This non-American Life

Gratuitous sledding pictures from Wallberg

Making the most out of our recent snow, yesterday some friends and I headed up the Wallbergbahn for some extreme sledding. The run takes about 30 minutes and affords amazing views of the Tegernsee and surroundings, although sometimes it’s a little too scary to admire the view when you’re barreling down a narrow path next to a steep cliff on a barely-steerable wooden contraption.

Last winter I made a post about sledding in this same location using quite similar photos. Now that we’ve lived in Munich for almost two years, I suppose I’m bound to start repeating myself. Get used to it.

Tags: Bavaria, day-trips from Munich, winter

A Rainy Day in Bad Tölz

Munich has been awfully rainy this week. What to do? Grab some friends and hop on a train somewhere, of course. Bad Tölz is an adorable little town about an hour from Munich. Despite the rain we had a lovely day. We…

…wandered the streets and imagined how cute they would be if the sun were out.

…went shopping for hats (among other things).

…found the world’s sexiest potholder.

…consumed Kaffee und Kuchen, little old lady style.

…saw the cutest train station in the world.

…and ran off to join the “Wu Wutang Clean”. I hope there’s no scrubbing involved in the initiation ceremony.

Oh yeah, and some of us even appeared on Bavarian television. Quite the exciting day.

Tags: Bavaria, day-trips from Munich, Germany

Regensburg: dults and other diversions

This weekend we hopped on a train up to Regensburg to party with the Regensbloggers. Their housewarming party conveniently coincided with the Regensburger Dult, an adorable little city fair complete with beer tents, disturbing rides, carnies, and strange shopping opportunities. I was surprised to see that it was bigger than the Auer Dult, and almost as big as Munich’s Frühlingsfest. The youth of Regensburg were out en masse, many of them wearing the most colorful tract I’ve ever seen.

A highlight of the weekend was finally getting to meet That Queer Expatriate live and in person. We had a fabulous time chasing a belederhosened emo boy around the dult together (see his blog for pics) and shopping for gingerbread hearts.

Naturally we were overcome with a feeling of deep patriotism upon seeing this ride:

Back at the party, we learned how to make awesome capa capra copu caipirinhas while marveling over the fact that in Germany, bags of ice come with instructions.

Tags: Bavaria, bloggers and the people who love them, day-trips from Munich, Germany, travel

Scenes from an early spring weekend in Bavaria

While Germany was busy swooning over our new president, we were out enjoying Germany.

We squeezed in one last sledding trip with the Rendenii (which is where we spotted this guy);

rang in the beginning of asparagus season in a beer garden on the lake;

and then got the balcony garden started.

Tags: Bavaria, day-trips from Munich, expat life, Germany

wheeeee giggle bump ow

I’d almost forgotten how much fun sledding is. I’m happy to report that the Bavarian version is almost as good as the Swiss.

Wallberg is on the Tegernsee, about an hour’s drive outside of Munich. A quick 5-10 minute ride up on the gondola is followed by at about a half hour of flying downhill on a tiny wooden sled with absolutely no steering or braking capacity. And oh, the views.

The trail gets a little mogully towards the end of the day, leading to more shouts of “ow” in between giggles and squeals of delight. If you’re lucky, your bum is numb from the cold so you don’t feel the impact as much (well, until the next day).

Tags: Bavaria, day-trips from Munich, Germany, winter

Skiing Sheffau

This past weekend we bummed a ride with the Munich International Ski Club for a day of skiing at Sheffau, Austria. Sheffau is just one of many entry points into the irrsinnig gross* ski area which includes 91 lifts and almost 300 km of slopes. There was lots of fresh snow, and a little too much sunshine. Very good conditions.

Sheffau isn’t quite as friendly for beginner skiers as Kitzbühel was, since there are areas where one has to ski red slopes to access other parts of the resort. Long red (middle) slopes are plentiful, and it would be easy to ski all day and never see the same slope twice. Lift lines were mixed, but we probably never waited more than 5 minutes to get on a lift.

One thing I disliked about Sheffau was the poorly-designed labeling system and map they had going on. Instead of numbering the trails, like most resorts do, the Sheffau folks decided to number the lifts. Horrible idea, given that trails don’t neatly correspond to lifts. We spent much too much time puzzling over maps. But otherwise it was a lovely day of skiing.

* ludicrously large

Tags: Alps, Austria, day-trips from Munich, skiing, winter

Skiing Kitzbühel

Thinking back on last ski season, we’re having a hard time remembering all the places we skied and which ones we liked the best. So this year I’m going to try blogging a little review of each place.

