Alpine Peace

As if making up for the Salzburg disaster, our next day trip was to the tiny town of Oberammergau. I really have no idea why we ended up picking Oberammergau, and against all odds, this day ended up being one of our favorites of the whole trip. It took us three different trains to get there, the town had approximately four other people out and about on the streets, the bus to one of Mad King Ludwig's castles ran only once and it's arrival and final departure of the day did not allow us time to actually tour the castle, and every restaurant in town was shut down (have no idea where we ate lunch, come to think of it). And yet, we adored tiny Oberammergau. Perhaps the conspicuous lack of drunken demons had something to do with our enjoyment. After the hustle and bustle and Krampus of Salzburg, relaxing in a sweet, Alpine village with snow falling softly was just what we needed.

Just your everyday donkey walking down the sidewalk

Even the beer truck is adorable

Oberammergau's claim to fame is its once every 10 years Passion Play, in production for 375 years. Back when the plague was ravaging Europe, Oberammergau's residents promised God that if he spared them, they would perform a play on the Passion of the Christ forevermore. He did, and they did. Currently, the Passion Play is performed during every year ending in a "0." While there is a theatre, the buildings of the village are frescoed with scenes from the life and death of Jesus (or some just have frescoes of Bavaria - this situation seems much like Italian nativities, which all feature a pizza maker). With the frescoes complementing the general adorableness, Oberammergau is a winner. The snow just added to the sweetness. My utter delight was helped along by spotting my favorite Christmas store, Kathe Wohlfart. I think there was actually a little bit of jumping up and down on the sidewalk with excitement. I'd pictured the German Christmas Markets as outdoor versions of a Kathe Wohlfart store, but they are not. The markets are nice and beautiful and fun, but I wasn't finding the Christmas ornaments I was expecting...so I loaded up at Kathe's place.

The walk from the ticket office to Schloss Linderhof

With no Christmas Market going on, and no place we could find to sit down and warm up (even the church was freezing), we decided to visit King Ludwig's Schloss Linderhof, his favorite castle some say. Built in the late 1800s, it's a tiny castle compared to his others (such as Neuschwanstein, the fairy tale castle straight out of a little girl's dreamland), but the setting is beautiful. Or so it seems. We don't really know since snow covered everything. And we didn't get to see inside the castle. We did get to walk around the grounds and eavesdropped in with an American tour group who showed up about 15 minutes before our bus back to town. I came close to begging their tour group leader for a ride back to town with them just so we could do the castle tour, but in the end, my extreme shyness took over, and we headed back to our new friend, the town bus driver, who was quite skilled at managing a humongous bus (carrying only the two of us as passengers) on roads that had seen falling snow for several hours and no snowplow. We just sat back and enjoyed the trees covered with the white, then did another walk through town just to soak in the peace.

Castle Swans

Bus to the Castle

Note to Self: Return to Oberammergau in 2020 for summertime experience and to see the Passion Play.

Christmas Time in Munich

Munich Rathaus

 In my continuing effort to backtrack and post about our activities for the last 14 months...in December of 2011, we went to the Christmas Markets in Germany. In Bavaria, to be exact. A region that our German friend (from the north) once said in disdain, "Bavaria! They should just put a fence around it and call it EuroDisney 2." This turned out to be a true statement. Traveling around Bavaria makes you feel like you are living in some sort of fairy tale, and you're hoping it's the Disney version rather than the Grimm version. It's all houses with exposed timber framing, and little rivers, and cobblestone streets, and Nathan's favorite, beer halls.

Nathan especially loved the Modern Art Museum, can't you tell?

We picked Munich as our base city with the goal of visiting various Christmas markets around the region. Munich is home to fabulous museums, a palace or two, a huge garden that includes a surf spot, two of the most famous beer halls, and an utterly fantastic Rathaus. The German Christmas Markets are a feast for the eyes. Each booth is a little wooden hut, some with cutouts or carved signs, even windows. No cheapo folding table with a tent overhead here. Munich is somewhat unique in that it has two huge Christmas markets in different locations as well as about four other smaller ones with a specific focus, for example, the Renaissance themed market was a favorite of ours. There, the gluhvein was lit on fire in your cup! We spent our first day just visiting the main Christmas market and taking in Munich's fabulous trio of museums (the old, the new, the modern), one of which was featuring an exhibit on...Naples! Our first day on vacation and we're wandering through halls of photographs of Naples.

And a different expression altogether at Hofbrauhaus

That night, we hit up Hofbrauhaus am Pletzl, and to Nathan's great surprise, I loved it. I don't like beer or crowds, and Hofbrauhaus is full of both. But it's such a unique place with a wonderful, convivial atmosphere. Seating is at long tables where strangers are instantly drinking buddies, and an oompah band plays while dirndl clad servers dish out pretzels and beer. Every so often, the oompah band's repertoire circles back to Ein Prosit, at which point everyone in the hall raises their beer glass and swings it back and forth until the end, where the glasses are clinked very hard with everyone else around. Which in a lot of cases would just make me roll my eyes with the cheesiness of it, but there is something special about walking through the Christmas lights and stands to this 400+ year old brew hall and joining in with strangers to share a moment of joy.

Ceiling of Hofbrauhaus am Pletzl

Doesn't this look FUN! We generally avoided the markets when
they were this crowded and visited in the mornings or later evenings.

See how adorable the huts are. I wasn't exaggerating.

A little bit of smoked fish to go with your gluhvein?