Bavaria - Austria, 2015: 2015

Thursday, August 13, 2015

Day 14-15. Munich

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I’ve been to Munich about 10 years ago, but remembered very little of it: big park, Olympic Stadium, TV tower and surfing in the channel in the middle of the city.

We had two days in Munich, and, remembering our very positive experience exploring Granada on segways last year, we took a Munich segway tour. But it was on the second day of our stay. On the first day, we went to BMW World and Museum and Olympia Park.

BMW - one of the world’s best (if not the best) car and bikes manufacturers setting high standards for automotive industry - is a result of a merger of Bayerische Motorenwerke (giving the name to the company) and Bayerishe Flugzeugwerke in the beginning of 20th century. It is the largest private employer in Germany today.

They started by building airplane engines during and after the WWI, added car manufacturing in 1929, had to stop it during WWII and survive making pots, pans and bicycles until 1948.

According to history BMW has always been a company making brave and risky decisions, which later paid off.

BMW Welt is a showcase of BMW products with interactive stands, workshops, simulators, racing games, bike tracks and regular bike shows. The entrance is free, since it is basically a shop.

Entrance to the museum across the road is not free, but not expensive either - just for 10 euros you get access to a very modern, interesting and educative exhibition on several floors.

It tells a story of BMW motor, motorbike and car making, car racing and trophy winning, design evolution and experiments, even the history of marketing and advertisements of their products.

There was a separate exhibition for Mini fans, called “A Mini Story”, which we did not visit, but I bet it was as interesting as the main museum. Definitely worth a visit if you are in Munich.

Olympiapark was built for 1972 Olympic games, in a very modern style for those days (and it still looks unusual and futuristic now). There was a summer festival starting on its grounds when we came, so the area was extremely busy with lots of kiosks with sweets and food, a stage for evening performance, waterski attraction on the lake and a big crowd. To be honest, the park felt and looked much better when I saw it last time, quiet and peaceful.

We then went back to Freising, a small and a very nice town close to the airport. The town is a very convenient place to stay when visiting Munich, just 15 minutes bus ride from the airport and 30 minutes S-bahn or regional train ride to central Munich. According to the legend the town was established by a monk, whose horse was killed by a bear around this place, and as a punishment he loaded a bear with his belongings and made him carry those to where the monk was headed.

Munich on segway

On the next day at 10 AM we were in the center of Munich reviving our segway riding skills. Interesting fact: in order to take the tour you had to confirm you had a driving license. We did not have this requirement in Spain. On the other hand Munich center is a much busier place too.

The guide - Matt - was a Brit, having lived in many different countries and ended up living in Munich because his wife was German. He told us many interesting facts about the history of Bavaria and Munich area and its kings and showed who of the rulers was responsible for this or that beauty or ugliness in the city. It was also very interesting to discover how Nazi movement developed here in Munich and there is a substantial amount of architecture in the center, that the city owes to Adolf Hitler.

Did you know, that Octoberfest started as King Ludwig I’s wedding celebration, which happened in the beginning of October? All the people were invited and given free beer to celebrate the royal wedding, and the tradition continued year after year until today. What is interesting though is that only beer breweries registered within Munich are allowed to have a stand on the Octoberfest. There are 6 such breweries in Munich, and, ironically, the brewery owned by the descendants of the royal family, grands-grand-grandkids of the very king, whose wedding started it all, have brewery registered outside Munich, and so are not allowed to participate. They say, though, that their beer is not the best either.

We did visit the “big park” I remembered from last time which turned out to be the English Garden - the world's largest public urban park. It was built by archduke and elector Carl Theodor, who was disliked by the people of Bavaria. So he tried to win citizens' love by improving the city, English Garden was one of those improvements. One part of English Garden is famous for river surfing on a standing wave - an Eisbach ("ice brook") river, that goes through the park into the busy street in central Munich, has a strong current (the flow velocity of the icy water is about 5 meters at a rate of 20 tons per second) and is the largest urban surfing place in the world.

The banks of the Isar river is a place loved by young people, bathing, suntanning, hanging out and having parties.

In general, Munich left a very pleasant impression with a rich (both literally and metaphorically) history and a great heritage as a result. It is said to be the best place to live in Germany, with the investments flowing into it, mountains and lakes nearby, great weather and beer gardens!

Conclusions

With this, our trip around Bavaria and Austria has come to an end. It was so good, that minor downsides or disappointments we had did not even register in my mind. Austria proved once again that it is a beautiful place to be, and Bavaria won my love.

