4 Days in Bavaria--Day 2

Salzburg actually started at the end of Day 1 but I’ll wrap it all together into this blog so as not to confuse our reading multitude. Also, the topic of this series of blogs is 4 Days In Bavaria and as I ended the Day 1 blog I mentioned that you’re probably saying, “Salzburg is not in Bavaria.” However, not surprisingly, given the volatile nature of the region and regimes, Salzburg was indeed a part of Bavaria from the 8th to the 14th century and again from 1809-1815, so that’s good enough for us.

Salzburg (Salt Castle) derives its name from the local salt mines and the salt barges that used the Salzach River which flows through the city. Settlements in the area have been here since Roman times. It was annexed by Bavaria in the 700’s and would not win its independence as a prince-bishopic of the Holy Roman Empire until the 14th century. In the 18th century the pro-Catholic city would expel almost its entire protestant population. In 1815 it became a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire until that regime's defeat at the end of World War I. Salzburg, along with all of Austria was again annexed by Nazi Germany in 1938 and would be heavily damaged by allied bombing during the war. After WW II the city and the country remained non-aligned in the cold war. Salzburg still today embraces and celebrates the fact that it is the birthplace and home town of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, born here in 1756.

If you ever drive to Salzburg for a visit you’ll find out quite quickly that there’s essentially no private autos allowed in the old town and that also includes no parking. But, smartly the city has built a large underground parking area in the high ridgeline that runs along the south side of the old town. Here’s the entrance to the tunnel that leads to the old town section of the city. Just to the right of this tunnel is the entrance to the parking area for the entire old town section of town. Hildmannplazt, Parking Area B.

After parking underground, there’s a maze of levels and walkways, including shops. Signs mark the way quite well. We followed the signs to the Dom (Cathedral) to this exit. Parking to hotel was 10 minutes.

We did a quick check-in to our hotel and, since we arrived later than planned, we hit the streets for some quick sightseeing. This is the Salzburg Cathedral. Although there were previous cathedrals on this site, the present building was begun in 1614 and finished in 1628. Mozart was baptized here.

The north side of Salzburg Cathedral. Although the front façade of the cathedral is rather ornate you can see this side, along with the other two sides, is pretty plain.

Interior of Salzburg Cathedral.

Ceiling in Salzburg Cathedral.

The skyline of Salzburg is dominated by Hohensalzburg (High Salzburg Castle) which sits atop Festungberg, the mountain that lays on the south side of the old town.

Getreidegasse is the main shopping street in the old town of Salzburg. It’s lined with restaurants, shops and souvenir stores.

Getreidegasse 9 is the birthplace and home of Mozart and, of course, a main tourist attraction in the city.

Mozart statue. And with that, officially, Day 1 of our Bavaria trip was at an end.

Here we are at the no-kidding beginning of Day 2. The smallest parade in the world. Here’s the band.

Here’s the parade thingies. That’s it, parade over. Just a band and thingies. No idea what this was for.

Salzburg looking south from the Salzach River. You can really tell from this picture just how high above the city the castle sits. Hohensalzburg was originally begun in 1077 and various walls and ramparts were added over the years. It is one of the largest medieval castles in Europe.

We’re in the Mirabell Palace which was begun in 1606 as a royal summer home. It has beautiful sculptured and geometrically styled gardens. A number of scenes from the movie The Sound of Music were filmed here. This Pegasus fountain is where the von Trapp children sang “Do-Re-Mi.”

This trellised pathway at the Mirabell Palace was also used in The Sound of Music as the children frolicked through the garden. Check out my top notch frolicking.

Time for a break from sightseeing. Jeff has a shirt he purchased from the Munich Beer Drinker’s Guide website. On the back of the shirt around 50 beer halls/gardens are listed with a small box in front of each where a person can check off after visiting that particular establishment. Well, one of those places is the Augustiner Bräustübl in Salzburg. So, of course, here we are.

The brewery, the Augustiner Bräu, Salzburg Mülln.

Jeff with a fresh glass of Augustiner. Another square filled.

Another image of Hohensalzburg. We’re on our way back to the old town and that’s our next stop, the castle.

You can walk up to Hohensalzburg or you can take this funicular train. Two train tickets please.

Old town Salzburg from the castle. Slazburg Cathedral on the right and the brown, porcelain roofed church on the left is Franziskanerkirche

Doing an audio tour of Hohensalzburg. Just hanging out in the dungeon.

