Europe Day 7: Lausanne

Monday morning, we left the hostel in Interlaken, and traveled the few hours by train to Lausanne, with a brief layover in Bern. The first train was fine, but the trip from Bern to Lausanne was interesting...it was a local train, and we were on the upper level, which was clearly not designed to hold both us and our luggage. Fortunately, it was only a short trip...


We dropped off luggage at the hostel in Lausanne, which was conveniently just up the street from the train station, but awkwardly just up the hill from the sex cinema...and apparently there are not any laws regarding what can be shown on posters on the street in Switzerland...yeah...little bit awkward...
Lausanne also is located in the French speaking region of Switzerland, whereas Interlaken had been in the German speaking region. I hadn't really realized how many little German phrases I was starting to recognize (mostly in context on signs) until suddenly everything was in French! Anyway, after dropping off luggage, we went on a walking tour of the old city in Lausanne, with Craig and his iPad acting as tour guide:


Lausanne had two cathedrals that we went into. These were an interesting contrast to Munich. Since Lausanne is in Switzerland, home to the great reformer John Calvin, both of these cathedrals, originally built and decorated as Catholic, were stripped of all decoration during the Reformation when the Calvinists took over. Even the stained glass windows in these cathedrals was removed during the reformation, so what is there now was added in the late 19th century. Apparently I am a good Protestant, since I felt much more at home in these bare buildings than in the somewhat gaudy Munich cathedrals. Interestingly, the Calvinist opposition to decorations apparently doesn't extend to the organ, as the organ in the Lausanne cathedral was beautiful and massive. According to Craig's guide, the organ was actually American made, and purchased at a cost at the time of over four million Francs (1 Franc is about 1 US dollar).











These were located around the wall of the church. I'm unclear if they are actually tombs, or who they represent (inscriptions in French...), but they certainly add a somber air to the sanctuary...





The cathedrals were the highlight of the walking tour, although we also walked around some of the classy shopping area of the city.


Also, we discovered that Lausanne is a ridiculously hilly city. Hills. Everywhere. Yeah...
Ended the day with a dinner. A group of 10 or so of us walked downtown to find cheap food, but we had somewhat of a disagreement over the definition of "cheap," so some ended up going to a pizza restaurant, while the other 6 of us made a fantastic life choice and went to a delicious (and cheap) Greek fast food place where I had a kabob...then we had a 1.5 hour conversation on religion and religious denominations. Great end to the day!

Europe Days 5-6: Europe Has Really Tall Hills

Saturday and Sunday are getting combined into one blog post, since the main focus of both days was skiing. About two thirds of the group ended up going skiing (with two or three going snowboarding). A few "aggressive" skiers went with Craig on the first train at 7:30, while the rest of us went with Brad on the 8:00 train. It took about an hour to get from the hostel to a ski area, a process that included a bus ride to the train, to the cogwheel train, to a gondola. Our group went to Mannlichen (all Swiss spellings tentative), a nice area at the top of a mountain with several red (medium difficulty) runs, some black (difficult) runs, and 2 blue (easy) runs.


Most of the group I was with went down the first blue run, where we quickly discovered who was better at skiing...My entire skiing experience before this consisted of two trips to Sunburst Ski Area in Wisconsin, so I was pretty nervous about this whole experience. The run ended up taking about 1.5 hours for the three of us lagging in back...the rest of our group did it in about half an hour. I discovered that Mom was correct: you CAN sideslip down an entire mountain...after that very stressful, icy run, the group ate lunch, and I and another girl who was having leg cramps ended up just waiting inside and wandering around a bit until the rest of the group was done skiing.
Our group on a mountain:



Why all the little Swiss kids are so ridiculously good at skiing:


We did have one unfortunate incident on the mountain. Although I succeeded in my dual goals of making at least one ski run and not dying, Aaron in our group did get hurt and ended up laying on the ski run for almost an hour before getting picked up by the ski patrol. It turned out that he tore his MCL and strained his ACL, so he's on crutches right now.

