Our Christmas Vacation in Germany - Part Two

Note:  If you haven't read Part One yet, scroll down and read that section first.  This is still written from Sheila's perspective.

Thursday Dec 31, 2009

We have seen several Bavarian Maypoles (Maibaum) as we travel through Bavaria.  The blue and white striped poles are decorated with the symbol of every trade and guild represented in the town, and is designed to help visitors determine what services are available there.  The effort and skill required to build one is a source of community pride.  The tradition dates back to the 16th century, and is governed by a strict set of rules.  Great care is taken in selecting and cutting the tree, which must be at least 98 feet long.  Once completed, it cannot be erected before May 1.  In the meantime, tradition and honor dictate that men from surrounding towns attempt to steal the pole and ransom it for beer and food, so it must be guarded 24 hours a day.  Once the pole goes up, with quite a bit of leveraging and manual labor, it cannot be stolen and may only stand for three years. 

Today we shopped in Oberammergau, which is best known for it's woodcarvings, a craft which has flourished here since the early 12th century in this Alpine valley. We purchased some wood carvings of Ompa dancers and a band.  Seth and Kristal bought Windradchen (pyramid candle carousel) and a couple of Rauchermen (German smokers). 

Since it was New Year's Eve the shops were closing early.  We had dinner at the hotel as a reservation only party which included an accordion player, who also apparently told very funny jokes in German.  The singer we heard 2 nights prior joined in as did the hotel manager.  I just absolutely loved the accordion music and wished my father was with us to listen.  He had loved the Lawrence Welk  Show and had gotten accordion lessons for me as a child, so I really appreciated the music.  The meal took 3 hours, typical of a German meal.  Children are expected to sit quietly during those 3 hour meals.  Dogs are also expected to sit quietly.  We have seen several dogs in restaurants, all of which have been very well behaved.  They are even allowed up on the benches.  We have seen many dogs on walks and in the stores.  There have been several dogs in the hotels we have been in.  Hence, one of the many reasons Kristal would love to live here.

 

January 1, 2010

Today we drove to Garmisch-Partenkirchen .  Once two separate communities, Garmisch and Partenkirchen fused in 1936 to accommodate the Winter Olympics.  There are more than 62 miles of downhill ski runs, 40 ski lifts, 40 cable cars and 112 miles of Loipen (cross-country ski trails).  The number one attraction is the Zugspitze, Germany's highest mountain (9,731 feet).  First we took the train,  then a cog railroad and then a cable car to the very top.  It was a 75 minutes trip, including an amazing 20 minutes on the cog railroad through a mountain tunnel.  The train was full of skiers and their skies.   A chilly -10 C greeted us on the top of the mountain.  

The area had sledding and skiing.  Four countries (Germany, Austria, Italy and Switzerland) are visible from the 360 degree viewing deck.    

Another snow ball fight, looks like Kristal is doing a little better in this one.

We walked over to the igloo hotel which is an actual hotel.  That was the first time I'd been in an igloo.  The roof had an eerie blue glow, reminding you that you were incased in ice.  The hotel had a bar and the beds were covered in animal skins but the toilet just begs the question "People pay good money for this?"

After taking the train down, we walked around Garmish with its high end shopping.   We went to McDonald's so Seth could order a beer with his Happy Meal, one of Kristal’s favorite memories of her previous travels in Germany.

January 2, 2010

We awoke to new snow cover and enjoyed the beauty of the view of Neuschwanstein castle and Bavaria as we ate our breakfast.  It was a real pretty snow, the kind that stays on the branches but not the kind that was very fun to drive through with limited visibility.  We had to stop a couple of times to break the ice off the windshield wipers.  This drive on the autobahn in a snow storm would be Jim's least favorite part of our vacation. 

 

 

Slowly and surely we made our way to Baden-Wurttemberg (the state in the south-west portion of Germany).  It cleared after awhile and there was blue sky by the time we got to Friedrichshafen to the Zeppelin museum. 

Named for its founder King Friedrich I, surrounded by resort towns and agriculture; Friedrichshafen played a central role in Germany's aeronautics tradition, which saw the development of the zeppelin airship before World War I and the Dornier seaplanes in the 1920's and 1930's.  The World War II raids on its factories virtually wiped the city off the map.  The buildings are all new and lack the character and style that we'd been seeing. 

The Zeppelin museum highlights the history and manufacturing of the airships.  There is a reconstruction of a 108 foot long section of the legendary Hindenburg that exploded in New Jersey on May 6, 1937.  It authentically recreates furnished passenger rooms, the original lounges and the dining room. 

Vineyards extend as far as the eye can see as we drive on to our hotel in Meersburg.  We arrive just at sunset and Kristal and I dash to the shore of Lake Constance to take some gorgeous pictures while Jim and Seth check into the bed and breakfast.  The wind coming off the lake was very cold and I was actually colder than the time that we had spent on the mountain.  The lake has only frozen over once in the last two centuries.  

 

Lake Constance, at 40 miles long and 9 miles wide, is the largest lake in Germany.  Actually, it's not a lake but a wide swelling of the Rhine, gouged out by a massive glacier in the Ice Age and flooded by the river as the ice receded.  The area is a favorite summer vacation spot for Germans.  Across the lake are the snow-capped mountains of Switzerland.

