A Promise Kept

Eight years ago (it is a little hard to believe it really was that long ago, but I guess the numbers don't lie... when did the time start flying by so fast?), I was in the train station in Salzburg, Austria with my friend Stephanie but did not go into the city. We sat there looking out the windows of the train seeing how beautiful it looked, and thought it would be fun to go, but we didn't get off the train. Why? I had promised Darren, then only my boyfriend although I was pretty sure we were going to get married, that he could be the first one to show me that city. He had been there when we went to Europe through a class during our time at George Fox University and loved it. When he heard that Stephanie and I were planning a trip through Europe the summer after I graduated from Oregon State University, he asked me to promise him not to go there and instead wait for him. So, eight years later, he finally got to make good on his promise to take me. I am sure that when he pictured taking me he didn't envision having his mother-in-law, her friend, and our baby along, but we had a good time and they were a good addition.

After leaving Dachau on Friday, we got back on the autobahn and headed down the road to Austria. Salzburg is near the border of Austria and Germany so we didn't have too far to go. Salzburg is an beautiful city, nestled in near the Alps and situated along a beautiful river. If you have ever seen the movie "The Sound of Music" you know this, since the movie was filmed there and based on events that happened there. There are lots of tours that will take you around to the different sites that were used in filming the movie. The tours and hype around the movie is solely for tourists, since the people there and people in Germany don't really know what the fuss is surrounding the movie. We didn't care and happily bought our "Sound of Music" tour map and walked around to some of the different sites around the city, though we didn't join an official tour.

Salzburg is also the city where Mozart was born and lived. Many of the tour sites around the city center on him and his life, and it was fun to see some of that. We didn't go into any of the museums, but I think we found the locations of all of the houses he lived in.

All of the pictures that I have included in this post are from Doreen's camera since I managed to loose our camera with all of our pictures on it while we were touring through the castle above Salzburg. It was frustrating to lose such a nice camera (although, it was the new little one that we had bought before the trip and not my bigger one), but it was long gone by the time that we noticed that it was missing and Darren ran back up the hill to the castle to check and see if it had been turned in anywhere.

The park near our hotel, and also the entrance to the Palace gardens where quite a few scenes of the movie were filmed

Darren, Mikayla, and I on the steps where the kids in the movie jumped up singing "Do, a Deer". We didn't actually know it at the time that we took this picture, but found it out later when we consulted the guide that we bought.

Darren and Mikayla running down the vine covered walkway that the kids ran down in the movie

Darren

Mikayla found herself a place to sit while we were trying to get the pictures to turn out of Darren jumping

Mom and Doreen in Salzburg

The wonderful little bakery that we found to eat breakfast at on Saturday morning before starting our day of site seeing

Mom and I in front of... something. A clock? Not sure, but we thought it looked neat.

When we got to the square that was in front of one of the main old churches in town, we saw that there were lots of horse drawn carriages offering tours of the old part of the city. We thought it would be fun to take a tour that way and get a little bit of a guided tour, too. Mikayla loved the horses.

Mom and Doreen on the carriage ride

Mikayla fell asleep on Darren during the tour

One of the main churches in the old city

View of the river with the castle in the background

Darren pushing Mikayla up the hill to tour the castle. This picture doesn't do justice to just how steep the climb was up the hill to get there.

A view out over the other side of the castle hill from the castle yard

Doreen at the castle well

A view out over the main part of Salzburg from the castle

The steps up into the castle

Vendors playing music and selling the Russian nesting stacking dolls.

The house where Mozart was born and composed some of his earliest works in

Yummy chocolates

Me posing with a cow painted with a "Sound of Music" theme

Doreen's purse, all geared up with essentials for entertaining Mikayla

The last night we were there in Salzburg, we rented the movie "The Sound of Music" from the hotel. Mikayla loved the singing parts and sat there and watched quite a bit of it until it was time for her to go to bed. She has talked about watching that movie for days since, and especially love the "Do, a deer" song.

The drive back was a little hard. What normally would be a 6 and a half hour drive turned into nearly 11 hours because of road construction and traffic jams (or "stau" as they say there) on the autobahn. It kind of felt like the never-ending trip because as soon as we would clear one delay and start to drive normal speeds, or what passes for normal there, we would hit another one. Mikayla was a trooper, though, and did pretty well. We sang a lot of songs, she watched videos on the iPod, and talked with Nana C and Doreen. My favorite was when we were talking about the swimming pool back at the hotel. We had managed to get her away from the pool the night before by saying that the pool had to sleep because he was tired. Some how that worked itself around to Nana C saying that the pool needed to sleep so it wouldn't be cranky. Mikayla thought that it was hilarious and giggled any time someone would say "cranky pool."

It was a fun visit to Salzburg, although we definitely didn't get to see all of it. I guess we will just have to go back someday.

Dachau

After Mom, Doreen, Mikayla, and I left Oberammergau and the beautiful Alps behind, we headed towards Munich to pick up Darren from the airport. The drive was fine and smooth sailing until we got into Munich, and then it completely bogged down. We sat in traffic for a long time and were about an hour late picking up Darren from the airport. We did finally break free of the traffic jam, though, picked him up, and then headed towards the town of Dachau and the more sobering part of our trip.

