Yet more mountains and one waterfall

After leaving Lucerne, we made our way to Grindelwald for yet more mountains and hiking. Grindelwald is one the highest drivable points up to the swiss alps, and having a car meant, why not? Apparently there was an end of season open-air concert the weekend we were there so we were actually pretty lucky to get a room! We didn’t know about it til we were there but none of the artists appealed to us so no biggie.

Lake Thun (on route to Grindelwald)

Similar to Baden-Baden, you get a tourist pass when you check into the hotel, which gives you some discounts. With the pass, we were able to use the sport centre swimming pool for free so that’s what we did. It was really quite wonderful to plunge into a pool of warm water when it was so cold outside. The lovely view of the swiss alps from the pool certainly helped too!

View of Mount Eiger from our room

After a day of relaxing at the pool, we went hiking again the next day and it was freaking hot!! Due to the open-air concert, some of the trails were closed however that didn’t stop us though our original plan was to hike up and then take the cable car down. In any case, it was another heart-stopping cable car ride up and then we spent some time playing with the snow up in the mountains. Ski season was officially over, however there was enough snow for kids to learn how to ski and there were quite a few of them doing practice runs, pretty cute actually. We just fooled around and threw some snowballs at each other, lol... The hike down was pretty alright except for the sun beating down on us, the two of us got totally burnt!

Before the long hike, why not have ice cold beer?

After hiking at Grindelwald, we made our way to Trummelbach Falls which are the only glacier waterfalls inside the mountain and still accessible in Europe. It took us a while to find it as there were many other waterfalls around that region and we thought we could view it from the outside. It turned out that we had to take a lift up to view it up close. It’s enclosed within the mountain so the sound of the water gushing down at up to 20,000 litres per second is pretty deafening. It was a bit creepy as well cos it was quite dark and it was pretty late when we were there so it was also quite empty. It was a bit of the ‘Lord of the Rings’ moment when Frodo and Sam were in Shelob’s lair, as it was so dark, otherwise the sight was quite majestic to behold.

Totoros in the alps!!!

(not native to this region)

Picture perfect Lucerne

Having landed in Geneva in February, we knew how picturesque Switzerland is and Lucerne proved to be the same. We did a walking tour and while nothing stood out architecturally, the scenery was indeed beautiful and everything you imagine a Swiss town to be like. The only structures I remember from the walking tour were the Chapel Bridge and the Lucerne Culture and Convention Centre. The Chapel Bridge is Lucerne’s most famous landmark and is the best-preserved wooden bridge in Switzerland. It also has 122 interior paintings created during the period of the Counter-Reformation promoting the Catholic Church. It probably looked pretty fantastic during its time but it didn’t do much for me. As for the Lucerne Culture and Convention Centre, I remember the guide saying that it looks beautiful but is very difficult to clean, lol.

Chapel Bridge

Honestly speaking, Lucerne doesn’t have much to offer other than its views and maybe skiing. Since we don’t ski, we could only enjoy its views, namely by scaling two mountains, Mount Pilatus and Mount Rigi, and doing a lake cruise.

Mount Pilatus from afar

To ascent to Mount Pilatus during the summer, you can take a cog railway up, but since it was winter when we visited we had to take the heart-stopping cable car. I was rather freaked out actually and avoided looking down as much as I can though I did sneaked in a few peeks here and there. There was a dip for about 2 seconds where it felt like the car was free falling, that was an experience I wouldn't want to try again. CS says that could scare the sh~t out of anyone. When we reached the top and caught the spectacular views, it was an amazing feeling, amongst the mountain peaks. Though it was very high, it was surprisingly warm. The sun was blaring down and perhaps being closer to it makes you warm up faster.

"Top of the world" views

There was no heart-stopping cable car ride up Mount Rigi, instead it was a good old-fashioned train ride up after getting off the lake cruise. There were quite a few people hiking up the day we went and I really admire their determination. It was a seriously hot day and also 439m high!!! Again the views were pretty good and it was also different from Pilatus. Pretty glad that we went up both mountains in the end, though it was also seriously expensive to do so.

Germany’s Highest Waterfalls and a new member to the family, no not what you are thinking

We went to Triberg purely because it had the highest waterfalls in Germany. The waters of the Gutach plunge over 160m in seven cascades into the valley below. We had a visitor card from the hotel so we were able to get in for free, but after 5pm or 6pm (can’t remember the time), it seems like you can get in for free as there is no barrier or guard preventing you from getting in.

