Holiday Windup

A belated tidy up of the last month's activities.

From Slovenia we caught a train to Munchen (Munich) to partake in that amazing festival that is Oktoberfest - though of course these days it is mostly in September. This started out as a boozy party to celebrate the nuptials of the future king in 1810, but everyone had such a good time that they decided to keep on doing it.

To communicate the scale of the event is difficult, there is seating for 100,000 people in and around the 14 aircraft-hanger like beer tents, and there are also a large number of amusement park rides, roller-coasters etc that are arrayed over the half square kilometer site. Beer is served in 1 liter steins by women who look like they do this as a break from their usual jobs as blacksmiths, lumberjacks and bouncers. Half the patrons dress in the traditional lederhosen and dirndl (embroidered white cotton dresses) though obviously not both at the same time. There are bands, accordions, singing, drinking and eating, dancing on tables and of course numerous trips to the pissoir. It has a friendly atmosphere, no fights that we saw and a jolly good time is had by young (16 years is legal drinking age) and old over the almost three weeks that it is on for.

Day 1 we headed to the Hofbräu-Festzelt tent that is most popular with English speaking visitors and got roundly sloshed and in traditional fashion I had my undies ripped off while I was still wearing them, ouchie. Day 2 we took it a bit easier and decided to try some rides. Jane suddenly remembered after getting on the eurostar roller-coaster, that she didn't like heights. The slow ride to the top was completed to a repeated litany of "Oh fuck" from her, and then once we were released and accelerated to full speed there was a sound like an air-raid siren going off in my left ear, starting at a low pitch and rising to almost ultrasonic, with only brief pauses for sucking in a breath. She assures me she had her eyes closed the whole time. Both she and you can check it out the ride on youtube at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43-tkPeEhPk

We also toured some of the sights of Munchen, like the massive Hofbräuhaus beer hall which probably seats over a thousand people and the intriguing surfing spot in the middle of the city where people surf on a standing wave in the river. However for me the highlight had to be the Deutsches museum.

As a rule travel and tourism are pitched almost entirely at women, 99% of all shops in tourist areas are aimed at women, selling clothing, jewellery, useless household bric-a-brak and artsy crap that has zero appeal to anyone who can stand up when urinating. So it was a major delight to me to finally be able to do something that was of interest to a guy. The Deutsches museum is a technology museum with all the collected history of the great engineering nation of Germany (and yes they do mention the War). I wandered around for three hours while Jane moped in a cafe and saw many delights, probably the greatest of which were the first Diesel engine and the first Spark ignition engine - strangely anonymous amongst all the other exhibits, you wouldn't even know until you read the small placards, but if they were ever sold they would probably fetch tens of millions of dollars each.

All in all Munchen really was one of the highlights of our trip.

From Munchen we headed to Austria and Salzburg (literally "salt castle" as it has salt mines that have been worked for thousands of years). This was a mistake, as we hadn't realised that this was the scene of one of the most heinous post-war crimes ever perpetrated in Europe; "The Sound of Music". Now hating musicals as I do I am one of those who believes that a "problem like Maria" could have been best solved with a 12 gauge shotgun, both barrels, and perhaps followed up with a small nuke just to be on the safe side. However in Salzburg the streets are indeed alive with it, the hostels play the movie several times a day, there are Sound of Music tours, memorabilia and a depressing number of matronly american fans wandering around and chastising Jane for her use of profanity (frankly amazes us that there are still people who get upset by such things, there are definitely more important issues in the world, particularly if you are American). Salzburg is also the birthplace of Mozart, and there are several museums and daily concerts celebrating this. Ironic that Mozart hated the place and couldn't wait to get out.

We arrived in the weekend to discover that Austria is a land that time forgot, everything is closed - very olde worlde. It was a challenge even to find somewhere to eat on a Sunday (we had no choice as tourists), but after getting through the weekend we hired a car (also not open in weekend) and headed out to look at the Alps. They are of course lovely, and we had a nice day learning how to drive on the wrong side of the road, before heading to our chosen overnight spot, the very picturesque lakeside village of Hallstatt. Not having a map it took an hour to locate the accommodation and having done so we looked for a park. Austria does not like cars and the nearest park we could find was a kilometer away. Feeling rather sick this was more than I could handle so we said screw it and began to look for somewhere else more convenient to stay. Huge mistake as by now it was coming onto evening and of course unbeknownst to us hotel receptions in Austria close at about 6pm (we believe that the concept of "customer service" may not actually be directly translatable into Austrian German). As a result we drove around for two and a half hours until 8:30pm, getting pretty concerned before finally driving back to Hallstatt and the original hostel that was luckily also a bar/restaurant and therefore still open. We also found a park right outside. I felt pretty stupid.

Back to Salzburg and a quick tour of the Hellbrunn Castle which was a hunting day-residence for a jokester king about 300 years ago. He had a large number of hidden water jets and other intricate and clever water features and mobiles installed so he could drench his subjects/guests as they wandered around the place. You can just imagine what a complete dick he must have been. Pretty good place to finish the holiday. We flew out of Salzburg to London.

What a contrast. London is one of the most expensive cities on the planet. It cost more for a train ticket for the 30 minute ride into London from Stansted airport than it did for the three day tour of the Meekong Delta that we did or the two hour flight from Austria. Accommodation is also extremely expensive, but thankfully we have had help from our friends who we have let us crash with them (big thanks Helen, Richie, Mel and Ros). Now it is back to the grind, Jane is job hunting and after a quick course of antibiotics I am over the Giardia (having lost another 10kg on top of the 10kg I lost in Nepal I now weigh less than I did when I was 20years old). I am headed back to NZ to sort out my visa and have a bit more sunny weather so that I can look for work when I return to the UK in the New Year. Jane is staying on to learn the ropes in London. What we have seen of England so far we like, it is nice to be in a country where we speak the language and are familiar with much of the culture and can get the variety of food that we are used to in New Zealand. We are looking forward to settling in and having a good look around the old country and Europe over the next few years.

Thanks to all those we have spent time with on the trip, it has been a blast.

Robert and Jane