musings from munich

For the last week or so I was in Belgium, in a small town called “Vielsalm,” which is in the middle of nowhere, but is home to a lovely little camp/resort for families. I was there with my boyfriend, his two little brothers, his sister and her boyfriend, and his parents. We stayed in a cozy four room cabin at the top of a hill. Our days varied: either we went on a small day trip to one of the surrounding towns, or we lounged around the park and hit up the swimming pool. The schedule generally looked something like this:

9:00 a.m. The seven year old little brother unceremoniously slams open our bedroom door, shouts “ES GIBT ESSEN!” ( ≈ It’s time to eat!), pauses for no more than five seconds to see if we move, then begins the physical assault on our slumber.
9:15 a.m. We roll down the stairs to a breakfast of fresh made rolls, eggs, and coffee.
10:00 a.m. Make a bunch of sandwiches for the road, and load them into a bag with whatever other snacks we manage to throw in before loading up the cars.
10:30 Head out for a day trip. (On lazy days we just played with our computers, went to the pool, read, or watched tv).
5:00 p.m. Get back from the day trip and lounge around until dinner time.
7:00 p.m. Repeat the morning routine with the seven year old, except this time it’s less jarring because we were already awake. After dinner was more down time to do whatever we wanted.
11:00 p.m. Squeeze in as much sleep as possible before the seven year old begins the morning attack.

On our driving days we visited Luxemburg, Aachen, and Brussels. All of which were beautiful cities. Luxemburg was very clearly wealthy and Paul was delighted with all of the expensive cars, which served as eye candy. We took a bus tour of the city and the bank district was absolutely amazing. Banks from all over the world had beautiful huge buildings, and in between all of the buildings were modern art sculptures. The city had a wonderful mix of old, new, and green space. On the way back to the car we took our time walking through an expansive park in a valley between two of the larger hills. There were people sprawled out everywhere sunbathing on that beautiful day. Aachen (Germany) is a cute student town. It probably would have been a little more entertaining had we known any other students there, but it was fun nonetheless. Paul’s mom got a brochure from the tourist office and we took our own small walking tour. It was very clear that the town was by and for students, and I would have loved to spend more time rifling through all the refreshingly reasonably priced stores and restaurants. Brussels was by far my favorite. The city has a huge artistic presence: graffiti everywhere, artists selling paintings on the streets, artists painting on the streets, and musicians on every corner. As we were walking through a particularly crowded street the smell of hemp, coming from a nearby store, wafted over the crowds and I couldn’t help but feel a little bit like I was in San Francisco. The churches were also very impressive and I made sure to sneak a peak in each one that we passed. I hope that I can get back to that city someday. It just seemed like there was something interesting and exciting around every corner.

While we were traveling we were also responsible for juggling Paul’s two little brothers some of the time. This obviously made for some interesting moments along the way. On the way back from Luxemburg Paul and I had the two boys in the back seat, and Paul was tired of following his parents’ car, so he made the unilateral decision to leave Luxemburg and find our own way back home with a map. A map, which was buried amongst 100 other maps in a street guide book of Germany (and surrounding areas), which he tossed on my lap as he began to drive out of the city. I was, of course, flustered because I couldn’t find Vielsalm anywhere on the map, and Paul couldn’t help me because he was driving. Meanwhile we are listening to the Fast and the Furious Tokyo Drift Soundtrack- definitely not the ideal music for young children, but hey, who cares, it’s in English, they won’t be able to understand it anyway. I’m flipping though the pages of the street guide frantically, Paul is cruising down an Autobahn, which we know is going in the exact opposite direction as we need, and all of a sudden the seven year old in the back starts pulling my ponytail through the head rest. When that doesn’t prove successful he adds poking my shoulder and shouting my name. “What!?” I finally ask.
7 year old: “Alexa (they call me Alexa), was heisst ‘sexy’?” (What does ‘sexy’ mean?)
Me: uhhhhhhhhhhh….Paul you want to take this one?
Paul: um. Well. Um….
Me: attraktiv! Es heisst attraktiv. (Attractive! It means attractive)
Paul: YEAH, exactly!
Of all the words in all the songs, the seven year old had to pick out sexy and question its meaning at precisely the most stressful point of our drive. Of course.

