I’m spending an intense month updating guidebooks, and I’m finding some surprising new sights to add to the books — like this memorial in Munich to Michael Jackson.
If you can’t see the video below, watch it on YouTube.
Power to the People
Munich pedestrianized its main street for the 1972 Olympics, starting a trend in Europe. And, like cities all over Europe, more and more of the center is becoming traffic-free.
If you can’t see the video below, watch it on YouTube.
Thinking in German
Traveling into Germany, it’s so clear that the Germans know how to motor an economy. They seem disdainful of the tax cheating, the inefficient bureaucracy, and the corruption plaguing the Mediterranean countries they will be bailing out. Suddenly, all around Europe, German efficiency seems like a good idea. It’s amazing to think that Germany has built itself up (with US aid after WWII) from near-total destruction to become Europe’s economic powerhouse. For sixty years, they’ve simply worked hard and paid their taxes.
Germans I’ve talked to admit that they’ve benefitted most from the euro currency. And now they recognize that they need to prop up the euro and give a little back to the other European nations. One German’s thoughts on Greece: “Greeks have learned from their heads of state to be corrupt. Brussels believed in their false numbers when they applied for membership in the eurozone, and since they joined, there’s been no control — just wishful thinking. Today we have a big problem with Greece.”
You see lots of construction around Europe, but in the south, it’s often stalled. Traveling through Germany this last week, however, I’ve seen thriving construction projects everywhere. A beautiful thing about Europe (compared to the USA) is that there are no electrical wires overhead. They are nearly all buried. A local told me that much of the wiring is from the 1970s, and throughout Germany, it’s being dug up and modernized.
One night in Munich, I walked over a tidy sidewalk into my hotel. The next morning, I stepped out and had to walk the plank over a deep ditch with tractors, orange-vested workmen, and industrial-strength tubing and wires everywhere. That afternoon, I came home…and the sidewalk was tidy again. I wondered how long a job like that would take in Italy or Greece.
Germanic people even seem efficient about hedonism. Every country seems to have its own firewater. And, while I gingerly sip it, locals throw it down in a gulp. Finally a local friend gave me a tip: “My Granny taught me that you should first breathe deeply in, then take the shot, then breathe out.” It works. Ahhhh.
On the topic of languages, a German friend observed that the Spanish and Italians speak as if talking to God, the French speak as if talking to a lover, and the Germans speak as if talking to a dog. They seem to be barking, even when agreeing with you: Stimmt! Genau! Richtig! I said I like the sound of German, but it’s difficult for me. My friend said, “German’s an easy language. Even children speak it.”
Meeting a lot of Americans traveling — including families and people well into their adulthood who are out of the States for the first time — I’ve been thinking about how travel helps people blossom. If we are like seeds, the travel experience provides the dirt. The act of traveling plants us. And the people we meet in our travels are like watering the garden. Combine the dirt, seeds, and water properly, and you get the blossom. Happy travels.
A Red Bull Day: Guidebook Researching in Salzburg
I love my guidebook research days. In Salzburg, I had no particular plan, and another action-packed day just unfolded. There’s always so much to do. My guide met me at 10:00 a.m. We popped into Mozart’s House to check out the new displays and audio tour. Then she drove me to a new Salzburg sight—Mr. Red Bull’s place. I wrote this entry:
Red Bull Hangar-7 — Salzburg’s big personality these days is the tycoon founder of Red Bull energy drink, Dietrich Mateschitz. He has a mysterious mansion at the edge of town, sponsors the local “Red Bull” soccer and hockey teams, owns several chic Salzburg eateries and cocktail bars, and employs 6,000 mostly good-looking people. It seems his personality is like the energy drink that made him rich and powerful — a high-energy, anything’s-possible cultural Terminator.
Hangar-7, a renovated hangar at the Salzburg airport, celebrates Red Bull culture. Under its modern steel-and-glass dome are 20 or so glittering planes and racecars and several pretentious bars, cafés, and restaurants. While things are described in German, visitors can borrow an iPod Touch with English information (free, daily 9:00-22:00, bus #8 from Hanuschplatz to the Salzburg airport, hangar-7.com).
