Washout

We had initially planned to go to Hellbrunn Palace, just outside the city, but we woke to the sound of heavy rains. As most of the activities at Hellbrunn involved walking outside and in park areas, we decided to nix the idea. We ended up taking an earlier train to Munich since there was no point sitting in a hotel room in Salzburg during a rainstorm, so we arrived around 3pm at our AirBnB. It was decently located, nicely decorated with storm trooper art, but also smelled strongly of cigarette smoke. It was supposed to be non-smoking.

We ultimately ended up bailing on it since Nicole was getting congested and my eyes were drying up. It sounds like the guy will refund our money as we got a hotel near the main train station. To comfort ourselves, we went out for drinks at the Hofbrauhaus, walked in for a second to see all the young rowdy kids drinking and being loud, did an about-face and tried to find another beer hall. We went into a place called Ratskeller, but we were the youngest people there by at least 40 years. There must have been some sort of senior discount.

Long story, short? We ended up back at the Hofbrauhaus. We had some sausages, potato salad, beers, and a pretzels. We essentially closed the Hofbrauhaus and outlasted all the amateur American tourists. It was a struggle trying to find what to order since we had actually been to a sort of Hofbrauhaus - lite earlier in the day near Max Weber Platz. We tried to interpret menus that were in all German amongst a crowd that was all German. We ended up with a meat and cheese platter. Unsurprisingly, it is not what we thought we had ordered.

Then, once we got to the real Hofbrauhaus, we found ourselves again trying to interpret a German menu. We later acquired another menu that was in . . . Italian. It has been an interesting day, and not necessarily a grand one. Traveling, as they say, is as much about the experience as it is about sites and scenery. While my pictures may not be as profound today, I think we can all appreciate this picture of lil' Cole eating a big pretzel.

Allegedly the rain is supposed to stop some time tomorrow, so we can actually venture out and explore. If Munich wants to improve its reputation, it needs to stop this rain nonsense. It was downright miserable. I would have thought it was February based on how cold and dreary it is. Gluck Auf.

Farewell Porsche, Gruss Gott Salzburg.

We drove from Bled to Ljubljana this morning (pronounced lee-you-blee-yawna in case you were curious) and dropped off our Porsche at the main train station. As we rounded a corner, there was a man in a white t-shirt who waved to us and pointed to the curb. It was surprising that it was that easy to find the rental car rep since there is no official drop off in Slovenia. Either that or we were victims of the nicest car jacking in history. The Ljubljana train station was a bit . . . rough for lack of a better word. It was fairly bare bones.

I went to the ticketing office to get our tickets printed out since I only had a confirmation number from ordering the tickets online. The woman said we wouldn't be able to print it until getting to Austria, which also happened to be our destination, so this was not exactly problem-solving. She kind of shrugged her shoulders as if to say, "not my problem" and we boarded the train without them. This greatly upset the Slovenian guy checking tickets on-board, who referred to the situation as a "catastrophe." Nicole and I thought that was a bit much. A train going off the rails and into a bayou is a catastrophe... or as some call it, Amtrak. We ended up going all the way to Salzburg without ever having our tickets officially scanned.

We arrived around 2pm and walked from the station to our hotel. This coincided with the finish line for the Salzburg Marathon so reaching our hotel was met with much applause and music. It did seem like quite an accomplishment in a way to have driven through the Balkans without having the Porsche dinged, nicked, or ticketed. The weather in Salzburg was a bit dismal -- rainy and chilly. Not a good day for a long run. It wasn't a downpour, however, so we were able to walk around without too much discomfort.

We walked a bit around the old town and where Mozart used to live and so on. We had tea and strudel for an afternoon snack and later had schnitzel for dinner. It was a nice change from the pizzas we've been eating almost every night save two. Tomorrow we have another train in the afternoon to go to Munich. I checked this time and see that I can get tickets to show up on my phone. This is a German rail company, so efficiency is something they pride themselves on. The Austrian rail could learn a thing or two, like maybe have a method of retrieving tickets purchased online without using a kiosk that can only be found at your destination...

I dragged Nicole back out at night to take some more pictures before it began to rain again, so we went back to the room to call it a night. I have been carrying our free wine from Bosnia for the last four days, so I opened it up to celebrate France's decision to not elect a Nazi. This, ironically, is likely to greatly upset the French, who are not known to respect the fine wines of famous Mostar region of Bosnia-Herzegovina. It's a 2013 so you know it's good. Has good legs and tannin. Gute Nacht.

Climate Change

We got up early this morning to grab some quick breakfast and then we summoned an Über to take us to the airport. Yes, it surprised me too. I envision Über as a 30 year-old hipster in Oakland driving a Prius, but it has evidently expanded quite a bit. After about 45 minutes and a distance of over 20 miles, we arrived at the airport, where we had to pay the grand sum of a whopping $13...including tolls. Not too shabby.

On our way to the airport, we got to witness the progress on the world's largest christmas tree. It's still not quite there. It's like they went all in on the trunk and then realized they didn't have enough material to do the actual tree portion and now it just looks like an ear plug. Once at the airport, we had to go in a few different lines. There was a security line to get to the check-in counters, which was a bit confusing for folks like us. Overall though, we made it to our gate without too much difficulty.

We did some last minute shopping, or really our only shopping since we hadn't encountered many shops selling tourist chotchkes. I ended up buying a cricket jersey. Believe it or not, I have played cricket in the past -- with Sri Lankans naturally. After a delay of more than an hour, we boarded our Austrian Airlines 767 and were on our way to Vienna. I took this picture during our descent. The sun was setting and it was barely 4:00. It is after all, the shortest day of the year.

We took the train into town, which took us just 15 minutes. Then we were hit by a blast of cold air as we entered a literal winter wonderland. Air travel is a fascinating thing. One day you're looking at elephants in the jungle, and the next you're making sure you don't step in slush from the last snowfall. After checking in to our hotel near the city center, we got some dinner at a casual restaurant nearby. It seemed popular with the locals. Nicole and I had a wiener schnitzel with potatoes and beer. It was our first meat in more than a week...unless you count the ham and cheese panini served by Austrian Airlines, which Nicole described as the best meal of her life.

After dinner, we took a taxi to one of the christmas markets in the city. We went to one by the rathaus (city hall) because it was the closest. While the lights and decorations were very photogenic, it was difficult to use my fingers to take pictures. We were not equipped for temperatures below freezing. While we were "cold" in Japan, Vienna took it to a whole new level. My back was hurting from shaking. Even the locals looked cold.

This cold, wet, chilled feeling we were having is the very reason my family started going to Hawaii in the winter instead of say . . . Berlin. We skimmed the stalls. Nicole got an ornament for our collection of countries.

As much as we wanted to linger and enjoy the sites, we felt as though we were climbers on Everest who had not adequately prepared for the hostile environment. Wearing t-shirts under lightweight jackets, we were destined to become ice cubes.

We quickly shuffled out of the Christmasmarkt and into an Über that took us back to the area of our hotel, where we thawed out, and prepared for yet another long day of flying. If I am able to adjust back to Pacific time in relatively short order, it will be a Christmas miracle.