Day 6: Salzburg - Festung Hohensalzburg, St. Peter, Residenz

We visited Festung Hohensalzburg, one of the most popular attractions in Salzburg. It is the castle atop of the city in the picture.

We took the funicular to the castle. Once we reached the castle, we were all awed by the breathtaking view of the city below. There was a moderate wait (~25 minutes) for the audio-guided tour, but it was well worth it. During the tour, we got to one of the watch towers, which is also the highest point of the castle. The view from this vantage point was even better. After the guided tour, we had lunch at the outdoor cafe at the castle. The dishes were reasonably priced, and there was no extra premium for the magnificent view.


We returned to the city after lunch. The funicular dropped us off at the front entrance to Petersfriedhof, where a few luminaries, including Mozart's sister "Nannerl" was buried. Glenda found the catacombs, carved in the rock face, most interesting.

We took advantage of the gorgeous weather today, and toured around the old town. We did go indoors briefly to see the Residenz.

Here is a picture of the old city from across the Salzach river. The rest of today's pictures are here.

Day 5: Salzburg - Mozart Geburtshaus and Wohnhaus

We had our Deutsche Bahn nuisance during the journey from Munich to Salzburg today. A full-price fast(er) train ticket would cost about 50€ for our family, but a Länderticket (the same kind that we have been using to travel on one-day journeys within our state) for the slower regional trains was only 28€ and the local transit from our hotel to the train station in Munich was included. The difference for a 30€ or so saving is about half of an hour in travel time (2 hours instead of 1.5 hour).

We got to the main train station ahead of the scheduled departure time. The display at the track indicated that the train would leave on time. But there was no train at the scheduled departure time, and the display showed that the train had already left from another station! We ended up waiting for an extra hour for the next scheduled train (which did leave Munich on time).

Our hotel in Salzburg is a 5-minute walk from the train station. After we checked in, the weather turned for the worse and was raining heavily. By about 16:00, the rain subsided and we went to Mozart Geburtshaus (Mozart's birth house) in the old town. Perhaps our expectation was too high, but it was a disappointment. The exhibits were much inferior to other "houses" we have been to. There was not much of a story being presented for the visitors to better understand Mozart's life.

But we got better luck at Mozart Wohnhaus, the house where Mozart, his parents and sister resided. The exhibits gave a more detailed view of Mozart's life and his travel. There was also a special Haydn exhibit to commemorate the 200th anniversary of his death.


BTW the house where Christian Doppler (of Doppler effect fame) lived is less than 100m away.

Day 4: München - Neue Pinakothek, Königsplatz, Karlsplatz

We spent time in the museum quarter today, and our destination was Neue Pinakothek, which has an excellent collection of 18th and 19th century classics.

We gave Jocelyn the digital camera, and she snapped quite a number of her favorites. What impressed me most was the audio guide. The amount of details were just about right for a typical museum tour.

We emerged from the museum in mid-afternoon, and walked around the Königsplatz area. This was the area where the Nazi held mass rallies. To aid visitors in learning more about the historical significance of this area, maps were erected to identify buildings that were once used by the regime.


But the storm clouds were rolling in, and we found refuge at a Viennese cafe after taking a short subway ride to the old town center. By the time the sky turned blue again, we had traversed to Karlsplatz and admired the splendor of Michaelskirche (St. Michael). Here is a picture of the kids in front of the fountain at Karlsplatz.

Day 3: München - BMW Welt and Museum, Olympic Park, Asamkirche

Our trips to the Mercedes-Benz Museum and Porsche Museum in Stuttgart were eye-opening, and we expected no less from the BMW Museum when we got off the Olympia-Einkaufzentrum subway this morning. Across from the station is the imposing BMW Welt (BMW World, shown here) building, which is the manufacturer's giant showroom and car delivery center.

We spent over an hour in this showroom, not because we were contemplating to buy a 90,000€-plus-change M3 (BTW, 19% value added tax included) or to argue with the associates there why the BMW hydrogen powered car (aptly named Hydrogen 7) is not going to be the answer to the energy and environmental problems due to basic thermodynamic principles. A nasty thunderstorm was in full force outside, and there was no covered walkway between this building and BMW Museum across the street.