As for Alps, I thought I'd have enough of the mountains and lakes (it's been 3 years in a row I am visiting Alps), but it turned out I am an addict now. The more I get of it, the more I want.

Sunday, August 9, 2015

Day 13. Werfen ice caves

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In the hotel last night while surfing through the brochures about Salzburg neighborhoods I stumbled upon the Werfen Ice Caves and suddenly remembered that those were the caves I planned to visit 2 years ago, when unexpected snow changed our route and we missed those. It was just an hour drive south of Salzburg and we decided to go. The decision turned out to be the best spontaneous decision in this vacation.

Werfen is a small market town in the Austrian state of Salzburg. It is mainly known for medieval Hohenwerfen Castle and the Eisriesenwelt ice cave, the largest in the world.
The castle looks magnificent, especially considering that as you approach the town and drive to the caves you get to see it from many different angles all of which provide a truly remarkable sight.

Getting to the cave is not a trivial task. First, you drive up the curvy mountain road and end up parking about 1500m above the sea level next to the ticket office, all the while being surrounded by magnificent and mighty mountains.

Having bought a ticket to the cave and a cable car taking you up to it, you have to walk 500m more up the hill to the cable car itself. Again, the walk is very picturesque.

The cable car takes you up the steep cliff a little bit...

... past the ominous stone faces of the Alps ...

... above the dangerous hiking trails (you can skip the cable car and take this trail below to get to the cave. It would take you 1.5 hours instead of 5 minutes by cable car. If you get there at all. The trail looked extremely dangerous to me).

At the end of the ride yet another walk awaits you, even more picturesque and amazing. I felt like I was in a movie. High Alps always make me feel very humble and powerful at the same time. It feels like I am seeing this beauty for the first time and I have never seen anything more beautiful than this. Every time I visit high Alps I feel it anew.

The gallery, carved in stone led us up and up to the opening in the mountain - entrance to the caves.

The cave is inside the Hochkogel mountain in the Tennengebirge section of the Alps. It is the largest ice cave in the world, extending more than 42 km into the mountain, with 1 km covered completely with ice. The cave was originally discovered in 1879 by Anton Posselt, a natural scientist from Salzburg. But he did not explore much. Alexander von Mörk, a speleologist from Salzburg was the one who explored it thoroughly and led several expeditions into the caves beginning in 1912. He was killed in WWI in 1914 and is buried inside the cave. Starting from 1920s the tours for explorers were offered in the cave. People came in the evening and stayed for the night in the hut, built specially for this purpose. Now there is a restaurant and cable car's upper station. In the morning they hiked up for 1.5 hours to get to the cave and spent there 6 to 8 hours, climbing on ice about a kilometer up and then a kilometer back down.

Today the tour takes slightly more than an hour, with narrow wooden stairs built on the ice for visitors: 700 steps up and 700 steps down, you make a strange and surreal journey in almost complete darkness, except for small open fire gas lamps given to the group at the entrance and a bright magnesium lights tour guides use.

After +30C outside, even with 4-5 layers of clothing the wet and cold (0C!) air inside the cave almost instantly penetrates you to the bone. On the entrance, due to 30 degrees difference in temperature there is a strong gust of wind, that seems to suck you into the cave and then suddenly subside as you step inside. The pictures are not allowed inside, so this is the only one made at the entrance, the rest are better seen in professional quality at the Eisriesenwelt site.

After the tour we stopped for lunch at the hut next to the cable car station. The birds (obviously, predators) were waiting for food at the tables and didn't hesitate to grab any pieces whenever offered (or eaters not looking...).

On the way back I stopped for one more small photoshoot with local cows, which are everywhere in Alps.

In conclusion, I must say, Eisriesenwelt is a must-see if you love mountains and caves.
It made a grand finale of my trip to Alps this year, making a great impression and leaving me hungry for more.

Next and last stop of our trip was Munich and Freising - a small town near the airport, from where we planned to explore Munich and fly home.

Day 12. Hellbrunn & Salzburg

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In the evening of Day 11 I suddenly realized that I have booked 2 hotels for one night. We had to move from St Wolfgangsee closer to Salzburg the next day and we still had the current hotel booked for one more night. A quick chat with the guy at the reception ended up with his promise to mark the room as available on Booking.com and not charge us for the night provided they find someone else to occupy the room. I don't know if they did, but the next morning we've got an invoice not including the last night, which was great. Kudos to Hotel Aberseehof for accommodating our request!

