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Tag Archive: Germany

11,12/2024 Christmas Markets and Home!

From Venice we flew to Vienna where we met a German friend, Jutta, and spent 4 days in Vienna visiting Christmas markets, the Spanish Riding School (Great tour), Belvedere Palace to see the Klimt paintings. If you want to see a city dressed up for Christmas, Vienna is for you. The streets, stores, buildings were all decorated with lights and ornaments. Vienna hosts at least 14 different Christmas markets all over the city. We think we visited seven.

What are the markets like? Do they sell things? They’re each a bit different and vary in what’s sold. Food and drink (Mainly gluwein which is mulled wine, wine, champagne), a variety of local snacks, and then there are the non-food products. Some of them have local craftsmen products, jewelry, pottery, ornaments, Nativity pieces, not much clothing. At night they are beautiful and tend to be the most crowded then. Lots of residents meet friends at the markets to wander, eat and drink. One or two had ice rinks.

Vienna City Hall at the Christmas market
Best thing about Christmas Markets – gluwein!
Broccoli Christmas ornament!
Yes, we visited the Belvedere Gallery so we could see the Klimt paintings.
St. Micheal’s church

After a weekend of too much food and drink, we flew to Berlin for Thanksgiving, Christmas markets, a few museums, and colds! These were the first colds we had in about 3 years – no fun!

One of the Berlin Christmas markets at night
This dog clearly knows how to ride the Berlin S-bahn.
A gluwein stand at a Berlin Christmas Market
Brandenburg Gate on a cold night in Berlin

Our last stop was Barcelona before boarding the Viking Sky to Fort Lauderdale.

La Sagrada Familia done in Legos, complete with crane.
Even the Lego store has to build a Gaudi house.
When in Barcelona, it’s mandatory to find at least one Gaudi building!

We spent a few days in Barcelona walking around to find Gaudi buildings but did not go to La Sagrada Familia – been there, done that; visiting their Christmas market; checking out the very large city market with yummy empanadas, fruit, and interesting looking fish and iberian ham; visiting a few pharmacies to stock up on paracetomol. In the U.S., we buy bottles of 500 Tylenol. In Europe, not so much! Their “large” packages have 20 pills for about $3.

You can never have too much Nutella.
Gaudi Chimney
Cauliflower of various colors
The fish are barcoded to meet EU regs.

The last leg of the trip was a 2 week Viking cruise to Madeira, St. Maarten and Ft. Lauderdale. The seas were a bit rolling but it was nice and warm! We really enjoyed Viking – no one under 18, lectures, lots of room in the public areas to read or play cards or watch the ocean, only 900 passengers. The food was good and Mark learned all about Sambal from our Indonesian waiters. We met very interesting people and just chilled out.

The Viking chefs built a lovely gingerbread village.
The Viking Sky was ready for Christmas.

The ship stopped for a day in Funchal, Madeira, a very mountainous island!

I knew we were back in Portugal when I saw the tiles.
Ronaldo is Madeira’s most famous citizen.
The church Nativity set.

Yes, Funchal has a Christmas market, too. This one only food and even beer!

The last stop was Fort Lauderdale where we flew back to Denver on a very uneventful flight!

Sunrise in Fort Lauderdale

10/2023 – On to Salzburg and Stuttgart

I love Salzburg and wanted to spend some time there. We took the train from Munich and hung out for 4 days. We first visited 32 years ago on our European camping trip – not much has changed. By dumb luck we hit the St. Rupert festival for their patron saint and founder. Surprise! It involves beer. At a nice market, I found some handcrafted jewlery to buy.

Hohensalzburg with the Mirabell Gardens, famous from the Sound of Music.
This little guy was in The Sound of Music, too. We did NOT do the tour.
My favorite place for a beer – Steigl – overlooking the rooftops of Salzburg.
The last time we visited Helbrun Palace was 32 years ago. The tours are now self-guided. We could spend as much time as we wanted looking at the water powered creatures built by one of the many Archbishop Princes of Salzburg.

The water holds up the little hat and changes its height.

These little guys spit at each other.

From Salzburg we took the train to Stuttgart, home to the 2nd largest “Oktoberfest” in Germany. It is officially called a Volksfestival – we assume that “Oktoberfest” is copyrighted. Deutchesbahn was actually on time!

The official name of the Stuttgart festival
The grounds open at noon during the week. Much less crowded than the counterpart in Munich first thing in the day.
We had 1/2 chicken and a beer for lunch in a very empty tent.
City Library in Stuttgart. It’s a tourist stop for architecture. Since it was right by our hotel, we had to wander in.