This wheel is a torture device used in medieval times. Note the blade that was attached to the outside of the wheel. The intent was to drop the wheel, blade first, onto folks that they might an issue with.

Inside Hohensalzburg.

Hohensalzburg courtyard.

The exterior wall of Hohensalzburg.  Over the wall around this platform the drop is 100 feet to the rocks below. Hohensalzburg was under siege a number of times but was never taken by force.

From the central tower within Hohensalzburg, the highest point in Salzburg, a panoramic view of the Salzburg and the surrounding area.

The funicular train tracks back down to the city. Funicular trains use the weight of the down- going car to help pull up the up-going car. For most of the trip there’s just a single track except for the area where the two cars pass which you can make out here near the bottom.

One of the best beer halls and favorite beers of Salzburg is Stiegl, which conveniently is located just up the hill from the funicular train bottom platform.

Much needed nutrition after intense sightseeing.

Inside Franziskanerkirche (Franciscan Church) which is one of the oldest churches in Salzburg. It’s origin is uncertain but the first renovation is known to have taken place in the early 8th century.

Incredible porcelain artwork inside Franziskanerkirche.

Day 2 is done, at least the sightseeing part.  There was still some necessary nutritional needs.  Next blog, "4 Days in Bavaria--Day 3."

4 Days in Bavaria--Day 1

A couple weeks ago we took a little four-day Bavaria trip. There were a few places there that we’d never visited so we hopped in the car and made the trip. Our first stop, north of Munich, was to complete the monastery brewery trifecta at Kloster Scheyern. With that, along with our previous visits to Kloster Weltenburg and Kloster Andechs, we would have then visited all three of the German, active monastery breweries; what an accomplishment!

Driving through the Bavarian countryside is always pretty but what could be better than a field of new hops plants climbing their wires with a quaint German village in the background.

GPS, or SatNav as the Brits call it, works great here in Europe. It's hard to imagine how we got around over here years ago with only a map. Once in a while though the instructions you hear out of the GPS are quite hilarious. Here's one shortly before we arrived at Kloster Scheyern.

We're here! The flags of Kloster Scheyern were welcoming us on a very nice sunny day. The monks began brewing beer in 1119 for their own consumption and some of the lucky local people. In the mid-1800's the monks moved their brewing operations to Augsburg but in May 2006 the monastery’s newly renovated brewery began operating once again on the premises of Kloster Sheyern, making it just the third active monastery brewery in Germany.

Kloster Scheyern brewery began operations in 1119, which is certainly quite some time ago, but not as early as Kloster Weltenburg which began in 1050, but much early than Kloster Andechs which began in 1455.

The newly renovated brew house at Kloster Scheyern. That wooden box to the left of the door has sacks of potatos that people can buy and then drop their money in a small box on the front.

The Kloster at Scheyern. No monks, priests, friars in sight.

Kloster Scheyern beer garden. Very inviting.

The reason we’re here.   We have now visited and sampled the beers of all three active monastery breweries in Germany.

So, that square’s filled and our next destination is Salzburg, Austria, a simple hour and a half drive . . . we thought. Traffic around Munich and all the way southeast to the Austrian border was horrendous. So this border sign driving into Austria took three and half hours instead of the planned one and a half.

We finally made it, the exit into Salzburg. Linz and Graz are also cities in Austria.  The white ovals are also pointing in the direction of  SK-Slovakia, CZ-Czech Republic, H-Hungary, SLO-Slovenia. You might be saying, Salzburg? That’s not Bavaria. More on that in the Day 2 blog.

See you in "4 Days in Bavaria--Day 2."

Bayerische Motoren Werke

Bavarian Motor Works.

We’ve spent the last three weekends in or around Munich. The last weekend of May we did a quick four day Bavaria trip that will be in a blog to follow soon but for now, our trip last weekend to pick up our new BMW X6. Here’s the images of our trip.

Thursday, 31 May

We hopped on the bus in our town, Weilerbach, for the half hour ride to the Kaiserslautern train station.  Interesting paint job on a bus that runs around the Germany countryside.

On the platform at the Kaiserslautern Hbh, Hauptbahnhof (main train station).

Here’s our ICE train pulling up in KTown.

Forty minutes later we’re in Mannheim.

The platform board in Mannheim showing the details for our train to Munich.

We’re staying at Hotel Schlicker in the heart of Munich, a very short walk to the Hofbrauhaus and Marienplatz. Interesting place, you can a see here a Burger King to the left and a McDonalds to the right. There’s me waving from our room.

