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10:06 p.m. - May 27, 2002 Well, my weekend was that. Exhausting, annoying, fun, irritating. Well, insert your adjective of choice in describing my weekend, and you've probably got it down to a peg. First of all, my friend Kelly and I met at the Hauptbahnhof in Munich because we were going to Innsbruck, Austria, which is about two hours from me. Saturday was a terrific day, I think, because everything was perfect or near-perfect. We breezed into Innsbruck at about 11.30 AM, found our hotel rather quickly, and had a big lunch in the downtown area of the city, which is populated with cafes, restaurants, and tourist shops (too many of the latter, I think.) Anyhow, after that, we walked to Hungerberg, where we planned to take a cable car (Nordkettenbahn) up to a mountain called Hafelekar, which is about 2256 meters high. Anyway, we made it just in time--we were the last people on the car, then we made it up to Seegrube (the midpoint between Hungerburg and Hafelekar). At this point, Kelly was saying, "Wow! we can walk (hike) down from here on the way back!" Meanwhile, I was thinking, "Oh, I don't want to do that..." especially since it took me an hour to walk up to Hungerburg in hot, humid weather, and I was melting and feeling very tired. And there were people skiing down from Hafelekar, so that was sort of freaky to me. We did make it up to Hafelekar without a problem, and I walked around a bit, took a few pictures, and then it started to get really foggy very fast, and then all of a sudden big, fat, cold raindrops started falling from the clouds. We ended up taking the cable cars and cog rails back down to Innsbruck, so I was pretty happy about that. Where one day went along perfectly, with seeing different sights like the mountains, the downtown, and the Winter Olympic constructions, like the ski-jump and the ice skating station, the other day was fraught with peril and disaster (or almost-disasters, at least from a travel perspective). We should have guessed that the day was off to a bad start at breakfast. We went to the hotel restaurant to get our continental breakfast, and I asked the waitress for juice (in German; she did, after all, speak to us in German). She gave me a funny look and then said (in German), "Ok, I'll be right back." So Kelly and I waited, while the waitress would whisper to other waitresses and the receptionist. She never came back. After a while, we decided it was not worth waiting for a glass of juice, since we wanted to catch the earliest possible train to F�ssen. Anyway, as we checked out of the hotel, the receptionist said, "What were you asking the waitress? She didn't understand you." Kelly said, "She was asking for juice." The receptionist then said, "Did you ask in English or German?" We said, "German." To further add insult to injury, the receptionist said, "You could have just said, 'I would like juice, please.'" Kelly was more annoyed than I was, and said, "Well, the waitress spoke to us in German, so of course, we asked her in German!" and we left. Afterward I just got more and more ticked off, because I know my German is very good--I mean, come on, I took it for seven years in the United States and have been living in Germany for almost ten months now. Of course I know German and can hold a long conversation in German--sometimes rather technical ones, too! Anyway, we figured that the waitress was just being lazy and was not paying attention--after all, we did also go to other places where I would order food and stuff and people could understand me. So what was the problem? The waitress could have just asked me to repeat. It wouldn't hurt my feelings. On the way to the train station, we decided to see if we could go to Hofkirche, but we were unable to, since they were having their morning services. So we walked a bit more, in the direction of the train station, and this young man, dressed nicely in jeans and a clean blue shirt, was loitering on the sidewalk. As Kelly and I walked by this fellow, he yelled something at us (neither of us were paying attention) and we just kept walking. He kept yelling at us, so we walked faster, trying to ignore him. All of a sudden, he was beside me and said something, but we were not not sure what he was saying; I was trying to ignore him and walk really quickly. Kelly got really annoyed and yelled, "Get away from me!" so the guy dropped back and left us alone. When Kelly and I made it to the train station (after getting a little lost), we saw that the scary guy was there, buying a train ticket. So we waited till he was done buying his ticket and walked away, and then we tried to buy our ticket. Now here was bad thing number three. There are no trains going from Innsbruck to F�ssen. We'd have to take a train to Garmisch-Partenkirchen, and then take a bus from Garmisch-Partenkirchen to F�ssen. So we bought the ticket, but the