Overall it was a wonderful trip, but by the end I was ready to head back to Munich, if only to escape the 9 a.m. wake up raids. Spending time with another family made me really look forward to seeing my family, which I will be doing this weekend! I’m so excited! I am going to Florida for my cousin’s wedding and everyone is going to be there. Sarasota, here I come!


The Dead Weather Hang You From the Heavens

Alright, alright. I know I have been absent for quite some time now, but I am going to try my best to pick up this little writing exercise once more. Would it help my case any if I told you that in the last two months I have been in six different countries, and visited/been visited by six separate people from the US? Maybe. How about we start with a little recap of my cross-continental adventures; I have highlighted my favorite things from each of the cities I visited, and just for your reading pleasure I am putting them in separate posts so you can pick and choose which cities you want to read about. I even went so far as to hand choose pictures and songs to go along with each city. There are many many more picture on my flickr account (link on the right) so check that out sometime as well. Hope you enjoy it!

Next week I am heading to Belgium with Paul and his family, so expect some sort of update after I return from that vacation. This will be the 12th country I have visited in my life! Exciting!

Heidi was my last visitor to Munich, and since she wanted to visit another town besides just Munich over spring break, we decided to take a short trip to Salzburg, Austria: a city that neither of us had ever visited. My friend, Matt, also tagged along and it turned out to be a great excursion. We were able to split a very cheap train ticket, and got to Salzburg within three hours. The main thing on our agenda was to take the oh-so-touristy Sound of Music tour!

Sound of Music Tour: Thanks to Rick Steve’s (who rescued me throughout these trips) we managed to get a discount on the somewhat pricey tickets for this four-hour tour. As I got on the bus, the ticket taker told me I looked like one of the children all grown up, and asked if I was going to sing for them…this moment was indicative of the corniness level of the entire experience. We drove from Sound of Music location to Sound of Music location and saw everything from the Von Trap house to the pavilion. I hadn’t seen the movie in roughly 10 years, so Heidi had to keep reminding me of what these locations actually were. While we were driving to each location, the bus driver kept us satisfied by playing songs from the musical over the intercom. Despite our weird tour guide, and bus packed with American tourists this tour made me appreciate the Sound of Music like never before. Later that night our hostel was playing the movie and the three of us couldn’t tear our eyes away from it until the Von Traps were happily traipsing through the Alps to freedom.

Salzburg is a city full of a lot of small things to discover, and is absolutely beautiful. I would love to go back there sometime, and most likely will considering its proximity to Munich.

The Sound of Music Favorite Things

It just so happens that we managed to sneak our way into Dublin for the one and only St. Patrick’s Day! I still don’t know how our timing worked out this well, but it did, and we were excited.


St. Patrick’s Day Parade: So the night before St. Pat’s we went on a backpacker’s bar crawl. Needless to say, we overdid it a little that night, so our St. Pat’s evening activities were fairly limited. We did, however, wake up in time to see the enormous parade that morning. We worse everything green that we owned, including the big shamrock glasses and green headbands we had bought the day before, in preparation. We spent a fair amount of time wandering around the parade route trying to scout out a suitable location. And by that I mean something we could climb up on because both of us were too short to see much of anything otherwise. Finally we found a cement wall next to a river, that we managed to clamber up onto, with one leg hanging over a 30 ft. drop straight into the river, and the other about 6 ft. from the sidewalk. While sitting there we met a couple of Americans and talked to them throughout the parade. The parade itself was a elaborate, long, and included more than 3,000 people. Quite the undertaking. We left a little early to beat the crowds, and get some food to cure our ever-growing hangovers.