Not a big plunging type of waterfalls but majestic nonetheless

Mesmerizing black forest

We ended up going to the waterfalls three times during our stay as there was really nothing much to do in the town other than visiting the waterfalls. There were hiking trails around the waterfalls so we did some of that. We also wanted to do the high rope course as well but it was never opened no matter what time we went, so in the end we gave up.

Had a "Return of Gandalf " moment here

One thing we did manage to do, or rather I managed to do, was eating black forest cake! Haha… since we were in that region, I thought we had to eat black forest cake in the black forest region and that’s what we did. I seemed to recall that black forest cakes were quite the thing in Singapore a long time ago, now they seemed to have disappear underneath all the macaroons/ cupcakes creations that are so in fashion now. It’s a pity though as I think those are really just for display and not so much for eating. Another thing to do was to buy a cuckoo clock, but we didn’t do that as I didn’t really fancy having something clucking at me every hour.

Black forest cake!!!

And lastly, say hello to Bonn, Haribo Bonn. Bonn was born in Germany, and his first name is Haribo and last name Bonn.

Bonn, not shaken not stirred, just sweetened

We picked him up when we went mad and bought all those sweets in Bonn. I thought he looked rather cute with his tuft of hair and asked CS whether he would like one. So now, he’s part of the family and joins our group of Totoros in the car and having an adventure with us. His picture is taken in the Black Forest, don’t you think the green background suits him so perfectly?

We were fortunate to get to savor the wonderful and beautiful food at Parkhotel Wehrle, Triberg

Bathing in Baden

One of the main things that we planned to do in our trip was to drive, and obviously not just along highways but also along some other more scenic routes. The Black Forest region of Germany is one of its most picturesque routes, obviously with a lot of trees but also beautiful scenery. It was quite a lovely drive and since it wasn’t yet summer and full tourist season, we pretty much had the roads to ourselves most of the time. Baden-Baden is one of the stops along the Black Forest route and we stopped by there to explore a little.

City of Baden-Baden

Baden-Baden actually means ‘baths’ in German so obviously one of the things we did was to visit one of its famous baths, the Caracalla Spa. The spa contains many pools of different temperatures, a sauna, steam room and you could also get a massage for an additional fee. It’s a bit like soaking in the hot springs of Japan or Taiwan but here, the pools are shared so everyone wears a swimsuit and the pools are a lot bigger. In the sauna though, even though it’s shared they go the Full Monty. We gave that a miss as we thought it would be too weird and sit amongst strangers of the opposite sex with our bits on display. Yes, the germans are very open about nakedness. Since it wasn’t yet peak tourist season, we had quite an enjoyable time going from pool to pool and just relaxing in the thermal spring waters. We also managed to get a massage (on a different day though as their system was screwed up and we couldn’t get one the day we went for the spa) which was rather good but a little weird at the same time. Again you go the Full Monty here, unlike massages in Singapore where they at least provide you with disposable underwear. The thermal spring water is also supposed to be beneficial for health if you drank it. After trying some, I say better to soak in it than to drink it :p

Pork knuckles, Bavarian sausages and a good beer

Spatzle (german noodles) with stewed beef and another good beer...

With the city tax we paid as tourists, we get a free tour of the city, BUT it was conducted in German so we gave up after about 15 minutes and decided to walk around it ourselves. We were lucky that the weather was good and the flowers were blooming. It seemed like everyone was out that day just enjoying the weather, all in all very lovely place to visit and just spend some time relaxing.

Beautiful blend of flora

A, B, C, E, M, R, S, which is the right class for you?

After going crazy drinking kolsh and buying up all the Haribo sweets we could carry, we moved onto Heidelberg to visit its castle, supposedly one of the best castles in Germany.

The drive to Heidelberg was uneventful enough but getting to the castle was a whole different story. We didn’t want to drive up into the castle as we had read that parking could be a problem. There was a train ride you can take to go up the hill but it wasn’t working the day we were there, so the staff told us to take a bus. However the directions were so bad, we ended up taking it in the wrong direction and spent about an hour being lost. After a lot of grief, we finally drove up to the castle and found parking pretty quick.

Heidelberg, not our expected image of a castle

The castle is one big ruin with an intact façade but we couldn’t enter most of the rooms, you can imagine how bored we quickly got. We did get into the Wine Vat Building that had a Great Cask which is capable of is capable of holding more than 208,000 liters of wine. You can climb to the top of which was quite cool. There was a wedding that night, thus it was fun to see them setting up for it. In all honesty, if we had a tour guide with us or if there were more explanations for the buildings, it would have been a lot more interesting, however as it is, the place was really a bit of a bore.

