Europe 2013, day four: Germany, Munich and Garmsich-Partenkirchen

The photographer was quite grumpy after getting no sleep on the sleeper train (how ironic). We fled Munich after the noon playing of the Marienplatz Glockenspiel, but not before climbing the clock tower of St. Peter’s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Peter%27s_Church_%28Munich%29) in which Rachel actually climbed and descended all 300+ steps on her own and A was actually convinced to step outside on the thin ledge at the top of tower. This is the day ended with the “Bavarian cultural evening” (Bayerische Heimatabend) at the local beer tent down the block from our hotel in Garmisch-Patenkirchen, picture posted earlier.

Disclaimer: Our current hotel charges 4€ per hour for wifi, so I am uploading this entry hoping it is under my data allowance. I arrive at my cousin’s house Friday night so when I arrive I can hopefully add some pictures to this entry, yesterday’s, and any other entry I might write.

I left off yesterday with us boarding the train. It was a fun experience but I barely got any sleep. I know it was because I was worried about having to get up at 6 to get off the train at 7. The husband barely had any sleep as well. The kids slept well but they were so excited they stayed up later than they should have. I think if the train arrived around 10 AM I would have had a better experience.

We arrived in Munich on time. We found Hertz and were informed that we were upgraded to a Mercedes. You gotta love renting a car in Germany. We found the car and put our suitcases in the car. Then we went back to the train station (the car was a couple of blocks away). My poor kids are having trouble finding drinks here in Germany. All they want is plain water or plain juice. Everything seems to have carbonation. My kids don’t drink soft drinks at home so everything tastes strange to them. Anyway, poor Rhubarb just wanted some apple juice so we were searching for that in the train station. I failed her and got her a carbonated apple juice….
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After the failed drink purchase, we took the public transportation into the old part of Munich. We arrived at the Marionplatz right at nine. I found out we could climb to the top of a nearby church (St. Peters) and we did that. I have a big phobia of heights but I did make it to the top! I am glad we did this first – by the time we left Munich the town center was very crowded. I think the kids enjoyed this climb as well.

After climbing St. Peter’s church we went to the farmers market. I think it is called the Viktualien Market. You could basically find any fruit, vegetable, cheese, meat, or bread that you could possibly need here. It was only around 10 AM at this point. We spent a good time wandering this market and eventually bought food for lunch. We enjoyed eating our food on the benches outside. We noticed that it is never too early to drink beer in Germany. Both myself and my husband passed since we were both tired from the train ride the night before.

After we ate I wanted to check out the Hofbrauhas house. We literally just walked through it. I think my family thinks I am crazy. Had we not had a meal at the Viktualien market I think we would have had one here. But in all honesty I think we chose the better option.

By this point it was almost 12 PM. At 12 PM the figurines in the Marienplatz building come alive for a few minutes. So we went to watch this. After watching this we decided to head out of Munich and towards our lodging in the Alps. The Rhubarb slept for about ten minutes in the car and that was it. She could have used a longer rest.

The drive down to the Alps was beautiful. I have only walked about two blocks in this town (Garmsich) but I have decided I would like to live here 🙂 We checked into our hotel. Here we have a small apartment that has two bedrooms and a sitting area. Each bedroom has a private balcony with a view of the Alps. I could sit on that balcony all day.

Once we checked in I did a load of laundry by hand in the hotel sink. Since our room was facing the sun most clothes dried relatively quickly..:.in Berlin I had a problem because we had no direct sun and we got the one hotel room that had no drafts….anyways, the husband had gone to take a nap at this point. So I told the kids that I was taking them out to explore. We walked two blocks into town where they are having a festival this week. Just our luck there was a puppet show starting. So we watched the puppet show for about forty five minutes and then headed back to the hotel room.