next train left two hours later, so we walked around the downtown area a bit before going back to catch our train. We made it to Garmisch-Partenkirchen with no problem and went inside to buy a bus ticket to F�ssen. The ticket person said that the bus left half an hour after we arrived. The bad news? The bus comes every two hours. However, she was nice and said there was another train we could take to another little city, where we could ultimately take a bus to our final destination. So we rode to that city; there was also a young American couple traveling to Schloss Neuschwanstein, so we went together to F�ssen. Now, things started getting better when we made it to F�ssen at about 3:30 PM. We bought a ticket to the next tour of Schloss Neuschwanstein, which was in German, so we parted ways with the American couple. The castle itself is absolutely gorgeous. Though unfinished, it is still quite opulent. My favorite part, though, was just a small corridor leading from one room to the next. And it was actually a cave with stalagacites and stalagmites! It was so unbelievably cool! Now, after seeing the castle, we had to catch the bus back to the train station. When we got to the stop, we discovered we missed the bus by two or three minutes. Kelly started throwing a loud fit, complaining about how she had to be on the 5.07 train. I was getting really embarrassed--she was really loud and complaining to everyone. There were some other Americans there as well--six of them who also missed the bus because the driver told them the wrong time. Later, after the other Americans, who were college students from North Carolina, found out that we were planning to be on the same train as they were, came up with an idea. Since two of them were going to Konstanz, which is closer to Heidelberg, and four were going to Munich, we decided that I would go with the four students and Kelly would go toward Konstanz and then get off where she could get a connection to Heidelberg. After that point, everything was okay and Kelly calmed down a lot. I think now she's really aware of how much she was overreacting. Considering that I had not eaten a meal since 7.30 AM, I was pretty hungry by 9 PM and could only think of goinf back to my room to make something to eat. However, the other Americans asked me to join them for dinner at Augustiner, so I took them up on their offer. They are chain smoking students who were definetely taking full advantage of some of the things Germany had to offer--like beer. Ever since I saw them at the bus stop on the way to F�ssen, they were drinking beer. They drank so much beer. And they are potheads, too--they got some pot up in Amsterdam and were discussing how to best smoke pot, as we finished up dinner. It was very bizarre. I mean, I knew they were the sort who liked to smoke pot--I could smell it on them when I first met them. Well, that was an interesting experience. I finally got a SMS message from Markus about going to Milan, so I'll be gone from Tuesday to Friday. I'm somewhere being between really excited and being just sick of traveling. I'll be glad when I'm back--I'll have all of June for relaxing, staying in Munich, and preparing to go home, without too many obligations. Right now I'm getting completely distracted by this interesting documentary type film on arte, and it's filmed in US, but was made by German people. It's about this american filmaker who disappeared one day--was he killed or did he just disappear? It's very fascinating. Here is a description of the film: Missing Allen is a detective story that leads the viewer into the American Heart of Darkness of Waco, Texas; Oklahoma City; UFO-believers; and religious cults. November 1995-filmmaker Allen Ross disappears without a trace. Five years later, his friend and sometimes cameraman, Christian Bauer, decides to make a movie about him. Unwittingly, what begins as homage to a missing friend becomes a riveting mystery rivaling any detective story. Leaving the security of anonymity behind the camera, Bauer becomes director and detective. The enormity of Allen's disappearance weighs heavily on everyone who knew him, especially his ailing father who holds onto Allen's last letters and credit card statements like a talisman. Moving quickly from the surprising to the bizarre-including Allen's strange marriage to a woman he barely knows and the religious cult with ties to the Waco Branch Davidians-we get to know Allen as the man Bauer knew, but before long, as the man Bauer never knew. In the end, life proves to be much stranger than fiction. Bauer's filmic investigation actually unearths the answer to the unsolved mystery. The astonishing and frightful truth could not be found in any fictional crime story. Part detective story, part documentary, and part love letter, Missing Allen is truly in a genre of its own. (From this site)
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