in his super-thick German accent. We did for a second but were anxious to get our things out in our hotel room. Our room was on the second floor, so we had to carry our bags up again which was hard because of our leg trauma from the day before. We had just got in the room when there was a knock at the door; it was a lady who dropped off a tray with cookies, nuts and strawberries! I don't think Curt booked the most expensive room, but I think were were the only guests in the hotel so we got the nicest room with a huge balcony that overlooked the mountains. We ate the cookies and researched how to get to the nearby Bavarian royal castles of Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau. These are the "fairy tale" castles you see in all the pictures of Germany on TV.

Hohenschwangau, built by Maximilian II in 1836 is the less remarkable and more intimate of the two. Neuschwanstein, the most photographed building in Germany, was the fair-tale concoction of Maximilian's son, King Ludwig II. Ludwig watched the construction of his dream palace through a telescope from neighboring Hohenschwangau. Building began in 1869 and continued for some 17 years, stopping only when Ludwig died in 1886. Between 1884 adn 1886, the king lived in Neuschwanstein on and off for 170 days. At Neuschwanstein he received news of this dethronement. Three days later he was dead.

For some, Ludwig II is the "The mad king" For others, he is the "dream king." This strange self-obcessed monacrch has become one of the legendary figure in Bavarian history. Biographies, films, plays, and even a musical have been written about him. Born in Munich in 1845, Ludwig II was only 18 years old when he was crowned king of Bavaria. Tall, handsome, and blue-eyed, Ludwig greq bord with the affairs o fstate and eventuallu become more and more obcessed with action out his extravagant fantasies. The most famous was the turreted castle of Neuschwanstein, perched on a crag high avove the town of Schwangau and Fussen. Ludwig's excesses eventually threatened to bandkrupt the kingdom, and in 1886, at age 41, he was declared insane. Three days later he was found drowned in Lake Starnberg on the outskirts of Munich, along with the physician who declared him insane. Was he murdered or did he commit suicide? No one knows.

We drove to the castles from our hotel, which is a huge tourist area. At the bottom of the hill are hotels and restarants, souviner shops, parking lots, carriages, and buses to take you up the hill to castle. Our Fodor's Guide described the walk to castle as, "The 35-minute walk up the winding hill to the castle is very enjoyable" so we decided just to walk. The walk was not enjoyable but very, very, very steep. I had to stop several times because I was out of breath from the altitude and dripping with sweat. We finally reached our first stop, the Marienbrucke bridge which overlooks the castle. This was great because it was really windy so we could cool off. We took lots of pictures of the castle and a waterfall below.

As a Crown Prince Ludwig had already grown to love the beautiful scenry of the Scwangau arca, including the dramatic waterfall in the Pollatschlucht above Neuschwanstein. This gorge with its steep rocky walls had already been "discovered" by Maximillian II"s generation as a beauty spot. The wooden rails of the bridge that spans it, the Marienbrucke, were replace by Ludwig II during the building of Neuschwanstein by the present elegant cantilever consruction made of iron. "The view from up above is enchanting, especially the view from the Marienbrucke of the castle, which will far outschine the Wartburg fro all it's acknowledged merits of location, architectural splendour and magnificent paintings, " wrote King Ludwig II in a letter in 1881.

After seeing the bridge, we walked to the Castle took more pictures then walked down which again was not enjoyable becuase it was so steep you had to keep yourself from falling. By this point I was getting used to the pain. Luckily, the weather was beautiful and surprisingly warm. After the walk down we got to our car and wolfed down some trail mix that I had brought along. Then we drove back to our hotel and took a bath hoping to relax our calf muscles. That night we walked to the Fussen Altstadt (Old Town) and found a nice hotel cafe to eat at. The menu was all in German so we had no idea what to order but we were starving. Curt asked the waitress if she spoke English and he ordered a beer and I got some kind of wine that sounded like it might be good even though I didn't know what I was ordering (It turned out to be really good). When the waitress came back Curt said, "Okay we are ready to order but I need your help" She said, "Do you want an English menu?" Oh! We didn't know you could ask for that. The english menu was good, but we noticed that it wasn't really the same menu. I think they only put items that they think the American's will like. Unfortunately we couldn't really order anything unique, but we were just glad we could read it.

