Munich (but not Oktoberfest)

So we left Oktoberfest and headed into Munich. We hadn't really planned well ahead, not even bringing a guidebook, so our first stop was the tourist office to pick up a map of the city. From this we made up our own little walking tour of downtown, starting at the Rathaus (city hall), which was under construction.From here we headed through the market area, and lucky for us, most of the booths were still open at around 6:00. I was tempted by some of the mushrooms which are ripe this time of year, but I showed restraint. Chris was impressed with the array of pumpkins, squash, and gourds. Very autumnal!Chris was also impressed with the BMWs that he police drive, and took a picture of one of the cars in front of the police station to show dad (though he was a bit worried about getting in trouble).At this point we were getting a bit hungry (and thirsty of course), and I suggested that we try to find the Hofbräuhaus, the most famous old inn and beer hall in Munich. It's a tourist destination pretty well all the time, but during Oktoberfest I really wasn't sure if we'd be able to get a table. Luckil the place is huge, and the non-smoking area is less popular. Here are a few pictures we took of the interior, so you get the idea:And another picture that we didn't take but should have (and that I nabbed off of someone else's website), which shows the painted vaulted ceiling. This beer hall is also famous (or infamous) as being a place where Hitler held meetings in the 1920 which led to the birth of the Nazi party. At that time the ceiling was painted with swastikas. Though part of the building was damaged in the war, most of the lower level was left intact, including these ceilings. Rather than paint over the swastikas, they left them there but painted flags in the blue and white checkered pattern of Bavaria over top to camoflauge them.Even though this picture is out of focus, it's still pretty cute, and gives you a dose of Owen for this post. Here he's sitting on Jeremi's shoulders after supper, taking great pleasure in Jer's feathery 1970s hair (which is being shaken around, thus the fuzziness).

And finally one last picture of a Burger King billboard we saw in Munich. I've been living here so long that I barely notice the incredibly stupid use of English in advertisements, but Chris and Karen were able to see this one with fresh eyes. Aren't you wondering what angry onions are? And it says that it has jalapenos on it, and even looks to in the pictures, but they must be somehow neutered for the German palate.
And finally one last picture from the hotel room, of Owen wearing the Oktoberfest hat that actually fits him properly.

Oktoberfest!!!

From Bamberg we headed south to Munich (or Muenchen, as it's known here) to check out the biggest folk festival in the world, Oktoberfest. We didn't book a hotel many months in advance as is generally recommended, but we did manage to find something a mere three train stops away from the fairgrounds. (Although it did cost about three times as much as we'd normally consider paying.) Still, it was quite convenient, and made it easy to head out pretty early on the Tuesday to check out "family day".

The Monday before, when we arrived, Jeremi and I set out to buy some beer and some juice and chocolate for Karen, who was struggling with a cold. We took Owen with us to give them both some time to rest, and he was being so good that we even stopped at a restaurant for a beer in their patio, where he tried so hard to have a beer with us.
Just look at the longing in those little eyes! And it seems that he likes the Dunkelweizen just as much...
The restaurant was vietnamese, and we thought the menu looked good enough that we returned later for supper. Nothing like a big steamy bowl of pho to help you recover from a cold! That night we played some more euchre and drank some more beer, and prepared for the coming festivities. Oh, and Owen practiced crawling.
Finally the big day arrived. Getting off at the train station it was easy to figure out the route to the fairgrounds, as we had only to follow the hundreds of people going the same way. What was really shocking to us was how many people were wearing traditional Bavarian costumes - the dirndls and the lederhosen etc. I always saw pictures of this in the newspaper etc., but I figured it was just the people that they chose to take pictures of. In reality, it was a solid 40% of the people there. What was funny to us was also the number of teenagers who were fully decked out, and who didn't just dismiss it as being totally lame.
The sheer size of the place and the number of people was a little overwhelming. In addition to the beer tents there's also a whole load of carnival rides and food booths. And the "tents" are more like giant buildings, really.
Different breweries have their own tents, with different decorations outside. This one had a giant animated pig roasting on a spit over a moving fire...And the insides of the tents were pretty elaborate too...
...complete with elevated stages featuring "Volksmusik" bands numbering more than a dozen.
Owen was sleeping on the way in, but we tried to buy him a little Oktoberfest hat anyhow. The guy at the booth said that it would be too small for him, but we didn't listen. Luckily the guy was nice and let us exchange it for a bigger one on the way out (plus the difference in price).I also tried on a hat, but was able to resist the temptation...
Even if the hats were small, the beer and pretzels certainly weren't.

And of course Owen got his first sip of beer! Here he goes...
and the swallow...
...and then he was asking for more. Desipte his best efforts, he'll have to wait for next Oktoberfest for the second sip, I think.
And of course little Owen's charm odyssey didn't stop in Bamberg. Here is is meeting the table of men next to us, and making friends.There was another man at another adjacent table who talked to Jeremi for quite a while, although he didn't speak any English and Jeremi found his dialect a bit tricky. Nonetheless they were having a great old time, and Jeremi even tried out some of his snuff!
And of course he got to bounce Owen a little too.
Here Owen was having a sweet moment of wonderment with a helium balloon that had lost just enough gas so that, with the weight of the string, it was almost perfectly neutrally buoyant. Too bad it ends up looking like an ad for Merck.
Not everyone was having as good a time as us. My rather drunken brother insisted on getting a picture of this poor guy, who was already passed out outside the tent at around 2:00 pm.