After a long train trip it’s always nice to visit the local beer garden and right behind Hotel Schlicker is the Viktualienmarkt and its beer garden. Here’s the Viktualienmarkt Maypole.

Jeff recuperating at the Viktualienmarkt beer garden.

In a German beer garden it’s not ucommon to see folks putting their cardboard beer coaster on top of their beer glass to prevent objects and insects from getting into their beer. Some people even bring a special beer cover with them when they visit a beer garden. The shade trees that are in many beer gardens are chestnut trees that tend to drop a lot of stuff. Here’s the kind of vegetation that falls from those trees. You certainly don't want that in your beer.

Across the street from the Viktualienmarkt is a long line of Metzgerei (butcher) shops. You don't see butcher shops like these in the states. Very pretty.

Just what you want, another picture of us in the Hofbrauhaus. So here it is.

A lot of people that visit the world famous Hofbrauhaus don’t realize that they have an outdoor beer garden. Here’s a video that shows the Hofbrauhaus beer garden which is in a square within the building complex. In Bavaria smoking is forbidden indoors so strangely, inside the beer hall the air is relatively fresh while the air in the beer garden is quite smoky.

Here’s Jeff with another beer coaster game demonstration.

If you read about our last visit to Kloster Andechs you may have watched video that showed Jeff demonstrating the beer coaster flipping game. His skill level on that occasion wasn’t all that great. So here’s his mulligan.

Friday, 1 June

Typical German breakfast at Hotel Schlicker. Eggs, sausage, fresh meats and cheese, brochen and brezel, orange juice and cappuccino.

After a 15 minute U-Bahn ride from the Marienplatz we're at the BMW headquarters in Munich. The headquarters is in this four cylinder tower and the soup bowl shaped building is the BMW museum.

Entrance to the BMW Welt (world). This is just across the street from the headquarters and museum and is the building where the car pick up takes place.

The lounge area where new BMW owners can eat and drink to their heart’s content until it’s time to meet their new car.

This is the area where folks will see their new BMW for the first time.  Each car is placed on a large disc that rotates and allows the new owners to see their car from every angle.

After accepting your new BMW you simply drive down this ramp from the presentation area to the street level and drive on to wherever you’re going.

A video that shows the BMW pick up process at BMW Welt.

BMW Welt from the outside. Behind is the Olympiaturm (Olympia Tower) located within Munich’s Olympic park. You can also just see the top of the Olympic Stadium behind the tower.

The back of BMW Welt and the walk bridge that crosses between the museum and headquarters and BMW Welt. In the background you can see the apartments that made up Olympic Village for the 1972 Munich Olympics. This is the area where Islamic terrorists took Israeli athletes hostage and ultimately resulted in all their deaths.

We took a two-hour tour of the BMW factory and it was amazingly great. No photos were allowed so we don’t have anything for that but now we’re going through the BMW museum. BMW originally was an aircraft engine manufacturer but after WW I they were restricted from that endeavor so they began making motorcycles. This is BMW’s first motorcycle, the R32.

One of BMW’s first cars, the 1929 BMW 315.

1936 BMW 328 Roadster, their first sports car.

The 1939 328.

BMW’s 1955 Isetta, two-seater. The two rear wheels are set very close together, no more than a foot or so. Only one access to the car, through the door which is the entire front of the vehicle.

The very cool 1956 BMW 507.

The beginning of the BMW 3 series. Their best selling car series.

1999 BMW Z9.

So Friday’s BMW activities are done, factory tour and museum. We’re a bit tired and what better way to reinvigorate than a bit of the world’s greatest beer, Kloster Andechs Doppelbock Dunkel, just off the Marienplatz at the Andechser am Dom.

A cute cherub in Andechser am Dom.

An interesting cherub on the door exiting Andechser am Dom. This one is actually the door handle.

Saturday, 2 June

2 June 2012. It’s our pick up date. We arrived at BMW Welt at 0800 for our 0920 schedule pick up time. Here’s the schedule for the first deliveries. We’re at the bottom.

The reception desk where they check all your paperwork; insurance, registration, customs. They also take your license plates so that they can mount them on your car.

After breakfast in the BMW Welt lounge we got a briefing about some of the features of our new car.

0920, first view of our new BMW X6.

Jeff and I with our new BMW X6.

Here’s a video of our experience picking up our new 2013 BMW X6.

Well it was a fun adventure and BMW treated us great!!  All that's left is the autobahn!!