Glacier Walking 101

Despite the lack of an Aurora Borealis sighting, I had an incredible time in Iceland. Every day over there included either some unique Icelandic moment or an "I never thought I would do this in my life ever" experience. While the first and second days we were in Iceland were amazing, by far the best day was the last full day we spent in country when we headed to the south coast of the island and went for a stroll on a glacier for a couple of hours. This is definitely something I never thought I would do in my life.

Iceland is the 17th largest (of 45 if you include Monaco and Vatican City) country in Europe but it is home to more glacial areas than all the other countries in Europe combined. A lot of this obviously has to do with its position on the globe, although there are parts of Norway, Sweden and Finland that are further north. More than 10 percent of the island's total area is covered in glaciers with about 80 percent of that total concentrated in the glacier Vatnajökull on the southeast of the country. We didn't make it that far on our trip.

Our destination Friday morning was the glacier with the almost unpronounceable name of Eyjafjallajökull, specifically the spur of that glacier named Sonheimajökull, which is somehow way less of a tongue twister despite its 14 letters. If the name Eyjafjallajökull sounds familiar at all, it is because it sits on top of the volcano of the same name which erupted in April of 2010 ceasing all air travel over the north Atlantic Ocean for six days. Eyjafjallajökull is by no means the largest volcano in Iceland (the whole country is volcanic, after all); its neighbor, Katla, last blew in 1918 and is overdue for an eruption. Our guide for the day told us an eruption from Katla has the potential to halt all air traffic in the northern hemisphere for six months!

The trip to Sonheimajökull takes about two and a half hours from Reykjavik, including the last five kilometers on a snow, ice and slush covered gravel road which our 15 passenger van handled with alarming ease. I'm not sure what kind of tires that thing had on it, but our guide and driver, Atli, didn't seem to have any problems, even going up hill or down some pretty steep slopes with 90 degree bends immediately at the bottom. I spent five winters driving to work in snow every day in upstate New York and I was impressed.

Crampons on! Ready to go!

Once we reached the end of the road, a parking lot full of other vehicles smaller and larger than our van, it was time to gear up. We zipped up our jackets, pulled up hoods, donned gloves and were handed an ice axe (never really thought I'd use that term in my blog) for the walk over snow covered volcanic rock and debris to the edge of the glacier. There we stopped and learned how to strap on our crampons to our boots and were ready to ascend onto the blue ice of the glacier itself. The crampons themselves were sharp but very flimsy looking and looked almost like the old time roller skates that you tied on over your sneakers. Not super encouraging.

Glaciers, despite their solid appearance, are anything but a stationary block of ice. They are constantly flowing on a layer close to the earth that is either liquid or semi-frozen and they contain tunnels and voids that change as the glacier moves. Our guide gave us one rule to follow before we stepped onto the glacier: follow in his footsteps exactly. I wondered if this word of caution was alarmist until, as if to prove his point, he poked around the glacier with his five foot long walking stick and then managed to submerge the entire length in snow, explaining that the hole he had just found may go as deep as 20 meters (over 65 feet). Point taken. I'm following him from now on.

Our guide, Atli, demonstrating how deep the snow is in spots by burying his walking stick into the snow.

The trip to the top of the glacier was gorgeous, a nice slow pace with plenty of stops to look around at the Game of Thrones beyond the Wall landscape punctuated by a mini rock avalanche that made us glad we were not close to the cliff where the rock fell. We mostly walked on snow covered areas and stayed in a straight line but walking on the clear ice was amazing; our crampons served us just fine. We managed to find an ice tunnel to walk through and saw diagonal striations in the ice that were caused by the movement of the glacier.

The color of the ice was otherworldly. It really is noticeable as completely different from the color of regular ice. There was a frozen lake at the bottom of the glacier that looked nothing like the glacier itself.

We got to the glacier at about 2:30 p.m. so after an hour to 90 minutes on the glacier, the sun was setting and we turned around it was getting to be time to walk back down in the fading daylight / early night (yes, early night after sunset at 3:20 p.m.!!!). So after some last pictures at the top of the glacier, we started back downhill.

The view from the top.

Walking uphill on solid ice is pretty easy: gravity works with you and I tend to look at the ground and not focus on the top of the ascent since I like to see where I am placing my feet, especially if not looking where I am going means I might drop down into a snow filled ice tunnel. Turning around and walking down is a whole different experience. My first reaction when I turned and started heading down what seemed to me to be a very steep and very slippery ice slope was "how the hell did we get up here and where's the path home?"

Looking downhill allows you to see all the curves and shapes in the glacier. It is simultaneously beautiful and terrifying, knowing that one false step, one slip, will send you on a long slide down over very hard surfaces into a frozen lake (in other words, pretty much sure death). I, of course, elected to walk down immediately behind our guide, meaning if one of my fellow tour takers slipped and fell, I'd be in danger of being taken out as well. I stepped very carefully and firmly on the way down, driving the spikes of my crampons with purpose until we got off the steepest slopes, which seemed sometimes too steep to hold me on a series of metal spikes.

Ultimately we all made it down off the glacier without slipping, although we did have one fall once we got back onto more solid snow covered volcanic gravel. We arrived back at the parking lot in the fading light of the day, when the low cloud covered sun made the almost monochromatic landscape totally black, white and gray. The couple of hours we spent walking up and down an ice slope, at its heart such a simple exercise, was literally one of the most exciting things I have done in recent memory. Not that we needed it to salvage the trip or anything, but that day made the whole trip worthwhile. I won't soon forget it.

