Family Vay-K

My Family plus Lisa (which is what I wrote on my google calender that my wife Lisa has access to...not my best choice of words) came out all the way from the US to visit me in Germany.  I took the week off from work and we did a road trip around Germany and dabbled in a little Austria.  I'll just try to highlight some of the sights we saw and throw in a few comments about the cities we visited.

Marburg

We started our trip in Marburg, where I live, and saw the few attractions that Marburg has to offer.  Don't get me wrong, Marburg is very nice.  But most of its charm is the small quaint feel of the town, so you run out of stuff after half a day.  The first day everyone just recovered from jet lag, so just drove up to Rapunzel's tower for a view of the city.

• Bottom Left: Check out the sweet VW van we rented.  9 passenger diesel, ohh yeah!

The next day, we actually toured Marburg.

• House pictures: Marburg truly has some awesome houses.


• Bottom right: On the walk to the castle there are 7 goats and a wolf coming out of the ivy (some fairy tale I don't know) so naturally we took a picture with them.


• Top right: The river and the castle.  Best view in Marburg.

Next we hit up Cologne to see their cathedral and to go to the chocolate museum.

• Top left: Obviously the builders of this church subscribe to my philosophy that "Anything worth doing, is worth overdoing."


• Bottom middle-right: Yes, that is a chocolate fountain.  Yes, they give samples.  Yes, that feeling you have is jealousy.

The next day we made our way over to Heidelberg.

• Top left: Nice castle, actually seems to have practical military use (you would be surprised what they call a "castle" in europe, often they are palaces).


• Top right: Looks like a fun slide, right?


• Middle right: It is actually the slide from hell.  It is so steep (or I weigh far too much) that you fly off the end and land on your butt in mud.


• Bottom right: The girls bypassed the slide.  Very wise.

Next, Rothenburg.

• Top left and middle: The cool thing about Rothenburg is they still have their town surrounded with a wall.


• Middle left: We traded in the VW for a Benz.  Nothing against the VW, but it was 2.1 m tall and most parking garages were 2.0 m tall.  The Benz was 1,9 m tall, which made it just right.  The Benz also was a six speed, which made it just right for the Autobahn.

Then, we traveled to Austria.  Why Salzburg Austria?  That is where they filmed the musical movie The Sound of Music.  What can I say, my family is musical people (for people who love musicals so much, aside from my dad and wife, it is amazing how little musical talent my family has...but we live by the philosophy that "if you can't sing good, sing loud"...and we are quite loud).  Also, since we were in Austria...as Jim Carrey says in Dumb and Dumber, G'day mate.

• Middle Left: Yes, they had a cow painted with The Sound of Music scenes.


• Middle center-right: Yes, they have a bused painted with scenes from The Sound of Music.


• Top left: The gazebo from the movie.


• Bottom left: The fountain from the movie.


• Bottom middle-left: Another movie scene (notice my "being a good sport" has worn off and I am no longer participating in reenacting the movie...honestly, you're lucky you got the fountain shot).


• Top left to mid left: When we finished in Salzburg we went to our Munich hotel and tried to eat at the famous beer hall, Hofbräuhaus, but it was so packed we left and went to the place I ate at the last time I was in Munich.  I did not remember what it was called, but I remembered the boar statue.

Next, Neuschwanstein.  So nice, it gets two collages.  I must say that between the waterfall and the castle, Neuschwanstein is one of the best views in Europe.  Ludwig II may have been crazy, but he had excellent taste.

• Bottom right: It looked like a Bob Ross painting, so Lisa drew some happy trees.


• Bottom middle-left: The water was unbelievably clear.

• Top left: Here you can see the bridge above the waterfall where the top-right picture of the other collage was taken.


• Bottom left: There was an old saw mill.  My dad and I are very happy to see trees being harvested.

Finally, the trip ended in Munich.  I did not take a ton of pictures because I have been there before.

• Top left: The clock that is totally not worth seeing.


• Bottom left: Frankie (best tour guide ever) from Mike's Bike Tours.  This was my second Munich tour with him and it was totally worth it.  He is just awesome.


• Bottom right: Bear dogs don't need leashes in Germany.

Overall, the trip was fantastic.  Germany has been a great place to live and an even better place to visit.