The only predictable part about the weather in the past week has been the transience of thunderstorms; they came and went usually in an hour. As soon as the storm subsided, we walked to the museum (the bowl-shaped building). We began our tour at the basement, where a collection of antique BMWs are on display, and we worked our way up, with a stop at the cafe for lunch, to the top floor where concept cars are exhibited. The kids were snapping a lot of pictures in the museum and a couple are shown here. The rest can be found here.


By the time we left the museum, the sky was clear and we enjoyed a leisurely saunter in the nearby Olympiapark, the hub of the 1972 summer Olympics.

One of Glenda's friends suggested that Asamkirche is a gem and is a must-see. An easy subway ride took us directly from the Olympiapark to this church. Unfortunately, the church is under renovation until fall, and we could only peep through the glass on the front door to admire the grandeur inside.

Day 2: München - Deutsches Museum and Altstadt

The kids saw pictures of Deutsches Museum in our guidebook, and told us that they really wanted to go there today. They loved this science and technology museum so much that we practically stayed there from late morning to the museum's closing time at 17:00.

After visiting the navigation and aviation sections on the ground floor, the kids spent some time at the Kinderreich (Kids' Kingdom) on the basement floor where displays on sound and art are plenty. Here is Jocelyn playing on a piano in the Kinderreich.

The museum has changed quite a bit since my last visit in 2002. A lot of the displays have received new facelifts. Here are two prime examples. In the physics section, we saw the 50-cm diameter photomultiplier tube (a sensitive light sensor that shapes like a giant light bulb) that is being used at the Super-Kamiokande experiment in Japan. Then we saw a section of the Large Hadron Collider ring. Gabriel took a picture with this real model and I explained to him how two proton beams circulate in the real 27-km ring across the Swiss and French border. Of course, he said he already knew all these from reading the PhD comics last week.



We went all the way to the top floor. The view of Munich's old town (Altstadt) is magnificent.


So magnificent that we decided to go there after the museum visit. Since we did not get much time to look around the old town yesterday, we strolled around Marienplatz for an hour before the kids yearning for food.

Other pictures from today can be found here.

(Free) internet availability in Deutschland

It is not easy to get free or low-cost internet connection while traveling in Germany. Most hotels in North America provide free in-room internet, while their German counterpart do not. Hotels in Germany may have WiFi available, but the cost could be very high. The American style hotel where we are staying in Munich, Holiday Inn, charges 7€ for 60 minutes of connection time. This "low-cost" option allows web browsing only (for the geeks: port 80 and 443 access only). To get more secured access would cost substantially more €.

In the SF Bay area, one just has to walk into a cafe and there is a good chance that free wireless internet would be provided. In Germany, most cafes do not provide such freebies. Instead one has to go to McDonald's or the McCafe (which is usually on the same premise). Their coffee is not bad at all, and beat Starbucks in both price and quality. In order to get one hour of free internet access at McDonald's, a local mobile phone that can accept SMS messages is required, however. One types in the mobile phone number on the T-Mobile connection page, and a password to allow access to the WiFi network in the restaurant will be sent in a SMS message. Typing this password on the connection page will give one-hour of free access.

Day 1: München (Munich)

Most German schools do not finish their school year until the end of this month. But our kids' school did not have as many holiday during the year, and their school year officially ended yesterday.

We began our weeklong trip to Munich and Salzburg today. The TGV train that took us from Karlsruhe to Stuttgart, where we would transfer to Munich, was late and we had to take the connection about an hour later. When we got to the Munich main train station, storm clouds were rolling in. By the time we got to the U-bahn (subway) station near the hotel, the thunderstorm was in full force. We had rain gear, but we waited in the subway station (Münchener Freiheit) until the lightning had subsided about an hour later.