I woke up the husband and we eventually headed back to the festival for dinner. This has probably been the most awesome thing we have done on the trip so far. The festival was under a large tent. There was a show at 8 PM and a parade to start the show. The Bavarians were mostly all dressed in traditional Bavarian clothing. The show was a traditional Bavarian show and there were several numbers put on by kids. You could order food and drinks while you watched. So we ordered dinner (which took a while to order). I attempted to order my first Radler but apparently the waiter thought I said Fanta so that is what I got. I am so happy we stumbled upon this festival. This was a genuine show – much better than anything we could have seen at the Hofbrauhas in Munich.

Procession of the festival

Traditional Bavarian dancing

So, now the kids are asleep. Breakfast is served until ten. I have a feeling I will have to force everyone out of bed at nine tomorrow. We are just planning on exploring tomorrow and I am hoping to do an Alpine roller coaster. The Bubba wants to do some hiking.

Did I mention that I would like to move here? I guess I better start learning German

Thoughts on Activities

Our trip is six weeks away from today. I am hitting that panic stage even though we still have a while. The minute we land I predict all eyes will be on me and ask, “What are we doing now?” I am trying to keep a list of things to see in various places so we can narrow things down. I am not worrying about the Rhine river, the Netherlands, or Paris as those areas I am sure we will easily find things to do. So the areas I am spending time looking into are Berlin, Munich, and the Alps.

My thought for Berlin was that we will land and immediately take naps. Both of my kids have already declared they are not planning on sleeping on the plane. I know you all are jealous. Don’t you want to deal with over tired kids at 10 AM in the morning (which will be 4 AM our time)? So naps we will be taking. But I figured that first day in Berlin we will see things like the Berlin Wall, the Brandenburg gate, the Tiergarten, etc. I want to do things that don’t require a lot of concentration and we can just enjoy our surroundings. Day two in Berlin I am considering a day trip to Potsdam. And day three I am thinking will be our museum day. I would really like to see the Pergamon museum. After that I really don’t care what we see.

We arrive in Munich early in the morning and we only have a day here. My thought is to wait on picking up our rental car since the subway at the train station takes you directly into the main area of town. Why pick up our rental and then have to deal with parking? So I am thinking we head to the old part of town, go to the Marienplatz, find a farmer’s market, go to the Deutches museum, check out a biergarten and/or Hoffbrahaus. After that I really have no plans. I think there is a bridge north of the city that my husband wants to see. And I know Dachau is close by Munich but I am not sure that we would like to explain that to the kids at their current ages. Or we could just head south to the Alps earlier than expected.

We then spend two nights in the Alps. My thoughts for this region include going into Austria. The town we are staying in is right on the border. It is fairly close to Innsbruck too so part of me is thinking maybe have lunch or dinner in Innsbruck. I have also seen some things on the Internet regarding Bobsled rides. I think everyone would enjoy this experience if there is one near us but it is not something I want to do if we need to drive out of our way to get to. So, we have one day for Austria…and then we leave the next morning to head to my cousin’s house. On this day we are planning on seeing Neuschwanstein castle. After that we are heading towards Lake Constance but we might take a scenic route there. Our castle tour is at 10:25…I am thinking maybe after the tour we can do a picnic lunch somewhere.

We leave the Alps and then head to my cousin’s house. My goal is to be at her house by 5 PM. Hopefully that will happen. She has kids that are close in age to mine. So I am not planning anything when we are there. It is halfway through our trip…I figure the kids will just enjoy playing with each other for a day and they will enjoy the break. Still – there is a town a half hour south of my cousin that I would like to see – so if we have to miss it to get to my cousin’s house on time we might go back to the town the next morning or afternoon – but we will let everyone sleep in at least 🙂

One nice thing is that when we are in Europe the sun set time is around 9 PM. So we will have plenty of sunlight on our trip (assuming it is not raining).

The itinerary

We booked our airline tickets to Europe in September. We had an idea of where we wanted to go and I had decided that we would determine our itinerary after we booked our airline tickets. There are many airports we could have flown into and I wanted to fly into wherever we got the cheapest tickets. That ended up being flying into Berlin and out of Dusseldorf.

