Europhile(s) -
Great trip report - love the details and your perspective!

As I'm sure others will tell you, there is a tunnel under the Champs Elysee to the Arc de Triomphe so you would not have needed to risk your lives. The view from the top is wonderful. However, I'm glad you were able to climb to the top of Notre Dame.

As for the Louvre, there is absolutely no way to give it the attention it deserves! We picked a wing (the one with Mona Lisa) and concentrated on it for a specified amount of time, leaving the rest for another time. You did well, understanding both your time constraints and interest level. And, you know, we can appreciate that a painting is special without really understanding why it is!

Wonderful job and looking forward to more . . .

Saving for later.

Tuesday, December 13, 2005 - Day 5 - Paris/Lyon/Geneva

We were early risers today as our train leaving Paris was set to leave at around 7:15 and we had a long travel day ahead of us that would end up with us in Geneva, Switzerland. Of course, this would not be your ordinary travel day being that we would be passing through much of central and eastern France before ending the day in Switzerland. When you say travel day in America it means interstate roads with mainly only billboards to stare it. Travel days in Europe are infinitely more interesting This would be the first day that we were using our Eurail passes, which with our youth discount cost around $380 I think for a 15 day pass. We got there extra early to get our passes verified and make sure everything was set, which it was. It was as this train station, again I forget which one but either the Gare de Lyon or Gare d'Austerlitz, that we discovered the goodness that is a French pastry. We thought maybe it was just a French specialty (I was having a croissant with delicious feeling in the middle after all), but we soon discovered that all of Europe specialized in making of an excellent pastry, a fact that we took full of advantage of just about every morning.

With our bellies content, we were soon leaving Paris and in order to see a little bit more of France, Will had us taking a train first to Orleans where we would then change trains and head towards the sleepy town of Vierzon. We did this with enough relish, but due to the early hour, it was not quite of a romantic excursion as we had planned. Ryan and Will slept fairly comfortably while I looked out onto the pastoral landscape before us. At Vierzon we changed trains again, this time boarding a train heading for Lyon. This would be a four hour train ride, so we had more time to sit back and relax after at previous stops we had scurried so madly to make sure we caught our connecting train that we felt as if we were preparing for airborne drops. What added further to the peacefulness of the train ride was that there hardly seemed to be anybody on the train, it seemed as though there were maybe only 5 or 6 people per car. With this setting, Ryan and Will slept a bit longer while enjoyed the countryside, which was plain and flat to begin with, but as we drew closer to Lyon we came upon rolling hills with towns tucked away on the side. Really quite extraordinary looking from where I was sitting.

We had arrived into Lyon around 13:00 with every intention of spending a few hours in the city, checking out as much as we could around the train station before getting on either a 17:00 or 18:00 train heading for Geneva. Then we stepped out of the train station and felt what we thought was maybe the coldest, most piercing wind ever. We settled for a fine French meal at yet another local brasserie instead. And when I say local, I mean just that. Lyon is of course a big city (maybe the second or third largest in France), but it does not have that cosmopolitan feel of one of the largest cities in French. Part of its economy is of course geared towards tourism, but that does not necessarily mean the city caters to the English speaking world with great aplomb. We arrived at this brasserie and instantly asked 'Parlez vous Anglais?' and the hostess looked as strangely, shaking her head. It turns out the manager was the only one who could speak English (and only a little at that) and so he was basically our main waiter (not that business required much from him anywhere else).

Now it may seem that we were being typical arrogant Americans here, but we thoroughly enjoyed this setting. We enjoyed that this would be an authentic French meal and atmosphere. We picked out what we wanted (some form of pork roast for me and Will and a sort of seafood dish I think for Ryan) and again our meal was thoroughly excellent and left little to be desired. Its quality was every bit worth the 14 Euros I spent on it, especially given the atmosphere which we figured was a popular lunchtime spot for local businessmen and workers on a break.

After having put warm food into our bellies once again, we braved the weather once again to head back to the train station. Since we had cut down on our time in Lyon, we were hoping to catch an earlier train to Geneva, but they were all reserved, leaving us with really no choice but to sit around and wait for our early evening train out of Lyon. It was a pity and probably the only time where we had to sit idly by and watch hours pass by that we would have hoped to be doing something productive, especially considering that Lyon looked a lovely city to walk around. It was just that cold.

After a few hours wait, we were finally able to board a train to Geneva, this time absolutely every seat was taken, but we were soon left to our own devices again as this just turned out to be local passengers on their way home from work and nearly all were gone again after a few quick stops. All that was left was a nice easy ride to Geneva.

We arrived in Geneva probably around 20:00 and after checking in with our families back home we made a quick walk to our lodgings for the night, the City Hostel of Geneva. This was a really nice place, especially as hostels go. The rooms were small and compact and hard to maneuver around, but all we needed to sleep in for a few hours before heading out on our next leg of the trip. The bathrooms were really nice and there was a good atmosphere amongst the travelers in the main lobby. For the one room it costs all three of us 31.50 Swiss Francs apiece. I think that probably works out to around $25.

After checking in, we headed back towards the central part of the new town of Geneva and had dinner at a local Pizzeria which seemed to be run by a number of tireless young women quite effectively with delicious pizza. Nothing too exotic or different about it from regular pizza, just good pizza.

