Category: Travel – Germany

Amy & I were lucky enough to score an empty seat between us so it was nice to be able to spread out a bit.

Shortly after take-off we were served some dinner. Since meals are small and your body gets all out of wack on long-haul flights, I always try to eat some of each meal. Sorry the photo is so bad, but my overhead light was not working.

As soon as dinner was cleared I put on my eye mask and head phones, hit play on Enya and went to sleep. Amazingly 6 hours later I woke up. I don’t believe I’ve EVER slept so long in one go on the plane.

With just a few hours before touchdown in Bangkok, we were served some breakfast.

From the sounds of things everyone slept really well on this flight. We arrived in Bangkok around 2pm local time. Such a lovely looking airport.

We had a couple of hours free time and were lucky enough to find a trolley to load all our bags onto.

We walked around for some time, checking out all the shops. I was especially excited to find a Boots!

And some Quality Street chocolates, which are my absolute favs. I was good and bought the smaller box :-).

We stopped for a meal. It was 4pm in the afternoon, but I believe it was our lunch.

I got a juice with guava, lime, watermelon (& something else). Delicous.

Amy and I also shared 2 toasted sandwiches but my egg & cheese one was just amazing. I’m definitely going to try to re-create it at home.* (Note to self – fried egg with cheese melted over, tomato, lettuce and mayo on toasted bread).*

With full tummies we went in search of somewhere to relax (and use the free wifi) until it was time to meet back up with the group. So nice to be able to put my feet up for a bit.

There was a Dairy Queen in the terminal so of course we had to get a Blizzard (my first one ever).

One last group photo of our group reflected on the ceiling.

At 6pm we had a BIG walk to our gate, then through security again ( we’d already been through once in this airport) which meant we had to throw out the water we’d JUST bought. While waiting to board we got to enjoy a Thai sunset.

Then finally we boarded the plane for the last part of the journey home. We left about 7.30pm.

We were given drinks and nuts, and I took some Panedine (due to the fact my ankle/legs were annoying me)…

and shortly afterwards we received dinner.

I then managed to get another few hours sleep before reading for the final few hours of the trip. We got to see the sunrise…

while we enjoyed breakfast. Okay, it might seem like I ate a lot, but honestly I ate no more than 1/3-1/2 of each meal.

Almost home… after a long day & night and 30 hours worth of travelling time.

Excuse the sun flare, but after all that time this was a VERY welcome sight.

We were off the plane and through customs in record time, but then had to wait over half an hour for luggage to be unloaded. We had already said our farewells to the group so headed right out to meet my Dad who was coming to pick us up. Being early Sunday morning we had a quick run home, where we had a wonderful welcome home from Christy and the pups.
We spent the rest of the day catching up with Christy, Nan & Pop, and had takeaway Thai (fitting since we’d just come from Thailand) for lunch, a ONE hour sleep, unpacked a bit, takeaway Pizza for dinner (getting groceries tomorrow) and watched some Glee, then Got to Dance with Christy when Kevin & Amy went up to bed. I went to sleep around 10pm (only to awake at 2am … ).

Tomorrow : Back to reality…

This morning we had the fun job of packing up all our stuff ready to depart Germany later tonight. We had breakfast and took our luggage downstairs to be stored. After waiting for everyone to be ready we finally set off for the day at 10am.

Todays destination, after a tram and train ride, the largest Technology museum in the world.

That was the good news, the bad news was we only had one hour to explore!!!! As you can imagine Kevin was quite beside himself with the time of the visit.

So Amy, Harriet and I raced around, following Kevin. He mainly wanted to see historical stuff and was quite pleased with some of his finds.

I loved seeing these models, especially since the largest one is the Saturn V, that we saw in real life at the Kennedy Space Center last year.

I also loved the early printing presses, probably because I saw how they worked in a documentary earlier this year..

Alas we hardly had time to scratch the surface of this museum before we had to leave, allowing a small amount of time to check out the gift shop. Kevin fell in love with this engine (which actually works).. but sleep deprived as I am I can’t recall the name of it. I convinced him to buy it, as he hardly ever buys any trip souvenirs.

We then had to catch a train back into town to have lunch at Munich’s largest beer hall. This was a special last German meal experience.

The meal started with some yummy soup – I think potato and leek.

What, besides the setting, was so special about this meal, you might ask?

Mind you I’m not sure I would have considered it special even when I ate meat – I always hated pigs on spits, so I’ll spare you the close up photos Kevin took. It was flambéed at the table in front of us and gravy served from the big pots. Kevin was in heaven, as he rarely eats pork (in Australia anyway).
I was excited because I finally got the try the white asparagus I’ve been seeing at the markets.

