On being a German Tourist…

Several weeks ago I decided to take a Monday off and spend a long weekend somewhere fun. I was waffling between someplace warm and someplace cold.

A co-worker had told me of a cluster of travel agents inside Frankfurt airport that offer deals on travel as they're all competing against each other. I'd been meaning to visit for a while, but the prospect of three days with no certain destination put me over the edge. A friend and I went on a Wednesday after work to see what they had to offer. She was looking for a week or two in Egypt. I was looking for just a fun weekend. The area is in Terminal 1, Section C, Level 3 (the level above departures). There are 30-40 travel agencies there, most with dozens of trips advertised on their back wall. After walking the gauntlet once (during which not one person attempted to call us over or try to solicit our business…a good sign) we determined that the deals were more or less the same, and that they're probably all tied into the same database, so everything depends on your rapport with the particular agent. We chose one and inquired about various locations, prices, options, etc. We thought the prices sounded really good and the travel agent, Sonja, agreed to do some further research on our trips. We left and after a little checking, figured these good deals.

On Friday evening we returned. I had just that morning decided that I would try somewhere warm as the snowstorm that was supposed to hit the French Alps had turned into rain. Fourteen hours later I was staring out the window of a Boeing 737 at the mountains, beaches and windmills of Mallorca.

I walked off the plane, picked up a rental car, grabbed my bay and was off. I headed east towards the mountains and over the course of the day made my way along a long windy road that runs along the western coast of the island. The drive reminded me of Mulholland Drive, Hawaii's Road to Hana and the American Southwest.




After spending the entire day exploring the small towns on the west coast I drove back to the city of Palma to find my hotel. The travel agency I had signed up with had advertised the RIU Bravo as a 4-star hotel. As my beloved GPS remained in Germany, I began scanning street signs looking for something familiar. As soon as I had become convinced I has past the location I recognized a cross-street. I looked around and saw a long line of bars, all with German (not Spanish) signage. I turned down the next street (just before the strip club) and didn't have a good feeling about the place. The entrance was decent enough. It had the appearance of being a top-notch hotel…30 years ago. The facade was a pinkish-salmon stucco that looked fairly run-down. I parked and walked in. My first clue that I was in for a different experience was when I told the front desk clerk that I was checking in she responded "My I have your voucher?"

Voucher?

I did have a voucher. When I made my reservation I received a stack of slips of paper stapled on one end. I understood that they were essentially my airline ticket and my hotel reservation, and I really wasn't surprised that the hotel needed it. I was surprised that that was the first piece of documentation she needed. I dug the stack out and handed it over along with my passport. After a few minutes she handed me a key and a small card that gave my room number, check out date and my dinner time.

I had paid for half-pension, which included the room, breakfast and dinner. Full pension would have included drinks and lunch. In my mind I had seen a traditional restaurant and being able to order off a reduced menu. Nope. It was buffet. The receptionist told me I had missed the first seating and that I would have to eat at 8:00. Not a problem, I wasn't really hungry at that point anyway. I found my room, dropped off my stuff and looked over some of my guides and maps, trying to determine what tomorrow would hold.

I headed down to the lobby just before 8:00 to find it packed. The doors to the restaurant were closed and the tourists were restless. I decided I wanted no part of the stampede that I anticipated would occur when the doors did open. I wandered back to my room and bided my time for 10 minutes. When I returned, the doors were open and most of the tables were filled. I showed my card to the hostess who asked me (in German) if I had half or full pension. I responded (in simple German) and was led to a small table in the back. I perused the food offering…there was a typical salad bar, a grill, a meat station, some soups, some bread and dessert. Nothing looked especially appetizing. I tried a few items and was even less impressed with the taste than the look. In addition to the food, the atmosphere left something to be desired. I was surrounded by loud German tourists whose average age was around 65. Most were in groups of 6 or more. I vowed to eat somewhere else the next night. After trying the equally tasteless desserts I returned to my room to grab a jacket and go for a walk.

Exploring the area around the hotel did not change my initial impression. As it was still off-season, many businesses were closed. Most that were open were run-down looking bars. A cluster of men selling cheap trinkets and knock-off watches had taken over one intersection and the only internet cafe I could find was apparently in the back of a karaoke/strip bar. I passed. I returned to my room and went to bed in what is the least comfortable bed I've slept in in a long time.