Giant wine vat

After that disappointment that was Heidelberg, we headed to Stuttgart, home of Mercedes and Porsche. We had originally wanted to visit the Mercedes factory but they couldn’t fit us in and thus they offered us a tour of the Mercedes museum instead which we took up. There is a Porsche museum in Stuttgart but we gave it a miss as CS wanted to co-drive the Porsche on a test track in Leipzig. We thought we could do the Porsche tour in Leipzig, though eventually we missed it due to lack of time.

The original Daimler

The Classics

Notice the Singapore Airlines logo?

(apparently they sponsored a London to Sydney rally in 1977!)

There were only 4 people on the tour, us and another elderly couple (can't remember where they were from). The tour was rather informative, and we learnt some interesting facts like how Princess Diana drove a Mercedes 500SL but she gave it up due to public pressure as she was expected to drive a British made car. There was also a secret prototype Mercedes in the courtyard when we were there, but since it was a secret prototype, it was all wrapped up in black plastic and we couldn’t exactly see the shape.

The future, green technology

(or blue efficiency as Mercedes Benz calls it)

Ahead of the times

Race cars

The "secret" prototype

German wantons and noodles at the museum

Other than the exhibits inside, the building itself was also quite remarkable, the interior has a double helix structure to maximize space. They also had a cool fire safety system which generates a 37m high artificial tornado to channel smoke out of the building in the event of a fire. After the tour, we ended the day with a meal at their in-house café which was quite lovely. All in all a rather good way to spend a day. We didn't do much for the rest of the stay in Stuttgart other than relaxing in our lovely jacuzzi in our room :)

TUV-ing it out

After arriving in Germany, we realized that Germany has implemented low emission zones in various cities and only vehicles which meet these emission standards are allowed to be driven into those cities. All vehicles thus had to obtain an Emission Disc/ Badge that states their particular emission and affix this disc/ badge onto the windscreen. No exceptions are made for foreign cars. Without the relevant disc/ badge, authorities could tow the car away even if its parked, so being the law-abiding Singaporeans that we are, we made sure we got one. And thus our adventure began…

While these discs/ badges can be obtained before arriving in Germany, we only knew that we had to obtain them after arrival. Apparently these discs/ badges are obtainable from car dealers, so off we went to Renault to get one, however the lady there informed us that we had to get it from TUV (the German equivalent of our LTA) instead. She didn’t just dismiss us though, she gave us the address, called them up to ensure that they were open, that they had the stickers and that it was indeed the right place to go. Really helpful and nice, I hardly think we would get the same treatment in Singapore. Thus, armed with the address and with the help of our trusty GPS, off we went again.

When we reached the address, we actually wound up in the wrong building since the address we had pointed us to what looked like a shopping centre. We eventually got there and it was a crazy long queue! What was weird was that almost everyone who was queuing had car plates with them. We just couldn’t figure out why though. We were the only 2 Asians in the queue and after getting our number from registration, we had nothing else to do other than wait. I felt like I was waiting to see the doctor at the polyclinic as there were so many people and they will flash the number outside the room when it is your turn to go in. After waiting for what seemed like forever, we finally made it in. We were served by this slightly eccentric German lady who seemed quite tickled by us and our requests for the disc/ badge. When we handed her our passports, she kept chuckling and muttered something to her colleague which we obviously didn’t understand. In any case, after waiting the whole morning we finally got our disc/ badge!! Now CS can zoom down the autobahn in peace, lol…

Our ride.. (eco certified on the corner of the windscreen, it's the green sticker in case in case you are still wondering where it is)

So after TUV-ing it out for one whole morning, you can say that we rewarded ourselves pretty well after by stopping over at Bonn…. Now you may think why would we go there and the reason is CS is a HUGE, and I mean HUGE fan of Haribo sweets and since we were in Germany, of course we had to go visit their flagship store in Bonn. We would have loved to do a factory tour but sadly they don’t conduct any so we had to satisfy ourselves with the flagship store instead. The store itself wasn’t exactly the biggest, but it had the largest variety of Haribo sweets ever and it was really busy! What was interesting was that there were the young, the middle aged and the elderly ALL buying sweets. I mean in Singapore, its mostly the kids and teenagers buying sweets, we hardly see grandmas and grandpas buying sweets for themselves. The lovely grandmas and grandpas were definitely buying it for themselves cos we saw them snacking on the sweets, haha...