The sky began to clear up after we checked into the hotel. After a brief rest, we decided to get some Bavarian food at Hofbräuhaus in the town center. It is a tourist trap, and I would say over 80% of the customers are tourists (with the remaining 20% being locals accompanying their visiting friends). But Glenda and the kids have never been to a beer hall of this size and I like their Schweinsbraten (roast pork) in my previous trips, so we had dinner there. Here you see our happy family (those drinks are, from left to right, 0.5L of water, 0.5L of Orangenschorle, 1L of wheat beer, and 0.5L of water).

California made news in Germany

The main discussion in the coffee room today was the dire budget and the circus-like government in California. Yes, the news made it to Germany. People here are genuinely surprised that the Governator has ordered state workers to take 3 days of unpaid furlough every month. The University of California system may enforce a 8% pay cut across the board. Depending on the final decision, I may see the cut as soon as I return from the sabbatical (although my salary is paid for by federal grants, and not state fund).

But we are going to enjoy our last month in Germany. Tomorrow we will head to München (Munich) and Salzburg for a week.

A birthday party with a "Star Wars" theme

One of Gabriel's best friends Milo had his birthday party today. The theme was Star Wars.

Here is a picture of the kids with two Clone Troopers.

What is Gabriel reading these days?

It was then (when he probably thought "Teach Yourself C++ in 10 Minutes" was synonymous with learning the alphabets):


and this was two days ago when he was reading the Piled Higher and Deeper (PhD) comic on CERN's Large Hadron Collider in a recent issue of Symmetry, a particle physics magazine published jointly by Fermilab and SLAC (two particle accelerator labs in the US):


Here is the link to the comic, which tries to explain the physics of the LHC. BTW he has started reading The Economist, and tried to explain the current economic crisis to his pals recently.

Sommerfest

The kids' school had two summer festivals in the past week. All the classes, except for the kindergarten, held theirs on Sunday; the kindergarten classes had theirs this afternoon. Both festivals featured performances by the kids (and games, food and drinks).

On Sunday, the kids had fun playing a human version of foosball. Gabriel also performed a couple German songs with his class.



Late in the afternoon today, Jocelyn's kindergarten class joined forces with the German and French kindergarten classes in a multilingual performance of the Rainbow Fish. The narration was in German, and the kids' dialogues were in their native tongue. Here is a typical exchange:

Blue Fish (English): Can I play with you?
Rainbow Fish (German): Nein, Sie sprechen nicht Deutsch. (No, you don't speak German)
Red Fish (French): Puis-je jouer avec vous?
Rainbow Fish (German): Nein, Sie sprechen nicht Deutsch.

Here is the link to the song and the dance by the English kindergarten class.

Zürich

On my return journey to Karlsruhe, I took a detour to Zürich, which is a 20-minute train journey from Brugg.

Since I had only a few hours to spare, I didn't get to see this city as much as I would like. After I left my belongings in a locker at the main train station, I followed the walking tour suggested in the map that I picked up at the tourist center. The route took me first to the sites on the right bank of Limmat, including the Großmünster (the view of the top of one of its twin towers is impressive), the building where Lenin once lived and Cabaret Voltaire (where Dadaism was born) at the nearby street, and the Opernhaus (opera house).


After a coffee and a small croissant at a local cafe ("wow" for the taste and "ouch" for the price - about US$7), I crossed the Limmat and enjoyed the tranquility by the pier at Zürichsee (Lake Zürich) before the arrival of a large tourist group. On the left bank, I particularly enjoyed Marc Chagall's stained glass windows at Fraumünster. They reminded me of the ones we saw at St. Stephan zu Mainz last year.

Before I headed back to the train station, I stopped by Paradeplatz, where pigs were once traded and is now the center of private banking in Switzerland. Not that I have any asset that is worth hiding from the US tax authority, but I wanted to get some good Swiss chocolate from Confiserie Sprüngli's flagship store. Here it is, the Truffes Grand Cru, which amounts to about US$2 a piece.

What I am impressed most by Zürich is how orderly everything is. No wonder it has been voted as the most livable city in the world this year (that is, if one can afford the high cost of living there).