It was pretty good but I think I prefer green asparagus more. The hollandaise sauce and potatoes were really good. Amy enjoyed her meal as well. We were going to share but pretty much stuck with our own.

And there was more apple strudel for desert. Very delicious but didn’t quite have the atmosphere of our first one (outside in the Bavarian countryside).

Do you think I’d make a good bar wench?

After lunch we had a few hours free time to do some more shopping – provided we could fit it in our bags, of course.

So I got to visit a great homestore we’d kept passing (and I’d not yet had a chance to visit).

There was also a third visit to Beluga chocolates and this time we stayed for afternoon tea.

I just had a tea (with some chocolate, of course) but the girls had these amazing hot chocolates.

There was some last minute souvenir shopping by Harriet. Unfortunately, besides for Christy and my parents, we had no room to bring back souvenirs for anyone else. I feel really bad but you saw the size of our suitcases and I didn’t want to waste money on cheap, junky (little) souvenirs (which is mostly what we found).
But do you think we should have bought this hat?

I did however manage to find a necklace (by a German brand I’d first seen back in Rothenberg – all those weeks ago) for myself. Be sure to check out my haul video when it’s posted – or you might be able to spot it in tomorrows photos.

We saw this cute little dog, which looked like a miniture Golden, that we’d seen earlier.

Turns out it belongs to a homeless woman so we went back to give them 5 euro. We have homeless people in Australia but not beggers as such – people kneeling holding out hats for donations of money – quite a few of which we’ve seen around Germany (esp. in Salzburg and Munich).
Of course, I was allowed to pat the puppy. She must have been happy with her money because we saw her headed off elsewhere shortly afterwards.

We met and caught the train & tram back to the youth hostel for the last time, then collected our luggage and helped the kids weigh and re-sort their luggage (some of them were very overweight). Then it was onto the coach for the trip to Munich airport. We were here 45mins before check in even opened and had fun trying to hold our groups spot in the line.

We roused on one lady who pushed through some suitcases, and claimed she was travelling alone with her kids and just putting the suitcases there (in front of us). So we felt bad. She ended up JUST behind our group (having queue jumped quite a few other people). Any guesses how old her kids turned out to be? They were adults!!! I really could not believe the nerve of her. So rude. And I’d even apologised to her for how we reacted to her jumping the line.

After check in opened and we finally got through the line (without any further incident) we had time to go get some dinner. Amy, Kevin and I ended up at a lovely restaurant, where we had the most beautiful meal.

We shared two dishes, which was a good choice as they were rather big serves.

We gathered together again and went through security. Some more shopping time and finally to our gate, where unfortunately our plane was delayed due to some technical issues….

It didn’t really matter to us as we had a long wait ahead at Bangkok airport anyway.

Eventually we boarded and left 2 hours behind schedule, just before midnight. As you can imagine, it had been a rather long day.

Tomorrow : The long journey home

At 9am this morning we set out on a bit of an adventure. Firstly we caught the tram to the train station, where we saw a Golden waiting outside a shop (so well behaved as all the dogs seem to be over here).

I got a tea and we stocked up on supplies, like Kinda chocolate.

Then we boarded the first train. This ride lasted about 1.5 hours.

We then caught a train, bus and a cogtrain to get up Zugsptze – the tallest mountain in Germany.


It was actually hailing when we arrived but it didn’t last long. And we were all rugged for the cold (even wearing thermals) but it was actually pretty warm, especially when the sun popped out.

Ready for some photos?

It was so pretty.

Absolutely breathtaking.

As you can see Kevin had lots of fun.

He even went out and joined a snow ball fight with the kids.

We then caught the cable car up to the very top.

Where we got to enjoy even more views – you can see where we just were down the bottom of the photo.

We then went to have lunch at Germany’s highest restaurant.

We didn’t have a lot of time so luckily lunch came out really quickly. I had spinach & fetta dumplings with creamed spinach. It tasted better than it looked :-).

We had a quick look in the gift shop then got the cable car back down.

Then it was time to get on the cog train for the first part of the journey home. I’m not sure why, but Kevin decided to buy us an ice cream.

We travelled back by cog train, bus and train (this should have all been by cog-train but part of the track was being repaired). Pretty countryside to be enjoyed.

I’d love to know what all these little huts in the fields for. Do any of my German readers know?

We then caught our final train back to Munich, where we had a bit of free time at the train station. Amy, Harriet and I made a bee line for Accessorize 🙂

We then walked to the old town where we had dinner.

Unfortunately this wasn’t a great experience for Amy & I because it was a buffet, 70% of which was meat, and the other 30% bread and salad (both of which we are pretty sick of). I ended up having 2 small rolls. And some apple strudel for desert.