Next morning we drove to Salzburg, town of Mozart, remembering our last pleasant impressions about it. We started with Hellbrunn - a summer residence of archbishop of Salzburg, built exclusively for pleasure. It was not that special, nice, small and cosy, with one interesting feature. The architect building the palace was a fan of fountains and a man with a sense of humor. He built trick fountains throughout the place which allowed archbishop to surprise and spray his guests.
The tour of the palace includes getting wet. The guide was attentive though and, while keeping the tricks pretty much a surprise, advised those not wishing to get wet. Kids were happy to get totally wet though, and jumped and ran around under the unexpected jets of water.

I did not make any pictures of my own, mostly since I did not mind getting wet myself and was protecting my camera. On the picture below is a dining table with chars having holes in the middle. The Prince sat at the head of the table, and then, at his will the fountains built into the chars started spraying water at the oblivious guests. The only chair without the fountain was the Prince's.

"HellbrunnJune2003" by Matilda - Own work. Licensed under CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

After Hellbrunn we went to Salzburg itself and toured the Old Town again. This time it did not appeal to us as much as last time, so we wrapped up quickly and went to our next hotel on the hill next to Salzburg with a beautiful view from the restaurant.

Tuesday, August 4, 2015

Day 11. St Wolfgangsee. 3 Berge, 3 Orte, 3 Steige*

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For centuries Salzkammergut area has been known and used for its salt mines, a "white gold" of the time, which made Salzburg - a center of the region - one of the richest towns in Austria.

St Wolfgangsee is a pretty large lake in the Salzkammergut area, a famous Austrian resort providing opportunities for swimming, walking, hiking, climbing in summer, skiing in winter and simply enjoying yourself all year round. We've been here 2 years ago (see my 2013 trip blog here in russian) and used the opportunity to come back again. There are three main towns on the lake: St Gilden, St Wolfgang im Salzkammergut and Strobl, with several more smaller villages in between.

We came to Strobl in the afternoon of the 10th day. Heavy rain started right after we had arrived and continued through the evening and night and only by morning the sun was shining again.

It was a hiking day for me. The area features numerous hiking trails, from leisurely walks to real climbing.

The first route I chose was a trail marked as beautiful in a guide, along the gorge, promising breathtaking views. The route led to a small lake called Schwarzensee, rich in fish, at the height of 716 m above the sea level.

At first the trail was pretty steep and challenging, but after a while it became a flatter road winding inside the forest on the hill slope. Down below there was a mountain stream, but calling this a gorge was an overstatement. Due to hot weather the stream was almost dry, so it wasn't as spectacular as it could have been.

One of the most beautiful sights on the way were numerous Cyclamens, or alpine violas as we call them. Small and gentle, they grew in patches here and there.

At the lake there were two restaurants with customary Apfelstrudel, huge cups of coffee and no credit cards accepted. In general, once outside the big cities and highways it's almost impossible to find a place to eat where you can pay with a bank or credit card. Bargeld (cash) only. This is especially true in Bavaria, even in cities, due to high bank charges for card payments. It's easier in Austria, but in the mountain villages still - stash cash!

Such a short and easy trail was not enough challenge for me this day, so I picked the next one - a pilgrim way over 3 hills, passing a famous local church called Falkenstein. It is a part of one of Europe's cultural pilgrimage routes - St. Rupert's. Clearly marked, with signs telling you the history of the place (albeit in German only), steep in the beginning and at the end, flat in the middle, it was a great pleasure. It started in the village called Riedl on the lake shore...

... and went up the hill at some places so steep, that even bikers on mountain bikes had to walk it, except for lucky ones having an electrical bike.

Last glance at the lake before entering the forest...

... and off you go into the woods on the slope of the hill, going up and up...

... until you reach a next bench and a bunch of tired bikers and hikers, all greeting each other, resting and admiring the view. One very pleasant feature of these places, or trails, or people? is that everyone I met on trails greeted each other. You could only guess from their Hallo's, Grüß Gott's and Gruetzi's whether they were German, Swab, Austrian, Swiss or someone else, trying to look German, Austrian or Swiss (like us). In any case it felt real good to meet and greet people on the way.

At the top the forest gave way to a nice grassy plateau with a Falkenstein church built into the mountain. The church was open, with benches, candles and even a bell that you could ring (and everybody did, breaking the pleasant silence of the forest).

On my way down on the other side of the mountain I realized that I went in the direction different from the one the route was designed. Not that it mattered to me, it's just all the way down there were stone crosses depicting images of Stations of the Cross (Jesus Christ on the day of his Crucifixion), and the idea was that you go uphill passing these and presumably feeling something remotely resembling suffering of the Jesus going up the Golgotha. For me it was a pleasant (although pretty steep) walk down with more views to the emerald waters of Wolfgangsee.