We had planned to make an early night of it again as we had awaken quite early that morning and had another long day ahead of us the next morning (they were are long of course, but glorious). We thought after dinner we would walked down to the lake to see what Geneva and Lac Léman looked like at nighttime. In a word, beautiful. Even though it was dark and the famous fountain was not spewing water, we had much to look at and admire, not least St Pierre Cathedral, the adopted home church of John Calvin. It rose and gleamed peerlessly in the Geneva skyline across the way from where we were. We decided that this area of Geneva (this area being the Old Town, or medieval section of Geneva) deserved more of our time. Even Ryan, who was the biggest advocate of an early bedtime, did not hesitate in following me and Will across the way.

This area of Geneva made us fall in love with the city immediately. It was only a shame that it was kind of late at night and we could not enter all the lovely looking shops, but the walk around the Old Town was well worth it all, with its narrow cobblestone streets lining the hillside of Old Town with Swiss flags draped all over the alleyways below St Pierre's Cathedral. The views from the precipice next St Pierre's Cathedral also provided breathtaking views of the city and medieval section below. It was around here that Ryan decided that he could see himself living in Geneva one day, or at the very least, certainly would not mind it. Bear in mind that this is Ryan, who until then had seemed like he would be content not to ever step outside the South. This resonated with Will and I deeply. Of course, now we try to hold him to the supposed promise that one day he must move to Geneva and we will move with him of course. If he changes his mind, we will simply beseech him.

Of course, it would not have been too long before Will and I came to this conclusion ourselves that we would not mind living in this city. Geneva certainly has a huge international profile (i.e., CERN, Red Cross, a number of other international organizations based here), but it has sort of a small town feel. The physical nature of the city does not seem that big at all. We walked from New Town to Old Town without the fuss or bother of anything other than a modest walk. The population is, again, pretty modest (185,000 people) given the profile of the city. Maybe one day...who knows. For now, though, we just headed back for the night to get some sleep to prepare for the next day's adventure, which would take through the Swiss Alps and end up with us in Munich, bringing us to our fourth country in four days. We could not wait.

As you see folks, this is the part of the trip that becomes "whirlwind" in a sense. Maybe it was because we were all under the age of 25, but it is really exciting doing so many things because you really feell like you are getting your money's worth. Yeah, we could have spent more time in places like Geneva, but we got the feel and personality of each city and that is most important. Being that we are all still young and very much in love with Europe, we knew we had plenty of time to go back to these places and spend more time in each one.

Just for everyone's info., we left Paris for Geneva from the Gare d'Austerlitz train station. I think most trains leave from there if you are going south. Although it was December, central France is still a great place to see while traveling by train. More to come....

Actually, more trains leave south from Gare de Lyon, but since you went to Orléans, it was Austerlitz. A direct train to Geneva would most definitely have left from Gare de Lyon.
I am very much enjoying the trip report, because I was a whirlwind traveler myself in my younger days, and it served to give me an idea of all of the places to which I would return later in life.

Kerouac, you are right. I forgot that we wanted to go south, but you have to break it up into segments if you do that. Therefore, we left from Austerlitz. I remember now that you usually leave from the Lyon train station if you go the fastest way to Geneva. We went a little more of the scenic route, I guess. Good to see a fellow speed traveler!!

Wednesday, December 14, 2005 - Day 6 - Geneva/Brig/Berne/Zurich/Munich

As you can see from the info above, we covered quite a bit of ground this day, beginning in Geneva and ending up in Munich. It was another early start, but not quite on par with yesterday's 5:30 wake-up call. We went with a pedestrian 7:00 or so as we wanted head down to Lake Léman once more to try and see what central Geneva looked like in the early daylight, but, in keeping with the weather of the moment, it was grey and foggy out, meaning that things did not look all that different than they did the night before. Still, we enjoyed our final view of Geneva before heading to the train station to have our daily pastry before catching either an 8:15 or 8:30 train to Brig, Switzerland, which is a small Alpine town in Southwest Switzerland, where we stop for a little while before heading on to Berne.

But before we arrived in Brig, we would get to really have our first glimpse of the Alps, and our affection for them was immediate, even amidst the fog. Were not far outside of Geneva before we starting seeing the towering peaks, or at least the base of them due to the visibility. Do not get me wrong, I would have preferred to have been able to seen the Alps in all their glory in the full sunshine, but I thinking seeing how they big they looked, even shrouded in fog, probably blew us away as much as it would have seeing them in full daylight. I guess maybe again maybe because it was a weekend, or maybe just there is not much traveling all the time in the wintertime, the train we were was pretty vacant. We often had row after row just to ourselves, and we took full of advantage of this as we traveled along Lake Léman and the snowy mountains bordering it by moving seamlessly from one side of the train to the other to see what next breathtaking view we could take in.

We continued in this manner all the way to Brig. Once we cleared Lake Léman, we started traveling in the valleys in between the mountains, coming upon postcard scene after postcard scene of Alpine villages tugged between the mountains or hugging to the foot of of the mountains. We even spotted centuries old castles and watchtowers perched upon the crest of various stand alone hills in the valleys. Our only regret (besides the foggy skies) was not being able to stop off somewhere and take picture after picture of these places, which is something I tried to make up for while in Brig.