After dinner we went back to the hotel and had to figure out how to use the German key to get in the front door since it was locked. The German hotel owner must have heard us, so he came to the door just when we figured it out and said in his accent laughing, "It's dee-ferent in Gerr-many, yah?!" We went to our room and relaxed on our balcony and sampled some of the local wines from the mini-bar. The mini-bar wines were really cheap so you could actually afford to drink them.

Day 2 - June 10, 2006

Exploring Lauterbrunnen
The next morning I woke up to find that Curt had already been up walking around. He got up early and walked down to the river that runs through the valley and of course found a local fisherman. He said he asked the man if he spoke English, and he said a little. He showed Curt a big trout he had caught. Curt was very jealous of course. Curt says, "He didn't fly fish, but fished with a 9'-0" pole and a spinning reel at the base of the handle similar to a fly rod but the pole was longer and more stiff. He placed the bait which was either a worm or grub at the spots where one would find trout. It was a very different type of stream fishing than we see in America. People in America think fly fishing is the only way to catch fish, but it's more for the sport instead of just catching fish." He also saw the local farmers bringing the cows through town to the pastures. The cows all had bells on just like in the movies. Curt said the cows tried to drink from an old watering fountain and the farmer had to shoo them away. There were several old stone horse trough/fountains throughout the town that had fresh water constantly flowing from the mountain streams.

After Curt finished telling me about the fish, we walked across the street to the main hotel building so that we could eat breakfast, which was included in the price of the hotel. The breakfast was like a buffet but the waitress seated you in the dining room and asked if you would like coffee. Then we walked to the room next door where they had lunchmeat, cheese, fruit cocktail, cereals, yogurt (the German yogurt is more runny than yogurt we have over here), and of course a variety of breads and Curt's favorite: Brochen (German rolls). The meats were especially good; they had several varieties of salami and baloney but they were much better tasting than what you would buy in the store over here. The coffee the waitress brought came on a tray in a silver coffee pot with real cream in a creamer and a variety of sugars.

After breakfast we took a 45 minute walk outside the town to Trummelbach Falls. This is not the waterfall you see in most of our pictures; this one is is not visible from the valley. It's a glacier waterfall.

Trummelbach Falls
Trummelbach Falls is 10 glacier waterfalls inside the mountain made accessible by tunnel-lift and illuminated. The Trummelbach alone drains the mighty glacier defiles of the mountain peaks Eiger (3970m), Monk (4099) and Jungfrau (4158m) and carries up to 20,000 liters of water a second 20,200 tons of boulder detritus per year. It's drainage area is 24km2, half of it covered by snow and glaciers. It is the only glacier waterfall in Europe inside the mountain and still accessible.


We reached the bottom of the mountain and paid a small fee to walk inside the waterfall area. Insead of stairs, they built a tunnel-lift which was like going in a cave elevator, but you went up. At the top you climbed stairs to see the different falls inside the mountain. My camera didn't work very well because of all the water-spray in the air. It was very loud and a little wet, but it was pretty neat. Afterward, we walked down the mountain instead of taking the car because that is what the operator guy told us to do. I figured out later that he must have thought we needed exercise or something becausse I think everyone else rode the car back down. You would think a few stairs going down would not be hard; but these stairs were very steep, uneven and at at 40 degree angle. You had to use all your energy not to fall down! By the time we got to the bottom our legs were shaking. Then we had to walk all the way back to the town and up a very steep hill throught the town and to our hotel. We ate lunch at another hotel in town; we both had Wiener Schnitzel and french fries. Curt said it was not that good; it probably came from the freezer. It tasted okay to me.

