Kyle and I went traveling through Germany and Austria for a week. We saw 4 cities and caught 4 Metallica shows (of which I worked two shows and Kyle worked one). There was some breathtaking sightseeing, amazing (and horrible) food, hilarious quotes, and more. Enjoy.
Conveniently Kyle was ready to jump on the 7 tram as I passed by his house on it saving me having to get off and back on. Our train to Munich was at 9:16, and after some always mediocre train-food for lunch we arrived around 1:20pm. The hotel was only a few blocks from the main train station (aka "HB" or "hauptbahnhof" which is "main train station" in German). It was a pretty nice place - two decent beds, big bathroom, and wireless that wasn't that expensive.
While settling in I noticed the safe in the closet didn't work. "No big deal" I thought - and I called the front desk. An attractive lady came up, opened it, and left. I walked over, attempted to set a code and BEEP BEEP BEEP. Hmm. "Kyle, you wanna give it a go?" BEEP BEEP BEEP. I poke my head in the hallway and find the same woman working on something else and ask her to come back. She pokes at it for a while and then profusely apologizes that she cannot make it work. No safe, but I was glad to find out I wasn't just being an idiot. =)
Lacking enough time to do much, but it still being too early to head to the show we flipped on the TV. As one would expect in Germany, everything was in German.... except 1 show. Now normally this isn't a show I'd watch, but it was the only thing in English. So we watched some reality TV show where Paris Hilton finds herself a new best friend The Apprentice style (or so I presume from the one time I was forced to watch that horrible show). I have to admit, the sheer absurdity of the show was entertaining. I mean, I wouldn't ever watch it again, but it was very good for a laugh. Basically, she'd put the group of girls through a series of challenges (sometimes disguised as "days off") designed to see if they can handle the stress of being a celebrity's best friend. The best example I can remember is when each of them was told privately about a "rumor" the other girls had been "spreading" about them. It was a lie - no rumors had been abound, but the idea was to see how they'd react to the obviously common occurrence of celebrity rumors. And while one can even argue that that test makes sense, the whole idea of a contest to determine your "new BFF," as they put it, is so absurd and ridiculous as to be comical. Once, anyway.
After watching with a mixture of shock and awe it was time to head to the venue. The venue was in a large park with two venues in it and finding our way was tough. See my review of the show at IPOM.
Following the show we headed home but kept an eye out for icecream. The only thing we could find was a Burger King inside which we found a very long line. After 20 minutes in line they informed us they were out of icecream. I vowed to hold a grudge against Burger King for the remainder of the trip and we left disheartened and angry.
We walked up to a small convenience store which was closing and in true European fashion was unwilling to let us by something even though it was 10 minutes before closing time.
At long last we found a convenience store in the train station and bought some icecream. Back at the hotel we worked out our plans for the next day (which mostly included me figuring out which Dachau tour I'd be taking and when/where I had to be there).
Kyle was up painfully early, but I slept until we were about to miss breakfast, and then we ran down and caught the tail end of breakfast. The hotel had quite a nice breakfast (especially for a European hotel): eggs, sausage, bacon, rolls, cereal, cheese, meats, etc.
My plan today was to do a tour of Dachau, the first Nazi concentration camp in Germany. Kyle had already done a Dachau tour so he was going to explore the city. After breakfast, showers, and such we headed in our separate directions. As it turns out, I was there about an hour early so I sat in the train station and waited for an hour, checking email, buying water and a snack, etc.
The guides take us on the train out to Dachau. Dachau was one of those things you can't really describe. I will say a few things about it. There are several categories of concentration camps from WWII - some were primarily for killing people, referred to as "death camps," others were primarily for working people (until they were no longer useful at which point they were often sent to a death camp), referred to as "work camps," others were mostly for short-term holding or other things. Of course there was death at all the camps. Dachau was considered a work camp. Plenty of people died there, but it was often from being worked to death or from horrible conditions, poor nutrition, working in freezing temperatures, etc.
The tour took us through many parts of the camp - the prison cells, various rooms where people were forced to do various types of work, the infirmary, the mess hall, etc. They explained the unimaginable conditions as well as some of the things prisoners were put through such as standing outside in below-freezing temperature in only underwear for hours, in the middle of the night.
Dachau did have a gas chamber, but all evidence suggests it was never used. It was built fairly late in the war, not too long before Dachau was liberated - but certainly well enough before that it could have been used. No one really knows why it was never used since similar facilities were in use in other camps... but nonetheless, it seems it wasn't.
Various religious buildings are now on Dachau grounds: a synagogue, a mosque, and a church. People who survived apparently still come back, and families of survivors who have since passed on come back, and pray or attend services at these places. I found this very strange. I can see keeping the grounds around as a reminder, but I wouldn't want to build a religious building there.
The gates to Dachau - and of many concentration camps - had the words you see in the last two pictures above. They translate literally to "work brings freedom", or "work shall set you free." A sad lie to make people believe they might be set free if they worked hard enough.
The last picture above is particularly interesting. The part on the left is a picture of the line-up where prisoners were called out by number. These roll-call sessions were often held at night and for hours. The part on the right was a picture released of fully-clothed prisoners looking reasonably healthy. This was a picture used as propaganda to counteract the rumors of what was really happening at the camps.