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the company, Icelandic Mountain Guides, that led our tour. We didn't pick these guys (they were handed to us as part of our IcelandAir holiday package) but we couldn't have ended up in more capable hands. In addition to showing me an experience I won't ever forget, we soaked up a ton of knowledge from our guide, Atli, on the drive out and back. I learned more than I could possibly hope to about Iceland in less than four days and we got so much out of that tour. I would recommend anyone looking to go on a glacier walk to seek this company out. They were incredible.

The House Always Wins

OK, so let's get this out there right away: I didn't see the Aurora Borealis while I was in Iceland this past week. My $2,000 gamble didn't pay off. I'll have to try again some other time. And no doubt I will someday, whether it be in Iceland or somewhere else. I'll get to see the Northern Lights eventually, even if I have to station myself somewhere for a month or so and do nothing else but look at the sky every evening. But that's a long way away in all likelihood.

I usually do a fairly good job of setting my expectations at a realistic level for something like finding the Northern Lights where there are so many variables in play which are totally out of my control: the right solar conditions, the right temperature and clear skies are definitely conditions which I cannot even influence in any way. And so when I boarded my flight at Dulles Airport Tuesday night I was prepared for failure and the disappointment that would bring. I knew picking such a short window of time meant everything would have to fall into place perfectly.

My itinerary for this trip included only a three night stay and I knew the first night was probably a loss because I would surely just pass out early that day due to the lack of sleep on the overnight flight Tuesday evening. But Wednesday's activities brought a glimmer of hope. I took a whale watching trip that day just after noon (or since we didn't see any whales, it was basically just a boat trip). While looking hopelessly at the Atlantic Ocean for anything resembling a whale, we met Steve from the Isle of Sheppey in England and his wife, Anna, from Belarus (by Steve's own admission a total eastern European mail order bride scenario but it worked out - they just celebrated their tenth anniversary).

Steve and Anna had seen the Aurora Borealis two nights before just outside of Reykjavik. I had a chance between not seeing whales to check out the pictures Steve had taken and hope that I would have a chance to capture some similar images. The Northern Lights usually appear in pictures as mostly green and yellow waves of particles across the sky and Steve's pictures looked substantially similar to those posted on Northern Lights tour websites. But his account of seeing the Lights in person differed from his photographs. While his pictures showed a lot of green in the sky, he described only white lights, explaining that he was told to take photographs using an eight second exposure on his camera which would produce the signature colors of the Lights. I never really thought those photographs were taken as anything more than a single quick shutter click, but I'll surely remember Steve's story if I ever do get to experience it myself. I went to bed that night cautiously optimistic. I kept the curtains in my room open just in case the sky lit up in the night (it didn't).

Special Tours: Not so special last Thursday night.

The first thing I did the next morning when I got up was to check the Aurora Forecast on the Icelandic Meteorological Office's webpage. While not ideal, the forecast showed the possibility of some clear skies later that evening just west of Reykjavik, meaning over the ocean. Fortunately, I had scheduled a night Northern Lights by Boat tour that night as part of my vacation package so maybe there would be some hope. I set out on a most of the day bus tour to Iceland's Golden Circle with my fingers crossed that I'd get a break that night.

The Golden Circle is composed of three natural sites: Lake Thingvellir, a site of historical and geological importance to the Icelanders; Gullfoss, a 100 foot high waterfall; and Geysir, one of the first geysers ever to be discovered (and the namesake for all those that followed). The scenery was incredible but the tour got back a little late, so we took a cab downtown to get some dinner in plenty of time to catch our boat. Excitedly, we asked the cab driver if she thought we would see the Northern Lights on our tour. The answer was a flat "no, it's not cold enough." And if that didn't dash my hopes enough, they were killed when we got to the very imaginatively named "Special Tours" company office and found out the tour had been cancelled due to windy conditions. Better safe than sorry I guess but there went one of my two chances.

Gazing hopelessly up at the Iceland sky Friday night.

So then it was down to Friday, my last day in Iceland and my last shot at the Aurora Borealis. Friday gave me the best shot at a spectacular sighting because I planned to get out of Reykjavik and away from the city's light pollution. But after a long drive out of town, a few hours strolling around a glacier and a quick traditional Icelandic meal, our tour guides declared the sky too cloudy and there was no way would see the Lights that night. Strike three. I was out. No Northern Lights. Not on this trip.

I'm glad I went to Iceland, even if the primary reason for me going never panned out. The country is beautiful and I'm glad my introduction to the place occurred in mid-December. I really did keep the hotel room curtains open all three nights I was in country in hopes that I would wake up at some point in the night to a fantastic light show. It never happened and my disappointment was honestly almost palpable. As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, I am committed to try again. It may not be soon and it may not be in Iceland but I'll be back to look up at the night sky again someday.

Iceland's night sky, Friday December 13, 2013. Yes, this is a real photograph.

The $2,000 Gamble

At a little after 7:30 p.m. tomorrow (weather permitting), a plane that I will be on will be leaving Dulles Airport and heading north. Way north. Further than I have even been by about two full degrees of latitude. The furthest north I have ventured in my life prior to my trip tomorrow was in the year 2000, when I traveled by car to Jyväskylä, Finland on my summer of '00 Alvar Aalto pilgrimage. When I land in Reykjavik, Iceland Wednesday morning, I'll be closer to the north pole than I have ever been before.