Haribo museum and megastore

Unending rows of gummies, chewies, stripes and bears!

The Governator has his own Haribo gummy!

Suffice to say, we both went a little crazy at the store. We had a lot of fun deciding which sweets to buy and we bought so much, that even though we bought the sweets at the end of March, we are still eating the sweets now in August so you can just imagine the amount we bought. Well, if you can’t here are some photos to help you out, crazy huh?

As much as I can squeeze into the photo

Kolsh in Koln

Koln (or Cologne) was a rather easy and compact city to walk around in, we walked almost everywhere and of course since we were in Germany, we had loads of beer, sausages, schnitzels and pork knuckles! Woohoo….

Schnitzel and sausages! Our first meal arriving late in Koln!

Beer in Koln is served a little differently from the rest of Germany, instead of a big mug, they serve the beer in little glasses of 200ml. I really prefer it this way since I don’t drink my beer fast. The beer is kept cold and you get fresh beer frequently, win-win situation!!! And the best part… the moment you sit down, they serve you the beer, cos that’s the only beer and the only size, no time wasted in deciding what beer you want and in what size, its super efficient and I like it. The beer is called Kolsch and its only served in that region, or made there I think. In any case, we both enjoyed it a lot. The food was also pretty good and cheap, we ate lots of schnitzels, sausages and pork knuckles. M had told me about the currywurst before I went and though it sounds really strange (sausages smothered in ketchup topped with curry powder anyone?), it tasted oh so good. Super fattening food but we couldn’t stop eating it. It’s like the ultimate street food.

Pork Knuckles and chilly glasses of Kolsch!

And since we are on the topic of food, we visited a chocolate museum in Koln as part of our trip, the Chocolate Museum. The museum is also known as the Lindt Chocolate museum and for a while, we were wondering why a Swiss company had a chocolate museum in Germany and if in fact, Lindt is actually German and not Swiss. Well, luckily, we are not that ignorant, Lindt is actually Swiss, the thing is, Koln had a chocolate museum for a long time and Lindt then decided to sponsor the museum, thus the name. The museum itself was fairly educational, it covers quite a bit of history about how cocoa was discovered, how its harvested, how the world reacted to its discovery etc. They even had an area set up as a rainforest so visitors can experience what its like in a rainforest environment. I was missing the heat of Singapore since it was still freezing in April so we went in there, however it was so so humid it was difficult to breathe so we only stayed for a very short while.

One of the more fascinating sections was the one where you can see how the actual production of chocolate is like in a factory environment. It ain’t no Willy Wonka and there were no Oompa Loompas, instead we had a few grumpy German ladies working there as part of the demonstration. Nevertheless, it was still fun to see how the little chocolate bars were being made. I found it quite remarkable that they actually bothered to put in that in the museum. I also quite enjoyed the section showing the old advertisements selling chocolate.

Classic Lindt

Old brands of Schokolade (chocolate)

Now that we’re done with the food, let’s talk about the other places we visited, namely the Kolner Dom, Museum Ludwig and Wallraf-Richartz Museum.

The Kolner Dom is the largest Gothic cathedral in Germany and we managed to get a guided tour of the cathedral with a very bubbly German lady as our guide. I actually can’t remember much of what she told us but I do remember that the tour was good, so that counts for something I guess. We were also able to get up close to the Shrine of the Three Magi and we learnt that though we normally think that three kings paid a visit to Jesus when he was born, the bible actually doesn’t say that there were three kings, it only states that the kings brought gold, frankincense and myrrh. Since three gifts are mentioned, people just assumed there were three kings. We also wanted to climb up the tower but didn’t do so due to bad weather.

Kolner Dom

Inside Kolner Dom

As for the two museums we visited, I really enjoyed the Wallraf-Richartz Museum. They had a special exhibition on Corbet which was designed by Christian Lacroix. Corbet was one of the renowned classical artists of his time, but he is kinda forgotten now and some would say he fell out of fashion. I must say I really enjoyed his paintings and I would say his works are pretty good. The museum also gives a really good overview of the evolution of art through the ages, you do need to be patient and read through everything though. It’s kind of like a Art History 101 lesson.

We didn’t really have a lot of time in Museum Ludwig but I did like the exhibitions on Pop Art. The Portable War Memorial was interesting and I got frightened by the woman figurine. CS had pointed out the fake woman and told me it was a figurine but I didn’t believe him, but when I found out I thought it was quite freaky. The artist’s idea of art was to make strikingly realistic human models and place them inconspicuously and get a reaction from the viewer, which he certainly got from me.

