Hall in Tirol, Austria

     Hall in Tirol is a wonderful little village just outside of Innsbruck Austria. It's the kind of place you hope to come across whenever you are traveling and rarely do. We were lucky enough to have some friends living there. I remember passing it on the train and hoping we could describe it to our friends so they could take us there. Much to our delight, we watched as we approached the area we passed and found out it would be where we were staying for the next couple of days. The area was beautiful and we were lucky enough to have bright blue skies and lots of sunshine while we were there. These pictures are from the street our friends live on and the walk we had winding through the small town.

     The building above is an old mint factory of money. The town began as a salt mine town, which is what Hall means and Tirol is the region in Austria. The town dates back to the 13the century and the crest of the town even has a picture of a salt cask surrounded by two lions. After winding through the streets a bit, our friend led us to a beautiful old covered bridge that has a great view of the mountains.

     After our wander around the town, we headed back to our friends house and had a good old fashioned American meal for lunch on a cold day, chili. But of course, our new European tastes made their presence as we added rice to the mix. It is actually quite tasty to have a huge bowl of chili with garlic rice inside. We all took a nap and prepared for our New Year's Eve hike. Little did we know what awaited us.

     So around 8:30, we started our most interesting New Year's Eve celebration thus far. We loaded eight home made sleds into three cars and made our way past Innsbruck and up a long mountain road. After lots of winding road and pushing our friends car to its breaking point, we arrived at a small, unlit parking lot. We got out and unloaded all of the sleds and head lamps were dispersed through the group. Among us were our friends, her parents, and their neighbors. Apparently, its a tradition for many folks in Austria to hike up a mountain in the dark and then sled back down on New Year's Eve. In fact, the Austrian expression for Happy New Year translates as have a good sled. The walk up took about an hour and a half and was a lot of fun. I can say that now but at the time there were moments where I longed for a car. We basically hiked up 2,000 feet in the dark on a narrow trail that was covered in snow and ice. We all had dressed quite warm as the temperatures were around 0 degrees F. As we walked, we sweated and sweated and sweated. We stopped to take water breaks and stare at the stars and breathe in the pristine air. Occasionally, we would flash our lights to make sure we were headed in the right direction. At other times, we had to move to the side for passing sledders going back down the mountain, some with no head lamp at all. How I envied them too. But finally, we made it to the top. The most embarrassing part was that we were well beaten by a group of hard core smokers. Wow.

     Ringing in the New Year was fun and filled with fireworks on our mountain top and the neighboring ones. We had the rare privilege of being well above the normal height and watching the fireworks in the city below was incredible. We were frozen but having a great time. And finally the time arrived, time to sled back down the mountain. This part was lots of fun and our crash course in sledding came in handy. I followed behind Iz, although, there were plenty of moments where I had to stop and wait on her to catch up. The highlight of the night was watching Iz throw herself off her sled because it was getting close to an edge that made her feel uncomfortable. Unfortunately, the sled kept going down the slope and Iz had to get up and run after it on snow and ice covered terrain. The only light she had was the head lamp I had on. Eventually, the sled stopped when it a tree branch and after dislodging it, we continued our way back down the mountain. Easily, the best New Year's thus far. Thanks to our friends Thomas and Rachel for an amazing time.

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Stuttgart, Germany

     Our trip to Stuttgart was quite short. We decided to stop through because it was on our way to Munich and we met some girls from Stuttgart who had couchsurfed with us in October. We arrived late in the evening and walked around the center of the city for a bit since they recommended we stop by and see the center before coming to their house. We walked up and down a long pedestrian streets that was full of stores for shopping. After being a bit bored by the shopping district, we headed back to the car but we didn't make in time and had to pay for another hour of parking for the extra five minutes of parking. Oh the frustrating parking schemes here. We headed on to meet up with our friends and enjoyed a nice dinner and went out to a salsa bar for some drinks.

     The next day, we headed back to the city center to walk around. Our hopes that the weather would be a little better were dashed as some flurries continued to fall and the snow slosh was in full force. We checked out an art exhibit at the Kunstmuseum about food being used as art. It was interesting to see some of the older brand designs that we remembered from being kids. Out front of the museum is the New Castle and Schlossplatz. Schlossplatz is a central point of the city and is surrounded by tons of old important buildings. The New Castle is now the home of state finance and education offices. 

     Above is a famous opera house that, like most of Stuttgart, was destroyed during WW2 and rebuilt. After wandering through this area of buildings, our friends decided to take us to the train station so we could go up the tower and get a nice panoramic view of the city. Sitting atop the tower is a large Mercedes Benz emblem, something quite telling of the city as it seemed every car we saw was a Mercedes. The view was nice and the last bit of the city we would see. Sadly, we didn't get to spend too much time in Stuttgart due to scheduling problems but what we did see was nice. We decided to pack it in and head on to Munich so we could make it in time to return the car.