So I know what you are thinking: it's late fall (almost winter in fact) about two weeks before Christmas and you are heading somewhere cold? Yep, that's right. I know most people at this time of year are thinking somewhere in the Caribbean or Florida. Not me. I'm going to a country where the temperatures at this time of year hover right around 32 degrees fahrenheit pretty much continuously and where there are fewer than five hours of light in the day. Sounds fun, right? I'm really looking forward to it. This has in many ways been a long time coming.

This short trip is going to be packed: a little over three days with four organized tours in and around the Reykjavik area. Before this week is over, I'll have been on two boats; walked on a glacier; toured national parks; and hopefully will understand a lot more about a country that as a kid, I always wanted to visit for some reason. I always used to write stories when I was in school in England that had characters living in Iceland.

My main hope on this trip, however, is that I will get to see the Aurora Borealis, or Northern Lights, a natural light display caused near the polar regions of the Earth by the collision of energetic charged particles with atoms in the high altitude atmosphere. The phenomenon causes bands of colored light to illuminate the sky and is especially visible on cold clear nights. It is considered one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World and it is without a doubt the singular inspiration for this quick trip north. I'm hoping for clear skies all week and temperatures in the high 20s.

I think we got a sweet deal on this trip. I managed to pick a packaged vacation from IcelandAir with our non-stop flight, three nights' hotel and four tours (including some meals) for about 38 cents less than $1,000. Then somehow, someway, I managed to convince myself I needed new boots, socks, base layers, fleece outer layers, gloves, coat, a storm shell (pants and coat) and hat (Wizards hat, of course) which set me back almost as much as the trip itself. Now it's less of a sweet deal but it's not like I will never use the clothing I have bought ever again. I'm hoping the gamble is worth it. The weather forecast predicts cloudy skies every day so I'm not super optimistic. If I manage to see the Aurora Borealis at all, I'll consider it money well spent. And if I don't, I'm sure I will have a great time anyway. I'm just hoping for a payoff worth more than $2,000.

Your Barrel Is Ready

I started this blog three and half months ago on my 45th birthday with a pledge to the world (or the dozen or so people who have read this thing so far) to spend the next five years broadening my horizons through travel. I vowed to visit at least two new continents and go to at least one place that would have totally freaked me out in my first 45 years. I got off to a pretty good start a week later by spending a week and a half in Germany and Austria, two places I had never visited. A week after returning from that European trip, I was in Las Vegas for the 15th time. Last weekend, I took another trip.

So after a 15th trip to Vegas (which is by now somewhat routine), this must be some exotic destination, right? And that's absolutely correct, if you consider Kentucky an exotic destination.

This is not my first trip to the bluegrass state. I visited Memphis, Nashville and Kentucky on a music and bourbon themed vacation in 2006 and as part of that trip I took a whirlwind ride in whatever rental car I had picked up (probably a red Grand Am; somehow I'm partial to those when renting cars) to what then was all seven Kentucky bourbon producers in three days.

Either when I was in Kentucky in 2006 or shortly before I visited or maybe even right after I got back, I signed up to be a Maker's Mark Ambassador. The point of being an Ambassador is to spread the word about Maker's Mark bourbon and recruit others to buy and enjoy their bourbon as much as we as Ambassadors do. When you sign up, you get an official Ambassador card, receive yearly holiday gifts and get invited periodically to local Maker's Mark events sponsored by the distillery. You also get your name engraved on a brass plaque and placed on a barrel of bourbon in their warehouse. Through the Ambassador page on the Maker's Mark website, you can track the aging progress of the barrel.

This past summer, I received an invitation to visit the distillery as a guest and hand dip some bottles featuring bourbon from my barrel. After seven years, my barrel was ready.

Now I knew this was  probably a total marketing gimmick. It was seemingly nothing more than a ruse to get me to drive ten or so hours across Virginia, West Virginia and most of Kentucky to buy a couple of bottles of bourbon. But I didn't care. This only happens once, right? I knew I couldn't miss this invitation. So after a day of driving through rain and sun; a trip down Diamond Caverns (Mammoth Cave was closed thanks to our elected officials); a trek through the woods at Dinosaur World; a spontaneous trip to Nashville; and a couple of nights at the Wigwam Village No. 2 motel (seriously), I found myself back in Loretto, Kentucky at the Maker's Mark distillery as a distinguished guest to buy some bourbon with my name on it.

We got to the distillery a little before noon and from the moment I walked through the door of the visitors' center, I knew my preconceived notion that this was all a marketing gimmick was way off. From the greeting when I walked in the door ("Welcome, Mr. Ambassador") all the way through me hand dipping my bottles into that famous Maker's Mark wax, the staff through the experience made me feel like a VIP every minute I was there.

We started our journey with a tour of the working parts of the distillery (I got a special little medal with a name tag; it's the small things in life sometimes) which took us from the still house, through the label printing shop, inside one of the rickhouses where the bourbon is aged and finally by the bottling line. After the bottling line, we spent some time tasting the bourbon starting with the White Dog that gets put into the new charred oak barrels then on to Maker's Mark and finally Maker's 46, which is standard mature aged Maker's Mark which is then re-casked for several months with a few charred French oak barrel staves to impart a different flavor than regular Maker's Mark bourbon.

As I mentioned earlier, I'd visited seven distilleries in Kentucky before in addition to Jack Daniel's in Tennessee so I already knew how bourbon was made. But I appreciated the refresher now that I've been drinking bourbon for a while (when I visited in 2006 I was pretty much a novice). I didn't recall that Maker's Mark rotated their barrels for consistent flavor in every barrel, which explains the lack of a single barrel or small batch product from this distiller. I also hadn't been really taught how to taste bourbon properly, which we got some excellent instruction on during the tasting. For the record, I liked the Maker's Mark product the best, which surprised me because I really thought I liked the Maker's 46 best after the first sip.