We arrived in Brig around 11:00, and had roughly an hour before we were to catch a train that would take us into the heart of the Alps on the way to Berne. As previously mentioned Brig is a small Alpine town of maybe 5,000 residents and it looks fairly typical I imagine as low lying Alpine villages go. It clings to one of the foot of one of the mountains and stretches out from there with its typical architecture of Alpine homes with various spires, marking churches, shooting up across the beautiful Brig skyline.

Upon our arrival into Brig, we had hoped to find some lockers to drop are increasingly heavy backpacks so we could spend half and hour or so walking around the town center, but were discouraged in our hunt. We at first settled for a precipice close to the traintracks from which to view the city, but this was not anything liked we hoped, so we resigned ourselves to just sitting at the train station while waiting on our train to Berne, which would not arrive until a little while after 12:00, meaning we had to sit around for roughly 30 or 45 minutes. We soon settled in a waiting area, but I had already grown enamoured of our surroundings in Brig and was not really content to just sit there and wait, so I resolved to walk through the town anyway, but since Ryan and Will did not care to join me, they were kind enough to let me leave my backpack under their care while I went on a quick thirthy minute hike through the town of Brig. This thirty minute excursion would turn out to be one of my fondest memories of the trip.

I began by ascending a low lying ridge towards the center of town which was marked by a small Christmas market and a large Christmas tree. The street leading up to here was marked with a number of specialty shops and I soon gathered that Brig fancied itself a humble gathering for skiers in the area. From the town center, I headed to my left towards a local highway that led slightly away towards a hilly ridge that housed a lovely little Baroque church and what was either a huge mansion or a local museum just on the edge of the city. This is where I really fell in love with Brig. The church would have had all I desired to begin with as far as pleasant viewing goes. It was of a Baroque nature as preivously mentioned and had this beautiful courtyard below that had a light dusting of snow covering up just about all of the ground. It was one of those sights you dream of seeing in Europe. From here, I climbed around the side of the church and came upon a little medieval alley that I was sure that I would get lost in, but went ahead anyway and climbed on the side of the highest point of the ridge towards this aforementioned mansion or museum (on a second though it may have been a small castle) which when I turned around offered me this breathtaking view of the town and its skyline as it inched closer and closer to the base of the mountain which only added to the romanticism of the view. This was the view I had been clamouring for ever since we approached. With a few minutes to spare, I took it all in and unleashed my camera, though I again slightly rued the foggy conditions, but still, even if I was not able to do my view justice with a camera, I knew myself what I had seen for those fleeting moments when all seemed laid before me. It was beautiful.

After a few moments contemplation, I descended upon the town, finding my way down a medieval street a different way than I had come up, but one that was effective none the less. I got there with a few moments to spare and started showing Ryan and Will some of my pictures, but I knew looking at them then that I would not be able to properly convey the beauty which I had just been witness to. Satisfied, we soon caught our train to Berne shortly after noon.

While the route to Brig had kept us in touch with the mountains, the route to Berne took us into the belly of them. Soon after departure from Brig, we were soon rising high into the mountains from whose rising side offered us views of various towns and villages thousands of feet below. Our sights encountered upon this path varied from a mountainside soccer field (I mean literally, it was perched on a cliff on the side of the mountain to the extent that we figured many games must have come to a halt when the a ball would be kicked thousands of feet over the side of the mountain) to high valleys stretched between white capped mountains. For a while, we seemed to be completely separate from the rest of the world. We passed more ancient cliffside watchtowers as we glided by remote mountain paths. For a little while, we even climbed high enough to be granted a reprieve from the foggy weather and as a glorious blue sky along with a snow-capped mountain peak view was granted to us. We were mesmerized by this seemingly holy site as we all came to a halt on this particular side of the train as tried to take in what we were saying. The Swiss Alps were fast becoming our favorite part of the trip.

The rest of our train ride to Berne offered sights of beautiful Alpine towns and villages such as Spiez and Thun nestled amongst the lakes and mountains (I would imagine we did not pass by too far from Interlaken). It seemed to us that residents of these towns much live in endless bliss amongst such beauty, seemingly with no one other than gawking foreigners such as ourselves to bother them. As we approached Berne, we knew in an instant we would have to pass back by this way again some time.

Our visit to Berne and what we saw there only consisted of what we saw as the train from Brig approached and as the train to Zurich departed. Our only business there was too switch trains for Zurich, and we had to do that at a moments instant as the train was quite crowded and not far from departure when we got to it. On our trip to Zurich, the Alps were never out of sight, and thus our mood became visibly reserved as we had to accept that our sojourn through the Alps was over for now. Yet we tried to keep this from affecting too greatly our less enthusiastic mood as we approached Zurich.