The last two pictures above show all the major concentration camps across Europe. If I recall correctly there are a large number of smaller ones not shown. Look at the sheer number of them. It's just... unfathomable.
The next 8 pictures show the check-in hall. The tables where filled with lists of prisoners, personal articles confiscated from incoming prisoners, etc. to show you what it was like. The 3 final pictures are a room filled with some of the torture devices used.
This path here in front of the main building is decorated with wreaths and art as a memorial to the many people who died or suffered at Dachau and through the war.
The camp was turned into something else prior to becoming a museum and the barracks were torn down. Two have been rebuilt - one with the infirmary to show what it was like. This looks from the main building, across the main "courtyard" to the first two buildings. You can see a long row of trees, there were originally rows of buildings all the way down that row of trees.
In the next pictures take a close look at the bunks. There are a few kinds here that show the progression. Originally there were dividers - people got slightly more than the width of a man to sleep in. As space got tight, people had to sleep two people to one of those bunks, and then eventually they took the dividers out and crammed several times the number of people in there that could reasonably fit.
Here we can see the perimeter that made it impossible to escape. There was a thick patch of grass - about 10 feet wide. Stepping on it meant the guards in the towers would shoot you. If you could make it across that, there was a ditch to cross and then a barbed wire fence, followed by another stretch of ground and an extremely tall concrete wall with nothing to hold onto. You can see the inner fence in these pictures doesn't go all the way around, but when the camp was operational, it did. This portion of the fence was preserved. Following the fence pictures you'll see the back alley behind the main building where prisoners were tortured or shot. Finally there's a drawing of prisoners being hung by their arms - backwards - breaking their shoulders.
While some were "fortunate" enough to live in the barracks shown above, many stayed in cells, which you can see here.
At the far end of the barracks are where the synagogue, church and mosque now stand.
Perhaps one of the most shocking parts of the visit was saved for last. This was the crematorium, with the gas chamber disguised as showers. Recall that the gas chamber was never used at Dachau, however, the crematorium was in fact in constant use.
Finally, several memorials are placed in the gardens that are now present around the crematoriums.
The city of Dachau is a very nice town that was apparently quite a popular place to visit before the war. Unfortunately now, it's known for the camp, and so people either come to visit the camp, or avoid the town all together.
Just before I left for Dachau, Kyle had suggested we go to The Hard Rock Cafe for dinner, and not having had a good burger in a very long time, I jumped at the chance. At the same time, I had Metallica's "End of the Line" stuck in my head from the concert the night before. These two things were stuck in my head as I walked around Dachau, and at least twice during the tour the guide used the phrase "end of the line" prompting once again the song to pop in my head. When I met up with Kyle, I mentioned that these two things were stuck in my head all afternoon and he responded with "... you've reached the end of the... BURGER!" and that became our quote for rest of the trip.
We found our way to Hard Rock and had a fantastic burger. On our way out we saw two girls sitting on a couch and joined them. They spoke English but it took us a few attempts to get a conversation going with them. Then they seemed interested... until one of their boyfriends showed up and the conversation abruptly ended. Baring anything interesting happening we asked them were we might find some bars or clubs. They listed a metro stop and we thanked them and headed out. Sadly, there were no bars or clubs were they claimed there would be, so we bought some icecream and headed back to the hotel to get some sleep.
We had to be up for our train to Stuttgart, so we headed down for another great hotel breakfast then showered, packed, and went to catch our train to Stuttgart.
In Stuttgart we grabbed the bus going the wrong way, a slight annoyance, but got our way back to the main station. We decided this time to hit up the info booth and ask how to get to the hotel, but before heading there we stopped for some gelato as one is wont to do.
The hotel was basically at the opposite end of town from... everything. The room was tiny - two beds that barely fit and a tiny bathroom... but it'd do. After checking in and dropping off our stuff, our first order of business was the Porsche Museum. It was quite interesting, with lots of information on the history of their racing and cars.
We then tried to rent a Porche for the next day, but it turns out this requires about a week of advanced notice. At some point it was raining and I claimed, "the weather is shit" to which Kyle goes into a rant about how good the weather has been and I should "respect" the weather for "how well it has treated us thus far." Of course, less than 10 minutes later was complaining about "the shitty weather" himself.
We walked around a cool area with lots of shops wondering where to eat. We wondered down a cool winding street and picked a Chinese restaurant near the end. The restaurant was intolerably hot - sauna hot. After sitting at the table for more than 5 minutes with no service we decided this wasn't worth it and went to another Chinese restaurant we'd passed. This one had a buffet that was possible the worst Chinese food I've eaten. I left most of my first plate. Kyle agreed it wasn't amazing but didn't mind it and got a second plate. I grabbed some McDonald's afterward since I was still starving.
