Return to Europe



SATURDAY, December 31, 1994.

My plane landed in Belgium and pulled up to the new terminal at Brussels airport. First, we were stuck waiting to taxi to the gate and then we were stuck waiting while they figured out how to position the jetway. Annoying. I already had my GoPass (Belgian rail pass) so I hopped right on the Airport Express to Brussels and then on to a connection to Liege. Ebie wasn't at the station to meet me, which she had said was a possibility. The back-up plan was that if she wasn't there, I should go to the shoe store under her apartment and she will have left the key with the shopkeeper. I went to the shoe store but she hadn't left the key. I was really pissed. I'd traveled across the Atlantic to see her and there was no indication that she even remembered that I was coming.

I waited around outside on the street. It was cold out there. I had some fries from the guy across the street. Almost 2 hours later, Ebie showed up. She said that she must have just missed me at the station Why? She'd been drinking tea with her friend Bart who assured her I'd be coming in on a later train because of delays with the new airport terminal. He was right about the delays, wrong about my train. She apologized but not as profusely as she should have. Still, I didn't want to make a big deal out of it. We were about to go on vacation.

We spent one night in Liege before heading out on our planned adventure in Bavaria, Prague and Poland. The train ride to Berchtesgaden in the Bavarian Alps was long and boring. The route took us through Nuremberg which rang some loud World War II history bells in my head. We did finally arrive in Berchtesgaden and took a bus to a stop on the side of the road near our hotel. There was snow everywhere, and it was freezing cold. The sky was completely overcast; we wouldn't see the sun again for days. Still, it was beautiful, and the air was deliciously cool and crisp.

We were very hungry for lunch and walked 5 minutes down the road to a restaurant. Ebie wanted tea and by the time our order was placed, the waiter was convinced we were British. After lunch, we took a nap to recover from the long hours on the train. I'd enjoyed my hot chocolate, and hot spicy tomato cream soup. It was cold outside. After we woke up, we had a very social dinner with all the other guests in the hotel dining room. I was a big mystery to everyone since I was the only one who didn't speak German. Elizabeth speaks German in addition to French (and English).

A young couple with a baby owned and ran the hotel. We were surprised by how young and hip the woman was for someone running a bed and breakfast. I speculated that she'd still be doing the same thing in 50 years, and we tried to imagine what she'd be like then. She spoke some English. I joked to her and said that I used to speak fluent German but that I'd forgotten every word. She hesitated for a while, realized how absurd that was and called me "the joking man." We went to bed after dinner, huddled together for warmth; the heater had not yet succeeded in taking the icy chill out of the room.

We woke on Christmas Eve Day which in Germany is more of a holiday than Christmas itself. Turns out that Germans exchange gifts on Christmas Eve, not on Christmas morning. We ate a typical German breakfast - rolls, sliced cheese and meats with butter and jam, complemented by some special Christmas cake. An older German couple who we met at breakfast drove us into town. Then, we walked up the hill to the old town. 'Twas the Christmas season and men could be seen wandering about town in the traditional dress called Lederhosen, goofy embroidered green shorts with white stockings. Women were sporting their Dirndel, traditional green velvet dresses.

For lunch I had a tasty ziti dish with a spicy German cream sauce. Ebie had something called pancake soup - which was like an onion soup with thinly sliced pancake strips. On our table, we had a candle which was not lit. Other tables had candles which were lit. All throughout Germany we were puzzled by the fact that sometimes they would light our candle, and sometimes they would not.

After eating, we headed to the ice skating rink. The rink was nice, not at all crowded (unlike free skating time at MIT), and had good quality hockey skates for rent. I watched Ebie continually end up spread eagled trying to learn to skate backwards. After skating, we caught the bus back to the hotel, caught the tail end of the Christmas party, ate lots of Christmas cookies, and drank some Gluhwein (hot wine). Eggnog was nowhere to be seen. Our Christmas Eve dinner reservations fell through, so instead we ate the food we'd bought for lunch the next day: edelsalami (not my own brand of salami; edel means noble), cheese, rolls, and jam.

We played chess and then caught a ride into town for midnight mass. The church was cold, the service was boring (and in German), and I found kneeling to be painful, but I went as a favor to Ebie. After mass, we went outside to watch colored fires up on a hill and listen to them fire guns called Christkindlschiess that had been going off all day. These guns are supposed to relay our position to Christ. I was somewhat disappointed that we had done our gift exchange on Christmas Eve instead of Christmas morning because I've always wanted to open gifts on Christmas morning.

Christmas morning, I slept in and Ebie went to breakfast alone. At breakfast, she was reading Let's Go Eastern Europe and discovered that Canadians need visas to visit Poland and the Czech Republic. Oh shit! Ebie had a kiniption fit. Americans have no restrictions in those countries, but she's Canadian. I should've checked more carefully. However, she knew Canadians have more restrictions than Americans, and I think she should've looked into it herself, too. Anyway, it was a fiasco and things were already tense between us.