Mountains - sponsored by Coca-Cola:


The group of about 8 of us headed back to the hostel at about 3:00. While 2 of us had done only one run, several others had done that same run...6 times. Had a bit of an adventure getting back to the hostel when we missed our bus, then missed our stop once we'd caught the next bus half an hour later, but we eventually made it back. We went to a nice little Italian restaurant for dinner, which turned out to be extremely expensive, but decent food.

On Sunday, all of the skiers, minus several who were too hung-over from the night before, left on the 8:00 train and we all went to a different mountain, to the town of Wengen. After staying together for a couple minutes, the aggressive skiers gave up and left the 9 of us behind...this run was very different than the day before. Where Saturday had been basically open areas down a mountain, this run wound around and down the mountain through some forests. This run took about an hour, and was way more fun for me...many thanks to the group for waiting for me to catch up several times!

My major improvement for the day was a change from sideslipping down most hills to snowplowing down most hills, until I had an impressive wipeout towards the end of the last hill...I stayed down in the town while the rest of the group took the train to do the run again. Following a nice lunch from a little snack shop (apparently in Switzerland they put the hot dog inside a roll, not a bun), we went on to "First," yet another mountain.


A long walk and long gondola ride later, a couple people did one more ski run, while 3 of us did the First Flyer attraction, which was basically a giant zip line down part of the mountain. Moderately terrifying, but a lot of fun (and included with our ski passes!)








This time, we made our way back to hostel with much less difficulty, knowing that we needed to (a) get on the bus immediately after exiting the train, and (b) actually push the stop button when we got close to our stop, not after it.

Feeling poor from the expensive dinner the night before, about 12 of us chipped in for some homemade spaghetti, courtesy of the Coop grocery store, and Tim and Mari's cooking. 2 Swiss Francs per person...far more reasonable than 20 a person at the restaurant!
After dinner, I watched (via iPod video streaming) the Packers win their wildcard playoff game against the Eagles, and finally went to bed at 2 am or so...fantastic weekend in

Oh, and yes, we were skiing in the same region that will be hosting the World Ski Cup next week. We saw them setting up some of the runs.

Location:Alpenstrasse,Interlaken,Switzerland

Europe Day 4: Observations

Random observations from the train as we're leaving the Stuttgard station on Friday morning:

There are construction cranes everywhere in Germany. There were tons in Munich, and it seems like every city we go through has several.

German countryside is very picturesque...I can't actually get good pictures at the speed we're going in the train, but it's beautiful looking out...especially going through the mountains.

There are churches everywhere. I have no idea how many are active, or historical, but every town has several...and they all have steeples.

Our train:


Also, everywhere we go there is graffiti...a lot of which is very artistic and well done. I'm not sure how much of that impression of a lot of graffiti is just because we're using public trains everywhere, but I'm rather surprised by the sheer quantity of graffiti around.

Smoking is far more prevalent in Germany than in the US...

Annoyances: Public toilets, except in the subway station, cost money to use...also no bubblers anywhere.

Lots of things are made of glass...many more glass walls and doors than I'm used to.

Update at 1:20 pm on the train...we thought this train was going to Interlaken, but Craig just found out that it's actually stoping in Basel today...so we should be able to switch trains there...hopefully...we'll see how that goes. We should be at a station in about 10 minutes, and we'll see what happens.

2:04 We had a brief false alarm where we tried to get off our train in Basel, Germany instead of Basel, Switzerland, which is 10 minutes farther down the line, but a nice German gentleman corrected us. Now we are on a substantially less nice train, but we are all pretty sure it is going to Interlaken, so it's all good.

Rest of the day:
We did eventually make it to Interlaken, found the hostel (very nice...substantially better than the one in Munich...not that that one was bad), and got equipment for skiing. Then, we drove very high on a mountain, took a gondola even higher (which was moderately terrifying), and went night sledding.


Night sledding consisted of sitting on these sledges and going down a very steep, curvy road...several people commented that it felt like Mariokart, where you should be able to drift around corners...Sledges are harder to steer in real life! Unfortunately, it had been raining, so the night sledding, while still being a lot of fun, including a large amount of night walking through slush while pulling a sled. We ended our night with a fondue dinner at the bottom of the sled run, and went back to the hostel

Europe Day 3: Trains and Planes

Part 1: Trains

This is a map of the Munich subway system, which pretty much describes our morning on Thursday.