     Our GPS led us through lots of small towns on our way to Munich. We finally arrived and got rid of the rental car. We stayed in our favorite Munich hostel, Wombats. Even though we've never stayed anywhere else in Munich, we are confident its hard to beat Wombats for all it has to offer. It is located right beside the train station and a short ten minute walk from one of the best beer halls in Munich, the Augustiner. We headed there for dinner and after thirty minutes of being passed over for a table because there was just two of us. Finally, a girl came over and invited us to sit with her and her friends at a table.

     After some time and more arrivals, we were engrossed with our new German friends. The girl who invited us over was married to a guy who was a brewer at the beer hall. Since he gets tons of vouchers for free beer, he treats all of their friends to drinks at the end of the year and we just happened to get invited to their private party. They ended up buying us lots of drinks and even had the drinks we'd already paid for comped and our money refunded. It turned out to be a great night but not a great morning for our ride to Innsbruck to see our good friends Tom and Rachel.

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Heidelberg, Germany

    Our Monday evening in Wörrstadt was great. Nicole and Patrick cut up lots of fresh veggies and meats and we cooked everything right at the table with a small cooker. They call it "" and its a very popular way of having a group of friends get together and hang out because you can have as much or as little as you like. To our surprise, they had recently purchased a favorite card game of ours, Dominion, so we ended up playing quite a few games. 

    Tuesday morning we decided to drive down to the city of Heidelberg. Famous for its castle and bridge, it is a hotspot of American tourists due to the proximity of an American military base. Heidelberg is famous in the archaeology world for "Heidelberg Man," a small jawbone that shows to be evidence of the first people in Europe 200,000 years ago. In the 16th century, Martin Luther defended his 95 theses in Heidelberg, only to later be excommunicated by the Pope. The modern city is still fairly representative of what the city looked like before the war. The Nazis enjoyed a strong local support, and thus didn't seem to feel such a strong need to destroy the city. Upon being defeated by the Allies in 1945, the Nazis destroyed some of the beautiful structures of the famous bridge right before fleeing the town. The Old Town is quite nice and lined with old buildings on a long pedestrian street with lots of local stores.

     We walked down this pedestrian shopping street down towards the open market and the most famous church in Heidelberg, the Heiliggeistkirche, or Church of the Holy Spirit. It's construction was started at the end of the 14th century and lasted for some 150 years. The inside is nice because its different from your typical church and has lots of red brick inside. The church is famous for housing both Protestant and Catholic services, even during the same years. The picture of the hotel above is a famous Hotel Ritter that was built by Carolus Belier in 1592. The building is still in use as a private hotel with 37 rooms that start in the 100's of euros per night. Our friend Nicole bought us some local chocolates in one of the small local chocolatiers. Deciding to put off the trek up the hill, we walked over to the famous Old Bridge.

     It really was as cold as it looked. Fortunately, you can't see my feet but they were frozen standing in the middle of the semi-melted snow. It kind of formed a slosh and I decided not to wear my boots because I was expecting good weather for the Italy part of our trip. The Old Bridge has a nice view of the city and you see how picturesque the city is sitting in the valley. The tower in the other picture is one of the only things that survived the Nazis when they destroyed the rest of the bridge structures upon fleeing the city. There are some fun monkey sculptures on the edges of the bridge. As time was catching up with us, we finally turned east to head up the 260 foot hike to the castle.

     Walking up 260 feet of steps that are covered in snow and ice is never a fun venture. The castle has existed in some form for 800 years. It has been destroyed by fires and wars as usual and in two cases, lightning strikes. The view from up there makes it easy to understand why the spot was chosen because it provides a great view of the area all around the city. There is a nice courtyard that was of course, covered in snow but apparently its a popular sun bathing spot for locals during the summer. There's a small fee to enter the castle grounds, something our friends told us was new. We paid and walked through some of the old buildings. There is an impressive exhibit documenting the castle and the old school style of pharmacies. There were shelves upon shelves of pots containing different powders and roots that were used for medicinal purposes years ago. After walking around the castle grounds, we headed back to the city. Fortunately, we called the restaurant we were intending to eat at later that evening only to find out they were closed. Forty-five minute trip out of the way saved. We ended up eating a cheap kebap meal and returned back to our friends' house for more board games for the rest of the evening.

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Cologne, Germany

     We started our trip in Cologne, Germany. After a lot of delays and snow problems, we were lucky enough to not have any problems with our flight to Dusseldorf. From there, we caught a train to Cologne, only 30 minutes, and started our journey. We were hoping to get a lot of skymiles from our trip and since we were in Germany, quite a modern country, we figured using our cards wouldn't be a problem. Yet, when trying to buy our tickets to Cologne from the Dusseldorf Airport, the guy tried to make us pay in cash. We didn't have any and by some sort of magic, he was able to use his card machine. Why he didn't want to just take the card in the first place is beyond us but this caused us a little bit of concern with our intention of using our cards. 