The owner directed us to his favorite restaurant just across the street.  It was a small place with only 6 tables and a very talkative owner who sat down at our table to help translate the menu.  His wife was the cook.  It was the best food we'd had so far.  We had the "salmon" fresh from the lake.  There were only 3 other people there while we were there and they were enlisted to help translate the menu.  They had trouble with poppy seed until opium was given as a clue.  The owner was very proud of his restaurant and shared with us explanations of pictures of Meersburg that hung on the walls and even gave us a copy of one of the pictures.  He had grown up in East Berlin and said that he didn't know that Neuschwanstein castle was in Germany until after the wall came down. 

 

Sunday January 3, 2010

This morning we walked around Meersburg taking pictures of the old castle, vineyard and lake before driving to Stuttgart.  Meersburg is steeply terraced with narrow streets from which cars are banned.  At the top of the hill, majestically guarding the town is Altes Schloss (Old Castle) or the original Sea Castle.  It's Germany's oldest inhabited castle, founded in 628 by Dagobert, King of the Franks.   The bishops of Konstaz used it as a summer residence until 1526, at which point they moved in permanently.  They remained until the mid-18th century, when they built themselves what they felt to be a more suitable residence-the baroque Neues Scholss.  Plans to tear down the Altes Schloss in the early 19th century were shelved when it was taken over by Baron Joseph von Lassberg, a man much intrigued by the castle's medieval romance.  He turned it into a home for like-minded poets and artists, among them the Grimm brothers and his sister-in-law, Annette von Droste-Hulshoff (1797-1848), one of Germany's most famous poets. 

 

That afternoon we drove to Stuttgart.  We had a lovely dinner with Tom and Heather Morrow at their apartment in Stuttgart.  Heather took Seth under her wing when Seth was a new math teacher.  She now works as a math teacher for the Department of Defense. 

 

Monday January 4, 2010

Today we got a personal tour of Stuttgart by Sandra.  She is the daughter of Seth's Oma's brother. (got that?) She showed us all around old Stuttgart.  Her father, Juergen, and step-mother, Angelika, joined us for lunch.  Seth had met Juergen once before but it was his first time to meet Sandra and Angelika.  It was so nice to meet these distant relatives and we really enjoyed our visit with them.  Sandra took us to the Nast bakery, one of the oldest bakeries in town and owned by the Nast family - Heidi, Seth's step-grandmother "Oma" is from the Nast family. 

Stuttgart is a place of fairly extreme contradictions.  It has been called, "Germany's biggest small town" and "the city where work is pleasure".  For centuries Stuttgart, whose name derives from Stutengarten or "stud farm," remained a pastoral backwater along the Neckar River.  Then the Industrial Revolution propelled the city into the machine age.  Leveled in World War II, Stuttgart has regained its position as one of Germany's top industrial centers.

This is Germany's can-do city, whose natives have turned out Mercedes-Benz and Porsche cars, Bosch electrical equipment, and a host of other products exported worldwide.  Yet Stuttgart is also a city of culture and arts.  Forests, vineyards, meadows, and orchards compose more than half of the city, which is enclosed on three sides by woods. 

We visited a church which had been destroyed during World War II.  The exterior had been restored to its original but the interior had been modernized.      

Tuesday Jan 5, 2010

We start our day by driving to Worms and seeing their cathedral.  They had perhaps the nicest Nativity Scene I had ever seen at the back of the sanctuary.  I was glad we had come during Christmas season to see it.  It was complete with a running water feature.  We have noticed several times that elephants were used instead of camels.   

Dom St. Peter (Cathedral of St. Peter) is the finest example of High Romanesque architecture in Germany and has dominated the skyline of Worms for nearly 1,000 years.  Building began in 1125 and was completed at the end of the 12th century.  Around 1300 it was re-carved with Gothic style features.  The cathedral was completely gutted by fire in 1689 in the War of the Palatinate Succession.  Following the fire, many of the furnishings were baroque including the high altar from 1742.   The crypt contains the Salian royal family of the 11th century.   

We head back to Heidelberg to visit the castle.   The oldest parts of the Schloss (castle) were built in the baroque style of the 16th and 17th century, when the castle was the seat of the Palatinate electors.  It was partially destroyed by lighting in1537 and then completely destroyed during the Thirty Years War.  It was destroyed again by the French army during the Palatine Succession in the late 17th century at the same time the town was burnt to the ground.  In 1697 the town was rebuilt as was parts of the castle only to be destroyed again in a thunderstorm in 1764.  Over the centuries of destruction its stones have been taken for other construction projects.  Parts of the red sandstone castle have been restored and parts have not.  The numerous times that it has been built and destroyed have left it with a variety of architectural styles.  It has a spectacular view of the old bridge and the river.

 

 

 

 

The Alte Brucke (old bridge) was part of medieval Heidelberg's fortifications.  The bridge itself is one of many to be built on this spot: ice flows and floods destroyed its predecessors.  The elector Carl Theodor, who built it in 1786-1788, must have been confident that this one would last: he had a statue of himself erected on it.

The Great Cask (Grosses Fass) is an enormous wine barrel in the cellar, made from 130 oak trees and capable of holding 58,500 gallons.  It was used to hold wines paid as taxes by wine growers in the Palatinate.

Jan 6, 2010

   Unfortunately, all great trips have to come to an end.  We drove back to Frankfurt early this morning and had to say good-bye to each other.  It was so hard to say good-bye.  But we know we would see Seth and Kristal again in just six short months, and that Seth's parents, aunt, & uncle would visit them in Egypt in only three.