We figured out that we could blow off Prague, hang in Munich for a few extra days and get a Polish visa there. I'd wanted to try to get a Czech visa as well, but we would've had to leave Berchtesgaden a day early and Ebie really wanted to stay. I yielded since I felt responsible and said OK, let's forget Prague, and do the Munich, Poland thing and then she spazzed saying, "Well, are you OK with that or are you going to just act all pissed off?" This exasperated me since I was agreeing to her proposal. Then she accused me of "theatrics." Oooh, I was pissed.

Wearing artificial smiles, we went on a walk to the Konigsee, a beautiful lake surrounded by Alps. Unfortunately clouds masked the full beauty. Nearby, we saw a bobsled track. I was impressed by how vertical the walls were in the turns. Later in the day, we walked to Schonau, a nearby village were we'd gone to midnight mass. Ebie said, "Let's go up there," referring to where we'd seen the colored fires. Apparently she didn't really mean it because when I found the way up, she groaned. On the way up, we passed a strange little hut constructed from wooden 2"x4"s and metal piping. The walls were made of bundled twigs which looked ready to burn. It was an enigma.

On Monday the 26th, we day tripped to Salzburg, Austria, which is less than an hour by bus from Berchtesgaden. We climbed a bunch of stairs to a castle up on the hill with a view of the alps as the clouds finally began to clear - the sun poking through as it set. Back down in town, we visited a neat graveyard and tried to imagine the lives of the dead. For lunch, we had some surprisingly decent chicken fried rice. Imagine that! Chinese food in Austria! After eating, we visited Mozart's birth house. After some difficulty, we managed to catch a bus back to Berchtesgaden, though we got back too late to catch dinner at the hotel so we had to eat dinner at the train station. Then we caught a bus back to the hotel, played chess, and went to bed.

On Tuesday, the proprietor gave us a thrill ride down to the station along with their friend visiting from Indonesia. The three of us were all heading to Munich. There in the station, I couldn't believe my eyes; I saw a McDonald's dining car!

We arrived in Munich and headed to a small hotel near the train station where Ebie had stayed before. It was obscure - basically one floor of an apartment building. We got there and buzzed the desk; there was no answer. Apparently the hostess had run out for cigarettes. We buzzed someone else at random and got let in and were told to wait a few minutes for the hostess to return. The first room we were shown reeked badly of cigarette smoke. We asked for another room. The hostess told us that the previous guests "smoked like trains." After dumping the packs and freshening up, we headed downtown.

Photos of Berchtesgaden

Photos of Salzburg

We heard organ music and moved in its direction, looking around for the church where it originated. What we found was a man in his early twenties playing an accordion-like instrument called a concertina. Most accordions have a piano-like keyboard on one side (and frosting on the other) and many small buttons on the other side. A concertina has many small buttons on both sides. Anyway, this guy was playing Bach organ pieces with incredible passion and depth - really unbelievable - you'd have to be there to believe it. He was playing under an arch with great acoustics. What amazed me was the depth of the bass, the speed and nimbleness of his fingers - the way they danced in patterns on the keys. His long hair was down in his face shimmering in the cold breeze. He seemed off in the world of the music, fiercely involved.

That night we went to see "Nightmare before Christmas," Tim Burton's stop motion masterpiece. Great fun. Totally impressive work. As a bonus, they also showed a Tim Burton short called "Vincent." I was shocked to find myself hugely impressed twice in the same day, first by "the accordion guy" and then by Tim Burton.

Wednesday the 28th was museum day. First we visited the BMW museum with its history of motorcycles, cars, and internal combustion engines. Then we explored the "German" Museum, which is a science museum with an impressive collection including Gutenberg's printing press, Focault's pendulum, and hall after hall filled with cool evolutionary histories of electronics, telecommunications, musical instruments... Unfortunately, the exhibit with Gutenberg's printing press was closed. I would like to have seen that.

That evening, we planned to go see the Glockenspiel, a clock with little dancing figures that perform each night at 9. To pass some time and eat a cheap meal, we went to Burger King at the train station. There we met a Canadian with his Spanish wife. They'd just been in Rome and gave me their left-over bus tickets! We lost track of time, panicked, lost each other in the subway station, and finally made it to the clock, in time to catch only the last 10 seconds of dancing statues and music. We spent the rest of the evening dorking around in the train station, buying English books, and figuring out how to get to Krakow, Poland. Munich was a fun city with a modern cosmopolitan feel and (at least in parts) an old fashion charm and beauty.



Copyright 1997 by Bradley Edelman
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E-mail: Brad Edelman