Gluhwein and Friends Heidelberg

We flew Condor from the Seychelles to Frankfurt because that’s the only direct flight to Germany and we really didn’t want to connect through either Istanbul or Dubai. The flights all leave Mahe late at night (10 PM or later), making the connections at 0 Dark 30.

After flying for 10 hours, the Condor flight landed on time and our body had a small weather shock.  It was about 85 F when we left the Seychelles and it was 32 F when we landed in Germany.  What was Mark wearing??  You guessed it – shorts!  One flight attendant looked at him and said, “I hope you have pants packed someplace.”  He did!

Our luggage with all our summer and safari clothes actually showed up and we managed to have some coffee before we met the Lufthansa shuttle to Heidelberg. The room was ready when we showed up at 10 AM and our suitcases with winter clothes (We’d left them in Heidelberg with friends.) were waiting for us! By the time we sorted out dirty clothes and found warm clothes, the snow started. The Christmas markets are pretty magical when everything is white, even if it was wet snow.  When we wandered back to the markets in the evening for some more gluhwein (Susan’s favorite!), the snow stopped and was all melted!

Snowy Heidelberg shopping street

Snowy Heidelberg shopping street

Snow at the Christmas Market in Heidelberg

Snow at the Christmas Market in Heidelberg

Mark melted snow on face in Lowenbrau

Mark has melted snow flakes on his face from all the wet snow. Yes, we were having a dunkel beer to warm up!  And he’s wearing the U. of Iowa scarf to stay warm.

It’s always nice to see familiar faces and this time we enjoyed meals with 2 different sets of German friends.  The first night (after we managed to get our clothes washed!) we met Joachim at Heidelberger Kulturbrauerei for beer and dinner.  The sauerbraten was really good, and the side dishes were enough for all to share.  Their November beer was good even if we drank it in  December!

Christmas wreath

Christmas wreath at Kulturei Brauerei

The second night after a day of shopping for supplies, we met Bettina, Michelle, and Hermann for gluhwein at the Christmas market and dinner at the Zum Güldenen Schaf.  It was a fun night with the gang who’s being so kind to store our suitcases and clothes so we don’t have to take them all with us everywhere!

Christmas market pyramid

This Christmas pyramid was on the main square in Heidelberg. There were at least 5 different market locations in the city, including one with an ice rink.

Drinking gluhwein

We were all trying some Gluhwein. It’s pretty hard to hold the cup with mittens on.

A Thursday of Oktoberfest Fun – and beer!

Oktoberfest seemed to be a success for our gaggle of 21 people – 6 Germans and 15 Americans.  If you don’t know, Oktoberfest is celebrated in Munich every year for 17-20 days and is a large party/fair for everyone who attends.  We had reservations in the Pschorr Braurosl Tent, thanks to hard work by a German friend.  Reservations are free but you must buy food and drink vouchers for 2 beers (Each beer is a liter.) and a half chicken for each person.  You can order other food and “pay as you go”.  Our reservation started at 11:30 AM on Thursday morning and we had the 3 tables until 4:30 PM.  Let’s just say everyone enjoyed the food, drink, company, and German music. I lost count of the number of liters of beer that were consumed by our group.  A few hats were purchased from the vendors, too.

pschorr brauosl tent

This is the tent we had reservations for all afternoon.

Half a chicken and part of a beer – The rest had been consumed!

Coat rack and reserved sign

Everyone hangs coats on the table legs. Reserved signs are on the table after you find the row of your table from your reservation letter.

Keep looking for more pictures.

A day hike to Andechs Monastery

One day 14 of us took the S-bahn to Herrshing and then walked about 4 miles up to Andechs Monastery for lunch and an Andechs beer.  The monks make the beer – pils or dunkel – and they’ve added a schnapps-making business.

Andechs monastery church

We’ve been there a few times so we know there are 2 different paths to take up (about 1 hour walk) or you can take the city bus #951 that leaves from the train station in Herrsching 2 times an hour and take 10 minutes.  Eleven in the group walked while the other three with colds took the bus.  Naturally, Mark and I picked the hardest route up (We can never remember from year to year whether to go left or right at the sign!) but we had a nice walk up and then we came down the other path.  The walk up does involve 2 very long flights of steps – about 60 in each flight.  We missed the rain and had beer and good food as a reward for our hard work.

Steps to Andechs

The steps we walked up during our hike to Andechs. (Thanks to Stephanie for the picture.)

Monastery Group

Enjoying beer and apfel strudel after we went inside to warm up after lunch on the terrace.

Walking thru the meadow

Two routes to choose from Herrsching and one of them takes you through this meadow

Pork Knuckle and Pretzel

Pork Knuckle and Pretzel for lunch

Andechs beer

Dunkel beer from Andechs

(c) Susan Athey