Bavaria

Our last three stops have been Slovenia, Salzburg, and Munich. Some thoughts from the land of Bavaria....and Slovenia counts because it has mountains and certainly does not deserve its own post!

Slovenian Cream Cake


We asked an American who had preceded us to Slovenia by a few days what a "must-do" consisted of for Slovenia. She told us their Cream Cake. "Yeah right lady, we´ll be sure to get right on that." But then we asked a native Slovenian on the train and she said the same freaking thing! We were now on a mission for not only cream cake, the original morsel itself. We ended what has probably been our nicest dinner with the legendary cake. Verdict: madd pedestrian. Linda Delaney makes 5 better desserts when at the top of her game. And Slovenia bases part of their tourism off this! Crazy.

We did enjoy a few nice hikes, despite glaringly vague trail signs, and a scenic hour of kayaking on Lake Bled. We did NOT, however, get to Zorb, a main reason for stopping in Slovenia. The operation is mysteriously shut down for the season. 2nd greatest tragedy of the trip so far. I narrowly avoided another tragedy when the police milling around outside our hostel asked to see my passport, but not Ben´s. Did they have an APB for a disheveled American? I then went in to check out, the police in there with me, and the front desk person said she didn´t know my name in order to check me out. The female police ominously said, "I know your name, Michael Delaney" in her Slovenian accent. I almost lawyered up through the American embassy then and there. I´ve seen Brokedown Palace! Luckily, nothing ever came of it, probably because I had an airtight alibi of eating Slovenian cream cake and then going to bed. I party.

Biergartens


Would it shock you to learn we went to 4 of the 5 main beer gardens or classic beer halls on the map in Munich? And one in Salzburg. Liters of beer, outside settings, and copious pretzels and roast chicken and sausages make for a good time. Ben and I also seem to have a knack for getting into epic conversations with fellow travelers at these places. The most Austrian looking man in Austria told us all about their awesome healthcare system, unsolicited, and tried to get us to move there. A Californian couple drunkenly gave us life advice, ending most sentences with "do it before you have kids", at the world famous Hofbrauhaus. And last night two female German plastic surgeons taught us German phrases, said I had a natural German accent, but as they got more drunk asked why we didn´t speak it. I´m sitting there thinking, "Dick Winters and Shifty Powers. Because only 3 or 4 countries speak it. Because it´s a ridiculously wordy and hard language. How asshole an answer do you want?" The conversation then switched to Nip Tuck and all was well.

Soccer


If you´ve been straining to know our greatest tragedy thus far, it was Germany dropping an egg against Italy in the semis of the EuroCup. We were prepared to party with an entire country for the Finals! Silver lining would be that I did not spend the next 3 days scouring Munich for the black German team track jacket I wanted but did not have in my size. That would have been 60 Euros for an item that would have fit nicely in the dusty novelty section of my closet, between my Peruvian track jacket and my Top Gun flight suit. Ben now owns a German soccer jersey though, sucker. All in all it was great fun to be able to sit outside and watch a match most nights of this trip.

Neuschwanstein Castle


We went with Mike´s Bike Tours to see the castle Disney modeled theirs on. This served as really my first packaged type tour of the trip and was well worth it. It included a bike ride, aka swerving to evade American mission trip teens who rode bikes like drunk Helen Kellers. We then did a toboggan ride, but the girl in front of me had an infatuation with the break. The tour concluded with a perfect hike up to the castle. Mike´s Bikes was great because they detailed the sordid history of King Ludwig II´s love affair with Wagner and his probable assasination. In contrast, the Bavarian Government tour guide, as rigidly German as they come, vaguely glossed over any juicier details. Ludwig seemed to get a raw deal. He was anti-war, but two popped up in his reign. He was gay, but at the same time, uber Catholic. All he wanted was to sit in his dream castle and reenact Wagner operas. As I told Ben during the tour, "Ludwig cried for hours a day in this room, and in this room, and this one....."

English Garden


A definite highlight of Munich, the English Garden spans an area bigger than Central Park. It includes a huge pagoda, a Japanese tea house, a surfing spot and not-so-lazy river, and the unavoidable "nudist meadow". Euphemisms are something else. A more appropriate name would be "field full of dales and balls that have been on this Earth at least 60 years". But the park certainly served as a fantastic place to read a book, ride a bike, or just people watch and have a beer. Good times.

We´re in Prague now. Up next, possibly Poland. Have a stupendous 4th people!