Wondering around after dinner we passed an outdoor film festival of some sort being setup (there was a stage as well, but the band seemed to be packing up). The film festival seemed to be still in setup, so we wondered around a bit and came back to grab a seat. I'm not sure I can describe the sheer horribleness of the film we saw. It was an animated Asian mostly-silent film. As far as either of us could tell it had no... um, forget plot, it had no progression from image to image. It was nonsensical at best. We got up about 10 minutes into it and left. We stopped to ask a few people where we might find bars and were pointed in a direction that had "lots" by several people. Assuming multiple people wouldn't lie about bars by all telling us the same street, we headed over. There was... one bar. Bravo Charlie bar, however, was pretty cool. Themed, as you might guess, in flight stuff, it was full enough to be fun, but we were still able to find a seat outside. Checkout the pictures on the website, the place is quite a trip. The drinks were good and reasonably priced, and it was nice to sit outside and have a drink.
We got up early today since we had lots to do. We went down 30 minutes before breakfast was over and nothing was left except cheese, cereal, and some horrible coffee. Given everything else about the hotel, the disappointing breakfast wasn't a surprise.
When I went down to ask to exchange some change for bills, they informed me that the hotel would be locked and unmanned after 2am, so we had to be back by then. I explained that we'd be at the concert and may not make it back by 2am and we needed a way to get in. Annoyingly she decided I would have to pay our hotel bill in advance before she would tell me how to get in at night. This really pissed me off, but I had no choice. After paying the bill, she told me my key would work on the back door and showed me how to get there. Brilliant.
Our first stop was the Ritter Sport chocolate museum. This place was really out in the middle of nowhere. Calling it a museum is a bit of an exaggeration. There was a room with some various things to show you the history of their chocolate, and how it's made, a small movie about it, and of course a store where you can buy it. Next door they also have a full art museum (which was closed). After going through the museum, it was lunchtime and we checked out the restaurant they had - but were not excited about the high price for essentially snack food, so we went to the gift shop, bought chocolate and headed back to town.
Given how far Ritter was from everything, by the time we got back it was 2:30pm, so we just grabbed McDonald's for lunch. We had plenty of chocolate for desert, but didn't want to carry the rest with us all day, so we wasted some time heading back to the hotel to drop it off.
Next stop was the Mercedes Museum. This place looks like a building from the future, it's quite nuts. Unfortunately, by the time we got there it was 5:15 and while they were open, tickets were no longer being sold. The final room was sort-of open so we went in the exit and looked around a bit. The museum was in the same complex as the venue... and 3 other venues! It was literally 4 large venues, in a row, down a long street. And of course, the one we wanted was at the far opposite end of the street. See my review of the show at IPOM.
After the show Kyle was convinced that walking in the opposite direction would be closer to a stop of some sort... but it wasn't. After a very, very long walk, we saw a stop, but missed the tram. Finally caught a tram, and found our way to HB. Starving, we once again dined on McDonald's and then headed back to the fabulous Hotel Find.
Some Germans came "home" last night and were incredibly loud in the room next door preventing much in the way of sleep. Despite that, we were both up at 8:30 - an hour before we'd planned to get up.
We checked out and found a locker at the main station to put our luggage into. We had noticed that the McDonald's in Germany had breakfast and had both been dying for McDonald's breakfast, so we headed there before heading off to the Mercedes museum.
There was a funky space-age elevator to take us to the top, and as you slowly work your way down the floors you progress from the first Mercedes to the modern area. The early years - particularly the technology advancements - were very interesting, but by the 60s it was mostly boring.
Back at the main station we had 20 minutes before our train to Frankfurt, so I got some shawarma and Kyle got some pizza. Only a little over an hour on a train and we stopped in Darmstadt where we had to switch trains (little did we know this was a small area at the very south of Frankfurt). We went from a nice train to... what could best described as a cattle car with seats. The entire thing was packed, so we sad in the very, very front just behind the door to the conductor on fold-down chairs. The air rushing by the thin walls was so loud that our ears were constantly popping. There was no carpet and no luggage racks. People and luggage were packed everywhere, and it was incredibly hot, loud, and miserable.
Kyle was just as miserable, but my bitching entertained him.
We stopped at tourist information and asked how to get to the hotel and then headed down into the metro. Unfortunately we lacked information on the right tickets to buy and also wanted a map of the public transport, so back up we went. Of course, to make matters more interesting we both only had 50s which we didn't want to feed to a machine that spits out change in coins. Eventually we got on our way.
At the stop in question we realized that we were on the opposite side of the freeway from the hotel and there was no way to get there on foot - and that it seemed to be quite far away. We called them and they didn't seem to have a good idea which was absurd. We eventually realized that there was another exit to the underground station that let out on the other side of the highway.
There were two escalators going up and out of the station... but both were going down! Why would you do that? If they were both going to go in the same direction - which seems stupid - they should at least go up! To make things worse, you approach a platform on the stairs that seems like it's the top, but you realize it's only half-way. These stairs were clearly designed just to taunt people.
Anyway, once over there it was a short walk to the hotel, but with bags and the heat it was an markedly unpleasant walk. The hotel was quite nice - a huge room, balcony, large bathroom, two nice beds, etc. After checking in we were exhausted, so I took a nap and Kyle did some reading for an hour. Rested, we put together a plan for dinner and drinks and headed out!