After lunch I took a nap because I was still really jet-lagged, and Curt went to a local bar to watch an England world cup game. He said that the sign said "big screen" and it was only a 19" TV! We figured out later that all of our hotels had small tv's so I suppose big screens are not very common. Later we relaxed on our balcony and watched the waterfall. We debated going to the top of the Jungfrau, the largest peak in the area (the white snow capped mountain behind the waterfall in our pictures) but it cost 100 Swiss Franks apeice to ride the train to the top. Later our calf muscles were super sore and we could bearly walk down the 3 flights of stairs to eat dinner! Since it doesn't get dark until 10:30 at night, I took a walk down to the Staubbach Falls after dinner because I saw from the road earlier that you could walk behind it. Unfortunately, there were signs and barracades blocking people from walking behind the waterfall. A sign said that a tourist had gotten hit by a falling rock so they closed off the falls. So I just walked back to the hotel and went to sleep.

Click on picture below to see our trip pictures!

Day 1 - June 8-9, 2006

American Flight 38: DFW to Zurich
We left Dallas at 3:00 p.m. which was great because we had time that morning before our flight to pack and think of last minute things. We took a cab to the airport and checked in. Neither Curt nor I had flown overseas before and we handed the ticketing agent our ID's like we usually do so she could look up our names in the computer to verify our flights. "Um, I need your Passports, not your ID's." she said. Our first awakening of the trip. Other than showing her our passports, we checked in as usual and waited for the flight. Before we boarded we got our last Tex-Mex fix in the terminal. I was pretty apprehensive before we left how I would survive such a long flight. Before we took off, I of course watched all the passengers board and walk-by. There was a whole bunch of Mexico soccer fans on the plane, even a guy with a sombrero! After taking off, "dinner" served to us about an hour after boarding and then breakfast about an hour before landing. I brought some sleeping pills (over the counter) and tried taking one but it didn't really hlep me fall asleap. It's hard to sleep when it's not that late. When we reached the French coastline, the pilot got on the loudspeaker and said that the left side of the plane had a great view of Paris. We were on the left, but unfortunately it looked like any other city since we were so high-up. As we flew closer to Switzerland, you could see the snow-capped peaks of the Swiss Alps. I started getting excited! After we landed, we went through Swiss customs which was very quick and easy. The agent glanced at our passports then said we could go through. They didn't even stamp anything.

Driving through Switzerland
After we got our baggage, we headed to the Avis car rental counter. Curt had reserved an upgraded car that had a GPS navigation system. The saleswoman gave him the option of the Mercedes or BMW; we ended up with a BMW hatchback wagon that was brand new. I started to get really tired waiting for the car rental. It was afterall 2:00 a.m. Dallas time by this point! The Avis people showed us the car and set up the GPS for Curt to English. We spent quite a long time figuring out how to use the thing before we even got out of the garage. There was one button that you pushed or hit up/down/left/right to select things on the computer screen. It was pretty temperamental but we got the address of our hotel in Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland entered. We left the airport and headed down the road. I tried to read the Switzerland road map to see if the GPS was working but I honestly had no idea how to read the thing. I figured all road maps are pretty similar but I couldn't find any of the highways we were driving on! Curt was really good about following the GPS. It had a women's voice that would say "Take the next exit, 500 meters" and then the map on the computer screen would show the route and where our car was on the map. We drove through Zurich and then into the mountains. That's when we both got really excited. It was so beautiful! The roads were very winding and narrow. The Swiss drivers had really small cars and there were lots of cyclists on the road which cars would pass. It was pretty scaring turning around a corner to see a car in your lane that had just passed someone.

Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland
We reached Lauterbrunnen and found the Hotel Silberhorn which was at the top of a hill. We had our first 'parking in Europe' experience trying to fit our big car in the little parking lot. We did it and then tried to check in, but our room was not ready. We decided to walk down a couple blocks along the main street to find some where to eat. The main street of Lauterbrunnen is lined with hotels which have outdoor cafe seating along the street. There were several people that were in their cycling or hiking clothes who stopped to have a beer and eat lunch. I ordered a salad and some asparagus filled pasta. Curt ordered some bratwurst and "rosti" which is a local dish. It's actually hash browns. After eating, I could barely keep my eyes open so checked into our hotel room which was in another building across from the main hotel and took a nap before dinner. Curt aparently reserved the nicest room at the place. We had the top floor suite with our own balcony that overlooked the town and Lauterbrunnen's most stunning feature, Staubbach Waterfall.