First up is Kitzbühel, Austria, where we recently spent a day. It’s about an hour and a half drive from Munich. It was a great place to spend the first ski day of the season, since there were tons of blue (easy) slopes. We skied the whole day and only repeated the same runs a couple times; on the other hand, neither of us found any runs we really loved. Things were icy in spots, since there hadn’t been any new snow for several days; the skies were clear and blue, and it was quite warm in the sun. We had lunch at the Pengelstein hut, which offered a pretty good variety of food (I had spinach strudel with Gorgonzola sauce).

After a day on the slopes, we headed into the town of Kitzbühel to find some food and drinks. The town itself was quite cute, and offered a variety of cafes and restaurants (mostly Italian).

We wandered into the tourist office and asked for a restaurant recommendation. They suggested Huberbräustüberl, a cozy little brewery restaurant serving typical Austrian/German food. The beer was good and the food adequate. The wait staff was friendly and seemed to have fun speaking English to the tourists around us (we spoke to them in German). Both of us filled up on dinner, so we had to miss out on the black guy in a shirt. Schade.

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My computer situation is still… not good, but hopefully that won’t last too much longer. I have plenty more blog posts that are just aching to come out…

Tags: Austria, day-trips from Munich, skiing, winter

Regensburg has markets of Christmas, too

And now for something completely different…

Yesterday some friends and I took a Bayern Ticket up to Regensburg to hang out with Sarah, Christina, Tammy, and An and force them to show us around their Christmas markets. It worked.

The offerings at the Regensburg Christmas markets were, shockingly, pretty similar to what you find at Munich’s Christmas markets, with a couple of exceptions. For example, there was an insanely fast merry-go-round. And Santa foosball. And dates in bacon coats. I’m betting these are popular Christmas presents for men – what guy wouldn’t be thrilled to have his date dressed in nothing but a coat made out of bacon? Well, not a vegetarian guy. Or a kosher guy… damn, so much for my brilliant universal Christmas gift idea. I don’t think the coats came in adult sizes, anyway (see Em’s blog for a photo of the elusive bacon coats).

Despite the dreary weather (which later turned into delightful snow), Regensburg managed to look cute in its Christmassy decorations, although the town seems to suffer from the same multiple-Santa-Claus problem that Japan has (see the Santas climbing the building in the photo above). The hot, alcoholic beverages hit the spot (although sadly no one was in the mood to try the one called heisse Liebe).

OK, enough of these distractions. Back to my Munich Christmas market crusade!

Tags: Bavaria, Christmas, Christmas markets, day-trips from Munich, Germany, holidays, Regensburg

Expats and bloggers invade Regensburg

Saturday we headed to Regensburg to spend the day at the expat meet-up organized by Christina. Regensburg is a cheap (on a Bayernpass) and easy 1.5-hour train ride from Munich, so it makes for a good day trip.

After wandering around on our own for a while, we joined the group for a guided tour of the city in the afternoon. It’s been a while since I’ve taken a guided tour of any city, and it was quite fun, even though the overarching theme (Regensburg might not look like much today, but in the past we were super important! really! Oh, and we’re very, very Italian, too!) was a little depressing.

Then it was off to a lovely biergarten for drinks in the shade before our herd of expats headed to dinner at a local Italian restaurant. It was fabulous to meet Cliff and Sarah of Regensblog, Tammy and Matthias of Coffee from a Cardboard Cup, and Tim and Heather from the Sprocket Spot, and several other non-blogging expats, too (it only seems like all of us blog…).

Us big city folk (ie., the four in attendance from Munich) left dinner on the early side hoping to catch a certain train, failed, and ended up watching most of the second half of the Russia-Netherlands game in a sports bar near the station. We were the only ones there over the age of 18, but at least we recognized the 80s music that was playing too loud for our delicate old ears.

Tags: Bavaria, bloggers and the people who love them, day-trips from Munich

Germany has lakes and mountains, too

On Sunday we headed out of Munich with some friends to do a little hiking. The drive there took us past some beautiful scenery including green pastures and clear, aqua-colored lakes. It was not long until snow-capped peaks could be seen in the distance. It was almost as if we were back in Switzerland. The most notable difference was perhaps that along the hiking trails here you greet others with “Servus” or “Gruß Gott” rather than “Grüetzi”.

We started at the bottom of the Herzogstand and hiked for 2.5 hours up. We were rewarded with sweeping views of the Walchensee and a whole lot of mountains. At the top we dined at a mountain hut restaurant. The local food offerings varied a tiny bit from that which you would find in a Swiss mountain hut. From the vegetarian perspective, I got to eat Käsespätzle with onions rather than Rösti. And the salad did not come swimming in a foot-deep pool of dressing. And naturally, the beer was much better. I’m sure the non-vegetarian offerings were somewhat different too… at least I can say that I’d never before seen this gelatinized meat monstrosity that our German friend proudly ordered:

After lunch we rode the gondola back down to the parking lot.

Tags: Alps, comparative expattery, day-trips from Munich, hiking