There was a strip of town known for restaurants and bar so we headed there and found a restaurant recommended by Kyle's book for "local cuisine." In particular there was a green sauce, Grüne Soße that is very specific to Frankfurt, so we had that with our dishes. I had schnitzel and Kyle had braised beef. The green sauce was interesting. It wasn't great, but it wasn't bad.
This place had a bathroom that made you swear you just walked into a spaceship. I would have taken a picture, but it's a bit weird to take a picture in a bathroom. Everything was shiny and metal and kinda pod-like. I don't even know how to describe it.
Most of the bars were not yet very busy, so we picked one that had Futurama playing and a very nice, and very attractive bartender named Eva. What more could you want? At some point we decided to go sit outside, but that plan was killed after a minute due to rain, so back we went. We grabbed a table, but when I was at the bar for a while waiting for Eva to get through a massive order, Kyle decided to join me there, and so there we stayed. A woman and a guy walked in shortly after and the girl looks at me and says "You were at the concert the other night, right?" Turns out they work for Machine Head, and somehow she recognized me (and since the one place I don't stick out is a Metallica show, I guess that means I'm either very attractive, or painfully ugly). Anyway, her name is Dot, and his is Cheeky. Introductions aside, they wanted to head out to some local rock bar and had come in here for a quick drink on the way (one would assume it was due to the rain, but this proved to be not the case). Eva recommended a place called "Final Destination", but Cheeky had already found out they were closed on Sunday. After exchanging contact information with Eva, we headed out to some place he'd read about online. In the rain. Lots of rain. Walking. After 30 minutes of walking - in the rain - we arrived at the bar. And what do you know... it was also closed. We picked the next closest bar which was a quiet little place with one table of people outside and no one inside. We bought some drinks and then went to play darts. The bartender put on Metallica for us, and all was well in the world!
While purchasing the second round, Kyle noticed that ordering two smaller Bacardi-and-cokes for 5 euros each would get you a Bacardi hat, so he bought us each one and got a hat, which we shared while playing darts. But clearly one was not enough so we quickly moved on to round 3 so that I could also have a hat. Dot's pina coladas came with sparkly sticks which she stuck in our hats, and we looked ridiculous and were loving it.
Many drinks later Hening, another Machine Head crew member, stopped by. Eventually, around 2am we headed out as they were closing. We started to say goodbye, but ended up just going into the bar next door for another 30 minutes or so. Neither Kyle nor I ordered anything having already had plenty to drink.
Kyle managed to capture much of the fun on camera. Dot's the only female, Cheeky is the big guy, Hening is the one with short hair and a goatee, and Kyle is in blue.
Finally it was time to say good bye, and I got a cab for Kyle and I and off we went...
... until we got back to the hotel and as we got out of the cab I noticed I didn't have my coat... so back to the club we went. I asked Kyle to come along with me, which was a poor choice as he was quite drunk and this made him ill. I owe ya one, Kyle. Anyway, back at the bar I walked in and after they sternly told me they were closed. I just grabbed my coat and they smiled and I ran back to the cab.
Back at the hotel we crashed - me on my bed and Kyle on the bathroom floor.
Finally another concert day! I got up around 12:30 and Kyle had found his way back to bed. I let him sleep while I showered. Kyle eventually got up, and after being sick one more time and taking a shower was in pretty good shape. Annoyingly, we'd left Kyle's adapter in Stuttgart and I had forgotten to bring one along so we decided we'd look for one at HB. But we were hungry so first we got lunch at a sandwich shop, plus a cookie at Starbucks. Forgetting all about the adapter we headed out to walk around the pedestrian mall in near the station to kill some time before we headed to the venue. We stumbled into the Euro Monument.
We headed to the venue which was really insane. It was a big oval with this sorta cut-outs at the ends. We couldn't find backstage - every door around the floor led outside! We ran into Jeff near the Guitar Hero stand and he didn't need us that night, but showed us the well hidden entrance (a staircase in the floor) to backstage and we dropped off our stuff. We were there early enough to work, but since Jeff didn't need us we had a snack, played some Guitar Hero and then realized we still had a lot of time, so we headed out to go check out brothel tower that the sightseeing book had said was a must-see.
At this point I remembered about the adapter and so we searched around HB for one, and finally found one in a cell phone store. For 7 euros it let you plug in 3 US plugs to a Euro plug - amazing! The entire time Kyle had to take a leak, and when we finally stopped by a restroom, the phrase "I'm going to make that porcelain cry" was born. It would be used many, many more times.
We were a big fan of the name of this store...
We headed off to find these towers of sin. How, I was wondering, could these be much different than the red light district of Amsterdam? But it turned out to be quite the unique experience.
For those of you who have been in a dorm, imagine your dorm building. Small rooms, open into a hallway, right?. Now imagine if all the doors in your dorm were open and in each doorway stood a woman in her underwear. Now imagine its 30 euro for half an hour of whatever you want. That's what the brothel towers were. 4 or 5 stories, about 10 rooms poor floor. You just walk your way through them. You can stop and talk to the girls if you think you might be interested. Neither of us were clients, needless to say, but what was, I think, particularly unique about these places (we went through 2 or 3) was that they don't get angry when you don't "pick" them. There's no pressure. It's almost as if they enjoy the "tourism" folks.