We technically had about 4 hours in the morning free for sightseeing, but about 20 of us decided to go see Dachau concentration camp, which should have been about 20 minutes by train, then a bus ride. Should have been simple...obviously, it wasn't. We started out on the right train, but going the wrong direction. We figured out our mistake within a couple minutes, but then we had to wait 15 minutes for the correct train. We finally got to the correct stop and waited for the bus. The bus did come, but the driver informed us that there was too much ice on the road (it was sort of drizzling out, but we hadn't thought anything of it) and therefore he would not be going. We walked back down to the train station, just in time to see our train pull out...had to wait 20 minutes for the next one. After that fiasco, some of the group went back to the hostel, some went to the BMW museum, and a group of us went back to the Old City where we were yesterday, intending to look through some of the shops.
Inexplicably, when we got there, virtually all the shops were closed. Some had notes posted...but obviously, they were all in German.


Found a cute little ice rink...future Olympians for Munich 2018? (Note the Munchen 2018 ad on the side of the rink.)


Eventually, we found a nice little cafe that was open, and had a fantastic (and cheap) lunch.

Part 2: Planes

After lunch, the entire class group went to the Lufthansa Flight Operations Center for a presentation from Sebastian Reidle, the director of marketing expenditures (or something like that). He also solved the mystery of the closed shops...it turns out that in the state of Bavaria, Epiphany is a state holiday...who knew!


Sebastian's presentation was fantastic. He covered a bit of background on Lufthansa, one of the largest airlines in the world. Then he moved into our class's topic, the Munchen 2018 Olympic bid. Lufthansa is one of the top 3 corporate sponsors of the city candidacy, so he discussed the choice by Lufthansa to sponsor the candidacy, potential benefits of hosting the Olympics, and how Lufthansa chooses what to sponsor. Some of the interesting notes to me were that Lufthansa is only sponsoring the bid, not the Olympic Games themselves, so their rights to logos, etc. end when the host city is announced. Also, they only have rights to the official candidate city logo within Germany, so the IOC forbids them from placing the logo on their airplanes, since those obviously travel internationally. Lufthansa will be placing a large gate over the highway outside the airport for 2 months, and placing many advertisements within the airport itself. The bridge pictured here will cost approximately 400,000 euros.


They also provided us with some nice scarves and hats supporting the Munchen 2018 campaign.


Following a class discussion at the hostel, we ended our day at the Hofbrauhaus, the most famous beer hall in Munich, and easily the largest restaurant I've been to in my life.

Europe Day 2 part 2

Wednesday afternoon, we went as a group to the Munich Olympic Park, home of the 1972 Summer Olympics.


At the Olympic park, we had a scheduled tour/presentation from a guide to talk about the lasting legacy and impact of hosting the Olympic games at Munich. A key element of the tour was the fact that our group had now all been up for at least 25 of the last 26 or so hours. The tour started with a couple minute video about the architectural design of the park, which could potentially have been interesting, had not everyone, including both Craig and Brad, our professors, been nodding off...some interesting things that I did take away from the video were that the Olympic park was and still is the world's largest tent roof, and that it was an impressive engineering feat. Pretty sure that was all the video said...

Fortunately, the tour was much more interesting. Not a whole lot to say about it, but here are some pictures:







A sports arena used for basketball and (I think) volleyball in 1972, now mostly used for concerts. Like all the Munich Olympic buildings, this building is 2/3 dug into the ground. If Munich wins the 2018 games, this will be the building for figure skating. If the wood floor is removed, there is already an ice rink underneath, used for shows like "Vampires on Ice" (yes, that's a real event...there are posters up).


The swimming pool where Mark Spitz set his world records. Notice the tent roof.



The pool, and the entire park, had people everywhere swimming, skiing, and generally enjoying the park. Munich is probably the best city in the world at utilization of Olympic facilities after the actual Games.




Not really Olympic related, but this is the biggest foosball table I've seen in my life.






Finally, the outdoor stadium. Used for the Olympic opening ceremonies in 1972, and for professional soccer until 2005. We went down onto the field, which was pretty cool.