Zurich, again, so to speak, could be listed sort of as a casualty of the whirlwind part of our trip. We probably arrived there around 15:30 or 16:00, and only gave ourselves 3 hours to walk around the city a bit. But it was far from a bitter disappointment. We only regret that we were not prepared for how expensive Zurich is. Our first order of business had been to find a suitable restaurant to eat at, but as our search grew fruitless due to the much too high prices from our perspective, it turned out to be our only real order of business in the city. We realize that everything was in the cost of Swiss Frances, which is below the standard of the dollar, but we were still put off a little bit by everything. I mean, the walk around Zurich was lovely, but we just could not find what we thought was affordable eating on our constraints. In one of our few culinary disasters (and I am probably involving myself in a little hyperbole there), we had to settle for McDonald's, Zurich style. And even here it cost something like 21 Swiss Francs for your basic Big Mac Value meal. Next time, we will just go ahead and devalue the Swiss Franc and suck it up.

Yet we still had no real complaints from the city. The Old Town that we walked around was beautiful while the Christmas market inside the train station was probably the best one we visited in Europe when it came to sheer size and quantity, as well as quality. After our very modest late lunch ad McDonald's, we headed towards Lake Zurich to view its setting with the Alps in the distance as the barely visible sun set over them, causing a fine ray of light to shine through the grey clouds. From here, we headed towards the Limmat River get a lovely view as the river split down the middle of the city with its famous Baroque church on one bank and magnificent spire on the other, whose encompassing beauty was further enhanced by the dimming light. From here we headed back towards the train station and did bit of Christmas market shopping before boarding our train to Munich.

In a less whirlwind trip, we would probably be telling you about a beautiful landscape witnessed by us as we traveled from Zurich to Munich, but the sun set had already set, leaving us with nothing more than snowy embankments to view as we headed east. I think we actually passed through Austria on the way, which I guess along with Germany later that night marked our fifth country in four days, and three in one day. We arrived into Munich later that night with our only objective to entreat ourselves to a modest cafe dinner before checking into our hotel, the Jaegers Hotel (http://www.jaegershotel.de/), not far from the train station. It was a hostel more than a hotel, and quite modest, but again, all that we really desired. The room was sort of like a long hall with a TV, a bunkbeds, and roll away bed. There was this peculiar sort of Porta-shower that looked totally out of place in the room and the bathroom was in the hall, but it was all cozy enough and we slept without a problem that night and the man at the front was quite courteous in helping us with anything we might need while in the city. All for the cost of just under 20 Euros a piece for the room. Very economical I believe. My total financial output for this day was a little over 31 Swiss Francs (thanks a lot McDonald's) and just over 23 Euros for the German leg. Also, I forgot to mention my finances for the previous day in traveling from Paris to Geneva, which was 48 Euros and 31.50 Swiss Francs. We were traveling well within our resources and loving it, and now we were getting ready to see a bit of Germany, not all would be full of beauty on this visit, however. More to come.

I know my story about Brig isn't quite as exciting because Michael was the one who took the hike around the city for 45 minutes. My 45 minutes at the train station included a 20 minute search for a sortie, followed by relief I might add, and then I made it to the little Swiss shop in the Brig train station. There I bought a box full of Swiss caramel candy, which is still in my car at this moment. I was pretty hungry, but I didn't want to ruin my lunch/dinner in Zurich, so I bought these caramels.

Moving on to something more interesting....

For anyone who is traveling by train through Europe, I must say the trip from Brig to Berne is a must. I can't even begin to tell you how beautiful it was, especially when the fog cleared only for 5 minutes and we could see the clear sky and tops of the Alps. Another great thing about that trip is seeing the Alpine villages literally in the Alps. I was blown away that there was actually communities thousands of feet up. Great trip!

Also, to add to our McDonald's disappointment, I will advise no one to "have it your way" in Europe if you don't know the language. Zurich being the first German-speaking city we had visited, I wasn't up to par on my German, so when i tried to order a Cheeseburger with just mustard and ketchup, i got a regular cheeseburger with a side of honey mustard and extra ketchup on the side that cost more. Bringing my McDonald's value meal to a grand total of $7.50. The franc to dollar conversion isn't too good.

Anyways, Zurich's old town is definitly not to be missed, so I advise anyone going through Switzerland, to stop in Zurich and explore it's grand status.

More to come....

Dachau and Munich...

Thursday, December 15, 2005 - Day 7 - Dachau/Munich

Today, we let ourselves sleep in a little bit and probably awoke some time around 9 or 9:30 and headed back towards the Munich Hauptbahnhof to get our ritual breakfast of a carbohydrated beverage and a pastry and afterwards checked with the ticket office in the station to see if our Eurail passes would be eligible to use on the S-bahn train that we wanted to take out to Dachau, which they did. From here, we thought it was the simple matter of reading the S-bahn map and seeing which train we would need to take to get to Dachau, which we though we did easily enough (and by this time we felt like Transportation maestros after navigating our way around London and Paris with considerable ease. This thought process would soon turn out to be pure folly due to the quirk that is the German S-bahn.

When we caught our S-bahn train at the station, it said we needed to catch this one to get to Dachau, and the one we got on did indeed list Dachau as one of its stops. However, we were not clear that this train we were on merely took us to a station where we would have to switch trains in order to actually get to Dachau. A sweet old German lady somehow realized we were making this error and tried her best to tell us that we needed to get off at a particular spot to switch trains for Dachau, but we found her advice more reassuring in some how thinking that we were still on the right path. Then we saw her get off at where we should have and we kept on going and by the next stop realized that we had erred and would have to head back to the previous station. In the end, we actually made it back and caught the train to Dachau that we would have caught had we gotten off initially anyway, so we did not lose anytime at least despite our error. We just felt bad that we had not heeded more clearly of the sweet old Germany lady.