People were fascinated by the 300 m high Staubbach Falls as early as the Middle Ages. The milky-white waters thundering down over dark green rocks have inspired painters, poets and travel writers over the centuries. Goethe wrote a poem based on his 1779 visit, making the lake famous in the late 18th Century. When Goethe visited the Lauterbrunnen valley in 1779 he made the waterfall famous by dedicating his "Gesang der Geister über den Wassern" ("Song of the Spirits over the Waters") to it: "The soul of man is like water. It comes from heaven and rises again to heaven, it ascends to heaven and falls again to earth, eternally alternating. The pure stream flows from the high, steep rock face, falls softly in cloud-waves onto the smooth rock and, gently accepted, rolls and ripples into the abyss."

History of Lauterbrunnen
In 1240, Lauterbrunnen was mentioned in a letter as "in claro fonte" The scattered settlement was almost certainly naed because of the more than 70 waterfalls in teh Lauterbrunnen Valley, "lauterbrunned" (only Springs) aor also "lautere Bache" (clear streams). In the 14th Century, the Walser Village of Lauterbrunnen was home to the main colony of people from Lotschen in teh Valais, who has settled in the Bernese Oberland.

Mining & Lacemaking
Between 1715 and 1805 metal ore mines existed in the Lauterbrunnen Valley, which eventually closed for two main reasons. Providing sufficient wood for the smelting ovens and charcoal worksresulted in intensive deforestation, and transportation costs were too height to allow for profitable production. In 1750 there was a mass emigration of local people to the United States. The authorities attempted to stem the flow by introducing home industries such as lacemaking. The art of lacemaking is still practiced today, with regular courses being held in Lauterbrunnen's old school house. Today only a few women make a living from this skilled craft, but during WWI, about 450 local women and children supplemented the family income by the production of exquisitely fine yet durable lace.

Alpine Farming
About 15 cows and the same number of calves still summer on Ap Untersteinberg. The mountain farmer still uses a traditional and extremely involved system of grazing adapted to the Alpine pastures and this retains the pastoral charm. Is spring and summer, he moves his cattle in stages from the lowest to the highest level, before in autumn he brings it back down over the same levels to the winter quarters in Stechelberg.

That evening, we went to dinner at the hotel restaurant which was very nice, it was family run and there even was a old grey Basset hound that would wander through the dining room. At the back of the dining room was the kitchen and a big round table that was reserved for the family. We sampled our first Swiss wine during dinner which was very good; similar to Reisling. After dinner we took a walk through the town. I didn't get dark until about 10:30 at night. At night, the tourists, cyclists, and hikers had all left so it was quiet with the only noise being the waterfall. Every now and then a lone car would drive by.

Walking up three flights of stairs to the hotelroom we realized that we were in a high mountain altitude becuase we both got winded after the first flight of stairs! It was really hard getting our luggage up to the room. There were two keys for the room one to enter and another to lock from the inside. which we had to figure out. The key and the door hardware was much slimmer than in the U.S. and the door was thinner with a lip that overhung the door frame. The bed was low to the ground and with seperate matresses. There were two folded down-comforters but no sheets. This wasn't too big of a deal, except was was a a little warm during the day and it took awile to cool the room off. There of course was no A.C. but opening the windows let a really nice breeze in. Interestingly, there are no screens, but then I never saw any bugs really. The bathroom was similar to what we were used to except there was just a handheld shower head.

Introduction

Dear Friends & Family,
I created this website blog so that I can share our trip photographs and memories of our trip to Switzerland and Germany taken June 8-15, 2006. I hope you enjoy!
Love,
Holly