Christmahanukwanzika, Part 3: Munich-Salzburg-NYE

Seeing as how I may be the only Jew in the history of the world to go on a road trip specifically to go to church, I promptly inoculated myself against apostasy, upon our return to Munich, by setting out the menorah and lighting the candles for the seventh night of Hanukkah. Only after that were we able to move on to other things.

The week between Christmas and New Year's was an interesting one for the city of Munich. There was an element of anarchy to the whole thing that is generally lacking in the States, and I kind of liked it. So while Laura and I repeated in our endeavors of the first week, this time with different destinations and attractions, the city slowly disintegrated into chaos around us. Like I said, interesting.

The day after we got back, we went to see the Munich Camerata perform a concert of music for chamber orchestra--Vivaldi, Handel, Telemann, and the like--courtesy of Laura's host family, the tickets being their Christmas present to her. It was a nice affair, the music was good, and we were, of course, dressed to kill. Spurning the Hofbräuhaus for dinner, we settled on a small, hole-in-the-wall indigenous restaurant, and there we began to hatch our plans for the coming week.

The Peterskirche in Munich has the cool distinction of having a balcony at the top of the church to, affording spectacular views of the city and beyond, to which you can climb. So one cold, overcast winter day, after visiting the Viktualienmarkt (a large, outdoor, year-round food market the likes of which you would not believe - exotic and quotidian food both exerting their inimitable power over helpless passersby), we each paid our euro and climbed the long, long staircase to the top, pausing only to allow the odd gaggle of rude American tourists to shove past us, and, occasionally, to photograph some of the best graffiti therein. When we got to the top, we were rewarded for our efforts:

Big City

The Frauenkirche and Rathaus, looking north

That scenic experience behind us, and thwarted in our attempt to secure a steak dinner (a long and harrowing tale that is still too raw upon my heart to relive), we headed over to the North Gate of the city.

Not pictured: The Korean tourists standing directly behind me, taking the exact same picture

This particular week, in truth, turned out to be a bit less productive and a tad more lazy than the previous one. While we did see some cool things in addition to the ones you see above, and we did eat at some places I would not have expected (including a ridiculously good Mexican restaurant that, to my utter delight, uses real jack cheese on their burritos, something that is apparently rare here in Europe), the memory thereof is now so hazy with its distance in the past that I can't quite remember specifics. What is essential to the tale is that we spent the week having cultural experiences and planning our New Year's. So when the weekend rolled around, we were prepared.

One of the better impulse decisions we made on this trip (and one of the better ones I have ever made in my life) was to take a day trip to Salzburg the day before New Year's Eve. It was a confluence of circumstances that made this possible: It's only a two-hour train ride from Munich, it is right across the border from Germany, and Bavarian Transit offers a round-trip, multi-person ticket for €29. Why not go? we asked. No reason, we replied. So let's go, we resolved. We went.

The train ride was comfortable enough (train travel in Germany is, I can say without fear of reprisal, far superior to its counterpart in Bulgaria. Ah, the wonders of a high-income economy), but when we got to Salzburg, it was cold, with a capital COLD. Braving the elements--including hail-like snow--like the determined tourists we were, we set out and saw a great many wonders of the city:

The scenic views,

Apparently, Anonymous is in Salzburg, too

the 961349 monuments to Mozart,

Handsome fellow.

and a museum of classical art that we inadvertently snuck into, not realizing that admission was €6.

Having absorbed all these wonders, we ventured up the hill to the Salzburg Fortress; basically, your standard castle on top of a mountain. But oh, is it scenic.

Seriously

The mountain to which we sung excerpts from Mozart's Requiem. That's right, I brought my score.

Did I mention it was cold? Well, let me mention it again, because we were eventually forced to take refuge in a Chinese restaurant and subsequently forced to order dinner while waiting for the hour to come when we could catch our train. Salzburg, for all its visual virtue, is not a very big town, and we were sufficiently cold to decide that we didn't really need to see too much more of it. So we passed our time in the marginally-warmer-than-the-elements restaurant, caught the train, and returned to whence we came.

The story of New Year's Eve:

In the course of our down time of the previous week, we had entertained many possibilities for how to spend our New Year's, including our original plan of going to Vienna (nixed for lack of money), outdoor concerts (nixed for lack of clothing warm enough to withstand several hours of intense cold), and a Goth Club (nixed for lack of eyeshadow and tight jeans). We eventually settled on a run-around-in-the-streets, make-it-up-as-you-go plan. We began our evening innocently enough with a big, cozy pasta dinner, and for comedic effect, I'll simply fast-forward to the part where we stood outside in the rain, fireworks going off six feet behind us (and in front of us, and on either side of us), pyrotechnics bouncing off windows in the Marienplatz, yelling at--and being yelled back at by--a group of drunk Italians, asking strangers to take our picture, shoulder to shoulder with thousands of other people. And thus we spent the first minutes of 2012.

We would, in the course of our evening, make quite a few friends (including, but not limited to, a young couple from Hof, a 26-year-old Cheshire lad who was leading a pack of girls from North Carolina, and several odd Frenchmen), be paid into a club by two of them at 2:30 AM, leave at 3:00, join the innumerable, inebriated, incoherent crowd on the subway at 4:00, and be forced take a cab back home after the subway dumped us off with nary a bus in sight. But all in all, a satisfying way to spend New Year's Eve in Europe.

New Year's Day 2012 dawned warm and overcast, and as it was my last day in Germany, we decided--along with half the city of Munich, since there is apparently nothing else to do on January 1--to take an easy walk around the city, which gave us the chance to see a few more things that we had theretofore missed. We finally got around to see the Landtag building, as well as another Gothic-y church that I had been wanting to see up close. The word(s) of the day was (were) taking it easy, and this we did, not having the energy to do much else.

Palatial

Flying High

The Boulevard from above

At the waning of the light

Idyllic

Exhausted, we headed for home, and the next day, I was back to Sofia.

It was a rather nice trip, and a monumentally satisfying two-week hiatus from all the stress I had been accumulating. I was glad to have the time and the experiences. All of them.

The last two weeks' tale will be forthcoming tomorrow, or perhaps Sunday. Thanks for sticking with me, so far, and adios.