When we go into Dachau it was fairly simple to get to the concentration camp from there. At the train station there was a bus that came through quite often, I forget which number it was, but it will be clearly marked for Dachau, and you just pay 2.20 Euros for a round-trip bus ticket and it will get you to the camp and back from the camp when you are done.

Once in Dachau, I suppose I thought it must be weird to live in a city that is noted mainly for being the site of a concentration camp during the Nazi regime, as though maybe the citizens should hang their heads in shame for what happened there, but it is not as if they were responsible for what happened. After all, we live in Chattanooga, TN, not far from where the Trail of Tears began for the Cherokee Indians. I feel there was great wrong done there and wish it did not happen, but I do not awake every morning feeling I must pay for the sins of our fathers.

Still, though, it is quite different. The Trail of Tears was 170 years ago, the Holocaust ended little over 60 years ago and its victims and perpetrators still walk amongst us. Beyond that, though, we have all seen films like Schindler's List and The Pianist and are well aware of what happened in places such as Dachau, which it must be said, is relatively small when compared to other concentration camps. Of course, part of this is because it began as a work camp. Still, 40,000 people who entered into the camp never left and thousands were gased and cremated while others were guinea pigs as Nazi doctors tried out new scientific and medical methodologies.

Entrance into Dachau is free (it would be disrespectful to charge people to come to this place) and you walk down a lonely dirt road before coming to the Main Gate and it hits you instantly and you feel as though you are walking back in time when you walk through the gates as you ponder the great evil that occurred here.

I do not feel as though I want to dwell on Dachau too much, nor do I think particularly think readers would want me to. All you need to know is that a visit to this place will leave you feeling stone-cold walking through it. How could you not after seeing the cramped barracks the prisoners were stationed in? Or walking in the footsteps of thousands of murdered victims as they walked into the gas chambers, followed by a the crematorium room. The day we visited Dachau was a fittingly cold and grey day. I would like to say 'We will never forget', but Bosnia, Rwanda, and currently Darfur seem to infer that we have.

From here, I will cover happier times in Munich. Not that we were unhappy in Dachau, it's just that are going to feel a particular way regardless there, you are not meant to feel happy, but more contemplative there. Dachau was well worth it and I strongly urge any who have a chance to visit the camp, but we were happy to be heading back towards Munich so that we could see a little bit of it before we got on a night train to Vienna later.

In Dachau, we had worked up quite and appetite, and our first order of business was to have would turn out to be a bit of an early dinner I suppose around 16:30 or 17:00. We first headed towards towards the city center and walked around the famous Town Hall tower while briefly taking in the huge Christmas market that filled the square. Being huge soccer (or football) afficionados we enjoyed taking in some of the early World Cup 2006 hysteria. Not much past some t-shirts and World Cup memorabilia, but we were excited to know that were in a city that would play a major part in the forthcoming World Cup in Germany.

After our brief interlude into this market, we walked on down from there towards a smaller, more relaxed market, just around the corner below a lovely little baroque church that was perched on a small precipice, looking over everything below. We walked around below in this area and kind stumbled on this restaurant called Bratwurstherzl, which was kind of hidden off the main part of the square. It turned out to be a gem of a place. When we first got there, there was hardly anyone there and lots of empty tables so we thought were good to go, but the man working there said we could not eat here because all these tables were reserved for people who would be coming in around 19:00 or 20:00. We were a bit incredulous as we thought in no way would it take us that long to eat, but again this is Europe, where they savor their meals and all they encompass, not just eat them, and I love that about Europe and think we should do it like here in America. But then again, you will not often eat at hole in the wall places like we did that night in Munich. Places like Chili's and O'Charley's do not exactly look to adhere to this policy.

Once there, we saw down and looked over the menu while our waiter (who as it turned out was the same man who had seated us) brought us some pretzels which were incredible while taking our drink order. I was fine with a coke, but Ryan and Will undertook the true Munich experience and had some German Wheat Beer. Now, we do not fancy ourselves anything like beer afficionados at all. When we drink (which is rare), it is liqour or fruity kind of drinks (yes, please feel free to emasculate us if you will), so I marvelled at how much they enjoyed this Wheat Beer, but this is Munich and these are real Bavarian hops I imagine, so maybe not that surprised in the end. But they enjoyed it for sure. We found equal pleasure in our meals. I had a delicious kind of pork while Ryan and Will were more traditionally German with their wiener schnitzel and sauerkraut. Actually, their separate meals may have actually varied, I will leave Will to clarify this, but I know that they absolutely loved it and once more it was a joyous culinary experience for us all in Europe.

Afterwards, we sat around a little bit and just relaxed and took part in the European post-meal meditation, just relaxing and soaking up the atmosphere. After a while, the formerly barren place began to quickly fill up and we soon realized that this was a popular establishment for locals to visit for their post-work meal and it was fun just to take in all these Germans have their banter with friends and loved ones while they downed a pint of good German beer. I thought I could easily get used to this. It would be nice to just go to work and every evening meet some friends for some drinks, food, and good friendly banter about anything and everything.