Dachau was the site of the first concentration camp in Nazi Germany, and was used as a model for the rest of the concentration camps they set up throughout the territory they conquered. It was a little surreal to go from beautiful mountain scenery and fun castle site-seeing to such a grim reminder of what people are capable of doing to each other. It had been on my list of places I wanted to see, though, since I think it is important to go see places like this so that it is not forgotten. My mom, Doreen, and I took an audio tour through the memorial site while Darren entertained Mikayla.

Part of the Memorial inside the old camp

The gates to the concentration camp, which reads "Work will make you free." It was both a way to mock the prisoners as they entered the camp and a way to promote the propaganda to the outside world that it was a "work rehabilitation camp" and not a death camp.

Sculpture that is part of the memorial

Wall behind the maintenance building that served as the location for execution by firing squad

A replica of one of the barracks that housed the prisoners

View out the window of the replica barrack, looking at the foundations that mark where the original barracks were located.

One of the church memorials located on site.

Bavaria

Wednesday morning, after Darren headed off to work, Mom, Doreen, Mikayla, and I piled into the car with all our luggage and drove off in a different direction. We were going to the Bavaria region of Germany and were pretty excited to go. Darren had to work, so it was just us girls for a couple of days before he flew to Munich to join us for the weekend.

When I first was planning the trip, I thought we would stay in Munich itself and just do a day trip to see the castles around there, but when I started looking into hotels in Munich I found that they were really expensive because Oktoberfest was just starting up the weekend we were there. So, instead, through a tip from a friend, I found a cute little hotel in the town of Oberammergau, which is near both of the castles we were interested in seeing. And the town itself is really cute and known for both its Passion Play (put on once every decade and all the town gets involved in putting it on) and its wonderful houses which have frescoes of traditional fairy tales painted on the exterior. The town is nestled in the Alps and just the location is worth the travel.

Mikayla, Mom, and I getting ready to check in to the hotel

The view from the deck of my hotel room the first morning I woke up

Nana C and Mikayla

Our breakfast table at the hotel. We had a fun waitress named Sabine who made the dining experience a lot of fun.

Mr. Schmidt, the owner of the hotel

Fresco house

Fresco house

After talking to the owner of our hotel, we found out that in addition to the two castles that we had planned on seeing there were also two wonderful little churches in the area that were pretty famous as well. He gave us a little map and outlined the route we should take. After seeing the churches that he pointed us to, we were glad that we took his advice.

Mom and Doreen in front of one of the little churches we visited. It rained most of the day that we were touring there, so they bought a couple of cute umbrellas to try to stay dry.

Mikayla and I in front of the church

There were a couple of horses in a field right next to the path leading to the church. They were pretty friendly horses and one of them decided to check if Mikayla had any food in her pockets.

The rococo style of one of the church's interior. It was amazing. The other one was amazing as well, although a bit different style than this one, but our pictures didn't turn out quite as well.

Candles in the church

After touring through both churches and stopping to snap a couple of pictures of a wonderful old concrete bridge in the pouring rain, we were finally on the way to see one of my favorite castles. Neuschwanstein. It was built by King Ludwig II, although never finished since the king died during its construction and all work was halted upon his death. Only about a third of the rooms were finished, but the ones that were finished and the exterior of the castle are wonderful. It is the reportedly the castle that Disney modeled his Disneyland castle after, and you can see why since much of it seems like it is part of a fairy tale.

We hiked up to the castle after buying tickets for the tour. The walk took about 40 minutes and was a good hike up a fairly steep hill. We timed it just right for this part of the trip since it didn't rain the entire time we were walking, and started to pour again just as we were getting back in our car at the end of our time here. I would love to include pictures of the inside of the castle here, but they don't let you take pictures inside. After that and after walking up and down the steps inside the castle during the tour, we decided that we didn't need to walk down the mountain back to our car, so we paid for a ride in a horse-drawn carriage to take us down.

The Alps near Füssen, the town nearest the castle of Neuschwanstein

Our first view of Neuschwanstein

Another view of Neuschwanstein from our hike up the mountain

The main part of the castle from the courtyard gates

Mom and Doreen and Neuschwanstein

Mom, Mikayla, and I on the hike up to see the castle

The ride back down the mountain. Mikayla was mesmerized by the horses and loved the entire ride.

And now there was only one thing left on our itinerary for the day, which was a smaller one of King Ludwig's castles (he had several besides Neuschwanstein) called Linderhof. I have heard it referred to as his "hunting lodge." It is a small but beautiful castle, located just across the border in Austria. We had a beautiful drive through small windy roads in the Alps to get there. Too bad it was raining. The views were impressive despite the mist and grey skies, so we could hardly imagine how beautiful it would be on a clear, sunny day. We got to Linderhof too late to take a tour of the inside of the castle, but we were able to look through the gardens and some of the grounds. Mom and Doreen took a tour through the Grotto near the castle while I stayed in the car with a napping Mikayla.

The fountain in front of Linderhof

Swans at a lake on the grounds of Linderhof

It was a long, but very good day. We enjoyed seeing each of the places we stopped at. We made it back to Oberammergau in time to have a late dinner at a little Italian restaurant. It was yummy and the owners were nice. They even had toys for Mikayla to play with while we waited for our food. It was here that we had our first apple streudel (no, that is not Italian... but we didn't ask questions since it was so tasty). And then it was off to bed. We woke up the next morning, checked out of the hotel, spent some time in the main part of Oberammergau doing a little shopping, and then headed to Munich to get Darren from the airport.

Mikayla, completely soaked, as she plays in a fountain in Oberammergau

Mikayla trying out hair curlers and other beauty products in the hotel room