Tag: snow

Walking in a Winter Wunderland

No offense to Amsterdam but the fairy tale didn’t really begin until we arrived in Germany. That’s because we spent our first full day here…

…at Neuschwanstein Castle.

Apparently the design for Cinderella’s castle in Disney World was inspired by this one and can you blame her? When I have a castle, I want it to look just like that too. Some people (probably the Spanish!) claim that this castle was actually the inspiration for Cinderella’s castle. Whatever the case, I was ready to slip on a gläserne Pantoffel and move right in.

But let’s start at the beginning, shall we? Getting to the castle from Munich is not difficult per se but it does involve multiple steps, including taking a train and then transferring to a bus, all in German of course. With that in mind, we booked a day trip which included transportation, a tour of the town, and a tour of the castle.

Knowing that we had a full day ahead of us, we arrived at the train station early. Early enough to have a nice, hearty breakfast to start the day off right.

Well, what else would you expect?

From there we got comfortable on the train, ready to take in the sights and start the adventure. Riding through the countryside actually kind of reminded me of driving through Vermont. There were open fields covered in a blanket of snow, tiny cabins with swirls of smoke streaming out of the chimneys, and big, tall pine trees struggling to hold the freshly fallen snow. Apparently it snowed the day before we got there. Munich must have heard that I was coming and wanted to make the right impression. Well, it worked.

See? Just like Vermont…

…well, except for the giant castle.

Speaking of the castle, now seems as good a time as any for the history lesson. The castle was commissioned by King Ludwig II to be his personal retreat from the world and is largely influenced by his admiration for close friend, Richard Wagner. The majority of the rooms play homage to the works of Wagner through the artwork on the walls. Ludwig II was sometimes referred to as the Fairy Tale King and the design within the castle certainly reflects his eccentric sense of style. The palace was designed to be a personal refuge that would never be open to the public, or to visitors of any kind, really; however, just a couple of weeks after the King’s mysterious death (he was found dead of supposed suicide in the nearby lake along with one of his psychiatrists), the castle was opened to the public, for a fee of course. Pictures of the interior are not allowed though, so I suppose they kept some of his wishes in mind.

We arrived in the small town of Hohenschwangau and had time to grab a bite to eat and take a walk around the town, with a quick tour before making the climb up to the castle.

Isn’t it a cute, little village? The yellow building on the hilltop is actually another castle: the Hohenschwangau Castle, where King Lugwig II spent most of his childhood. It now lies in the shadow of Neuschwanstein Castle and is largely forgotten. Can you imagine? A tiny town with a superfluous castle? From here, we started the long climb to Neuschwanstein.

As mentioned before, pictures of the inside are not permitted so you’ll notice that there are only pictures of the exterior. Too many? Nein! No such thing! On the subject of pictures, all shots are courtesy of my handsome and talented companion, John. I meant to say that in the previous post, but that’s what happens when coffee is involved. My brain works faster than my fingers. Or maybe it’s the other way around?

All in all, it was a fairy tale of a day. John got to see his castle (and our future home, I’m counting on you!) and I got my winter wonderland…although maybe a little too much of it. My poor booties struggled to survive the encounter! And somehow I don’t they appreciated the promise of beers and pretzels the next day as much as I did.

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Although that’s really a post for another day because, well, there were a lot of beers and pretzels…

 

Adventures in Amsterdam

I started writing this post at the coffee shop the other day so this post is coming to you on the wings of the caffeine. I feel it’s important to warn you of that up front!

I’ve been out of commission for a couple of weeks now and as I sit here trying to recount those long weeks, I discovered that writing is a lot like running. They say it only takes two weeks to lose your fitness and boy was that true yesterday when I ran crawled through a six mile run. Apparently it must only take two weeks to lose your writing mojo too because I can’t seem to find it.

Hence the coffee shop. A change of scenery does the mind good. George Harrison doesn’t hurt either.

Why me of course!

These past couple of weeks were a bit of a whirlwind, four cities, three countries, planes, trains, automobiles. I do have faith in you, my loyal readers, but I can pretty much guarantee that you won’t sit there and read a five thousand word post about it. Okay mom, you probably would. But it sounds a little too much like schoolwork (“class, I want you to write a theme”) even if it is littered with pictures. So the weeks will be split up in separate posts, probably according to city. Chronological probably makes the most sense but I think I want to keep Madrid for last. So that brings us to….

Amsterdam. The land of sex, drugs and stroopwafels.

We landed and made our way to the Swissôtel, where we were treated to the penthouse! Okay not really, but it was the top floor with a pretty incredible vaulted ceiling and exposed beams. Plus a beautiful view of Dam Square. The fact that we didn’t get any pictures of it actually makes me a little sad. Anyway we decided to take a walk around to get the lay of the land.

Side note: Did you know that the Dutch love their cheese? I didn’t, but I sure as heck do now. I’m pretty sure we made a meal out of cheese samples. And I wouldn’t have it any other way. We even ran away together to run our own cheese farm…

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…but the cow only spoke Dutch so logistically that was just a nightmare.

Anyway with local food cheese in our bellies, we had to sample some of the local beverages as well. For strictly cultural experiences of course. So we started with a couple of beers…

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That newspaper would later catch fire due to a blissfully unaware barstool companion. John blew it out and the man still had no idea. True story.
That newspaper would later catch on fire due to a blissfully unaware barstool companion. John blew it out and the man still had no idea. True story.

And then we moved on to jenever, the national liquor of the Netherlands. It is juniper-flavored and is actually quite good on its own. It is served in a tulip-shaped glass (of course) which is filled to the brim and placed on the bar. The drinker then bends over to sip a little bit off of the top before picking it up.

