Live from the Alps

*Opening note, the content of the blog was written while in the alps, the pictures taken while there but I am not currently there*

I am writing in a notebook while sitting on a rock. The only sounds i am hearing are coming from nature. The sound waves in the air are dominated by running water, with the faint hint of heavy falling water.

Looking straight up into the air I see what seems to be a moving fog. The cold breeze makes me shiver and contemplate putting on my hoodie.

The rock is sitting in Chilchbaum, what I assume to be a valley in the Swiss Alps. Looking up and ahead i am surrounded by mountains. There is a stream running right by me, and several others are running beside it. They all meet further down in the river I followed to get here. All the streams are coming from different parts of the mountains, trickling down the sides of them like miniature water falls.

I walked 2 hours from Gimmalwald to get here. Gimmalwald is a small mountain settlement of only 140 inhabitants.

Looking up I can't see the peaks of any of the mountains, just the fog of the moving clouds above. I feel so relaxed, so care free!

This is the view of the side of the mountain, you can see a couple different parts where the water is falling down the side. You can also see the beginning of the clouds.

More tricking miniature waterfall streams and cloud cover.

The view looking the other way. That is a stream eventually running into the river.

You can make out the peak of the mountain there peaking above the clouds.

Switzerland

Long after leaving some friends behind in France then Denmark and Berlin, I had been traveling alone. In witzerland I had secured the opportunity to meet up with another housemate from Brisbane.

She was going to take me on a hike so I could see a portion of the Alps near her house, but it rained all day. Instead, we went to a couple of museums and a cheese factory. I also had the opportunity to have a couple dinners with her family as well as one with an aunt and cousin.

The museum was pretty interesting. It talked about the special ceremony they have when they march the cows up the mountain so they can graze on fresh mountain grass. People dress in costumes and the cows at the front of the line wear these massive bells. The museum also showed what the typical house looked liked as well as talked about another ceremony that was even more bizarre to me. It had more costumes and some yodeling.

At dinner we talked about a variety of things. Not surprising skiing is a very common activity that most people take part in. It is also a stereotype of Canadians that we all ski and snowboard. While traveling people have often been quite surprised to find out I have only ever skied twice. They don't realize it is more of a regional hobby and that I can ice skate and play hockey. During dinner that started a conversation. My friends father used to play hockey and Jonas Hiller, the goalie from the Anaheim Ducks, is from Herisau, the city they lived in.

I spent two nights with my friend and left early the 3rd day to go into the mountains and do some hiking, on my own once again.

This is Zurich, I roamed around this city a little before I caught the train to meet my friend.

This is the costume they wear when they march the cows up into the Alps.

This was the view from my friends balcony. It was beautiful just driving around as well.

The Sound of Music

During this trip I wanted to see as many countries as I could. That meant that being in Munich made it easy to do a day trip to Salzburg Austria, only an hour train ride away.

I did not know a whole lot about Salzburg and even less about Austria. Having four sisters however ensured that I had seen the movie Sound of Music and it took place in Salzburg. The first place I went from the train was to the garden right from the movie. It definitely reminded me of the movie.
I thought the garden was beautiful. Reminded me of Versaille. I thought about taking sometime and reading my newly purchased Diary of Anne Frank. Decided to wait and see if I had time later, there were other places to see, like Mozart's birth house.

Salzburg also has a famous chocolate cake, Sachertorte. I walked by the store that sold it and decided I must try a piece of my own. I ended up reading my book and eating the Sachertorte with a tea. I wasn't a big fan of it, but that is mostly because I am picky. I don't really like the
apricot jam that helps hold the layers together. It is also a Darker Chocolate which I am not particularly a fan of. I still think it looks really good though.
This is the view of Salzburg up near the castle. Those are the alps in the background, which is where my adventure went to next.

Hall of Women

The Hofbrauhaus is a famous beer hall in Germany owned by the state that sells beer of the same name. It has a large history of serving beer. I never went in, I was told the beer there was over priced and instead I had a couple of liters of beer with my tour guide and other viewers at an outside beer garden instead. The tour guide always finished his tours there and as a result of bringing the owners continued business he usually only paid for every other beer.

It has a history of being state owned as well, being the drinking place of choice for German royalty. One of the royalty proclaimed that all women drink free, or at his expense.


This man was Konig Ludwig. He would then choose which lucky girl was to come home and sleep with him. When she woke up she would be shocked to see that Ludwig's personal artist was drawing her. The artist was instructed to ensure the lady looked good regardless of if the beer from the night before had changed what Ludwig's perception of good was.

The pictures were put up in a hall, known as the hall of women. Ludwig eventually married Therese. Before breakfast every morning Ludwig insisted Therese walk down the hall of women so that she could see how lucky she was that Ludwig married her out of all the women he had to choose from. I'm sure she only put up with it because the marriage would eventually make her queen.