After the tasting came the best part: me picking up my customized bottles after a seven year maturing process. Since a picture is allegedly worth a thousand words, I think that process is best told through a few carefully selected pictures. You are about to go through 10,000 words very quickly.

The blank canvas of the unlabeled Maker's Mark bottles.

Adding my custom labels.

Labeling complete. 

Joy!

Apron on!

Sleeves on!

Dip No. 1. 

Dip No. 2.

Applying the special Ambassadors' only seal to the top of the bottle.

Bagged and ready for home.

One of the bottles I dipped is now safe among the other bourbon bottles on my kitchen counter but this one is more special than the others. It was personally created and transported back by me. Along the way from a label-less bottle of brown liquor to the moment I left the distillery, the staff at Maker's Mark made me believe this experience was something special which it absolutely was. To be honest, when I first got the invitation to visit, I had very little intention of going. But good friends convinced me that this would be worthwhile and a ton of fun and they were right on both counts. I will likely never go back to Kentucky again but then again I thought that when I drove out of the state in '06. Maybe I'll have the opportunity to go back again, perhaps when one of my friends finds out that their barrel is ready.

Home sweet home!

Welcome To Fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada

Earlier this summer, I took a quick weekend trip to Las Vegas to watch NBA Summer League basketball. It was my 15th trip to Las Vegas since 2001, which makes Vegas by far my most visited vacation destination since I started traveling on my own after school. That's an average of more than one trip per year, in case you couldn't do the math yourself.

Despite all the time I've spent in Vegas (over a month all told when added up), however, the territory I've explored there has been extremely limited. Most of my time has been spent on foot or in cabs in and around the Strip, which for those of you uninitiated in these things is pretty much Las Vegas Boulevard from the Mandalay Bay resort to the Stratosphere hotel. One year I rented a car and went to the Grand Canyon for a couple of days and I've been a mile or two off the Strip to go to eat once. I've also been to the Fremont Street area four or five times but for the most part, I've spent my month in Las Vegas within an area which is no more than 15 square miles.

One of the most famous Las Vegas landmarks is the "Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada" sign which sits about a mile south of Mandalay Bay. This thing is a world famous icon and it graces millions of dollars of Las Vegas souvenirs sold each year. But in my first 14 trips to the Nevada desert, I had never seen it in person. I didn't want to let that error in judgement stand my 15th trip. And it didn't.

The sign was installed in the center of Las Vegas Boulevard in 1959 by Las Vegas salesman Ted Rogich who sold it shortly after its installation to Clark County, Nevada. The sign was designed by graphic designer Betty Willis who never copyrighted the design, insisting it was a gift to the city. As such, she doesn't see a dime from the millions of dollars of souvenirs sold each year. Somehow this gesture makes the sign all that more awesome.

As a graphic design, the sign is so simple and clear but timeless at the same time. It's a simple white diamond shape trimmed in yellow with rounded ends topped by seven circles (allegedly to resemble silver dollars) and a star above offset to the left. The sign's red and blue welcoming message is obvious. The font is easy to read and the script "Fabulous" convinces you that Las Vegas is, in fact, fabulous (it is, most of the time). The back side of the sign, which one rarely sees, is equally clear, although it's easy to see why the back side isn't displayed much.

The sign was made by the Young Electric Sign Company, the company that made most all of the iconic Las Vegas casino signs. If you go up to the Neon Museum near the Fremont Street area, you will see the "YESCO" logo adorning the majority of the signs in their boneyard. The Young Electric Sign logo can been seen on the front and back of the sign.

The sign used to stand alone in the median of the Strip but a few years ago, the city decided to make it a bona fide tourist attraction and installed a parking lot just south of the sign so that people wouldn't simply walk there and then scamper across the road to the sign. Good idea. We took a cab down there on our way to the airport, had the driver wait, and then continued on our way home. The sign is way smaller than I thought it would be. I expected it to be highway sign height but it's quite modest (25 feet high) which was probably more appropriate to the scale of roadside signs in the late 1950s.

Like all tourist attractions in Vegas, the sign has drawn people to it looking to make a buck. We ran into a guy who presumably spends all day offering to take pictures for everyone at the sign (there seemed to be a ton of couples there) for an implied tip (we did it). It's hot in July. Very hot. I know it's a dry heat but still... This had to have been one of the shortest stops I've made at a tourist attraction, maybe slightly longer than the Griswold family spent at the Grand Canyon. It was worth it. I feel like I have been to Vegas now.

I have a long list of jobs I don't want. Sitting in the sun in July in Las Vegas in a Big Bird costume got added to that list about two months ago.

Arbeit Macht Frei

It's been a few weeks since my last Bavaria post and almost three months since I set out on that one week plus journey but I still have one more to post to get through and it hasn't been easy to write. This will be the last one I publish about Bavaria unless I return someday in the future to that corner of the world.

Overall our trip was a great trip. I learned a lot about the history of the region; changed my opinion of German food (for the better) and beer (for the worse); and saw gorgeous countryside in and around the Alps. But it featured two of the most uneasy days I've ever spent on vacation in Dachau and Berchtesgaden.

