Munich: City of Bells

Munich is a city of church bells. You can hear them every hour, ringing from every direction, their different tones blending harmoniously with each other.

And if you’re there on trash day, you can also hear the early morning clanking of thousands of beer bottles being dumped into trucks. This of course pairs nicely with the drunk tourists reveling in the streets, pretending they can keep up with the Germans who were weaned on hops.

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Salzburg Austria City Tour: Part 1

Anyone who grew up watching Sound of Music has a certain expectation of Austria — pristine landscapes, luxurious palaces, beautiful music, really old buildings…and I am SUPER happy to say I experienced ALL of this to be true! Eric & I recently returned from a two week trip to Austria & southern Germany. My next few blog posts will cover this trip.

The first day of our trip began with a flight to Munich followed by a train to Salzburg (flights were MUCH cheaper to Munich). I had purchased a Bayern ticket before we left the US, so all we had to do was find the next train to Salzburg & locate the correct platform. Easy Peasy. The 10 minute bus ride in Salzburg to our hotel is what gave us a near apoplexy. I had looked up a possible route before we left home, so I knew we needed “Bus Line 2,” but I DIDN’T know there would be different kinds of kiosks & homeless teens asking us for money while we’re trying to figure out how to buy a ticket — that was our first panic attack. The second panic set in after we purchased the ticket & realized it didn’t say what bus or platform to use. I thankfully remembered seeing the bus # on the kiosk screen, but we still had to guess on the platform.
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