After having a couple of litres of beer each we walked around the fairgrounds for a while, and Jeremi, Karen and I took a ride on one of the roller coasters. Then we walked over to this GIANT staute of a woman and her lion (representing Bavaria, I think), and hung out on the grass for a while and watched the people go by.But it wasn't just people! This patch of grass was also next to the road where decorated teams of horses pull in wagons carrying (probably fake) barrels of beer. Here I am checking out one of the horses, who had a good time sucking on my hand.

And Chris even managed to get a nice little video of one of the teams of horses going by, with their decked-out handlers.

And that was the end of Oktoberfest for us, though not the end of the day. We headed into Munich to check out some of the sights that evening, but for that you'll have to wait for the next post...

Bamberg, the town of a thousand (or 500, or 200... or maybe 50) beers

On our way to Munich we stopped in Bamberg, a pretty little city in the north of Bavaria, in a region called Franconia, which is quite famous for its brewing tradition, including the infamous Rauchbier (smoked beer that really tastes like... smoke). The old city is designated a UNESCO world heritage site on account of its well-preserved city centre which dates back to the middle ages. Luckily, the weather gave us a bit of a break, and was just fantastic while we were there.

This made for a nice time wandering around and enjoying the sights, such as the picturesque row of fisherman's houses which came to be known as "little Venice"...
...and the old Rathaus (city hall), which was built onto a bridge across the river, as the bishop wouldn't grant a permit to build it anywhere in the city (or so the story goes). This pictures shows the nice half-timbered middle-ages side of it, and not the rather over-the-top baroque addition on the other side.And speaking of over-the-top Baroque stylings, we also visited this church while we were there:
And because Chris just loves the churches, we also saw the old Romanesque Dom (cathedral) which was on top a hill overlooking the city. As we were leaving there was a group of female Japanese tourists going in who were completely enamoured with Owen. There were many pictures taken of him, and he was even given a candy. And he wasn't even smiling or waving or clapping! I'm almost afraid to think what might have happened had he pulled out all the stops with them. (I'm also curious what they do with pictures of other people's babies when they get home, but I guess that's the wonder of digital.)
Here's a nice picture of Chris and Karen on one of the many bridges crossing the river through the city.
As you may be able to tell from the pictures by the river, the water level was higher than usual after all the rain that we had in the preceding week, and we were entertained by watching a boat full of tourists on the river just barely fit under one of the bridges. We really weren't sure they'd make it, but then they lowered their flagpole (just in time) and announced for everyone on the open upper deck to sit down. (Of course, being Europe, which generally pays less attention to public health and safety than we poor Canadians are accustomed to, they announced this mere moments before passing under the bridge.)

Here you can see a house that has one side almost completely covered (literally!) with climbing roses. There aren't so many flowers, possibly also because it's October, but it was still quite impressive to us.While in Bamberg Karen also did some of the only shopping of the whole vacation, picking up a pair of Birkenstocks at a little nook of a shop just crammed full of them. (Only 49 euros including all taxes, which is much cheaper than the standard price in Canada.) Chris thought the shop was so cool that he had me ask if he could take a picture:
On Sunday night we went out for a nice supper at a pretty cool restaurant that, among other interesting decor, had chandeliers made out of bunches of suspended wine glasses. Here's Owen enjoying his supper with mom and dad:I know that all kids like to play with beer bottles, but Owen will fight with all his little might to get at anything at all that has anything to do with beer. While he was sitting on my lap after supper he was doing his damnedest to get at mine. I ended up finishing it and filling it with some water from his bottle so he could drink it, but by that time he'd so completely charmed the entire staff of the restaurant that they brought him his own beer glass with water in it. (This is doubly impressive as it's almost unheard of to get tap water or any free water at all in a restaurant here. Owen is just that cute.)
And despite what it may look like, Owen didn't actually get any beer. That had to wait until Oktoberfest, of course...

an afternoon in Freyburg

We were initially planning on leaving for our trip on Saturday afternoon and spending two nights in Bamberg on the way to Munich, but Bamberg was booked up. It seems that we weren't the only ones with the idea of combining trips to two different beer-tourism locations. And so we made some alternate plans.

Since we already had our rental car (which you have to get on Saturday anyhow as everything is closed on Sunday), we decided to head to somewhere near Jena to check out a castle. There were three obvious choices, the Wasserburg in Kapellendorf, Leuchtenburg in Kahla, or Schloss Neuenburg in Freyburg, where we went with Marie. We opted for the latter, as there's a nice museum there, and our friends Calin and Susanne came along for the day as well.

The weather was a bit better in that it wasn't raining, but it was quite blustery up on the hill where the castle is located. Here's Jeremi and I with Owen standing by the castle wall, with his long long hair a-blowin' in the wind.
The view from the top of the wall was quite nice, looking into the river valley below.
I carried Owen around in his carrier for part of the day, but he wasn't overly impressed, probably due to the bulky vest he was wearing at the time.
Here's Karen in one of the castle's narrow and short doorways.
After a few hours looking around we were all hungry, and decided to get some food in Freyburg before heading back to Jena. We went to a nice Greek restaurant, which fed us all well. We parked by the very swollen river, which was much higher (and browner) than usual after the enormous amounts of rain we'd had. Here's a not-great picture showing where there's usually a dam with about a meter drop, which barely makes a bump in the water. The lock upstream of this was completely submerged.
And finally, a random picture from our trip to pick up the rental car that morning. This is hard to see because of the reflection in the window, but this optician's storefront in Jena has a big display about Canada in the window, complete with tourism posters, an atlas open to the right page, a toy train from VIA Rail, some Nordic walking poles (which are much more popular here than in Canada), and a whole bunch of glasses randomly perched on top of the display. It is an optician's shop, after all.