Another key part of the day was discussion of 2018. Munich is bidding to become the first city to host both the Summer Games and Winter Games. The bid for the 2018 winter games is officially turned in on January 11th, and the results of the decision will be announced in June or July. So, on our tour, we discussed where the 2018 games would take place. Mostly, they would be in the same facilities as 1972. About 70% of the buildings needed already exist and need only minor additions or remodeling. Very interesting discussion on how Munich is still reusing and repurposing buildings from 39 years ago for 2018.



To end our time at Olympic Park, we went up into the Munich Olympic tower.





Great views of the city.






Also, somewhat inexplicably, there's is a Rock and Roll Musem on the top of the tower...very random.






etc.
Most of us ended the night with a visit to the beer hall right across the street from our hostel, the Augustiner. Great food...and my first litre of beer.


And finally sleep.

Europe Day 2: Munich

After landing in Munich, we went directly to the hostel and dropped off luggage in a luggage room, then left right away to Marienplatz (the old city part of Munich).



The old city is a very historical, touristy area. There are very few cars in the streets, and an interesting mix of modern tourist stores directly across the street from cathedrals.



We explored two cathedrals. Both were very impressive visually, but I have a hard time seeing myself being a member and regularly attending a church of that size. Both were undergoing some sort of restoration work and had tourists inside, yet both are also active churches. If I was here for more than 2 days, it would be interesting to check out a service.






Apparently you can go up in the towers for a fantastic view of the city...unfortunately, we didn't...oh well.


Very nice church, but the pillars would be awkward.






I think the Luther CFL hall really needs a giant hanging crucifix...



Following the cathedrals, we split up to find our own lunch and explore around the old city. We all watched the famous Munich glockenspiel in action, which frankly I did not find all that impressive...nor did most of our group. However, perhaps we were all missing something, since there were tons of tourists watching.



Most of the group had used an ATM for money, so they had euros to spend. I had traveler's checks and a credit card. It turns out that most of the little shops accept only euros in cash...so, after attempting and failing to cash a traveler's check at the Deutshe Bank, ended up eating on my own at McDonalds, which I am not terribly proud of. At least I got something German...a "Nurnburger," which was sausage links on a hard roll for a very reasonable 1.37 euros. I also found it interesting that the McDonalds had self service kiosks - insert a credit card, select your food, and pick it up at the window. Very efficient, especially since there were lines at the cash registers.



After lunch, I gave up and withdrew some money from an ATM, but then almost immediately found a tourist information office, where the nice lady told me to go to a certain cash shop a block away to exchange my traveler's check. Morals of my money adventure: (1) Look for tourist information...they are polite, helpful, and speak English. (2) Find somewhere to turn in traveler's checks as soon as possible...ideally before you need to eat.

Europe Day 1: Travel

For those of you who are not yet aware, I am spending my January term 2011 traveling in Europe as part of a Luther College class on Olympic Management. The class technically started from Newark International Airport, which made me slightly nervous because I had never flown alone before. I am happy to report that the flight to Newark from Milwaukee on Frontier, except for being delayed on the tarmac for slightly more than an hour due to mechanical problems (they could't seem to fuel the plane...apparently fuel is important...who knew!?), otherwise had no issues. I realized after going through security that I had neglected to take out my liquids for separate screening, as I should have been required to do. I also left them in my bag in Newark when I went through security, and again, I had no issues going through airport security with liquids in my carry-on bag, which I found interesting after all the protests and complaints a month or two ago. All the TSA staff were very professional and helpful.

High points of the day were flying over the New Meadowlands NFL stadium (easy to recognize because I could read "Jets" in the end zone), and seeing the Statue of Liberty for the first time in my life (albeit at a distance from an airplane).

Although the Frontier Airlines representative in Milwaukee told me to check because the time from arrival to my connecting flight was more than 4 hours, I was able to successfully check my luggage through from Milwaukee (on Frontier) to Munich (on Continental). Everyone in the group for the class made it to Munich with their baggage! German customs were a joke...some people in the group were asked questions about passport control (length of visit, etc) but I was just passed through. Then, our entire group just went through the "Nothing to Declare" line, and we were in Germany!