Coastal Bus Tour: This was something on my list of things to do. I had heard that the coasts of Ireland were the most important things to see, and I couldn’t wait to find a way to get there. Luckily enough we found a 2- hour bus tour that drove us around the coasts surrounding Dublin. Our bus driver was amazing, and serenaded the double-decker vehicle with old Irish folk songs throughout the morning, and knew exactly where to make unofficial stops so that we could get a better view of the coasts. They truly are beautiful, and were everything that I expected. The cliffs were covered with wild flowers, and would suddenly drop straight down into the misty ocean. It was the perfect way to spend my last morning in Ireland.

Ireland was very cool and I wish that I had had more time there: all in all we were there for less than two days. I will definitely be going back, but next time I want to get out of the city and travel around the coastal towns for as long as I can.

Glen Hansard Say It to Me Now

Old London town was on my list of places to visit primarily because Serene wanted to go there. What better way to meet up with a friend than to rendezvous in another city? I found a cheap flight from Lufthansa and walked out of my Heathrow terminal only to find Ms.Chen waiting for me. I had been to London before, so the list of things to do came from Serene, and we packed a fair amount in for the short times that we were there (we had an excursion to Ireland in the middle of the week, so it split our London time into two segments).

Billy Elliot the Musical: I was dying to see a musical as soon as we stepped foot in London: the ads for shows were posted everywhere, and it wasn’t until I saw them that I realized how much I had missed going to see musicals. I hadn’t seen one in over a year, and since the last time I was in London I saw Avenue Q, I decided to keep up the tradition. One night Serene was meeting up with a friend, so I took the opportunity to take in a little theater. The show I really wanted to see was Spring Awakening, but, naturally, it was opening the night we left London, and I had seen almost all of the other musicals running that week. So Billy Elliot it was. I have never seen the movie so it was a completely new story line for me. Serene did my hair, and I put on a dress and heals and hit the town. The show was absolutely wonderful! It is the cutest story, and the kid, who played the lead, was outstanding! A perfect way to spend an evening in London.

Platform 9 ¾ : Ok so this is a little embarrassing, but I can’t leave it off of my list of cool things in London. Serene and I took a special ride on the tube to King’s Cross Station specifically to see this landmark. For those of you who don’t know, in King’s Cross Station in honor of Harry Potter they have erected a real live Platform 9 ¾. It has half of a luggage cart sticking out of a wall, underneath a sign that reads “Platform 9 ¾.” We took many pictures in that place in true 12-year-old girl fashion. Totally worth it.
National Gallery: I loved this museum the last time I went and I still do. It has such an amazing cross section of various epochs of art, and best of all is free. We wandered this museum, each seeking out our favorite paintings for over an hour. If you are ever in London, this is a must-see.

Overall this time around in London gave me more of an appreciation for the city. It is an interesting cross between an American city and a European one. It feels both lived in and touristy at the same time, but maintains a good balance between the two. Spending time just wandering around the different cites in London was enjoyable in and of itself. I spent my last day there doing nothing but walking across the city to the Tate Modern Museum and back again. It is a gorgeous city.

Billy Elliot The Musical (Original London Cast) Expressing Yourself

This was another town on my dad’s list, which we visited immediately after Innsbruck. The train rode from Innsbruck to Rothenburg was a hectic one, with four transfers over the course of a six hour commute. Unfortunately we had limited time in Rothenburg: we arrived at 5 p.m. in the evening and left the following morning. The town itself is extremely well preserved in the medieval style, and is so small that it pretty much becomes a ghost town after dark.

Haus-Karin: Our pension was by far the coolest thing about Rothenburg. The town didn’t interest me all that much, but this pension made it entirely worth it. It was a small place run by two retired Germans: Karin and Hans. They picked us up from the train station and drove us into a small neighborhood just outside the original city wall. Essentially they just own two houses in Rothenburg and have turned one into a bed and breakfast. Karin directed us to the best food she knew of in Rothenburg, which turned out to be a restaurant in the basement of a 400 year-old building. Awesome choice. In the morning she sat and ate the breakfast, which she had prepared, with us, and afterwards Hans drove us to the train station. An absolutely personal and wonderful experience.

Rothenburg is a cute little town and if you are at all interested in medieval history, a definite must-see. The people there are incredibly friendly and all have an interesting story.