Then we headed back to the venue. You can see my review of the show at IPOM.
After the show we went to get food at HB. McDonald's was packed to the brim with people - it was impossible to tell what line you were in, or if you were moving. After about 10 minutes we bailed and went to Burger King which had a very long - but single - line. We waited about 40 minutes and finally got food, and then ate while we waited for the last train of the night.
It was our day for sightseeing. We got up and went to the McDonald's next to the hotel to eat our breakfast and plan our day... but they didn't serve fucking breakfast. We walked through the breakfast area at the hotel, but it was pathetic, so we decided we'd try to make it to the McDonald's at HB before breakfast hours were over.
We got ready and headed to the McDonald's at HB, but they were no longer serving breakfast. We ate breakfast (I think we ate McDonald's anyway) and headed out. It was, unfortunately raining. Our first stop was Römer - a famous medieval building. It's famous eastern facade makes it look like it's fake - just a 2d facade standing up. It is an actual building, but it doesn't look real.
Next to the Römer was a souvenir shop and Kyle and I both realized we'd forgotten to buy our respective souvenirs from Stuttgart! I get a shot glass from every city I visit and he gets a magnet, and somehow we both forgot in Stuttgart! We checked for ones here, but as you might expect, there were no Stuttgart items in Frankfurt.
We went to a nearby history museum, but didn't feel like paying 10 euros to see models of the city. We wondered onto Saalgasse, literally "Hall Lane." The book says, "this lane of postmodern buildings echoes higgledy-piggledy buildings that stood here until World War II. In the 1990s, famous architects from around the world were each given a ruined house of the same width and told to design a new building to reflect the building that stood there before the war." One of the buildings on his street was designed to be upside down. See the first two pictures below of it, followed by another cool apartment building.
We then wondered past some old ruins of an old roman bathhouse foundation.
Then up to St. Bartholomeus's Cathedral where we saw am amazing organ and two frames with skulls on the bottom.
We also went into a small church that I think was called St. Nicholas'.
Then we wondered across the street and to St. Paul's Church which, since the end of the war is no longer used as a church. Instead it's a center for various displays and events. However, the large room above the main hall was for a long while used as the meeting place for the Frankfurt Parliament. I'm not entirely sure were the last picture in this set comes from - it was somewhere between St. Paul's and Main Tower.
At this point we were wondering how to get to the Main Tower, and Kyle jumped on a random bus that stopped by us. "It's clearly going in the right direction, it has to get us closer," he said. Of course, 3 stops later we realized it was going in precisely the opposite direction we wanted to go in. So off the bus, across the street, and onto the same bus in the other direction...
We found our way to Main Tower, which is basically a very tall building with offices and a you can pay to go to the top and look out over the city. Prior to going up, you had to, as usual, go through security. And, again, as you'd you'd expect, they had a device which appeared much like a metal detector. Now, anyone who's been through an airport with me knows that I have all my metal off and in my bag long before I get to the metal detectors. I fly a lot and I know what's made of metal and what isn't. So, as usual, I took all my metal off. But no, this wasn't a metal detector. It was an... object detector. It detected my chapstick. And then my certs mints. And then the small stones I carry with me. And then a random part of my coat that clearly had no metal in it whatsoever. What the fuck?
Possibly my favorite part of this building is that the elevator had a speedometer in it! You know why? Because that elevator travels at 18km/h! Now that's an elevator!
As you can see the weather was once again shit.
Anyone who has spent extensive time around me will know that if I'm heavily involved in talking, I'm often oblivious to everything else - particularly to my surroundings. So as we were leaving, and I was quite thoroughly explaining or describing something or another to Kyle, all of a sudden the thought, "Why did I bump into Kyle, why is there something on my ass" interrupts my speaking.
As it turns out, there was a turnstile. Ya know, those little bars you walk through one at a time. This was a bit bigger than a usual one, just big enough that if you weren't paying attention you could walk into the same section as someone else and not notice until you ended up squished into them a second later. As we both shot out of the turnstile and into the street, Kyle inquired as to why I was trying to rape him. Well, he has such a nice ass and all...
Our next destination was the opera house, which was a short walk away. When we got there, it appeared to be mostly quiet. We spotted a hot chick which Kyle went to go ask if tours were available. When he got back I thought he might faint. Apparently this girl's teeth were actually sideways. Wow. And no tours were currently available.
We walked around trying to find a cafe and in a strip mall, there's a small back area with a tiny hidden cafe. We both got "iced coffee" which turned out to be basically a root beer float with some coffee in it. Kyle, as he always is, was a bit hungry, but we've had so much crap food lately that he ordered a ceasar salad... which turns out to be completely massive. So much for a snack.
We look through the book to find something else to see, and there's not too much left. The Eiserner Steg pedestrian bridge was the only thing we could find. It was, apparently, close to where we started the day, so we jumped on the metro back to the stop next to St. Bartholemeu's and walked to the bridge.
The bridge turned out to be entirely underwhelming, but from it we saw a cool looking church not for off, so we walked over there.
The church turned out to be fairly underwhelming as well.
