Schonbrunn Palace -- Photo Gallery

19 images from Schonbrunn Palace in Vienna. Took so many pictures here I figured I'd give it its own album.

Germany-Austria-Slovakia -2012 -- Vienna Schonbrunn Palace

Vienna -- Photo Gallery Part 1

The album for Vienna is turning into quite a project, so I'm going to post it in sections as I complete them. This first part covers the Museum District, Hopfburg Palace, the royal treasury, and the Hapsburg family crypt.

Germany-Austria-Slovakia 2012 -- Vienna Part 1

Salzburg -- Photo Gallery

Salzburg Photo Edits complete. Here's the link...

Germany-Austria-Slovakia 2012 -- Salzburg

Berlin -- Photo Gallery

I have finished editing the images from the Berlin part of our journey. Check them out at:

Germany-Austria-Slovakia 2012 -- Berlin

Germany-Austria Trip 2K12 -- The Return Trip from Hell

   6:30 GST (Hour 0). We start off on the right food with a good breakfast in the hotel lobby, the height of which for me was a rolled pickled herring filet.

   7:30 GST (Hour 1). We travel by bus from the hotel to the airport, making a few stops, but getting there with relative ease. Tegel is a strange airport where the gates all have their own independent security lines. We checked in on one line, walked 10 meters, then waited to go through security directly into our departure gate. German security going through to the US is very strict -- much stricter than any security line I've ever been through in the US. We were patted down, all our luggage was upheaved and sorted and processed through the x-ray machine twice. The security agents had an impromptu conference about my camera monopod and decided it looked too much like something you could bludgeon the flight crew with, so I was forced to check my large bag.

   9:30 GST (Hour 3). On to the plane, only to wait on the runway for 45 minutes while the flight crew "refile their paperwork." Apparently the headwinds were going to be so bad that they were going to make a detour fuel stop in Canada, which they assured us would take 20 minutes. On the plane I have a particularly awful chicken breast thing that tasted like it had lived in a freezer for several months before gracing my dinner tray. I watch 3 movies on the trip, unable to sleep, as usual on plane trips.

   10:00 EST (Hour 10). We land in "Goose Bay" Canada, world reknowned destination for refueling airplanes and little else. The passengers remain on the plane of course, since it's just suppoed to be a short pit stop.

   11:00 EST (Hour 11). After more "paperwork" issues, we finally get off the ground and on our way to Newark. I have a scotch and soda and watch Casablanca.

   15:00 EST (Hour 15). We arrive in Newark, having already missed our connection to Tampa. We go through customs and then wait in line to get a new connection, now scheduled for 19:00 EST. My father buys me a Guinness and I have a corned beef sandwich. I note the irony of the fact that the first thing I eat in the US is a sandwich made with saurkraut.

   19:00 EST (Hour 19). We get on board the plane to Tampa, relieved to be on the last leg. We are 20th in line for take-off and wait 45 minutes on the taxiway.

   22:00 EST (Hour 22). In a flight stupor, we stumbled out of the plane and into the Tampa Airport, where Jeannie is blssedly waiting to pick us up.

   23:00 EST (Hour 23). We get back to the apartment, ironically a little more energized from telling stories on the drive back to Palm Harbor. We catch the end of Bill Clinton's address to the Democratic convention, and then I promptly pass out. There are no pictures of the day.

   Thanks for following our adventure through Germany, Austria and Slovakia. I hope you enjoyed my ramblings. It was a great trip despite the transitory issues and one both of us are unlikely to forget any time soon...plus we have this blog as an archive to remember things! Once I sort through the 1800 exposures I took and adjust, weed, and polish, I will post a link to the gallery.

  So long and guten nacht!

Leipzig -- Day 1

   It threatened to be a jammed-packed day, as we not only had to see everything we wanted to see in Leipzig, but get to over to the hotel near Berlin-Tegel as well. Tegel is one of those airports like Gatwick. It's the old airport and it's "in the city" only in the loosest of definitions. But before any further talk of Berlin, we have to talk about Leipzig!

   First thing, we went to find a place to have breakfast. Originally we were planning on going to a famous coffee shop, but as it turns out, they're not open for breakfast, so we went to another place nearby called, rather unfortunately, Club Spizz.  There I had a traditional Leipzig breakfast, which includes a seven-minute egg, brown bread, some smoked ham, liverwurst and....wait for it....lard. Yes, that's right, apparently a big thing in Eastern Germany is bacon-infused lard on bread. I did eat it. It was ok, though it's hard to get past the fact that you're pretty much spooning lard directly into your face.

The main attraction, so to speak, in the city is the fact that it was the long-time home of J.S. Bach and his family. He was the cantor of Thomaskirch for several years as well as teaching at the adjoined school. St. Thomaskirch itself is a gothic Lutheran Church, partially rebuilt after allied bombing in WWII and oft-restored since sulphur and soot from a nearby mine did extensive damage to the statuary and paintings inside over time.

   Across the street from Thomaskirch, in his formal home, is a museum dedicated to Johann Sebastian Bach, his life and family and of course his music. We managed to go to the Bach museum on the only day of the month that admission is free, so we stepped through each room and listened to every audioguide snippet until our heads were packed full of Bach trivia. Here's a piece that's floated to the surface now -- Bach had 2 wives over the couse of his days, and between them fathered *20* children. As a result, there are several Bach relatives alive today. Sadly, none are in the music trade anymore.