While we are in Europe there are a few people we hope to visit. One lives in Biberach (Germany), one lives in Rotterdam (The Netherlands), and one lives right outside of Paris (France). We were hoping to be able to visit all of them.

So our itinerary goes like this:
– Arrive in Berlin. Stay there for two nights. On the third night take the overnight train from Berlin to Munich
– Day in Munich. Head down to the Alps at night
– Two nights in the Alps (Garmisch-Partenkirchen). Plan to explore the Alps region, Neuschwanstein castle, Lake Constance
– Two nights in Biberach
– One night along the Rhine river in Sankt Goar
– Train from Dusseldorf to Rotterdam. Three nights there. While there we will explore Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and other interesting Dutch towns
– Morning train from Rotterdam to Paris. Three days in Paris
– Evening train from Paris to Dusseldorf
– Return home from Dusseldorf

I know it’s a lot. But when I go on vacations I want to see the world. I can’t relax on a trip. If we spent a week in the Alps I would be thinking of all the other places we could also be seeing. Also, I debated spending a night in Munich but in the end I decided not to because that would mean another night of checking in and out of hotels. I thought it made more sense to drive the hour south to our accommodations in the Alps. The sun does not set until after nine PM that night. However it does mean we cannot enjoy too much beer in Munich!

Determining the trip destination

I am lucky to be on the East Coast.  As a result I have several major airports that I can easily get to via Amtrak or by driving.  When I started researching flights to Europe about six months ago I noticed that depending on where you departed from the price was different.  I noticed a flight out of my local airport might be $300 more expensive than one out of another airport a few hours away.

When I went to buy our airline tickets, I found one airport within a four hour radius of us to be $927 more expensive per ticket than what we actually paid.  Our local airport was $857 more expensive per ticket than what we actually paid.  Multiply that times four and we would have paid $3428 more than what we actually paid.  Of course, now we have the inconvenience of getting to our departure airport, however we’ll take Amtrak.  I project the Amtrak fare will cost around $300 round trip for ALL of us.  My kids love to ride on the train, I love how you are not confined to your seat, there’s a snack car, and you don’t have to stop to use the bathroom.

I also noticed the same was true for Europe destinations.  I knew that I primarily wanted our trip to focus on Germany.  However, we were also planning on visiting friends in other countries bordering Germany.  So I figured I should explore several European destinations as well, and that we would base our itinerary off of the location where we were going to land and depart.  When I changed our destination to Frankfurt, it was going to cost us an additional $309 per ticket at the cheapest East Coast airport.  Multiply that times four and it would have cost us an additional $1200.  If I changed our destination to Amsterdam, it was going to cost us an additional $255 per ticket at the cheapest East Coast airport.  You get the idea.

So, we are flying Newark to Berlin to Europe and we return home Dusseldorf to Newark – where I found the cheapest ticket.  My brother had reminded me I could do an open jaw ticket.  That’s where you fly into one city and depart out of another.  The open jaw ticket was only $16 more expensive than flying into the cheapest city (Dusseldorf) that I found.

I generally use a site such as Kayak to locate the cheapest airfare.  Then I go to that airline’s website to book the fair.  Our flight is operated by Lufthansa, which is a partner of United.  When I tried booking the flight on United I noticed I could not pick our seats.  I then went to Lufthansa’s website and booked the flight through them.  Their website allowed me to pick our seats.  You DON’T want to be stuck in a middle seat and separated from your family on a trip to Europe…

In conclusion, if you know you are going to be spending a lot of money on airline tickets, make sure you spend some time researching how much it costs to fly into various locations.  Driving to an airport two hours away to depart or landing at an airport three hours away from your primary destination may be a big pain, but in the end you may save yourself hundreds or thousands of dollars. We are saving over $1500 by taking a flight out of an airport that is not super close to us.