At this point, lacking anything useful to do, we started to head home. But on our way to the main station, Kyle suggested seeing a movie, so at HB, I headed off to make some porcelain cry while Kyle found out about the big English-language movie theater. We head over there hoping to see Angels and Daemons... but that's only on Wednesdays. Lame.
At this point I had a craving for Subway for dinner, and the only movies we wanted to see weren't for a while. So we did some work to map out the various Subways around town, and related that to various plans we might have made for the rest of the evening. Of course, us sitting in a subway, with a map and a list of all Subways in Frankfurt showed our epic loserness to the world. We decided to find a cafe and chill for an hour and a half until X-Men Origins: Wolverine started and then get Subway after that.
As it turns out there was what looked like a tower and piece of a wall that could have been from an old wall through the city (although we don't believe it was, research shows it used to be a fortified tower)), which housed the Tower Cafe, right next to the Subway. So we went in there and Kyle started looking at deserts - but upon me saying I didn't want any, he ordered a brownie and icecream "with two forks" and claimed I would indeed want some once I saw it. However, when it came out, it was so small he quickly proclaimed I was not allowed to have any.
The bathrooms were at the very top of the tower, which was at the very top of a winding staircase, making this one hell of a cool cafe!
We went to the theater, got our tickets, and ended up sitting in the cute love seats (it was the good seats). 10 minute after the movie was supposed to start, there was still no previews showing, so I did what one has to do to make the movie start: I went to sleep on Kyle's shoulder. 10 seconds later, previews started.
The movie kicked ass, but since I'd had to pee since 10 minutes into the movie, I raced to go destroy the soul of some porcelain (the expression needed to be upgraded for this one). Conveniently there was a bathroom in the actual theater, so I didn't have to go far.
After Kyle and I both got out of the bathroom we made an observation - bathrooms in Germany all smell like fermented ass-juice. But why? After some thought we realized that Germany doesn't seem to have discovered the urinal cake yet. But just to make things interesting - they seem to have urinal cake holders in the urinals... they're just not quite sure what goes in them yet. Poor Germany.
We then wondered back to Subway for an odd experience. As the guy was making my sandwich, when I asked for onions, he asked what else. And I said "onions", but he refused to put the onions on until he knew what vegetables might be accompanying those onions. As if the onions might get lonely. Then, when we got to the lettuce (I have like extra-extra lettuce on my sandwiches), he gets very annoyed. Finally, when I asked for the "sweet onion sauce" which is apparently not available at this particular location, he finally gave up and moved on to the next customer. I had to ask the cashier to finish my sandwich.
To make up for this atrocious service I'm completely overjoyed to find that they have Mountain Dew. Now Dew is already a yellow soda, but they have it in a green-highlighter-colored bottle, which makes look like it's practically glowing. And while it tastes mostly like dew, it has the vague aroma like they put it in a German bathroom for a few days to absorb some trace amounts of the lovely odor. But I don't spend much time sniffing my soda, so this doesn't bother me as much as it does Kyle and I finish mine and half of his.
On the metro ride home Kyle asks why I sometimes run into shit - such as his ass in the turnstile or walls. My explanation, which will only make sense to a fellow computer geek, was "You don't understand, my mouth is a high priority thread and requires an inordinate amount of resources." Which turned out to be infinitely more funny than I'd expected. I include this for the geeks among you.
When we arrived at the hotel we stopped into the McDonald's next door to inquire about breakfast times. A cardboard placard on each table mentioned these hours which Kyle starts to memorize, but I just took it and walked out the door so that my nat-like memory would not be required to exert it self. This, of course, left many German McDonald's patrons confused as to what's so valuable about this piece of cardboard to be worth stealing.
Outside Kyle looked at me inquisitively, and I responded, "Remember, fly like a nat" not realizing my slip. Kyle repeated, "*Fly* like a nat??" Instantly understanding I laughed so hard that I fell down in the middle of the drive-thru exit, and continued laughing so hard that it took several seconds to get up.
Up early and to McDonald's to catch breakfast (mmmm), and then back to the hotel to get ready and check out. This being the most expensive hotel of the trip, it stuck out when the bill was an extra 90 euros above what I'd expected. This was the breakfast charge which I had them take off since we did not eat their breakfast. 90 euros for 3 mornings of a continental breakfast that was so bad we didn't even want to eat? Yeah, right.
At HB I got the train info while Kyle picked up some of the awesome Starbucks cookie goodness. The ICE train was pretty nice. But you know those farts that are so horrible you feel you might turn green and die when you smell one? The kind most people only manage once or twice in a lifetime? The kinda that's so bad you can't believe it's real? Someone near us was pumping one of these out every 15 minutes.
Seven long and smelly hours later we got off and found our way to my co-worker's house which he was generously lending to us. We got there around 8:30, and after settling in and then figuring out where we wanted to go, we didn't leave for dinner until around 9:30pm.
One thing that's hard to miss when you're in Austria is the strikingly beautiful women. Wow.
We headed to the "hip" restaurant area, but at 10, when we got there, the restaurant the book recommended was closed (as were most restaurants), but we found a place next door that was open. Crystal, Kyle's wife, had said the beef goulash in Austria was amazing, so Kyle ordered that and I got some cordon bleu.