On the left here is Ludwig. This picture was painted on the wall outside a museum along with all the other German royalty throughout the years. He was the most interesting so I took his picture to remember to share his story. As you can see in the picture he was King from 1825-1848. He married Therese in 1810. They had a huge wedding party with the normal for Bavaria mass amounts of beer. The party was such a success they decided to throw it again. It eventually became a yearly tradition and is still thrown to this day, better known now as oktoberfest.



This is a statue of Ludwig's father. It was supposed to be built life size to show he was on the same level as the people. It was made way to big and angered him. On his deathbed he asked Ludwig to ensure the statue be destroyed and certainly never displayed. In Ludwig's grief he did the opposite of his fathers death wish and the statue is still on display for everyone to see today.

This is a view of the Hofbrauhaus

Nazi Salute

Everyone knows what the Nazi salute is. On doing a tour in Munich this is what was said to us and an example of it was not given. This is as the guide explained because it is now a criminal offense to do the Nazi salute in Germany. You can be thrown into jail for up to three years. A foreigner will also be deported and banned from returning for several years as well as having 'Nazi Sympathizer' attached to their passport.

Obviously it wasn't always a criminal offense. In fact, during Hitler's reign at times it was a criminal offense to not do the salute. It was mandatory to do the salute in Munich when passing the Hitler statue and a failure to do it resulted in death.

Some people didn't want to die, but they also didn't want to support the Nazi party. The picture above is one of many subtle memorials found throughout the city of Munich. It represents a path people walked so they didn't walk by the statue and thus didn't have to do a Nazi salute. Unfortunately party members started noticing people walking the long way and realized what their reasons were. They were forced at gun point to go to the statue and do the salute or be shot.

I can't imagine what it would be like to live with such forced devotion. Our freedom is something we take for granted and something we should be grateful for.

Munich

I really enjoyed the city of Berlin, and also knew that it was a unique city. In that sense, I didn't feel I could get the exact picture of Germany from only staying there. As a result I decided to visit another German city, Munich.

It reminded me a lot of Prague, for a couple reasons. Number one was how great the beer was. They also sold it in large 1 litre glasses. There is nothing like having a beer in that size. Saves you from having to wait in line for the beer as much, although it also makes you have to urinate more often.

The next similarity to Prague is another clock, called the 2nd most overrated tourist attraction. It's the Glockenspiel. It acts out some royalty wedding, a jousting match as well as a dance commemorating the plague being over. It is called the Coopers dance and was ordered to be reenacted every seven years.

I liked the Prague clock better because beyond the corny dance displays, it at least tells you the different random information like the different stages of the moon and how the earth revolves around the sun.

Like other places in Europe, there were locations where buildings were being rebuilt or reconstructed due to the wars. Munich was certainly no different. There are also rules that encompass the city's love of beer. Everyone is entitled to two litres of beer a day, and can't get in trouble for having it during lunch break. As a result there are some poorly built structures within the city, including a rebuilt building where they forgot to put a door.

Red Light District

The Red Light District in Amsterdam was something else. As I mentioned in an earliar post I stumbled upon it quite by accident, although I did fully intend on going.

Despite it being early in the morning, it wasn't hard to figure out I was in there. My first clue was a sex shop on the corner, full of adult toys. This was also the first canal I ran across, so I was unaware of all the canals in the city so my first impression of the red light district also included the canals.

There were boats driving through the canals and bikes riding down the alleys, and otherwise absent from cars. There were also different types of sex stops on each side of the canal as well as live peep shows, adult viewing DVD rooms and so on. Of course, these are only the light aspects of the district. What it is famous for are the small apartments littered around the streets, down narrow alleys and everywhere in between. At the windows of these apartments there are neon red lights and girls in their underwear, displaying their goods for the legal profession of prostitution. During the day the lights didn't illuminate the streets and windows quite the same as at night.

There was also a very strong aroma on the streets. It had nothing to do with the red light district however, but with the coffee shops found all over the city. The smell is that of the drug cannabis, notoriously tolerated in The Netherlands. Coffee shops are a place you can purchase it from. They even have a menu for different types of cannabis available. You are also free to smoke it there however technically mixing it with tobacco is illegal as there are laws about smoking tobacco inside, none of these laws include cannabis. Coffee shops are not allowed to sell alcohol and cafes are not allowed to sell cannabis, so there is an obvious difference between the two.

I returned to the red light district several times throughout wandering through the city. Sometimes on purpose and sometimes by accident as I had no idea where anything was until I secured a map. I enjoyed walking down the alleys seeing the girls in spite of having no overwhelming desire to purchase their services. It never got old seeing attractive girls motion for you to come see them or call you things like cutie.

Once night hit, the number of windows available increased and the neon lights illuminated the streets and alleys more. Obviously it was not allowed to take pictures of the girls in the windows.





This is a view of the red light district at night, without any of the women in the windows.