One of the darkest chapters in 20th century history occurred in Germany from 1933 to 1945, beginning when the National Socialist German Workers' Party (more commonly know as the Nazi Party) took power in that country until they were defeated at the end of World War II. While I don't usually seek out unpleasant holiday destinations, I thought I owed it to myself and to everyone killed in that war to visit some sites connected with the Nazi regime to remind at least myself of what we collectively should never allow to happen again. It was worth it, but it was chilling.

We arrived in Munich on a Friday afternoon and the next morning boarded a train for the town of Dachau, a typical German town about 20 kilometers northwest of the city. Only not so much. Dachau was selected by the Nazis as the site of the first concentration camp to house persons that the Nazis thought should be removed from society. And there were a lot that the Nazis thought should be removed from society.

The camp was established in March 1933 on the site of an abandoned munitions factory to hold communists, trade unionists and other opponents of the Nazi party. Eventually, other groups were brought to the camp, including Jehovah's Witnesses, gypsies, homosexuals and, after Kristallnacht in November 1938, a significant number of Jewish men. In 1937, the camp became a work camp, first demolishing the old munitions factory and then enlarging the very place that would hold and work many until their death. The place remained a work camp until liberation by American forces in 1945. Dachau was not officially a death camp, meaning there was no mass extermination in gas chambers (although there was one built), but for sure there was plenty of death in this place.

A guard tower and poplar tree at either end of one of the barracks' foundations.

When we first got to the site, my first impression was that the place was huge. It was just way bigger than I expected. This was not a place that held a few people against their will; it was massive. We walked the site from the south end of the complex to the north, starting at the prison and then moving through the administration block (which is now a museum), past the barracks and the memorials and chapels on the property before ending up at the crematorium. That was probably the right sequence. There is no doubt the crematorium was the toughest spot to visit.

As I walked through the place, it was impossible not to be affected by so much that was there and had happened. Overall, I was struck by the abject cruelty of the entire enterprise. There was a vision of hatred put forth by Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler that truly applied to everyone not like them and it was clear from the exhibits that it would have been all but impossible for most people to avoid their persecution. The camp was truly there to work people to death. There was no constructive purpose behind some of the labor that the prisoners were forced to endure. Some work details simply moved rocks or piles of sand from one location to another before just being made to move them back to their original locations.

Reconstructed barracks.

Originally the camp had 40 barracks, each constructed to hold 200 men. At the camp's highest occupancy, there were up to 2,000 men squashed into any one barracks. Walking through the two reconstructed barracks at the south end of the site, it is unthinkable that that many men could be packed into the bunks inside. Different types of bunks are depicted in the two barracks and none of them seems any better than the other. I can't imagine how awful it was to be kept here. In many ways it is remarkable that the prisoners didn't rise up against the guards. I guess there was true belief despite all that was happening around them that the intent was not to work everyone to death.

After passing through the barracks, you are faced with the foundations of 38 other housing units, each numbered to seemingly remind you of how many there were and how many men were kept here, divided by an allée of beautiful poplar trees, who were witness to such cruelty for the first years of their lives. It's a long walk and that walk makes you think even more about the hell that the people here must have endured.

The path then directs you to the west, through the barbed wire fence atop the deep perimeter ditch and to the crematorium. As amazing as it sounds, the crematorium initially in and of itself was not that difficult to visit. This was the place where the bodies were burned, not where people died. But once you get to the gas chamber, it's absolutely incomprehensible why man would want to do this to another man. I've read and seen stories of the Nazis building gas chambers to look like showers so I expected the "shower heads" above me as I passed through the space. But the attention to detail was absolutely disgusting. There are drains in the floor which serve no purpose since no liquid would ever pass through there. It was literally one of the most horrifying spaces I have ever been in. It was never used at Dachau and that's little comfort to me. It was designed to be used. That's enough.

As if the gas chamber weren't enough, the path from the crematorium takes you past the shooting range, where the guards used prisoners as practice. For me the fact that the gas chambers were never used mattered when I got to this place. People were gunned down here for sport by men. It was truly sickening.

Looking south between the poplars to the administration building.

I can't imagine how the German people come to terms with what their ancestors have done in this place and the guilt about what happened here is obvious. After the war, the barracks were used to house refugees until 1965. Only in the 1970s did Germany start to make any effort to recount what happened here. There is so much here that is new or recently discovered, from memorial chapels and sculptures to roads and guardhouse foundations recently unearthed. It is patently obvious that this history has been avoided in some measure. Thank God it appears there is progress being made.

Dachau is perhaps the worst place I have ever been on vacation. Despite that I suggest you go if you ever find yourself in Munich. The world needs visitors to see and remember what happened here. The main gate to the camp features the words "arbeit macht frei" which loosely translated means "work shall set you free." It's horrifying to think that whoever hung that gate honestly believed those words.

Four days after our visit to Dachau, we visited the Berchtesgaden region. Our agenda for the day featured a boat ride in the gorgeous Berchtesgaden National Park in the morning and then a trip up into the Alps to visit the Kehlsteinhaus in the afternoon.

The Kehlsteinhaus, or Eagle's Nest, was built as a gift for Adolf Hitler's 50th birthday. It is a diplomatic entertainment spot designed to show the benevolence and love for nature demonstrated by the Nazi party. It was built in just 13 months, an incredible feat considering it is sitting on top of a mountain accessible by a one way road (which had to be built before construction on the building could be started) and a gold plated elevator built into the heart of the mountain. This place is clearly a demonstration of what the Nazis could build if they set their mind to it. 