At Hangar-7, the Mayday Bar serves experimental food, and Restaurant Ikarus features a different well-known chef each month. Mateschitz’s Carpe Diem cocktail bar in the Old Town is also Red Bullish.
Then we popped by Hellbrunn Castle, with its fine gardens and famous trick fountains. For years, I’ve panned the palace. I revisited and, like so many sights, it’s much improved. I wrote this entry:
Hellbrunn Castle and Gardens — About the year 1610, Prince-Archbishop Sittikus decided he needed a lavish palace with a vast and ornate garden purely for pleasure (I imagine after meditating on stewardship and Christ-like values). He built this summer palace and hunting lodge, and just loved inviting his VIP guests from throughout Europe for fun with his trick fountains. Today, Hellbrunn is a popular sight for its palace, formal garden (one of the oldest in Europe, with a gazebo made famous by The Sound of Music), the tour of its famous trick fountains, and simply for a chance to get out of the city.
Upon arrival, buy your fountain tour ticket and get a tour time. Tours generally go on the half-hour. The 40-minute English/German tours take you laughing and scrambling through a series of amazing 17th- century garden settings with lots of splashy fun and a guide who seems almost sadistic in the joy he has in soaking his group. (Hint: When you see a wet place, cover your camera.) If there’s a wait until your tour, you can see the palace first.
The palace, inspired by the Venetian architect Palladio, was built in a style popular around 1600. It was a cultural destination back in the 1600s, when the ritual was hunting in the morning and enjoying an opera in the evening. The first opera north of the Alps, imported from Italy, was performed here. The decor is Mannerism (between Renaissance and Baroque), with faux-antiquities and lots of surprising moments — intentional irregularities were in vogue after the strict logic, balance, and Greek-inspired symmetry of the Renaissance. (For example, the main hall is not in the center, but at the far end.) With the help of the included audioguide, you’ll wander through the palace exhibit and — to the sounds of shrieking tourists below on the fountains tour — enjoy hunting themes and learn about the impressive 17th-century hydraulic engineering that let gravity power the intricate fountains.
You’re then free to wander the delightful garden grounds and pop out to see the gazebo made famous by the “I am 16 Going on 17” song in The Sound of Music.
Taking full advantage of my guide’s car, we then dropped by four countryside farmhouse B&Bs I recommend, each on a handy bus line into the center of Salzburg. Here’s an example:
Frau Ballwein rents 11 cozy, charming, and fresh rooms in a delightful and family-friendly farmhouse. Some rooms come with intoxicating-view balconies (Sb-€38, Db-€55, Tb-€75, Qb-€85, 2-bedroom apartment for up to 5 people-€95, €10 more during festival, no surcharge for one-night stays, cash only, farm-fresh breakfasts amid her hanging teapot collection, non-smoking, free Wi-Fi, 2 free loaner bikes, free parking, Moosstrasse 69a, bus stop: Gsengerweg, tel. 0662/824-029, www.haus-ballwein.at, or email haus.ballwein@gmx.net).
Saying goodbye to my guide, I popped back to my hotel, where Marianne and her wonderful family (who run the place) made me a schnitzel. Then, with Marianne tagging along, I zipped over to the main square in the Old Town to catch the daily walking tour. I’ve done tours like this one many times, but another guide told me the guides who did this particular tour were not good — and, because I recommend the company in my book, I needed to check. They didn’t know who I was; I paid the €9 and was one of three people on a great 90-minute walk. Even with just a handful of tourists, they split the German-speakers and the English-speakers into two groups, so we didn’t have to listen to two languages. Our guide was excellent.
Marianne and I then zipped over to catch the 16:30 Sound of Music bicycle tour. It’s called “Fräulein Maria’s Sound of Music Tour,” but it’s run by a burly young man named Rupert. (As Austrians barely know what the Sound of Music is all about, getting a handle on this quirky touristic phenomenon was particularly interesting for Marianne.) It was a delightful tour, and now I can capably compare it to the Sound of Music bus tours.