After the late lunch in one of the guesthouses near Strobl, I was still not tired and decided to finish the day hiking the mountain nearby. The beauty of the trail I picked was that it had a steep ("red") part in the beginning, promised beautiful views of the lake on top of the mountain and then a nice and easy descent ("blue" trail) back to where I started via the Kleefeld wildpark. Sounded amazing.

Since it was getting closer to the evening my plan was to pass the red part of the trail - steep hike - first and then come back with a longer flatter semicircle. In this case even if it started to get dark, I would be able to easily descend on a wide walkable road.

The important part was not to miss the fork at the beginning of the trail and go to the steep part first. But the trail signs were so confusing, that in spite of checking the map and the surroundings I took the wrong turn and ended up being on the flatter blue trail in the first part of my journey. When I realized my mistake it was too late to come back so I enjoyed the lambs and goats in the wild park on my way and then sprinted up the mountain to make it as soon as possible to the top, because I had no idea how steep the descent was and how long it will take me. On the way up the road slowly became less and less visible until it finally turned into a barely visible narrow trail on the top. But by this time I realized with a sense of relief, that I made it to the top with still plenty of time to go down.

A nice evening view to St Wolfgangsee lake opened from the top of the mountain.

I spent a great deal of time just sitting on the old trunk of the tree looking to the boats sliding peacefully on the emerald water surface. The forest around me was quiet - just the buzzing of mosquitoes and a noise of cars driving below on the road, amazingly loud, was heard at the top.

After some time I decided it was time to go back and I went to the red route. It was not very hard but it was harder than I expected. Actually, the worst part was that the trail was almost invisible and only the markings on the trees in the form of austrian flag with a trail number showed me where to go next. Sometimes I couldn't find any trees with the marks.

Eventually I made it to the base of the hill, passing several beautiful stops with views on the way, also noting where I have made the mistake on my way up and noting that I would have made this mistake in any case because the signs were really ambiguous.

By now I was finally tired and it was time to call it a day. One important outcome of it was that I really liked my hiking experience and there was one more reason now to come back to Alps - this time to go up the mountain without cable car. And to my greatest pleasure the amount of trails to hike and views to admire is big.

*3 Berge, 3 Orte, 3 Steige (german) - 3 mountains, 3 places, 3 hikes

Wednesday, July 29, 2015

Day 9-10. Up and down Danube river.

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The next two days did not produce many pictures since we were busy - the first day - biking, the second one - driving.
Melk abbey is built on the high bank of the Danube river in Wachau, close to the famous wine valley. Cruise boats go up and down Danube, stopping at Melk and many other small beautiful towns and villages in this area. The wine valley can be explored hopping on and off the boat, driving by car or riding by bike. We took a bike downhill from Melk to Krems and then a boat back upstream.

The recommended bike route goes on the north side of Danube and the first couple of villages are not that remarkable.

Then the vineyards start - steep long terraces with vines, formed by mountains, silt, Danube and human hands - interrupted by small cosy villages and wineries.

Bike trail wound among the vines, mostly downhill, sometimes going up, busy with bikers traveling in both directions. The route is extremely popular among bike tourists, riding their bikes loaded with backpacks and probably staying in small villages along the way.

Slightly higher went along the touristic railroad - Wachaubahn.

Weissenkirchen is a small village featuring a church with white tower (Weissenkirchen means "white church"). Besides vineyards surrounding it, if you want to learn more about Wachau region, you can visit Wachaumuseum situated here.

Closer to the end of the valley, Dürrstein is the nicest town of them all.

The view to Danube from the town walls is amazing.

The narrow streets are filled with local restaurants and shops offering apricot (Marillen) products from jams to liquors and wines from the hills around.
We happened to be in the region in the apricot and chanterelle season and almost every restaurant served fresh chanterelle dishes as part of their tageskarte and there were places along the road where you could buy fresh delicious apricots just picked from the trees around.

We left bikes in Krems and landed in a riverside cafe waiting for the boat. At the next table a small cutie waited for the boat as well..

Danube is busy with cruise and cargo ships going up and down the river.

Not only people, but buildings themselves on Danube shores are very friendly and welcoming...

On the next day before driving off to Wolfgangsee we came back to Wachau valley to admire its atmosphere again and taste the local wines (the idea of tasting it while riding bikes did not seem great to us yesterday). We found a nice vinotek around Weissenkirchen with a shady garden...

... romantic pavillion for one ...

... and a couple of aboriginal sparrows, who didn't mind posing for the camera ...

With this the Wachau visit was completed and we drove off to north-west Austria for some more hiking.