When I was planning this trip to Germany, I knew I wanted to visit the Eagle's Nest. Quite honestly, I expected the place to be a typical wooden chalet like the kinds you imagine exist in the Alps. Indeed, the trip south to the Berchtesgaden takes you by a number of picturesque chalets. But the Eagle's Nest is nothing like that. It is an ashlar masonry structure with (appropriately enough I guess) very little warmth whatsoever.

It honestly feels like an executive conference center which I guess in many ways it absolutely was. Other than its size (it's huge), it doesn't seem excessive at all. There are no Nazi motifs on the building or any sort of celebration of German power. Other than the fact that it is built on top of a mountain and you have to take a gold plated elevator to get there, it doesn't seem that impressive. I guess it would have in the first half of the 20th century.

Once you are on top of the mountain, the site is really amazing. It is not quite on the top of a mountain but the peak is just a short walk from the building. The views are incredible. It's difficult to imagine the type of men who built this place in a spot so beautiful.

While walking around the Eagle's Nest, I found myself torn about the continued existence of the place. This building and this site are reminders of Nazi power and excess and I would have no qualms about wiping it off the face of the Earth. I feel this is different than Dachau. A site like that needs to remain to remind us of what we should not become again. I don't feel the same way about the Eagle's Nest. On the other hand, there doesn't seem to be any purpose to razing it.

I do think there was an opportunity that was missed by the German government. The Eagle's Nest today is a tourist spot and a cafeteria style restaurant. The reasons why the building exists and what it symbolized are relegated to what used to be an outside porch type corridor, squirreled away off the main path of travel by the bathroom. I'd be much more accepting of keeping the place around if it was a museum to what the Nazis had done to the people of Germany and Europe, rather than as a beer and food place on top of a hill.

The Eagle's Nest is not an easy place to get to. From Salzburg, we took three buses there and three back (eight total with our trip to the Berchtesgaden National Park) in one day. I recommend you try though. Despite the sinister reason for it being there, the view is incredible.

It seems odd that I would devote two of my nine vacation days to these sites but I thought it was extremely important. Despite the reminders that these two places represent, we keep allowing dictators to persecute their own people. I guess we can't take on all the world's problems but it's awfully difficult standing by.

Bavarian Food And Beer

Beer kegs at the Paulaner brewery.

I'll start this post with some statements I never thought I would make. The beer in Bavaria was almost universally disappointing and was without doubt the part of my recent trip to Europe that fell farthest below my expectations. The food in Bavaria, on the other hand, was absolutely amazing; I loved almost every serious meal I ate while I was on vacation there. If you had asked me to describe my expectations for beer and food before I boarded my flight to Germany two months ago, I would have said I was looking forward to the beer more than most aspects of my trip and I was dreading the food. Something strange happened between the time I took off from Dulles Airport and arrived back in the United States ten days later.

When I arrived in Frankfurt and presented my passport to enter through immigration, I was asked the purpose of my visit. When I responded that I was on vacation, the follow on question was if I was visiting to drink German beer. I responded enthusiastically that I intended to drink a lot of German beer. About eight hours later, I was downing my first liter of dunkles beer at the Hofbrauhaus near the Marienplatz in Munich feeling a little let down and hoping that the rest of my beer drinking experience in Bavaria would be better. It was, but only a little.

Munich is surrounded by breweries; there are at least nine world renowned breweries in or near the city. The rest of Bavaria is not much different; there are breweries almost literally everywhere. Each brewery in Bavaria generally brews three types of beer: a helles, which is essentially a beer which tastes like Bud Light but with about twice the alcohol content; a dunkles, which is a little deeper in flavor and color than helles because of the roasted malt used in the brewing process; and a weissbier or German wheat beer, which is a chewy citrusy wheat beer.

My first mug of beer in Bavaria (in the foreground).

In addition to the breweries, Munich and the rest of Bavaria is full of bars and beer gardens. Each bar or beer garden is usually aligned with a single brewery meaning two things: you have no choice of beer brand when you sit down to drink and you typically have three types of beer to choose from: helles, dunkles and weissbier. That's it. That's all you can get. There are some exceptions to this rule. Sometimes, you can find a bar that serves a helles and dunkles brewed by one brewery and a weissbier brewed by a second but you still end up with three choices. Pretty daunting, especially if you consider it's impossible to find non-Bavarian beer in Bavaria. It made me realize the kind of creativity and variety in beer we can now get in the United States. It has to be one of the premier beer brewing nations, unconstrained by strict adherence to brewing tradition.

Before you lament my dilemma with only three beers to choose from, let me say that I really like German weissbier. It has a ton of delicious flavor with not too much yeast taste and the texture and body of the beer is wonderful. Think Samuel Adams Summer Ale if you need a point of comparison. It's so much more satisfying than Belgian style witbier, which I generally find watery and sometimes lacking in taste. Of all the weissbier I had on my trip, I thought the König Ludwig and Munich's Augustiner Bräu were the best although not by a lot. If you like the taste of weissbeer, I don't think you can really go too far wrong in Bavaria. But drinking weissbier for nine straight days was not why I came to Bavaria. 

Now because I like to work hard at finding good beer, I refused to let the situation presented to me keep me down. So I worked at it (meaning I kept drinking). Where I was frustrated with the limited beer selection in bars and beer gardens I visited, I found greater variety at breweries' official beer gardens. Hofbrauhaus offered four beers to choose from but Paulaner, Andechs Abbey and Hacker-Pschorr all offered at least five and the selection beyond the ubiquitous helles / dunkles / weissbeer choices were worth seeking out.

