Subject: "It is not down in any map; true places never are." -- Herman Melville
Date: Friday, November 28, 2008 3:55 PM
Guten abend,
It's a long weekend, so I'm back in Europe again. My brother may be getting bored of my Europe trips but I'm certainly not! This time I'm in Germany, although Austria is literally a stone's throw from where I'm staying right now. (ok, not LITERALLY... but you get the idea)
Before I go on, I want to thank a certain someone in the Philippines who I owe this trip to -- you know who you are!
Anyway... I did not sleep a wink on Wednesday night, and left home at about 3:45 AM Thursday morning to get to the airport. The flight was San Francisco-Dallas, Dallas-Frankfurt. I had my upgrade confirmed a long time ago, but this time, the seat next to me was empty! That was sad -- somebody could've gotten an upgrade for that long flight across the Atlantic instead of being cramped up in some "E" seat in coach!
I saw Wall-E on the flight (I'm not gonna buy it for my collection now, I fell asleep half-way through), then woke up at 4:30am when the plane was over the first "A" of "Atlantic Ocean" on the big movie screen. You know the spot -- its the one with the big dark blue patch in the middle of the light blue patch. Yeah, that place. After that, it was 5 1/2 episodes of "Two and a half men" all the way into Frankfurt AM/Main Flughafen.
I did the usual thing -- withdrew 90 euros (never 100, always 90) from my ATM (never exchange, always withdraw), shower and 2nd breakfast at the Admirals club, a quick check of the weather in all the German cities, and walked over to the train station, not really deciding yet which direction I wanted to go.
One of the first trains was to Munich, so I got on that one, thinking I'll stop by in Heidelberg on the way. I didn't really read the sign at the station -- this train went via Wurzburg and Nurnberg, not via Heidelberg/Stuttgart. I only noticed that after the train left the airport!
Oh well, I got off at Nurnberg, roamed around the station looking for a place to eat lunch, didn't find anything interesting, didn't go into town, and got back on another train to Passau -- my final destination for today.
Now I thought I wanted to get off at Regensburg -- had read some stuff on it before and one of my uncles had also told me it was nice... Well, I fell asleep! The train went right through the beautiful city of Regensburg without me getting off of it.
Fortunately I did wake up before crossing the border into Austria (final destination of this train was Vienna) -- my rail pass is only valid for Germany. When I woke up it was in the middle of a winter wonderland. It had snowed overnight and everything was white -- just gorgeous! The train pulled into Passau Hauptbahnoff right on time at 14:26.
The motel I had reserved was before I had cancelled my car rental reservation. I had chosen it because it had free parking. Well, its about 3km from the train station, and now I had to walk it -- in the cold, dragging my bag behind me through patches of snow on top of cobblestone streets. Aaaah the unexpected joys of travel...
Passau is a gorgeous city. I had downloaded a webcam application on my iphone and had seen live pictures of this town a few days ago... I knew what to expect but not that it would be THIS BEAUTIFUL!
The town is where the Inn river flows into the Danube, at the Austrian border not far from Munich, Salzburg and Linz. My hotel is on the banks of the Inn river, very near the Innstadt brewery. (The Lowenbrau brewery building is also visible, on the other end of town). Not that I'm much of a beer fan...
First order of business after checking in to the hotel was finding a place to eat. That meant walking back to the center of town, but this time with a much lighter load on my back! I took the long way, strolling along the river on a road that isn't on any map (ok so its a bicycle route). The sun was setting as I was crossing the bridge into town (about 4pm), and that timing was perfect to just linger and enjoy the views on both sides! I waited until the sun went down then rushed to the other end of the bridge to take some more pictures while there was still some light left.
After that -- "first order of business". I walked by a Croatian restaurant on the banks of the Danube, but the "tourist menu" and one of the waiters standing outside telling me to come in didn't interest me much. Finally ended up having a whole pizza at an italian restaurant... where the restroom was closed for repairs. Then it was time to head back across the Inn for some not-as-nice night views of the city.
There's a grocery store next to my motel, and I stocked up a little on food and drinks for tomorrow (and right now as I'm typing this). The peach pastry there was good too :)
Tomorrow is much the same as today -- meaning I have no idea how I want to go back to Frankfurt. Not going to Heidelberg and Regensburg today makes me want to go tomorrow. But then again, Munich and Berlin aren't out of the question either! I guess it all depends on where it is snowing...
The pictures have turned out quite good, at least all of them after the first self-picture taken yesterday in Dallas...
http://www.callmewanderer.com/europe/eur08-4/index.html#TOP
(see that after 15 minutes from RIGHT NOW).
Auf wiedersehen,
-Ich (I think)
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Nov 27 | Contents | Nov 29 |