We then walked back to catch or tram back to the hotel and off to bed.

**This post has not be checked but I wanted to get it posted before we head off on our flight home.

Today started with a visited with a visit to Dachau Concentration Camp. Depressing as I knew it would be, I don’t believe it would be right to come to Germany and not visit one of the camps. Kevin, of course, was keen to go as he’s read a LOT about WWII and the Nazis.

We entered through the main gate and it’s just impossible to imagine the horror of the people who were forced to come here. Such a dull and colourless place, especially on an overcast day like today. The sign reads ” work will set you free”.

There are trees surrounding the main compound and at times all you could hear were the birds singing – which seemed so at odd with the nature of the place.

We did an audio tour (with Amy & Harriet) that took us all around the memorial site.

Dachau was the first built camp (before the war even started) and was the model for all others. It was also the training ground for other camp leaders.

Built to house 6,000, when the camp was liberated by the Americans at the end of the war, there were 32,000 – so you can only imagine the cramped living conditions.

It was a tough morning for me emotionally. I mean, I get upset enough about the treatment of animals. I did okay until the photo of bodies piled high…which I won’t share on here… I’m sure you’ve seen similar photos before and it’s definitely not something you can ever forget.

We saw the crematorium – used to dispose of the bodies so no-one really knew how many they were killing off.

There a gas chamber here – built to see if they could get people to enter under the false pretext of a shower. So it was used for trail purposes only, not for mass murder – as in many of the other camps.

I pretty much stopped taking photos (and video) once we got to the museum as that’s when I really needed the tissues. Seeing photos of babies and wives, taken from the men who were here really got to me and then reading some of their stories. I’m kind of glad only men were here, not sure I could have coped reading about women & children. I tend to put myself in people’s shoes and imagine how they would have felt and how they would have suffered (which is also why I’m glad the medical and torture rooms were closed – not that I would have gone in the torture room).
So hard to imagine that all this took place in my grandparents generation. Both my grandfathers fought for Britain during the war. And my Poppa was involved in the liberation of one of the camps. But I’m not sure which one because he never really talked about the war (I’m not even sure if my Granny knows).

Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) we missed seeing the video in English. But we think it’s the same one that Kevin purchased.

Still feeling a bit numb and rather sad we headed back to the information center and sat outside to eat our packed lunch – which was some rolls we’d made ourselves, fruit, drink and a treat.

Eaten beside these gorgeous trees.

We then boarded the bus for a very different afternoon. Kevin took the time to have a nap!

We went to the town of Abensberg where we had a bit of free time to explore before our tour time. Such a cute little town, though nothing was open because it was May Day (1st of May).

We love how so many homes are covered in solar panels.

And check out the size of this flower.

We stopped in the Beirgarten and got an ice-cream from the vending machine – don’t have these in Australia!

Finally it was time to see what we’d came to see… The Hundertwasser Towel…

But first we had to do a tour of the beer museum. Let’s just say the owner of the brewery must be an eccentric. The tour started off normally enough – we got to the see the bar from the movie Casablanca that the owner had bought from Hollywood and had shipped over.

We learnt about how beer is made.

Kevin and I both thought these girls were part of the tour (which is why we took their photo) but it turns out they were tourists….from America! Kevin wants me to get a dress like this…but I think he’d be mighty disappointed if I did :-).

This map shows all the breweries just in Bavaria.

We should have known things were getting weird when the singing dwarves appeared. But since the owner wrote a story about dwarves for his children we thought okay…

Then came the painting of the last supper. And it’s subsequent analysis. We were waiting the for punchline – something to do with beer of course. But it never came. This was truly the strangest thing I have ever sat through. It wouldn’t have matter the subject of the painting, the analysis of it was total crap (sorry, that’s the only word to describe it).

After this came more singing dwarves and by now I was totally confused … being that we were in a beer museum.

Then finally we got to go up the tower, which seemed so normal after the strangeness of the tour. We caught the lift to the top, where we enjoyed a lovely view over the town.

We then walked down the stairs.. admiring the tower along the way. It was designed by a German who actually lived in New Zealand. I like the tower – it remind me of Dr Seuss.

There is another building nearby being built in a similar style.

We then got to have a beer and a pretzel..well Kevin actually had apple juice…

and I had a lemonade (Sprite)…

Then it was back on the coach for the 1.5 hour trip back to our hostel. We got to see a few maypoles that had been erected today being May Day (1st of May).

Back at the hostel it was schnitzel night again. As you can see I started eating before I remembered to take a photo. I also had some veggies.

Tomorrow : We’re heading up a mountain to find snow.