Fun fact: we had the hardest time getting into this place. By which I mean, we literally had the hardest time of getting in the door. I swear there were people inside but the door didn’t open. Anyway, we eventually made it in and took turns snapping pictures in the nook while sipping away on our drinks.

The next day started with a beautiful walk around the city…

Construction, construction, what else is new…

…in the snow.

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In actuality, it only snowed for a little bit and then it stopped. In fact a lot of the pictures above were taken after the snow. But did it really have to snow first thing in the morning? My poor toes were all wet!

All was well when we were rewarded with Dutch pancakes in the Upstairs Pancake House. It’s this tiny little place with 4 tables and about 800 teapots. That’s only slightly exaggerated. There was one with red polka dots which I picked out as my favorite. The pancakes were delicious. We split a ham and cheese one and a regular old “plain” one (which is anything but plain, just check out that dollop of buttery creamy goodness).

From there we went to this tiny little town of Muiden…to see Muiderslot. It was mostly geared toward children with all sorts of interactive activities which led to many a rowdy child. But we were able to try on suits of armor and dress in old times garb. We even got up close and personal with an owl!

The fairy tale came to end when we remembered that we are not actually royalty. So…how do we get out of here? The wifi wasn’t working at the castle and nowhere in the town seemed to offer free wifi (or lights, oddly enough). We finally wandered into a very dark Italian restaurant so that they could call us a cab and we learned that the whole city was out of power. I’m still not really sure if that’s a regular occurrence or not. There were varying broken-English accounts of the incident, some of which made it sound like it was normal not to have power before five. But I guess we will never know for sure.

Regardless, we escaped to a well-powered civilization and had, what else, beers. But these weren’t any beers. They were beers in a windmill. Okay, technically beers beside a windmill, but I don’t think that makes it any less impressive. The atmosphere was homey so we stayed to sample quite a few. All in the interests of learning, don’t forget. Plus another jenever or two…this time with flavor. Future reference: the chocolate cherry tastes like cough syrup. Super disappointing.

The next day we were off to Munich. And because it was so much cheaper, we went through Eindhoven. So we walked around Amsterdam for one final farewell, which included a yummy, yummy, yummy cookie. This bakery makes only one cookie and, let me tell you, they make it well.

Then we went to Eindhoven. What is there to do in Eindhoven? Well shopping, for one. And eating at the automat. Actually eating at the automat is popular all over Amsterdam. We had an entire meal of sausages, croquettes, hamburgers for less than five euros. That is the reason for my excitement. For the record, there was no alcohol involved in the making of that photo.

From there we took a walk around, saw the shops and the church, and had some coffee. Then it was off to the airport, bound for Munich!

Me and my coffee and a comfy chair
On to Munich!

Join me next time for castles in wonderland! Okay, Munich. Same thing.

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Of Castles and Aqueducts

You may have noticed that none of my posts so far have been about Spain even though I do currently live there. Well it finally happened. Last weekend I took the opportunity to get out of Madrid without actually leaving the country. Crazy, I know. And I was rewarded with some snow-capped Spanish mountains but we’ll get to that later.

Lauren and I took a tour with Citylife Madrid, which plays host to all sorts of trips, get-togethers and social outings. It’s probably geared toward the typical study abroad student, but, whatever, we wanted to go to Segovia and they were going there. Scene opens to two girls grabbing croissants and coffee and running down the street to the bus.

Destination: Segovia
Travel time: one hour, thirty minutes
Mode of transport: bus, oh dear

First things first, the photo op. It was kind of funny to watch everyone like off of the bus and immediately start clicking photos. Even though the sun really didn’t want us to take pictures. The Alcazar de Segovia is said to be one of the inspirations for Cinderella’s Castle in The Magic Kingdom (another of which is Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria…which John and I will be visiting soon!). And for that reason it will heretofore be referred to as Cinderella’s castle. We quickly surveyed the exterior of the castle and then headed into town for a tour.

The city is itself incredibly old and was named a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1985, along the Aqueduct of Segovia. The aqueduct is 818 meters long and is considered the most important Roman civil engineering project in Spain. Over fifteen kilometers long and more than 160 arches! Let’s be honest it has to be one of the most impressive looking ones in the world.

 

But if you were to ask the Spanish, the Romans didn’t actually build the aqueduct, the devil did. You’re telling me devil brought water to the town of Segovia? Well sure. According to the legend, a young girl used to have to climb to the tops of the mountains surrounding the town in search of water and then carry it all the way back home. One day she made a deal with the devil to construct some sort of structure that would prevent her from having to trudge all the way to Timbuktu just to get water. (There’s no record of the conversation, so that’s probably not exactly how she worded it, but I imagine it was something like that). The devil listened to her request and said that he would do it for a price: her soul. The girl agreed but that night when the devil went to work on the aqueduct, she found herself regretting that decision. She prayed to the Virgen de la Fuencisla for help all night long. When the sun rose the next morning, there stood the aqueduct and yet the girl was fine. But how could that be? Well apparently the devil never actually finished the aqueduct; there was one stone missing. And in that space is a statue of the Virgen de la Fuencisla. Leave it to the Spanish to outsmart the devil.

But back to the town and more importantly the castle.

But wait, it isn’t over! From there it was on to Pedraza, a little medieval village that looks like, well, a medieval village. Not only that, but there are only 500 residents and one single road in and out. But most impressive was the view. In case you hadn’t already figured it out, I’m a sucker for mountains, especially cloaked in snow.

 

So there are my first check marks on the rapidly growing list of destinations to discover within Spain. Segovia: check. Pedraza: check. Two down, maybe about twenty five to go…