I awoke the next morning with a sore back. After a quick shower I headed down to breakfast, which was much better than dinner. Europeans apparently always do breakfast right…even in a crappy hotel. I was out of there by 9:00. My first stop was downtown Palma, which is dominated by the Palma Cathedral, or La Seu.




Following that, I drove toward the eastern side of the island, with no real destination in mind. I visited the Dragon Caves, finding them far too crowded and overpriced. The "classical music concert" was interesting, but the several hundred tourists alternately talking and "ssshhhhing" got on nerves quickly.

I next drove to the town of Artá which, like most other towns on this island, had a large stone church atop a hill.


I was pleased to see that the Spanish are implementing their own version of the Americans with Disabilities Act.


Leaving Artá was more difficult than I had expected. Streets in rural Mallorca aren't exactly well-marked, so most of my navigation was done by reasoning "I want to go in that direction" or "this looks like a well-traveleled road." After coming to two dead ends I found myself climbing a ridge along a series of switchbacks that didn't allow much room for error. When I encountered an oncoming vehicle each of us would slow to a crawl and edge as far to our respective rights as possible until our side-view mirrors passed each other with only a inch or so of clearance. At points there were drops of a hundred feet or so on one side, which wasn't protected by anything. Fully realizing that this wasn't the way I had come, I pressed on, figuring the cars (some of which looked like small vans of tourists) were coming from somewhere, and that somewhere was a place I had not yet been. After about 10km (6 miles), which took me about 20-30 minutes to drive, I arrived at another dead end. This one, however, had a parking lot and an open gate. I walked along the entryway and came upon the Ermita de Betlém, a small monastery whose monks live off the land.


There were some paths leading up the hill, which apparently lead to a lookout point. The hill is home to a flock of sheep, who eye you warrily as you approach.


I found my way back to Artá and onward to Alcúdia, arriving just as the sun was setting. Remembering my previous dinner expereince, I found a small restaurant (not realizing until I had already ordered that the kitchen wasn't scheduled to open for another 30 minutes). The food was good, and the view of the bay from the terrace made up for fact one of the trio of tapas was baby octopus.

I made my way back to the hotel and went to bed.

I awoke with a sore back again, had breakfast, checked out, and walked out of the RIU Bravo for the last time. I had determined to re-visit the mountains, so I set out for the towns of Valldemossa, Deiá and Sóller. I wandered their small streets, leaving as soon as a tour bus would show up. I found a small hotel in Deiá, S'Hotel D'es Puig (The Hotel on the Hill) and picked up a brochure and another map of the island. One of the ads in the margin of the map was for http://Miquel Oliver Wines, one of the local wines I had tried on Saturday. The map directed me to the town of Petra. After happening across a map of the town I found the bodega, which turned out to be nothing more than a large storage room behind a pair of unmarked doors. I would never have found it if the doors weren't open and a truck parked on the sidewalk awaiting cases of wine. I purchased some wine and picked up a pamphlet entitled "Mallorca: The Island of wine." There nine wineries were laid out on a map of the island. Why did I find this with only six hours until my flight back to Germany? I plotted a route back to the airport that passed by several wineries. I stopped at one...closed. I stopped at the next, Son Bordils and taste several wines. When I left I was wondering how I was going to fit eight bottles of wine into my weekend suitcase. I somehow managed and made it to the airport, returned my rental and boarded the plane.

My bottom line on Mallorca:

• Stay away from Palma unless you want to swim in tourists
  
• The shoulder seasons are excellent ways to avoid tourists
  
• Explore the mountains
  
• Explore the small towns...before the tourists arrive
  

It's not just Americans

I bought some groceries at REWE yesterday. My total came to EUR 40.63. I handed over a 20, 10 and two 5 Euro notes along with a 50 cent, 20 cent, 2 cent and 1 cent coins (40.73). I continued bagging my groceries as the cashier looked at me, then the coins, then me again, counted the coins and looked at me again. She did eventually figure out that I needed 10 cents change. Why is that so difficult a concept?

On the issue of money, it seems the US is once again trying to introduce a dollar coin. My prediction is that this will fail just as the the three before it in my lifetime (Eisenhower, Susan B. Anthony, Sacagawea) have. As radical an idea as it seems, the $1 bill needs to be eliminated if the American public is to accept a dollar coin. While we're at it, let's eliminate the penny.