We could not stay forever, though, we wanted to make sure we fulfilled our promise to the old man and got out of there before we took up anybody's reserved table. From here, we headed back to the big market around Town Hall. Here, we separated for about an hour so that we could all kind of branch off on our own for a little while to take in the parts of the market we wanted to before meeting back at a certain spot around 20:00. I did this gleefully enough and rummaged through a great soccer store (that I could only dream of having in the US) before heading back into the market and buying myself and World Cup 2006 shirt before trying to find the perfect Christmas gift for my mother, though unsuccessfully.

After meeting back up, we continued to just walk around a little bit, but it was growing chillier by the minute and a lot of shops were beginning to close down. We braved through a incredibly cold wind to look the Frauenkirche with its two famous domed towers. We soon realized it was too cold to be wandering around much of the city for too long and resolved to head back to the train station to sit it out a bit before catching our night train to Vienna, which was going to be leaving shortly before midnight.

Munich is definitely a place we look forward to coming back to and seeing more of. Our trip to Dachau took a little bit longer that we had anticipated, so our time in the actualy city of Munich was far too short. We had wanted to walk around a bit more and take in one of the famous biergartens, but we would have to save that goodness for another time. For now, we would just wait at the Hauptbahnhof for our night train that we would take into Vienna, hoping that we would be able to sleep on the beds in the cart. It would be interesting for sure.

My finances for this day amounted to around 55 and 60 Euros all told, including some gifts that I bought, so Munich was good price wise for me. Well, stayed tuned, a day with some true Viennese was on the schedule for our next day in Europe, and what a long day it was.

Great to get the perspective from people who pulled off such a fast-paced trip covering an incredible amount of ground in a short period of time!!

Nice report - looking forward to more.

As someone roughly twice your age, I can't imagine carrying 50+ pounds up to Montmartre. I would have split a taxi and gone hungry that night...

Friday, December 16, 2005 - Day 8 - Vienna

Our day literally began with a lesson learned for future trips across Europe. Do not book a night train that has puts 6 beds in a room, piled on top of each other. For one, you are more likely to be sleeping in cramped quarters with total strangers, and two, there is barely enough room to breathe, much less maneuver around. It would be a lesson learned as we took a night train from Munich to Vienna on day 8 of our journey. It was manageable, but certainly not anything that we really want to try again, maybe a 4 bed per room cart, but never again a sixer. All that said, we arrived comfortably enough into Vienna around 6 in the morning.

Waiting for us at the station was a friend of Ryan's uncle, Felix, whom he had met while doing a bit of traveling himself, and they had remained close friends ever since. Ryan was able to arrange lodgings with Felix for when we came into Vienna, which we were incredibly grateful for. It was a little tricky at the beginning because Ryan had only met Felix once, and it was years ago, so he did not quite recognize him once we got off the train though me and Will had spotted an older gentleman who looked as though he was probably looking for three dazed and confused Americans, but Ryan swore that was not him. Well, 20 minutes later, this older man again came up to us and said, 'Ryan?', and thus we met the great Felix formally. Ryan had apparently been thrown off by the fact that Felix was wearing a hat. No harm no foul, though, and Felix quickly led us to his car as we headed for his son Wolfie's house, where we would actually be staying.

Felix and Wolfie are probably two of our greatest memories of the trip with they showed us and did for us. At six in the morning, with the sun not even up, Felix was already energetically pointing out parts of the Hofburg Palace as we headed to Wolfie's. We had worried that we felt bad about having Felix come and pick us up at such an early hour, but we soon figured out that Felix's energy levels were limitless and thought to ourselves he probably rises at least this early every morning in anticipation of great new day. When we arrived to Wolfie's house, it did not seem that the apple fell far from the tree. Wolfie was fixing a breakfast for us that consisted of a number of rolls and bagles and other delights that we were more than happy to consume on the account that last night's train right was not highly effective in re-energizing us. This was definitely our longest day in Europe because had begun so early after not really getting a good night's sleep, and we would have to struggle through parts of the day just hoping not to collapse, which, again, we mainly blamed the night train.

After breakfast, Wolfie had to head off to work while Felix took us back into the city to show us around. You of course cannot see all that Vienna has to offer in a day, but you can certainly get a feel for the feeling with someone like Felix showing you around. Felix would prove to be a plethora of knowledge on all things Austrian and Viennese as he took us around all day. Before going back into Vienna, though, he took us to the top of a mountain so that we could overlook the beautiful Vienna Woods, while also pointing out that where we were looking beyond the Vienna Woods in the distance was actually Slovakia. So close to 6 countries in six days.

We soon headed back into the city as Felix drove and pointed out the different districts of Vienna and how they were aligned and what they represented. Then we parked somewhere around the city center and began walking down what I guess was the main street of Vienna as it was full of pedestrians while being mostly closed off to traffic. We simply walked down the street took in the seemingly limitless information that Felix was feeding us. We soon came to St Stephan's Cathedral and appreciated its architecture before walking in and seeing the great wealth displayed in the church.