   After the Bach museum, we headed to Zum Arabischen Cofe Baum (Of the Arabian Coffee Tree), which declares itself to be one of the oldest continually running coffee shops in Europe. Atop the old shop is a slightly tongue-in-cheek museum dedicated to the history of coffee in Europe generally and in Leipzig particularly. An interesting fact is that there used to be four dedicated members-only Masonic coffeehouses in Leipzig, where members of the Freemasonry performed their secret rites and...presumably drank coffee.

   I had a house specialty flavored coffee (I know, I know, I was reluctant even to put that in writing. I'll be thrown out of the coffee-snob club for sure for this one). This being one my last opportunities for trying food in Saxony, I also had a Leipziger Gose beer -- Brett, pay attention, because this one is really unique.

   Gose beer is a top-fermented regional speciality beer made with at least 50% malted wheat. In the brewing they add corriander and salt during the brewing and do a short malolactic fermentation at the end to give it a strong, sour character. It was *very* different, almost tasting like a cider.

   They also had a dessert on the menu that I couldn't stop myself from ordering, and I am sure glad I did because it was one of my favorites for the whole trip. Take whole, stoned plums, stuff them with Marzipan, add a little quark cheese, dip in a sweet batter, deep fry the whole thing, sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar, and add a sauce made with sloe plums. Serve with a bit of ice cream. Absolutely fantastic.

   Afterward we strolled around downtown, deciding not to go to any more museums with the hour and a half left to us. We walked through the downtown farmer's market, oogling the fresh end-of-summer fruits and veggies, the meat and seafood vendors, and the spice vendors. At a local dairy market we braved a bottle of fresh local milk, since we won't be able to get anything like that it in the states. It was really good, though I suffered a little for drinking all that dairy.

   We walked to a park on the Goethestrasse across the street from the train station to watch some ducks while we burned off some time before our train and then left Leipzig at 3pm for Berlin. By the time we got to Berlin it was about 5 and we took an S train to the canalfront, where we stopped at a restaurant right on the channel. It was a really nice final dinner in Germany -- we had a table next to the river and the weather was cool and bright and beautiful

  I had ox cheeks with a potatoe cake topped with chanterelles (in season and all over the place). The cheeks themselves were braised in a red wine sauce and topped with some kind of "foam". Foam is a big culinary trend right now, and I think it's kind of a rubbish trend to be honest. The meal looked great except for said foam, which sort of made it look like someone had spit on the food -- not a very appealing presentation. Still, it was delicious, spit and all.

   Dad had his *acutal* last Wiener shnitzel of the trip, and much to our surprises, it was actually the best shnitzel we'd had so far.

   We watched the sun go down over Berlin and said our silent farewells to the city, and essentially our trip and started our winding way to the hotel near the airport.

   And when they say "near the airport", they mean "in the approach lane". They also failed to mention the lack of AC in the room which required that we open the windows and allow the planes to swoop by. You could hear them coming practically off the runway. By the time the plane passed by, it had evolved into a brain-filling roar. Eventually we had to endure the warmth and close those windows to avoid feeling like the wrath of God was coming down on us every five minutes.

   The next day would start at 6:30 am, and since I am writing this entry a few days late, let me foreshadow and say that it would be a travel day for the recordbooks.

Leipzig -- Day 0

  Much of the day was given over to traveling to Leipzig. At the last moment I had doubts about the fact that our connection on the town of Lufta gave us only a 10 minute window to get from one train to the next, *assuming* everything was running on time. I decided that maybe the train service rep had jumped the gun a little when making our reservations, so I went to a self-service ticket machine and decided to give some new reservations a try. Well there was a train leaving an hour later, at 11 instead of 10, that got us to Leipzig at the same time as the other train, but had no connections to worry about. Stellar. I signed us up for that, but it meant that we were going to have a little longer wait in the train station.

   So be it. Luckily my initial estimate of how far it is between Leipzig and Berlin was flawed -- it's only an hour and a half train ride, so the trip tomorrow, our last of the journey, will be a blessedly short one compared to the beast of a commute that was Munich to Leipzig.

   Leipzig is a college town, and small at that. While it is technically the largest city in Saxony, the whole of the tourist section of town is less than 4 square miles and all emminently walkable. Our hotel is across the street from the train station and our room has a nice view of the next-door park.

   When we arrived in Leipzig, we walked right to the hotel, dropped off our bags, then headed to the #2 attraction in the city, which also happens to be a restaurant -- Auerbachs Keller. In his day, this was the writer Goethe's favorite hangout, a place that he immortalized in Faust. The restaurant has been playing up that angle ever since, with it's Faust themed wall murals and Mephistophelean graphics on the menu. It's actually a really nice-looking place in the heart of downtown, and its traditional Saxon menu has some really great stuff on it. I had a pork cutlet that came with a "farmer's pie" made from potatoes, sheeps cheese, cabbage, apples and pepper. It was a surprising and pleasant flavor combination -- the sweets, sours and savories coming together really nicely. I was pleasantly surprised.

   One of the most famous desserts in Leipzig is called quarkkeulchen, a pastry made with quark, a sort of cream cheese. The one at Auerbachs Keller was served with a scoop of cinammon ice cream and an apple cream. It was good, but not awesome.  The presentation was nice though.

   Tomorrow we're headed to the Bach museum, apparently the main event for any Leipzig trip. Our train leaves for Berlin at 3:50, but like I said, everything in this town is close by, so we're leaving our bags at the hotel lobby and touring around as much as we can before we catch the train. Even if we miss our reserved train, only being an hour and a half away, there are trains leaving to Berlin constantly, so I'm not worried.

   Sadly, the trip is nearly over. I think we could both use a break from rushing around Europe and navigating the labyrinth of transit lines, but I'm going to miss the adventure.