The Korean won bills had 1000, 5000 and 10000 denominations (roughly equivalent to $1, $5, and $10). Their coins consisted of 500, 100, 50, 10, 5, and 1 (roughly 50, 10, 5, 1, 0.5, and 0.1 cents, although the 5 and 1 won coins were very rare). I found the 4 coins to be a reasonable number, but the system needed larger bills.

The Euro, on the other hand, has a reasonable collection of bills (5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 500) but a their coins confuse me. There is a 1 cent coin and a 5 cent coin, but also a 2 cent coin. Granted, with a 2 cent coin you should never receive more than 3 copper (1, 2, 5) coins in change, but is it that unwieldy?

Northeast Switzerland

Soon after I joined up with my good friend, K, and we we off to Eastern Switzerland. We left our respective homes with the intention of linking up by cell phone when we arrived, me by car, she by train. After a 6 hour journey and no juggling of schedules, she disembarked her train and walked out of the train station just as I came to a stop for some pedestrians on the other side of the street. That couldn't have been accomplished if we had tried.

We started out in the in the town of Schaffhausen, located in the Canton of Schaffhausen.




History has deemed that Schaffhausen Canton, while remaining part of Switzerland, will be almost completely surrounded by Germany. It's a bizarre piece of geography. Many times it's quicker to go through Germany to get to another part of Switzerland.

On Saturday we wandered through Schaffhausen and then drove to the the town of Stein am Rhein, where the building in the old city center are still decorated with frescoes.





On our way out of Stein an Rhein we took a wrong turn and accidentally entered Germany. Not thinking much of it, we continued down the road for a while, turned around and found ourselves back at the border crossing. The guard stopped us, asked for passports and vehicle registration. After figuring we were Americans (which took all of about a half second) he motioned us over to the side, took our documents and began examining them. I guess he found us harmless enough, as he let us go soon after, but the car in front of us wasn't so lucky. As we pulled away the guards were still going through the contents.

After a quick drive back to Schaffhausen (being careful to stay in Switzerland) we arrived at the Rhein Falls. The largest waterfall in Europe, with 25,000 cubic feet of water flowing past every second, wasn't quite as touristy as Niagara Falls, but it did have its moments. The massive (for Europe) parking lot, the entrance fee, and the gift shop you began and ended your tour in made me think that if they'd just add a guy in an animal costume posing for photos they would have the whole package.



Returning to the car, we noticed a farm across the street selling apples, among other things. We wandered up the driveway, smiled at some families watching some free-range chickens. We noticed a sign on the barn indicating that the cows would be milked at 5:30. As it was 5:00, we decided to wait around. After looking around, finding a small unattended store selling cider, milk and other farm-fesh products we returned to the barn door with the sign. The only sign of life we found was a cat in the window who was busy napping. We had almost given up, and were turning to leave, when we saw a man walking toward the cow pasture. We approached him and communicated (as best we could) that we were interested in seeing the cow milking. He led us into a small building filled with two rows of cows. They were attached to milking machines, drawing the milk into a large stainless steel tank in the next room. The farmer took a plastic jug from a table and filled it from a spigot on the vessel. He handed the jug to me. It was warm, which I knew it would be, but it still took me a bit by surprise. Rounding out our purchase with some cider and apples, we returned to the car. I opened the milk jog, sniffed and took a drink

The next morning we ventured to the town of Osterfingen on the final day of their annual wine festival. We were most certainly the only Americans in the town, and the only ones that didn't speak German, never mind that dialect. We walked the town, sampling wine and food along the way. We talked at length with a winemaker's son (who was fetched as soon as it was determined we spoke very little German) about the town, the festival and the wine. By the time we left we were carrying two large boxes of wine (that's boxes containing bottles of wine…there was no "wine-in-a-box" to be found).





Upon reaching the car and driving away we started putting bits of information together.
1. It's easy to cross borders without meaning to.
2. There's no guarantee that we won't be stopped and searched.
3. We are carrying far more alcohol than our 2-litre duty-free limit.
We did decide to risk the border crossing (having travelled that way earlier and only seen a sign on the road that essentially welcomed you to Switzerland/Germany.

We continued our journey, taking the scenic route along Lake Constance/Bodensee and traversing some of the greenest fields I have ever seen. The two "Half-Cantons" of Appenzell are about as Swiss as you can get. Red geraniums in full bloom stand in window boxes, cows roam the pastures and small villages dot the sides of the greenest hills I have ever seen. We only had a short time in this region, so we drove through it until almost sunset, taking in as much as we could. After a dinner of (what else) fondue we found the town pretty much deserted so we pretty much called it a day.