From St Stephan's we headed to this lovely sort of Market/Grocery store. I mean, it had the look and display of a sort of neighborhood grocery store, but me, Ryan, and Will could only dream of something like it back home. I guess it would more comparable to a Fresh Market because it did not seem to sell a lot of brand name food, but it still seemed like something greather. If we ever lived in Vienna, we would shop here and have glorious meals each and every night. The bakery seemed absolutely first rate and I regret greatly that we did not just buy a loaf of bread and eat it right there. The aisles were lined with all sorts of food imported from just about everywhere in the globe. We knew this because labeled underneath the food were the flags of the countries of the food's origins. They were not messing around with their culinary delights. It was really inevitable that I would buy something, and I selected some Austrian coffee to give to my parents as a Christmas gift with Felix's express consent after Ryan had picked it out. I also bought a few Austrian chocolate bars which Felix had said were favorites of the Royal family in England. Surely they cannot have bad taste I thought. Totaled, I think I spent about 16.70 Euros on gifts here, and could have spent much more if we had time to eat all they had to offer.

After our market fun, we continued to just generally walk around Vienna for a short while, not really stopping to do anything tourist specific, but just walk around and listen to what Felix had to say about various subjects. We walked around the huge Hofburg Palace at times and reveled in the luxury and extravagance of the Habsburg dynasty. I knew the Palace was prominent, but I was not aware of just how much room it took up. It seemed more like a large set of buildings built around the old city to act as protecting barrier of sorts, which I suppose it was.

Walking around with Felix, we could tell that he was incredibly proud of being Austrian, and more specefically Viennese as beamed with pride as he told us about the greatness of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and how Vienna was once THE cultural bastion for the rest of the world. Walking across an old shop, he pointed to a map sprawled across the window which showed us land mass that the Empire took up, which was quite massive of course. Felix was perhaps born just a century too late, I thought, though you could never look at Felix and think him unhappy. We continued on this well guided tour of Vienna until lunch, where Felix also proved the generosity of Viennese culture.

With much walking underneath our feet, we were only too glad to take a break and grab a fine Austrian meal at a local place that did not seem too different from the Bavarian restaurant we had eaten at the night before in Munich, though at the time of day we were eating (around 13:00) I would not expect it to be. The particulars of this meal escape me somewhat except to say that I had some more fine roasted pork of some kind. Just delightful, and whatever it was that Ryan and Will had, they seemed quite content with it. Felix, however, would not be content with letting us pay for our meals. As soon as the bill landed on the table had gobbled it up so that we would not see how much money he was spending (though I spotted at least 70 Euros on their for the four of us) and insisted on paying. We implored him to please let us pay for our meals as it was of course the very least we could to after he had let us stayed with his son while taking time out of his day to show us all over his wonderful city. If anything, we should have been paying for his meal. Yet he only seemed to be bothered by the notion that we would actually pay for our meals in his presence. He felt it was his duty as a good man of Vienna to pay, and pay he did, and we were extremely grateful.

After lunch, we began to wind down the afternoon a bit. We walked just a short while longer around the Jewish part of Vienna while also spotting the oldest standing church in Vienna (some 800 or 900 years old I believe) before hopping back in Felix's van. He did have one more special place he wanted to take us however. He took us to one of the most abstractly designed houses you will ever see. I say design, but it is really a piece of art done by Friedensreich Hundertwasser, born in Vienna as Friedrich Stowasser in 1928. He loved to use anything as art work as you would be able to see if you ever saw one of his houses in Vienna. I wish I could tell you exactly where it is as it is definitely worth seeing, but I cannot say for sure, though I suspect with the knowledge of his name you would at least be put on the right track.

Hundertwasser loved crazy shapes and he wanted everything to look uneven so that it did not match anything else in his work of art. He also loved to randomly gorw trees outside of window panes. It is really crazy to look at in person when you come upon it. The walkways are not even the same at they rise and fall at random intervals so that you maybe walking up a slope while somebody next to you is walking in a hole. Hundertwasser's houses are really worth checking out if you are ever in Vienna. It is crazy.

Once we concluded the madness and genius that is Hundertwasser, we drove around Vienna just a little while longer as Felix showed us the world famous Prater with its wheel before crossing over the Danube and taking a look at the development across the river. But it was not long before he dropped us off at Wolfie's house, probably around 17:00 or 18:00, where he would would part ways with us and leave us under the care of Wolfie for the remainder of our time in Vienna. We were sad to say bye to Felix and it was immensely joyful to have him lead us around all day. All that said, we were quite tired all the same and relished the idea of having a nap before Wolfie got home from work. I myself, much to Will and Ryan's amusement, had taken initiative earlier in the car on the way back and dozed off a number of times with my head drooping and tongue sticking out, some much I am afraid that by the time we got to Wolfie's house, I was pretty refreshed and ready to go, but he was not home and Ryan and Will wasted no time in falling asleep, leaving me to my own devices for an hour or so. Wolfie finally did get home and by 19:00, we were all ready to go again and finish off our only night in Vienna in whatever way Wolfie saw best.