The Decemberists The Hazards of Love 2 (Wager All)

My dad and I took a two-day trip to this pretty city, settled at the foot of the Austrian Alps. It is extremely easy to get to from Munich, so we bought a ticket and hopped on the next departing train.

Going up a Mountain: My dad found this one in a guidebook somewhere, and it turned out to be my favorite thing in Innsbruck. There was a route all the way to the top of this mountain on the outskirts of town, with two stops on the way up. We stopped at the first station and had some classic meals: Spätzle (german mac and cheese) and Wiener Schnitzel, with a killer view overlooking the entire town. We then took a series of gondolas up to the very top of the mountain. I mistakenly wore a skirt, so spent most of the 30 minutes we had at the top admiring the view from inside the hut. The wind was so strong that the birds couldn’t even fly down the mountain, and the gondola only ran once every 30 minutes. The view was absolutely spectacular, and even more fun was watching the ridiculously talented skiers and snowboarders tackle this beast of a mountain. I wish I could snowboard. So badly. Someday I will learn.

Innsbruck was a pleasant little town, and two days there was plenty of time to enjoy all the sights we had desired. Our hotel had a breathtaking view of the Alps, and once night we just stayed in and had a makeshift picnic in the hotel room. Overall, a great choice for a short excursion.

Iron and Wine Upward Over the Mountain

When our plane landed in the Barcelona airport to sunny sixty-degree weather, I felt that jolt of energy shoot through me, that you only get from a beautiful day after a series of seemingly unending cloudy ones. We dropped our things off at a beautiful hostel, with tall ceilings and a cool breeze blowing through the hallways from the open back door balconies, and made our way down to the beach.

“Fried Small Fish” :
When we got to the beach we were starving. We found a nice outdoor café and got a table with a view straight to the ocean. The whole boardwalk smelled of nothing but fresh fish and salt water, so naturally I wanted to try my hand at some Spanish seafood. The menu was mostly in Spanish, but one of the few things written in English was “fried small fish.” ‘Perfect,’ I thought, ‘a small filet of fish fried. Sounds delicious!’ I confidently pointed to that menu item and sat with Annie admiring the view. About 15 minutes later the waiter whizzed passed our table and nonchalantly dropped a plat of many small fish, which had been deep fried, heads, tails, and all. Oh man, I have never been so freaked out by food in my life. Annie, after having a solid few laugh at my calamity, promptly popped one in her mouth. She was brave, I just couldn’t eat those heads though. The eyes were looking at me. All that was running through my head was the “fish heads” song my mom used to sing when I was little. Lesson learned: Fish was plural and fried and small were modifying the group.

Tapas!:
Our days in Barcelona weren’t quite as full of museums and cultural undertakings as they were in Amsterdam, so we adapted to the Spanish lifestyle (or I should say the lifestyle of the other people in our hostel). We slept in late, wandered the city during the day, and saved up all our hunger for around 8:30 in the evening, when it was time for tapas! Tapas meals were by far my favorite of all the meals I ate during this vacation. We sat for extended periods of time, ordered one or two small dishes of food every half hour or so, and enjoyed fresh, delicious sangria. The best sangria we had was at some formerly-bohemian-now-turned-ritzy restaurant, where they made it from champagne and a large variety of citrus fruits.


Barcelona was beautiful, if not just because of the weather, but because of the buildings themselves. The city is riddled with gorgeous architecture from Gaudi, and is a nice change of pace from what I consider a typical European architecture. Overall, I liked this city but I think once visit will do.

I'm from Barcelona We're from Barcelona

Annie and I went on a tour of Europe together in 2006 and hit a fair amount of cities along the way, so when she decided to come visit me in Munich for two weeks before flying off to Berlin for her own study abroad experience we decided we should spend part of our time together exploring countries that we missed in 06. Amsterdam was one city that was on both of our lists, so we bought tickets and flew out a week after Annie arrived in Munich.


