Videos from Gasthof Fraundorfer in Garmisch-Partenkirchen

During our lengthy dinner/dancing/drinking in this fine Bavarian establishment in the German Alps, I managed to get a few videos. And here we go...

Walking into the bier hall:


A short clip of the slap dancing. These young guys worked for beer. You could tell how many places they had visited when they came back later in the night!


A John Denver classic in a German bier hall:


Finally, the German Oompa Band plays one of our favorite tunes from Dirty Dancing:

Bier Hall in Garmisch-Partenkirchen

Garmisch-Partenkirchen is a town in the German Alps, just north of the border with Austria. Of all the places we had booked for accommodation, Gasthof Fraundorfer in Garmisch-Partenkirchen was the only one that I talked about and really looked forward to. (For most of the trip, I decided it would be best to arrive without expectations.) Why was Gasthof Fraundorfer so special? Check out their site and you'll see! My digifriend ColoradoBobs put me onto this place and the thought of staying in a German bier hall/guesthouse was irresistible, so I booked in for two nights... what a shame it was when I realized, just a week before our planned arrival, that I booked for the 5th and 6th of June while we were actually staying on the 5th and 6th of July*! Thankfully, they managed to squeeze us in for one night. Ordinarily they would have been able to find room for two nights, but 30,000 bikers were due to arrive in town the following day. Many of these bikers were already there, and we enjoyed their company that night of dinner, drinks, singing and laughing.

Seating is in the Bavarian tradition: small groups are combined to fill a bigger table. Dana and I were seated with two other American couples - we think they planned that - with whom we became friends for the night. As the music continued and the excellent beer flowed (mostly fresh Paulaner), the slap dancing began along with yodeling and meeting some folks at other tables. Dana and I were among the last to leave, along with our newly acquired Russian and German buddies.

If you are ever in the area, plan a trip to . Try a bierlikore (warm beer mixed with a spot of liquor, topped with whipped cream and served in a shot glass on a ski) eat as much as you can fit in your stomach, sing along and stay in one of the cozy rooms just upstairs.

*This turned out to be the only mistake made in my planning of the 44 night trip... could have been worse! OK, there was the near mistake in Florence, when I thought we were staying one less night in our hotel, and dropped train ticket the next day, but it all worked out in the end!

Get your fix of slap-dancing photos here.

I'm Going to Beat You With a Pig Bladder!

In accordance with my new method to counteract my backblogged status, I'm going to have to give a rather quick summary of two amazing days in Switzerland, then direct you to a lump of 111 photos. I hope you're OK with this.

• We drove through the heart of the Swiss Alps to get from Montreux to Interlaken. Halfway into the drive through the snow-capped mountains filled with waterfalls, we stopped for a sandwich in a town that didn't appear to have a name. This was the first town we entered that spoke German rather than French. We pointed at the meat, cheese & bread we wanted while making pathetic attempts to pronounce the German words for them. Whatever we ate, it was good!


• Our hotel, Hotel Alpenblick, was in Wilderswil, just outside of Interlaken. The town was exactly the sort of quiet, sleepy village we wanted... much better than the heart of Interlaken. We had a terrace that we sat on to watch the storm clouds roll in and out. Mostly in.


• The family-owned hotel gave every guest a morning paper. I mean a piece paper, like a print-out, that included the forecast and welcomed incoming guests while bidding farewell to those departing. The day we arrived it said, "Wir freuen uns, folgende Gäste begrüssen zu dürfen:
  Herr und Frau Hurley aus Australien"

• The drive around Lake Thun (or the Thunersee) was lined with waterfalls just off the road. Even though it was not raining, we had to keep our windshield wipers on to clear off the dumps of water that spilled from the overflowing falls.


• We made a stop at the 12th century building called the Oberhofen Castle. The gardens were gorgeous and the waters around the castle filled with entertaining ducks. Not quite as entertaining as a speaking duck, like Daffy or Donald, but still pretty amusing. If they tried to use the old latrines inside the castle, then they would have been funnier than any angry duck personified in a cartoon.
  

• Thun offered a lot of beautiful streets on which to stroll and a massive castle overlooking the town and onwards to the lake. The castle had much better dungeon and torture facilities than the Château de Chillon. These dudes were up in towers, overlooking Thun. They would be much more effective now since captives would have to look upon the new housing developments.


• In the museum of the Castle of Thun there is a traditional mask on display that is still used in the annual Thun fair! A man dons the mask and runs around the street, shouting and hitting women and children with pig bladders. Really? Yes. I did not make this up.


• After two nights at the Hotel Alpenblick, we continued on our way. The food and service was excellent, and we would stay there for even longer in the future if we have the opportunity. On our first night they were offering their fondue dinner: over 120 sauces to accompany the chicken, beef, potatoes, etc that we cooked at our table. Highly recommended.


• After leaving Switzerland we briefly drove through Liechtenstein. The country shares an open border with Switzerland, and we wanted to stop for a cup of coffee to meet an Liechtenstite Liechtenstinian Liechtensteiner, but we had no such luck. The country is tiny (62 square miles), is very similar in landscape to Switzerland and has only about 35,000 citizens. Before we even knew it, we were in Austria!