We had to cut out half an hour early in order to catch the 19:30 marionette performance of The Magic Flute. Of all the musical venues in Salzburg that I recommend, this was one I’d never actually experienced. After the performance, I could write it up with more confidence:
Marionette Theater — Salzburg’s much-loved marionette theater offers operas with spellbinding marionettes and recorded music. A troupe of 10 puppeteers — actors themselves — bring the artfully created puppets at the end of their five-foot strings to life. The 180 performances a year alternate between The Sound of Music and various German-language operas (with handy superscripts in English). While the 300-plus-seat venue is forgettable, the art of the marionettes enchants adults and children alike (€24-35, May-Sept nearly nightly at 17:00 or 19:30, near Mozart’s Residence at Schwarzstrasse 24, tel. 0662/872-406, www.marionetten.at).
After the concert, we hopped into a taxi to go extremely local at the Augustiner beer garden (my favorite dinner in Salzburg), which is written up this way:
Augustiner Bräustübl, a huge 1,000-seat beer garden within a monk-run brewery in the Kloster Mülln, is rustic and raw. On busy nights, it’s like a Munich beer hall with no music but the volume turned up. When it’s cool outside, you’ll enjoy a historic setting inside beer-sloshed and smoke-stained halls. On balmy evenings, it’s like a Renoir painting — but with beer breath — under chestnut trees. Local students mix with tourists eating hearty slabs of schnitzel with their fingers or cold meals from the self-serve picnic counter, while children frolic on the playground kegs. For your beer: Pick up a half-liter or full-liter mug, pay the lady (schank means self-serve price, bedienung is the price with waiter service), wash your mug, give Mr. Keg your receipt and empty mug, and you will be made happy. Waiters only bring beer; they don’t bring food — instead, go up the stairs, survey the hallway of deli counters, and assemble your own meal. Classic pretzels from the bakery and spiraled, salty radishes make great beer even better. For dessert — after a visit to the strudel kiosk — enjoy the incomparable floodlit view of old Salzburg from the nearby Müllnersteg pedestrian bridge and a riverside stroll home (open daily 15:00-23:00, Augustinergasse 4, tel. 0662/431-246).
Marianne guided me deep into the local cuisine — all the way to horse-tongue salad (her favorite…I tried). We finished the day, after marveling at the beauty of floodlit Salzburg from the riverbank, checking out the bars on Steingasse. I’m not big on late-night listings in my guidebooks, but Salzburg is so accessible, and there’s a string of boomer-friendly cocktail and wine bars on a very characteristic old lane. Drinking there with Marianne, who pretended to be American, I had someone who could actually understand all the German being spoken as I made my rounds, giving me a wonderfully candid understanding of just how friendly they were to tourists.
I list all of this because, even though I enjoy the advantage of local friends, any traveler who equips himself with good information and expects to travel smart can amass plenty of lifelong memories in a single well-organized day.
Good News from the Radio Department: Travel with Rick Steves Passes 200 Stations!
Our weekly public radio show, Travel with Rick Steves, is now seven years old. We started airing on only one station: Seattle’s KUOW. After a year, we were thrilled to air on 16 different stations, from Seattle to Fresno to Sioux Falls. And this week, we passed a much bigger milestone: 200 stations.
The latest additions include stations in Rochester, New York; Gainesville, Florida; Quad Cities, Illinois/Iowa; Valdez, Alaska; a network of stations based at Eastern Kentucky University; and a new station in Gray’s Harbor, Washington. And the newest member of our radio family: WUWF in Pensacola, Florida, will begin airing our show in September.
The full list of local airtimes for Travel with Rick Steves on our website includes “listen live” links to affiliates with Web streaming, as an alternative to subscribing to the podcast. You can also listen to any of our past shows in the radio archive at ricksteves.com/radio.
Thanks and congratulations to my producer, Tim Tattan, who mixes a passion for all things cultural, great editing skills (and the patience to digitally clean up my not-so-smooth interviews), musical brilliance (I love the way Tim uses music to enliven the hour), and a love of public radio. Thanks to our promotions wizard, Sheila Gerzoff, for helping us with station relations. And thanks to the stations and their listeners for keeping us on the air.
By the way, our show is completely free, better than ever, and it’s here to stay. If your public radio station is not airing us, you’re welcome to give them a call and ask them why. Travel with us all over the world — or an hour each week on the radio for Travel with Rick Steves. Thanks.