Switzerland & Germany

Tales from Switzerland & Germany follow below the maps.
Click for more information on Switzerland and Germany from the Internet.

VENICE, BERN, MUNICH: Date: Tue, 16 Apr 2002 12:21:59

Subject: Wading in cheese, with only sausage to keep us afloat

            We promised we’d write soon and here we are! So from Venice we took a night train to Bern, Switzerland.  We had the most commodious ride, with our own heater and a snoring Swiss to boot.  We couldn’t quite get over our China-instilled wariness, because when the conductor offered us coffee, we said no, then Hagar thought out loud, "You know, they might not charge for it."  While Michael was still shaking his head in disbelief, Hagar chased the guy down and get her complimentary coffee.  They gave us breakfast to go, too!  It was a chocolate croissant, a regular croissant, and some orange juice and two Bacio chocolate truffles.  We were suspicious because when Michael took the Vietnamese meal on the train to Ho Chi Minh City, he got sick like never before.  On the other hand, croissants sounded a lot safer than minced pork and unknown dark sauce.  So we decided to consider the possibilities and packed our free food for later. 

            We arrived in Bern and tried to follow very confusing directions that led us to think we had to take a bus then a train, although they also included walking directions.  As we couldn’t afford the train fare, we walked and arrived in our hostel after 5 minutes.  Weird.  The Swiss don’t seem to like to walk up hills, because every hill has either an elevator or a steep train-tram thing, and the Swiss take it for distances as short as fifty meters of stairs.  The backpackers were easy to spot.  Anything to save a euro ten.

            The packaged breakfast came in quite handy when we found out Swiss prices.  McDonald’s meals cost about 8 or 9 bucks, and Cokes cost $4.50 for a medium!  After a sad attempt at hunting for rabbits, we decided that we need to implement our newly learned "poor backpacker food mode."  So we did what anyone else would have done in our situation:  We stole bread, butter and cheese from our free (read: FREE!) daily hostel breakfast, and ate it for lunch.  Oh and in Italy we anticipated the priceyness of Switzerland, so we stole various packaged goods from the free hostel breakfast as well (butter, nuttela packages and melba toast, plus some cookies and used tea bags).  So needless to say, we lost some weight in the ole Land of Alps.

            We DID, however, eat fondue.  After two days of this melba toast and nutella diet (the other supplies proved less helpful, as we had trouble getting hot water for our used tea bags), we decided we were ready for the fondue meal we had promised ourselves.  We ordered rosti, which turns out to be hash browns with stuff on top, sausage, and champagne fondue.  Wooooo hooo!  The pot was one of those big cooking pots and AFTER melting, the cheese was four inches deep.  Hagar admits though that she is quite short and couldn’t quite see where the cheese ended and where the pot began, so she was disappointed in the amount of cheese.  When she peeked in after feeling overstuffed and floating in cheese, she was shocked to note that we were still elbow deep in the sticky stinky stuff.  It was really exciting though.  Each bread cube delicately dipped with cheese, then accidentally dropped in the pot, so, OH NO, it got smothered and covered and saturated with cheesy happiness.  After fifteen or twenty accidental droppings, Michael had to undo the top button on his jeans and finished off with mostly regular dips.  Needless to say, we were full and happy, and Michael couldn’t finish the second sausage.  Throw it out? Never!  Ask the waiter to pack it up and face embarrassment (he had warned us that we ordered too much food)? Never!  Michael asked Hagar if anyone was looking, and when she confusedly answered in the negative, he calmly stuck the sausage in his jacket pocket.  He still smells like sausage, but lunch the next day was quite filling.

            Needless to say, we gained the weight back in a single meal.

            The weather stunk.  It was cold, rainy, miserable and definitely no weather for the Swiss Alps (we weren’t planning on skiing).  We had a choice of continuing this madness of hoarding food or we could continue on.  We took a train, hung out in Zurich for a couple of hours (where we joined a festival of drunk Swiss folks dancing to Oompah-style jazz standards, and got a free pencil), and then continued on to Munich.  Ah Germany.  Sausage, sausage and more sausage.  God save us.

            Some stereotypes are false.  For example, most Bavarians don’t walk around with those funny green hats and suspenders (although some do).  But one stereotype is true.  Germans eat lots of sausage and drink lots of beer.  Michael ordered a small beer and the cheapest sausage plate and was attacked by bratwursts (we are tempted to make phallus jokes, but are sparing our relatives and those with sensitive eyes) big enough to be used as a weapon in a beer hall food fight, complimented by a pit of sauerkraut.  The beer was a half-liter, plus two inches of foamy head.  Michael hasn’t gone hungry.  Hagar, on the other hand... She had a bowl of applesauce.

            In Munich, we saw the main churches, the square, and the huge glockenspiel that does a little dance at noon.  The Residenz, where the dukes lived, contained enough gold and other treasures to rival the Roman Catholic church.  Each person’s bedroom was surrounded on either side by ten other rooms.  Extravagant to say the least.  Apparently, people sunbathe nude at the Englischer Gartens, but since it actually snowed yesterday, we figured the odds wouldn’t be good on finding Germans out for a stroll in their birthday suits.

            One other thing-- it seems that Germans of yesteryear liked to look at scenes of murderous stabbings while they eat.  The plate collection at the Residenz (that’s right, they have a silver, gold, and porcelain plate collection that fills up three halls) was composed of regular designs, pretty flowers, and horrible scenes of stabbings, scenes from "When Animals Attack in the Sixteenth Century", and major war scenes a la Saving-Private-Ryan-style carnage.  Plus the gothic architecture is pretty spooky, and even the church dedicated to Archangel Michael displays a sculpture of the glorious and sublime angel stabbing a screaming lion-serpent through the neck with a spear.  We are not sure if we are eating only one meal a day because the food is so heavy, or because who wants to eat after seeing bloody violent sculptures all day?

            We had enough of that.  So we left for Dinklesbuhl.  Riiiiiight.  We are not there now.

            So the train connections were: Munich to Ulm to Ellwangen to Dinkelsbuhl (the last by bus).  Our first train was fifteen minutes late, so we had to take the next train an hour later, and by the time we got to Ellwangen the last bus had left for Dinkelsbuhl.  Dinkelsbuhl, by the way, is supposed to have a charming city wall and towers.  Ellwangen has nothing.

            Picture yourself traveling from New York City up to Boston by train, and are looking for a scenic spot.  You decide to visit Princeton, but instead of getting to the university town, you spend a night in the Newark airport.

            No, it’s not that bad.  In fact, the main street looks like one of those mock-Swiss skiing villages, except it’s real.  But one does wonder what one does here for fun... We guess, drink a lot of beer.  We are spending our evening writing this email on one of two computers in the middle of a casino (small town style, with electronic poker machines and ashtrays and depressed-looking men).  Tomorrow we have to be creative as to our daily activities, as we are meeting a fella in Heidelberg in the evening and were expecting to see Dinklesbuhl in the meantime.  Alas, such is traveling, and it is glorious! 

            We’ll keep you all up to date on how the sausage is, and whether Michael develops a beer gut by the time we get to Paris.  We do report digestion problems caused by very dense bread dumplings.