We then headed to the "bar and club" part of town but neither of us really wanted to drink, so we got some gelato which was definitively the worst gelato of the trip. We wondered around a bit more before heading home... but we got to the metro stop near Maw's house too late and missed the last bus, so we took a 4.80 euro cab ride home (so much cheaper than Zurich).
We were up at 9:30 for a day of sightseeing and out quickly. Unfortunately, we were standing at the bus stop, not paying attention and followed each other into the wrong bus (I got on because he did and he got on because I did...). Damn.
Finally we got to the metro station and picked up some breakfast, and then took the "fast train" to the Opera House where the book's tour of the city started. I say "fast train" in quotes because it's actually the "original" (and slowest) train. It's only called the fast train because it's direct from where we were to the Opera House. Cute.
Sadly the Opera House was closed, but we took some pictures of the outside, but the book had mentioned the special "opera house" bathrooms in the metro station, so we went down to check these out. It cost only a Euro, but it was... not worth it. Some wallpaper over the urinals made it seem like you were standing at a bar. A piece of wood over the urinal was there to complete the illusion. They also had some classical music playing. A bit disappointing... but at least it was only a euro.
The next stop was the famous Cafe Sacher, home of the famous Sacher Tort, a "fine desert" that the Queen was apparently quite fond of. Sadly, the tort wasn't that great, but the Vienna coffee was fantastic.
We proceeded to the Monument Against War and Fascism passing the Albertina Museum which has a "canopy" which is basically a massive diving board protruding from the front of it. Sadly, mostly of the monument was covered up (we would later learned this was because someone had painted swastikas all over it).
The Imperial Crypt, or Kausergruft, was our next destination. Many of the coffins were adorned with skulls and other cool things. Interestingly, many of them had fresh flowers, even ones that had been dead for over a hundred years.
We were on a walking tour of Vienna, and as we walked through the city following the directions in the book, one of the directional markers was to follow the direction the naked breast of the statue of Providence in this fountain was pointing.
After following the boob, we found ourselves on Kaerntnerstrasse, a famous shopping street. It was a bit odd to see a MySwitzerland.com building...
Near the end of this street is the Haas House - a massive mirrored building. It was built opposite the magnificent St. Stephan's cathedral, and was hated by locals for a long time.
The Haas House is impressive, modern, and unique, but it doesn't hold a candle to St. Stephan's Cathedral. This massive Gothic cathedral is hard just awe-inspiring.
We spent some time walking around inside St. Stephan's cathedral; it was amazing. We took some pictures, and admired the architecture and the art, and then we saw that there was a catacomb tour soon, so we waited in the designated area for that.
In the catacombs, you walk through and see lots of bones and skulls, and holes in the ground where bodies were dropped during the plague. However, near the end they explain that all the vast chambers they'd built below the cathedral were not big enough to hold all the bodies of plague victims, so they took prisoners and made them go down, take out the bodies, clean the bones and stack them neatly. This room had been mostly blocked off except for a small window in a wall with bars which you could look in. It was a few stories of neatly stacked bones. This was definitely my favorite part of Vienna - maybe the whole trip!
There were no photos allowed in the catacombs, but I was so amazed by this one room that Kyle motioned for me to stay behind and he'd follow the rest of the tour and give me a chance to sneak a photo! Thanks Kyle!
One of my favorite pictures in the world! We then wondered down to Der Graben, a very famous street at the center of Vienna, to see the Pestsäule, a monument to those who died in the plague.
I don't know what it is about famous bathrooms and Vienna, but there was another famous bathroom near the monument that had mahogany toilets and supposedly also had chandeliers. So we spent the Euro to try these; they lacked the chandeliers, but the urinals were indeed made out of mahogany.
At this point, I left for the concert since I was working that night, and Kyle went off to do more sightseeing. See review of the show at IPOM.
After the show I met up with Kyle who told me about how he had joined an anti-Nazi protest. Unfortunately we went one too many stops on the U6 and there were no more metros or buses, so we took a cab the rest of the way home. He told me about his day at the protest while we ate chocolate back at Micheal's house.
We got up around 9:30 for packing and to try to put the place back as close to how we found it as possible. We left our stuff there since we would have time to pick it up before our night train, and headed out.
After scoring donuts at the bakery at the Philadelphiabruk we headed to the Schoenbrunn Palace. This place is über ginormous!
This place is supposed to compare to Versailles in size. We took a tour, which was pretty cool. No photos were allowed, but some of the art, and some of the rooms were quite exquisite. After that we checked out the gardens, which were really amazing.
One of the things in the garden was a large maze (the gardens were free, but the maze had a fee). I've never been in a full-sized maze before, so of course, we went. It was actually a reasonably challenging maze. Annoyingly, however, the group in front of us had some friends who were in the tower at the end of the maze who were telling them where to go!! GAH! Way to spoil it. So I wondered off in a different direction from them for a while and found my own way
There was a second "maze," but it turned out to be just concentric circles with games. Lame. We decided to try to get lunch at the place that was close the first night, so off we went. The beef goulash was amazing, though our waitress seemed incredibly annoyed at us, for some reason I don't quite understand.