Museums: Luckily enough Annie had a friend, who is studying abroad in Amsterdam and she was kind enough to lend us a set of student museum cards so that we received extreme discounts on every museum that we visited. We took full advantage of those and visited the Van Gogh Museum, The Anne Frank House, and The Photography Museum. Of course, visiting the Van Gogh Museum marked the fulfillment of a long-standing goal of mine, and was by far my favorite. I got to see my two favorite paintings of his, in a collection that interspersed his works, with others relating to his life. The Annie Frank House was, as expected, very powerful and I can’t believe that I was able to go inside and stand in the rooms that she wrote about in her diary.Overall I very much enjoyed Amsterdam. The language is a curious cross between German and English and between the two languages I was able to understand most of what was being said in Dutch. The city is incredibly walkable, has beautiful canals around every corner, and has a cornucopia of things to do on the frequent rainy days. I am a big fan.

Guster Amsterdam

I am currently sitting in a large, well lit public library in Amsterdam, which happens to have free internet access. There is a circular book shelf in front of me, with a spiral staircase that leads to a pillow fort on the top of the shelf. The kid's section is obviously much cooler than all the rest.

Amsterdam: canals between every street, coffee shops on every corner, legalized prostitution, and all the marijuana the world could want. Ok now that I have freaked out my parents, Amsterdam really is a lovely place. Despite a constant state of dampness and light rain the city is very easy to navigate on foot. Annie and I had made plans to go to all kinds of places, and keep just stumbling upon them.

I think the most novel thing so far has been our hostel. Props to Annie for being responsible enough to book an interesting place. We got in around 8 last night, and naturally, got lost on the way to the hostel (This is Annie and me we are talking about). But I feel like this time around it was understandable, because our hostel turned out to be a boat. Yes, a straight up turn around and walk down a ladder to get in the main cabin boat. As we walked down the wooden dock to the Maria Alberta Passenger Ship I kept expecting some sea creature of the deep to jump out of the black water. I read too many comic books. We were instead greeted by a friendly old born-and-raised Dutch man, who gave us a little trouble for being late and showed us our room. He slid a wooden door open to reveal a set of bunk beds, a small sink, a one foot wide walkway that led to the roughly 2 by 3ft. bathroom. Anyone over 5'7" would not be able to stand/sleep/shower without hitting their head in this room. As appealing as the quaint quarters were (that sounds sarcastic, but this place really is cute), we decided to head out to the red light district, assuming it would be the only place with food open late.

Prostitution here is legal. Translation: girls in bikinis stand in windows surrounded by red lights and make eyes at all the passing men. We walked about 4 blocks and easily saw over 40 different women, and a smattering of men zipping up articles of clothing coming out of the window-paneled shops. The red light district is however, suprisingly safe, and we managed to find a small pub broadcasting German TV station, ZDF, which was covering the Bremen-AC Milan soccer game. We called it a night early and headed back to the boat.

Today was the Van Gogh museum. It was wonderful and I saw all of my favorite of his paintings. To be perfectly honest, it was a little overwhelming and by the end I just wanted to buy some post cards and get out of there. We also met up with Annie's friend, who is studying abroad here and was kind enough to round up some museum cards for us, meaning we get into all the museum seriously discounted (Van Gogh should have been 15 but was only 2,50) or free. We also took a tour of the Heineken brewery, which was pricey, but fun. Right now we are resting our feet and waiting for Stephanie to get out of class so that we can all go to dinner together.

It is absolutely amazing how similar the Dutch language is to German and English. First of all, everyone here speaks English- the entire Heineken Brewery was in English- but even if they don't the language has the cadence of English but the word structure and vocabulary of German. We have had absolutely not problems navigating our way through the streets with nothing but Dutch signs.

Alright, it's about time for dinner. Coming up in the next few days: Anne Frank house, photography museum, and on Sunday to Barcelona!

No song for today, but if you are looking to hear an AMAZING slice of the indie music scene and donate money to charity you should check out Dark Was the Night: A Red Hot Compilation. It is the best album that I have bought in a long time, and has some of my all time favorite artists collaborating.