Both Hofbrauhaus and Hacker-Pschorr's beer gardens served a summer beer, which is a medium colored unfiltered lager with good body and far more taste than the helles or dunkles beer but without the sweeter yeasty taste you get from a weissbier. The Nockherberg beer available at the Paulaner beer garden had a similar profile and was perhaps the better of those three beers. I also found a bottled Hacker-Pschorr keller beer at the end of our Paulaner brewery tour (ironically) that was far tastier than the helles beer we were assaulted with at other places. I'd liken it more to a full bodied pilsener beer than the standard light German style lager we found elsewhere. Sometimes hard work pays off.

And then there's the food. If I had to give my impression of Bavarian food prior to my trip, I would have described it as meat and potatoes based and would have displayed very little enthusiasm for it at all. Add in to the equation an experience I had at an Alsatian restaurant in Paris on a trip I took in 2004 where I was served blood sausage and my piece of pork still had the pig's hair on it and I would say I was positively dreading the food possibilities on this trip. I've loved English, Dutch, Belgian and Finnish food on trips to Europe. I was absolutely not looking forward to food on this journey.

Spaetzle at Hacker-Pschorr's beer garden in Munich.

But I was surprised. And very pleasantly so. Of the first seven days I was in Bavaria, I think I ate sausages at some point on six of those days, before varying my diet just a bit the last three days. The sausages in Germany, be they frankfurters, bratwurst, knockwurst or whatever, are unlike American versions of those same foods. The grind on the meat is super fine, the casings snap and the taste is amazing. There's no gristle or hard crunchy things when you bite into them. I hate to say it was like eating hot dogs every day because the sausages tasted so much better but that's my only point of comparison. I do love hot dogs by the way. I would eat them every day if I thought it was healthy.

Sausages are eaten hot and cold in Bavaria. The cold salami I ate at Andechs Abbey and the weisswurst I ate on a beer and food tour in Munich were equally as good. And each type of sausage is paired with their own spicy or sweet mustard which improves the overall taste of the meat. I didn't see any blood sausage at any of the places I visited, although that's probably because I didn't visit the right (or wrong) places.

The best meal of the trip: pretzels and sausages at Andechs Abbey.

Besides the sausages, other highlights of Bavarian cuisine that I will long for include pretzels and spaetzle. The only real exposure I had to pretzels before this trip was at sporting events (think rock hard brown pretzels with tons of salt) and Rock Bottom Brewery (think fresh baked brown pretzels with tons of salt which get rock hard quick). The pretzels in Germany are works of art: crusty and slightly salty on the outside with warm doughy bread on the inside. And they are served with raw sliced white onion and a spiced cream cheese and butter mixture that is out of this world good. I would kill for some of that stuff right now. Also, for the record, raw white onion makes pretty much everything better. Call me crazy on that one.

I only managed to have spaetzle once on my trip, so the sample size is admittedly difficult to rely on, but the cheese spaetzle I had at the Hacker-Pschorr braureihaus was incredible. It was like a lighter, fluffier version of macaroni and cheese and it was absolutely delicious. If I ever go back, I'm having more spaetzle, if I can give up the sausages and pretzels.

Apple strudel in Salzburg.

Finally, a word about dessert. I'm not much of a dessert guy but I did have to have some apple strudel in both Germany and Austria (especially Austria). If there was a food I thought would be incredible but wasn't, it's the apple strudel. I found the three servings I had to be pleasant, with a lot of apple, but the traditional vanilla custard served with the strudel didn't do much for me and the plates I had were ultimately a little disappointing.

My advice to traveler seeking out good food and beer in Bavaria is this: find the kind of beer you like and drink your beer at brewery beer gardens if you have to; eat plenty of sausages and pretzels; and when presented a chance to eat cheese spaetzle, take it and don't look back. If you don't like it you can always order some more pretzels. Oh, and if you ever make it to Andechs Abbey, get some of the pork roast or convince a friend to get some and steal some of the crispy pork fat. Delicous. Prost!

Eight Things I Learned In Bavaria

Please please explain to me what this sign means. No playing soccer in the street next to your house with cars around?

Every time I travel outside the United States, I end up realizing that the rest of the world is not like it is at home. Not that I really ever forget that being an immigrant to this country myself but the history, culture, food and behaviors abroad can vary wildly from my sheltered little life close to the capital of one of the biggest and most prosperous nations on Earth.

In many ways I guess it's not just an international phenomenon. The same could be said for traveling in the United States itself; they don't do things in Texas or Boston or South Dakota like they do in Washington, D.C. And all of that is a good thing. Why bother traveling if everything were the same the world over?

Having said all that, I always travel with the particular biases I carry from the place where I live. No matter how savvy I think I am, I always learn something about or from the places I go. Some of the things I learn help me get around and will benefit me on future trips; some are refreshing; and some are just plain baffling or downright amusing. Here are eight things I learned in Bavaria.

1. Carry Cash

The United States is without question a credit driven nation. How else would most people in this country have all the great and glorious stuff they have without the power of credit card debt. On the contrary, cash is definitely king in Bavaria. The opportunities to pay with credit over there are few and far between. You have to carry cash pretty much wherever you go!

The best part of this cash first society for me is the waiters and waitresses in beer gardens and restaurants. When you pay, your cash is not taken to the register to make change. Each server carries a massive wallet full of all variety of Euros and Cents and makes change, seemingly for whatever sum you lay out, right at the table. It's thrilling and amazing. ATMs are plentiful. Hit one as soon as you land and you'll be OK.

Wild boar sausages over potatoes in Salzburg. Lots and lots of sausages. Yummy!