We then headed back towards St. Stephan's but headed down various streets for fun along the way. As we walked, I saw a store with a notebook in the window that had a goth chick with a vampire bite and a skull that was really cool looking. We went in, but it was simply an empty notebook and almost everything else they had was Hello Kitty. Other than some micro-mini Mozart matches I bought, they didn't have anything cool. The next thing we bumped into was a toy store. They had all kinds of amazing things, and I picked up two miniature smurf figurines.
At some point in this wandering, we ran into the Judenplatz Holocaust Memorial - a memorial to the 65,000 Austrian Jews who died in WWII. It's a bit hard to tell, but it's an inside-out library.
We also ran into a few other interesting things while wandering around.
Since the last time we went to St. Stephan's we didn't have time to actually sit and absorb the church, so we went back for a brief visit.
From here we'd done all the things we wanted to so we wandered down the big commercial street looking for souvenirs, but everything was too expensive here. We wandered into a small church, saw some cool street performers, etc.
We finally picked up our respective shot glass and magnet and then went to Starbucks for a recharge. We found ourselves at the Opera House again, and found out that we'd missed the last tour - but the Wiener Festival was in town!
Yes... we're 12.
We decided to jump on the tram that looped around the city that the book had mentioned. After 2 stops we passed a TGIF Fridays and I proclaimed we must go there for dinner! While line 1 and 2 were supposed to be the same path around the city in two different directions, it seems that line 2 had changed and we ended up over the river somewhere in some random part of town. We decided this was an interesting new place and we'd explore - and so we did. Eventually we ran into large mall which was kinda cool - we got to see more of "local" Vienna.
... Like the place named to remind you to give your wiener back...
Or the toilet with the odd 4-digit phone number (with a 5-digit area code!), on the toilet roll holder - should you want to (fail) to call them.
After bumming around we left to find our way back to town. While waiting for the tram, we noticed that the tram was going to be here in 2, no 13, no 2, no 13, no 2, no 13 minutes... click here for a short video of the sign which couldn't make up it's mind - look at the 2nd line (the far left is the tram number and the right right is the minutes until it arrives).
We got to Fridays where I had an amazing rare burger with onion rings, a Caribbean iced tea, and oreo madness and a mudslide for dessert. I was in pure heaven. It was lots of my US favorites and I was thrilled to death.
Near TGIF was the best-named street in all of Vienna!
Dumb street!! I told you, we're 12.
We made our way back to the house, got our stuff and headed to the train station. But there was someone else in our bunk - and they also had tickets to that bunk! After a few minutes we realized... we had tickets for the next day! Oops. We got off, discussed it for a minute, and then I asked if there was anyway to get on the train anyway (we'd already locked Micheal's keys in his house at his request and rushed all the sites we wanted to see in), and was told our tickets would get us on the train, but that there was no guarantee they'd find a bed for us - we might have to sit in chairs. We decided to go for it. We asked about beds and they found a 2-bed room for us - a distinct upgrade from the 6-bed room we had booked! We were thrilled.
I plugged in my laptop to jot some notes down, but the outlet would turn off every 30 seconds, so I had to type while unplugging and replugging my laptop in every 30 seconds.
There was an emergency hammer labeled as... not a hammer!
In case of emergency use the nothammer!
Around 1 in the morning they came and knocked on our door. I was unwilling to let someone come and wake us up at 1am (even though I was actually reading a book) and didn't answer the door, but after several minutes, I finally got up.
The gentleman who'd taken our tickets and passports for verification (on sleeper trains they take them at the beginning and then distribute them back at wake-up-call time) had come back to tell us we had not paid for a 2-bed room. I explained that we know this, we'd just asked for any available bed, and had showed the girl our ticket. He said they thought we had this kind of room, and that we either had to move or pay an extra 150 euros! I said that was their fault, not ours, and he insisted. At this point I asked to speak to a manager, and Kyle was fumingly mad next to me.
After arguing with the manager, I said it was ridiculous for us to wake up 4 other guys just to move out of a room they weren't going to use, but he said there was a completely unused 6-bed room we could have. At this point I was out of arguments, and well aware that on a Swiss train you're not going to get around the rules and regulations, so we packed up and moved.
As it turns out there's more differences between these rooms than just the number of beds. The "couchette" (6-bed room) doesn't have... beds, as such. They have convex hard corduroy covered services on which one might lay. How anyone can sleep on a fucking convex surface is beyond me. So while I was about to go to sleep when all of this happened, I read most of the way back to Zurich - despite trying several times to go to sleep. The 2-bed rooms, on the other hand had actual mattresses. Little. Fuckers.
Back in Zurich we both headed home, and while I'd planned to stay up, it was 7am, and I was exhausted, so to sleep I went.
Despite some annoying setbacks, it was one hell of a fun week! I'd like to say thanks to Kyle for coming and sharing it with me, to Jeff and the Metallica crew for their awesomeness, the fans for putting up with my mediocre filming on MetOnTour, to Eva for being awesome enough to ask for our numbers, and to Dot, Cheeky, and Henning for an amazing night of partying.