• Enter Austria. OK, we knew it. Customs from Liechtenstein was about as rough as you'd expect, but what was much rougher was finding a cup of coffee! Liechtenstein seemed caffeine-free, so the 'cafe' sign in Austria was promising. It was actually a Chinese restaurant affiliated with the Asian food market next door. The coffee was pretty good. We didn't eat anything, and I think that's what the people working there were shouting about... but I'm not sure.


• Driving from Switzerland to Liechtenstein to Austria felt a bit like popping in and out of different shopping centers after hours, looking for a Starbucks that might still be open.


• We drove through the fantastic Austrian Alps for a couple of hours and were blown away by the spectacularly painted trucks they have. The waterfalls and mountains are great, of course, but entire scenes realized on a milk truck! I can die now.

Love all 111 photos of Switzerland & Austria (and maybe Liechtenstein, I'm not sure) here.

Backblogged 2.0 (lots of family photos)

I've been backblogged before, but never quite like this. It's been tough to write myself out it... on top of having thousands of photos and dozens of stories from the Big Trip, I've been gathering up more just from being home, plus I have been doing lots of other writing. Now I'm going to pick up the pace and bring it all up to where I am in reality. It'll be a bit like what the television station Nine did in Australia: the country was five years behind in the soap opera Days of Our Lives, so they ran a special that summarized four years of the show in one hour. I won't be that brief.

OK, here we go:
basketballwithdadchriscjandmike¹
goingtothebeachandplayingstackeratpatandjens²
dinnerwithmybrothersandsistersinlawthenbacktothebeach³

1. We got in a game of HORSE before the surprise party that even Mike & CJ knew about but managed to keep from me!
2. The weather wasn't ideal, but we had a good day at the beach in Jersey. That night the adults kept themselves entertained with games like Stacker. Loads of laughs.
3. Eight of us - Chris, Jan, Pete, Jane, Pat, Jen, Dana & me - went out for a night in Red Bank. The next day the entire clan - add on Mom, Dad, Mike, CJ, Katie, Julianna, Valerie, Danny & Ciara - went to Long Branch for fun in the sun and surf.

Infant Held Captive in New York City

Here's an infant being held captive in NYC:

Montreux & Château de Chillon

Enter Switzerland into our little Big Trip. We had to pay a driving tax, so for a few moments we thought about dumping the Peugot, setting it on fire and hoofing it the rest of the way through Germany and up to Belgium. We kept the Peugot. Besides that, entry into this non-EU country was easy. It was like driving into Canada from the US, but in Europe... and with multiple languages.

Switzerland has three official languages: French, German and Italian. We arrived in the French-speaking side of the nation and finished our stay in the German-speaking side. As we drove from the eastern half to the western half, the Swiss we encountered slowly shifted from speaking one language to the other. In the middle of the country, the language swapped every other word, like weaving two threads together. At least, that's how it sounded to us. In reality, the dialects are very different from the French and German spoken elsewhere in the world.

We drove along the northern edge of Lake Geneva, past Lausanne and stayed for one night in Montreux. The weather did not call for water sports. It called for Bill, and Bill wasn't home. Lake Geneva is gorgeous, and it's lined with statues of Freddy Mercury, B.B. King, Ray Charles and Vladimir Nabokov. I guess all four of them used to hang out here together. Poker buddies, maybe. Actually, Nabokov & Mercury both lived in Montreux. The statues of King & Charles show how the city has become a destination for jazz enthusiasts. They were preparing for the 40th Annual Montreux Jazz Festival when we were there. The line-up was incredible.

Montreux is known to classic rock fans as well. In 1971, Deep Purple were staying in town to record, and at the same time, Frank Zappa was there to perform. A fan set fire to the venue for the Zappa concert, the Montreux Casino, with a flare gun (or a bottle rocket or something). From their hotel across the lake, the members of Deep Purple watched the "fire in the sky" and the "smoke on the water." A legendary inspiration to metal.

Just outside of Montreux is the Château de Chillon, a castle that dates from the 11th century. It has a natural moat, having been built on a small island just in from the lake's edge. Lord Byron, inspired by the tale of a Genevois monk who was imprisoned in the basement for 6 years, wrote The Prisoner of Chillion after visiting the castle. He also add a bit of graffiti to the dungeon, carving his name into the stone. You can still clearly make out his name.

Images of Montreux, Freddy Mercury, Vladimir Nabokov and Château de Chillon

Lunch in Annecy

Our lunch spot during the drive from Lyon, France, to Montreux, Switzerland, was dictated by our stomachs. Thank you, stomachs! We stopped in Annecy, in the north-eastern edge of Rhône-Alpes region. The architecture and cuisine of the city reveals the influences that Geneva had on it over the centuries. Our visit consisted of a hearty lunch and solid hour of wandering. For lunch, I enjoyed raclette while Dana chose a healthier option. I'm not sure how you can get much healthier than raclette, though: a block of cheese is stuck above a heater, then you scrape the melting cheese onto potatoes, bread, onions and gherkins.

Annecy is located on the second largest lake in France, Lake Annecy. The lake, known for being possibly the cleanest lake in Europe, is full of swans and paddle boats. The Thiou canal runs through the city, making it a wonderful spot for photographers. The Palais de l'Isle, built in 1132, is the most striking building in the city. We stumbled upon this beautiful location, and our visit was cut short by rain, but if I were planning the Big Trip now, I would certainly include a night or two in Annecy.

Beautiful Annecy