2. Where's The Bacon?

For all the pork I ate in Germany and Austria (mostly in sausage form), I didn't eat a single solitary piece of bacon. And it wasn't by choice because let's face it, no way would I actually voluntarily opt out of eating bacon. I mean, who would? And it's not like we didn't look either. Our last hotel had an incredible breakfast buffet with cereal, eggs, croissants, jam, yogurt, ham, salami, herring (yes, herring), cheese and pretty much everything else you could want for the first meal of the day except, that's right you guessed it, bacon.

Now this would be just unthinkable in the United States but, again, that's why we travel. I guess I can exist for nine days without bacon if I can get the incredible sausages they have over in Bavaria. Just for nine days though.

3. Google Translate Really Works

While I was planning our trip to Bavaria at nights, on weekends and the occasional lunchtime at work, I found a lot of websites (particularly in Germany) that did not offer English translations which I found annoying for a while until I turned to Google Translate. This tool is absolutely amazing. Other than a few words here and there, I found it to be mostly foolproof.

And it really helped with non-English menus (ran into one of those here and there) to determine what exactly we were ordering before something showed up in front of us. I wanted to make damn sure we didn't end up with cow's brains like Brenda and Donna when they went to Paris on Beverly Hills 90210 so I used it religiously in those situations. It's always fascinating to consider what sort of vocabulary I come back with from foreign speaking countries. My Finnish vocabulary from my trip in 2000 consists of hei (hello) and kittos (thank you). Thanks to Google Translate, I know how to say whipped cream (schlagobers) and trout (forellen) in German but I have no idea how to say please.

4. Advance Planning Pays Off

I'm a big believer in advance planning. If there's one thing I've never been accused of, it's not putting enough thought into a trip in advance. I usually know what's important to see; exactly how to get everywhere I need to go; and when museums and other attractions are open and not open.

Having said that, there were some situations in Bavaria where I would have benefited from planning at home before landing in Germany. The train schedules and ticket options are a lot clearer on the Deutsche Bahn website than they are on the ticket machines in the stations. We bought tickets to Hohenschwangau before we got to Germany and saved a ton of money; by contrast, misunderstanding the ticket machines cost us about 30 extra Euros each to get to Salzburg and back.

I also wish we had dug into the bus websites a little more to know that day passes are available which can save a lot of money and time. Fortune favors the prepared mind!

5. Germans Love Long Words

If there's one thing that astonished us about the German language, it was the length of the words. Some words seem to be nouns appended by adjective after adjective which end up in multi-multi syllabic nightmares. I ordered one meal called fleischpflanzerlschmaus which somehow means beef croquette with mushroom sauce and cheese spaetzle. Delicious by the way!

I think the longest words we found on our trip were 27 letters long. The word above (one of the 27 letter words we found) means tax advice firm, although Google Translate doesn't know that (I said "mostly foolproof"). The upside of long words is sentences with few words. I guess it doesn't help if you can't pronounce the words though.

6. Bus Drivers Make Change

The first couple of days of our trip to Bavaria were spent hoarding Cents and Euros so we would have exact change for all the bus rides we needed to take. We religiously paid with large bills for small transactions so we could accumulate massive pocketfuls of change. When buses approached, we swapped and pooled money so we would each have the exact fare and wouldn't overspend. That's the way Metro works in D.C. Why would we think anything different?

Eventually a few days into the trip we got to a situation where we just didn't have the right change and were forced to plop way more than the fare down in the tray in front of the bus driver, feeling foolish that we were overpaying for a bus ride and we hadn't managed to successfully manage our group coin pot. Then something amazing happened: he made change for our bills and it changed our world. Apparently we learned nothing from the number 1 above. Can't see Metro adopting this. Thank God for SmarTrip.

House next to a tree this way? Anybody got any better meanings for this?

7. I Don't Understand German Street Signs

I love signs. Advertisements, wayfinding signs, neon signs, whatever. You name a type of sign and odds are I love it. One of my favorite types of signs are street signs. They are absolutely essential to the driver and pedestrian alike. I find it amazing the kinds of messages that can be conveyed using pictograms and a few words or no words at all.

European signs are often very different from signs in the United States and sometimes take a bit of time to understand their exact meaning. The sign at the top of this post makes no sense unless you understand there's a version of the sign without the red line through it. I believe it's telling you when you can and cannot let your kids play in the street. Despite my best deductive reasoning, there were a few signs in Bavaria that I just didn't get. I can't for the life of me figure out what the sign above means, which we found near a bus stop in Salzburg. The only meaning I can ascribe is that there's a tree next to a building to the left. I cannot figure out why I would care. Can anyone help me out here?

8. Schedules Work

If there's one stereotype of the German and Austrian people that I had before heading overseas this summer, it's that things would run on schedule. Our travel plans on some days in fact counted on it. We worked out day trips where trains or buses leaving early or late would have been major inconveniences. One day, we had to take eight buses to get from place to place.

And do they ever. I think just about every train or bus we waited for came at the appointed time (except of course when I was trying to recover my iPad and depending on a bus to get me back to the hotel for checkout time - hitchhiking works in Germany, although that's not a lesson I'm willing to post as learned). If I'm waiting for a Metro bus in D.C., I know I just have to wait until it decides to get there. It could be early or late or buses 20 minutes apart may arrive five minutes after each other. But Bavarian transportation is clearly different. I spent a lot of time on the Regionalverker Oberbayern website before leaving the United States looking for bus schedules to shore up our plans and it definitely paid off huge. The website, by the way, is not in English. See number 3 above for help.