The next morning we decided to visit a cheesemaker. On our way back we stopped in at the Appenzell Showcase Cheese Dairy. The "showcase" was a fully operational dairy that was viewable from a walkway above. No guided tours, no free samples, and no fuzzy mouse (although there was a 30 foot piece of cheese out front). We were able to purchase some of the "Extra," black-label, cheese (aged the longest of the three varieties).



Our adventure over, we drove to Zürich, where I dropped K off at the train station and began the long drive home.

Too Much Fun

A friend e-mailed me in early January noting I hadn't updated my blog as often as I had while I was in Korea. She added that she hoped I was too busy and having too much fun. That's kinda true.

Since my last travel update in August I've done some more trekking across Europe. In late September I happened across a small gathering in Munich. The festival seemed to center around beer. They had many kegs of beer:


Even more mugs for the beer:


I sampled some of the food and beverages available and then took a look at what else was around.

This is what I found:



The Eurostar is a large, inverted roller coaster. That by itself is pretty cool. The mind-blowing piece is this: it's a traveling coaster. When one fest ends they pack it up and move on to the next. This isn't some little tinker-toy coaster that you would see at a state or county fair. This is almost 100 feet tall, has a half-mile of track, and reaches a top speed of just over 50 mph (the same max speed as Batman: The Ride at the Six Flags Parks).

I don't know whether a maß or more of beer makes the ride more or less enjoyable. I'm just happy I saw only one sidewalk pancake.

High-res Boston

I've seen some pretty cool things based on Google Maps but this is near the top.

Back…and a bit of a change

I haven't gone anywhere…well, actually I have travelled to Belgium, Poland and Switzerland, as well as many places within Germany since my last update, but it's a bit of a hassle to upload photos to Flickr, write witty commentary and post it.

Recently, I've found myself e-mailing links to friends that I've stumbled across. I might as well start posting them here. We'll see how that works out.

I guess I was a little suprised when I came across this article stating that according to Frommer's, Portland, Maine ranks with Tokyo, Panama and Ethiopia as a "surprising, thriving or emerging" destination.

Photoblog

I've included a link to Wiesbaden Photo Blog on the right. She has much more timely and more interesting photos of this city.

Family Visit

My family (brother, sister, mother, father) visited for a week in August. We took the train to the Swiss Alps and spent two night in the small Swiss town of Wengen. From the city of Interlaken you board a privately-run railway for a 20 minute ride to Lauterbrunnen. There you change trains to board the Wengernalpbahn, the longest continuous cog railway in the world. Fifteen minutes later you are greeted by a train station and small car-free village in the shadow of the Jungfrau.



That is, if the weather is good. On the afternoon of our arrival it was completely clouded over and just to add to the experience, there was a constant drizzle.



We awoke the next morning with hopes of an amazing view, but only found more drizzle. Undeterred we boarded the train to Kleine Scheidegg, where could catch a train to Jungfraujoc, in the saddle between the Mönch and the Jungfrau. As we would have viewed a big grey nothing. Instead, we set out across some fields and encountered some the famous Swiss cows with their famous cowbells. Alas, we were too early to read of the Swiss Hiking Federation's warning to avoid encounters with cows. Even so, we escaped with our lives.



The next day showed more promise. The entire mountain loomed above us surrounded by a deep blue sky (this is when the first photo was taken). We again found ourselved at Kleine Scheidegg but this time we boarded the Jungfraubahn for the 9km (5.6 mile) ride,over 7 km (4.3 miles) of which were inside the mountain.

At the top, the view was amazing. Note the four hikers in the valley in the second photo.



After the snow and sun (for which I was rewarded with a sunburn and cold sore) we travelled down to Interlaken and boarded a train to Lucerne. The next morning was spent walking through the town the next morning, seeing the requisite Chapel Bridge (Kapellbrücke), Water Tower (Wasserturm), and Lion Monument (Löwendenkmal). The later is a dedicated to the Swiss Guards killed while guarding the Tuileries Palace in Paris during the French Revolution.




From Lucerne it was off to Munich, the Hofbräuhaus and other attractions. After that, back to Wiesbaden.

The next two days were spent driving along the Rhine, visiting Heidelberg, Burg Eltz and Kloster Eberbach.

My father and brother flew out on a Sunday morning as my mother and sister boarded a train for the next two weeks of their European adventure.