 

     The Cologne Cathedral(Kölner Dom) is probably one of the most imposing cathedrals we've seen. Compared to the others in France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Germany, it's massive. It was started in 1248 and not finished for another 600+ years. From 1880-1884, it was actually the tallest building in the world until the Washington Monument was completed. The front façade is quite impressive and is the largest of any cathedral. It's quite easy to see how it became a famous landmark for German architecture, like the Eiffel Tower in Paris. The construction was begun in 1248 because that's when the previous church burned down. It managed to survive WW2, probably because of its height and how easily recognizable it was from the air. It sustained damages but has since been repaired. We walked around the inside for a bit because the architecture alone is quite spectacular. 

     On Monday, we spent a lot of time wandering around the streets of Cologne but the cold and wet weather made it trying at times. We visited the Chocolate Museum, located down on the Rhine River. Most of the Christmas markets were being dismantled since they had closed up shop on Christmas Eve. The gnome you see is right outside of a Beer Hall where we ate lunch. The sausages and mustard with sauerkraut were very tasty.

     Scattered all around the city are old pieces of the ancient city. There are several ancient gates from the old city that date back to the medieval ages and still have most of their structural integrity. Even though the city saw lots of action during WW2, the city still seems to have remained intact. There are also tons of old Romanesque style churches and buildings. The walk along the river was full of colorful houses that were nearly destroyed some years back when Cologne had a great flood. Since it was quite cold out, we ventured into the Museum Ludwig, which has an impressive collection of Picasso and Lichtenstein.

     Our overall impression of Cologne is that its a nice city but the Cathedral is really the main selling point and the cold and snow everywhere made our time not as nice as if it were the summer. We called it a day around dark and went to the train station to collect our rental car and head south to meet up with our friends Patrick and Nicole in Wörrstadt.

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Auschwitz, Poland

     On Thursday morning, we awoke to head to Auschwitz. We both visited Dachau camp a year earlier on Christmas day so we had some idea of what we were getting into. To hear the stories is one thing but to walk around where tons of people died at the hands of unbelievable hatred is completely different. We paid about 40 euros to be picked up at our place and given a private ride out to the camp about an hour outside of Kraków. We watched a DVD about the history of the camp on the way out. Once there, our drivers introduced us to our tour guide and off we went. 

     The first thing we came to was the entrance and its ominous sign that translates as "Work Brings Freedom." To the Nazis, propaganda, to the Jews, cruel irony. To say that the camp was anything short of modern day slave labor is to only fool oneself. The buildings were brick because the Polish army had built them as an army barracks and the Nazis helped themselves to it after taking over Poland. Then, they established several concentration camps that would become extermination clinics. The first set of pictures is from the smaller of the two camps and our guide informed us it was the nicer of the two just because of the sheer difference in numbers. The first and smaller camp has a vast array of exhibitions that show you how life was for the Jewish inmates. 

     Most of the Jews in Western Europe were made to buy a train ticket to this camp and told that they would be relocated to work for the German War Effort. Believing this lie, they packed their belongings, paid for a death trip, and climbed on board. The suitcases in the pictures belonged to the victims who would never again see their belongings. They were told to write their names and cities on the bags so that they would be easier to locate. The shoes are also a collection of things that were recovered and not destroyed by the Nazis when they tried to destroy the camps and proof of what had been going on. Throughout our tour, our guide made sure that we all took long looks at the photos taken in the camp. Most of them show the victims but not in a way you'd expect them to be. Most of the victims looked like they had no idea of what was about to happen to them. For the most part, the women and children were immediately gassed. There are photos of them waiting in the gas chamber lines and you can see a lack of panic on their faces because they believed they were going in for showers. The level of deception in the camps was incredible. Say what you want but you can look at the photos and tell the Nazis pulled the wool over everyone's eyes.

     The concrete wall against the brick wall was a firing range. The windows on the buildings facing this small secluded deathyard are all closed off so no one could watch what happened there. Many people were executed there. You can see the warning signs for people to not touch the fence. It was electrical and claimed quite a few lives on its own. Some people tried to escape but the punishment for an escapee who got away was that ten others in the camp were killed. We were told the story of one man who was part of a group of ten who was hanged for reciprocity of an escapee. A letter of his was later found in which he stated he had an ingenious plan to escape but decided not to because he didn't want ten people dying because of his actions. The last picture is of a crematorium. It is one of the only ones left as the Nazis blew up the others to hide what they were really doing. Standing in that room was probably one of the sickest feelings I've felt in a long time.

     These last three shots were taken at the Auschwitz II - Birkenau. It was the larger of the two camps and housed tons of prisoners. This was the destination of many trains because it housed more gas chambers and crematoriums. Most of the victims got off the trains and were dead within hours. The biggest majority of victims came from Hungary and Poland and there are maps of all the countries where victims came from. There is a plaque like the one you see in every language of each country of a victim and English as no victims came from England. The day was a difficult one to get through and while I'd have much preferred to be there in better weather, knowing that the victims who passed through there endured the same weather in a third of the clothing I was wearing made the experience that much more intense. We will not forget this day.

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