The best way, it turned out, was to drive down to the local U-bahn station and buy a ticket for 3 Euros and we took the train back into center of Vienna and when to a part of the Hofburg Palace where there was a lovely Christmas Market stationed. We spent 30-45 glorious minutes here walking around, checking out what was being offered. Plenty of good things were for sale, but I was still on the lookout for the perfect gift for my mother, and was still not satisfied enough to buy anything yet. Before the market closed down, Wolfie had us try this sort of drink which was oddly flavoured but still good. I think it is one meant to sort of sip on in the cold weather. Maybe Will can has a better recollection of it than I do.

With our Christmas market shopping done for the night, Wolfie next took us to a Royal Beer Hall not far from the palace for dinner and some drinks. I was still quite fool from lunch actually and only went with some sort of appetizer that was pork wrapped in cheese. I think Ryan had some ribs and whatever Will had (I forget exactly), he loved it I am quite sure. We also ordered some beers. Mine was okay, considering I just do not really enjoy beer. Ryan liked his and Will got some sort of dark beer which I wish I would have partaken in. We were quite content in this atmosphere as it definitely had the boisterous social atmosphere that you would expect from a German speaking Beer Hall. We just sat there for probably a few hours just talking about Wolfie about any number of things from Austria to soccer to world travel. Wolfie is probably only a few years older than us, so we were able to relate on a lot of things with him. We thought it was cool that he was a big Rapid Wien fan, which is one of the local soccer teams in Vienna, and that where we parked to get onto the U-bahn is actually where their stadium is, so we went got off there later tonight, we would get to see a real live European soccer stadium. Like school kids we were, at least me and Will, when we did see the stadium on the way back from the U-bahn station.

From here, our night was soon drawing to an end. After our fine meal which costs about 10 Euros, we got on the U-bahn (and saw the stadium as previously mentioned) and headed back towards Wolfie's house to call it a night, probably somewhere close to midnight. We did not toil long as it had been an incredibly long day and we looked forward to some sleep (especially since we decided to sleep in a little the next morning) before leaving Vienna and heading across Austria tomorrow, seeing Salzburg and Innsbruck along the way. Before falling asleep, we had another one of our contemplative moments together where we discussed how lucky we were to have Wofie and Felix take us around Vienna. We had been a bit apprehensive before hand I think about having total strangers (well at least to me and Will, though even Ryan only vaguely knew them) house us and show us around. But maybe we just really underestimated the kindness of the Viennese people. Vienna's elegance, it turns out, goes hand in hand with the goodness of its people, and for that we were extremely grateful, and felt genuinely lucky as this had definitely been one of our favorite parts of the trip, and all told, only about 33 Euros were spent this day.

Thank you so much for posting one of the most enjoyable and unpretentious trip reports I have seen in a very long well.

Ah, memories of my own Eurail 5 1/2 week do-it-all first trip to Europe--in 1969!

^

What a great trip report I love your description of your experiences. I admit getting a little teary when reading.....

"I imagine that millions of couples have fallen in love for the first time, or all over again, on top of Montmartre when looking at the beautiful canvas before them. I fell in love with Paris at that very instant."

How eloquent! Keep posting!!

Europhile23, you are such a heartbreaker

I so enjoyed reading your trip report last night! You have such a writing gift -- most young guys (if they even thought to write a trip report!) would just concentrate on what they drank and ate! Thanks for all the detail on the architecture and scenery! I'm keeping it for sometime when I take a trip and can spend a little more than hours in a country! We're waiting for the next installment -- hurry!

joy/luvparee

<Given other prices I have seen for a Eurostar trip to Paris, I think we did pretty well, largely thinks to our International Student Identity Cards (ISIC). Since we already had a rough itenerary set in September for this trip, we had gone ahead and called the people at ISIC and ordered our tickets over the phone for $60 a piece before I had left for London. ISIC can be overrated at times, but it was a big help here and saved us a fair bit of money I think.>

A nice report but the above is simply not true even if StudentUniverse had you believe it was. You got a Youth Fare on the Eurostar for being under 26 - had nothing to do with the ISIC card - there are no student fares on Eurostar.

I hope you could get some discounts elsewhere to merit the card's purchase - perhaps the insurance that comes with it is worth the price but many find they can't use the card much in Europe where discounts are often based on being under 26 or your regular student ID could work as well.

But the ISIC card got you no discount on the Eurostar.

PalenqueBob, whatever the case may be, I can confirm that we made our reservation my calling the number on back of the ISIC card. Now if we actually got a rate because of this ISIC card, or they were just helpful in finding the cheapest rate, who knows. But me being the one who planned out most of this trip, the rate we got when calling the ISIC number was by far the cheapest. Bottom line! And to us, that is all that matters.

Yes, it may well be that the ISIC card was not responsible for our discount at all. We just called the number on the back of our ISIC card, which may have connected us to STA Travel instead of actual ISIC people, but either way, whoever we did call was associated with ISIC in some manner and in whatever way, they were able to get us cheap tickets for Eurostar, though I think it might also be worth noting that one of the reasons we were able to get them so cheap (besides the student discount or youth discount or whatever the discount was) was because we bought our tickets I guess a little over three months before we actually used them. While I am writing here, I wanted to go ahead and also thank everyone for the positive feedback so far. I admit I probably go a little overboard with stuff and make the smallest things seem overly grand, but on the other hand, I guess it is good when you can view in such an appreciative way. Another post should soon be coming.