We also did a little shopping in Koln, and since it is the birthplace of the original eau de cologne, you can guess what we bought! I must say I don’t like the scent of the original, I prefer the new scents they came up with. It was quite weird that they had a tap in the shop which had a continuous stream of the original eau de cologne though.

All in all, we both really enjoyed our stay in Koln. With good food at reasonable prices, fresh beer and some interesting sight, what more can you ask for. Most importantly, its not overrun by tourists yet. Definitely a place to visit.

One last picture of food to end the entry. Almonds flakes on steak and another german favourite, potato dumplings.

Not so much for me though...

Fancy a glass of champagne?

After OD-ing on museums in Paris, we thought it would be good to indulge in some champagne tastings instead and off we went to Reims.

As everyone knows, champagne is only produced in a particular area of France, all other bubbly wine has to be called something else, i.e sparkling wine, prosecco, basically anything other than champagne. We decided to visit Moet & Chandon and Tattinger, two champagne houses in Epernay and Reims.

Crazy underground network of wine cellars

(stays at a constant temperature of 10-12 celsius throughout the year)

We visited Moet & Chandon first, and as expected, the set-up was pretty impressive. We had to reserve the tour in advance but we lost our way and turned up a little late so we missed most of the corporate video and instead started in the cellars. Our guide was a French lady who took a while to warm up to the group but overall she was a rather good guide. It was a small group (6 only) but they were a fun bunch with lots of jokes and interesting facts shared. So back to school and some of things we learnt.

• Three different types of grapes are used to make champagne, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier. Chardonnay and Pinot Noir are white grapes whereas Pinot Meunier is red. Though Pinot Meunier is red, it produces white wine! And I’ve always thought only white grapes produce white wine and that champagne is only made from white grapes. Its the skin of red grapes which makes it red.
• Vintage champagne is made only with grapes from a certain year. This depends on the champagne maker’s decision and the grapes obviously have to be very good that year for him to make that decision. Most of the champage available is actually a mixture of grapes from different years.
• The bubbles in champagne is a result of natural fermentation occurring in the bottle and not as a result of injection of carbon dioxide in the wine. I can almost hear the sneer in the guide’s voice when she said this.

Endless rows of maturing wine

• The champagne bottles need to be turned to allow the sediment to settle (the sediment is the yeast they inject to interact with the wine to create the bubbles). They still turn some by hand but most are turned by machines now.
• To remove the sediment, they freeze it at the bottle neck and the pressure within the bottle will pop the iced sediment out, plug it with a cork and still retain enough pressure for us to pop it at home.
• Champagne just like wine needs to be aged before drinking. There is a French authority which regulates the minimum number of months the champagne must be aged before it can be sold, minimum of 18 months for normal champagne and 36 months for vintage champagne. The champagne bottles are left to age in the cellars of the respective champagne houses, so there are literally thousands of champagne bottles underground in that particular region in France!!! The cellars are all next to each other so the champagne houses actually can’t really expand any further. Oh the cellars are actually quite gross and for some of the bottles, the layer of dust on them is quite unbelievable.

Be fabulous like Scarlett Johansson

(she hosted a dinner in the wine cellar!)

After the tour, we had our tasting of the champagne! Hehe… just what we were waiting for. We had paid to drink 2 types of champagne, the normal one and the rose one. Both of us preferred the normal champagne and it was really easy to drink. Oh Moet and Chandon and Dom Perignon belong to the same company but brewed at different places, so if you can't afford Dom Perignon, you can still buy Moet, hehe...

Hello, Mr Perignon

The next day, we visited Tattinger. This tour didn’t require any reservation so there were quite a lot of people. It felt a bit like they were herding sheep actually. The guide was rather friendly but most of the info was the same as Moet so nothing new to learn. The set up wasn’t as impressive as Moet I must say, but apparently their cellars were bigger than Moet. Strangely enough, we have not heard of them before, but then again we are not exactly big champagne drinkers. We had the champagne tasting again after the tour (just one glass this time) and we both preferred the Moet one instead as that just tasted smoother.

Other than getting drunk on champagne, we also visited the Notre Dame in Reims. Yes, there is a Notre Dame in Reims, and apparently there is a Notre Dame in almost every city in France, think it’s a bit like Duomos in Italy, haha… Apparently the kings of France were once crowned there, so the interior is quite amazing with quite lovely stained glass windows. The exterior is also quite a sight, towering large cathedral with loads and loads of statues and statuettes.

Interior of the coronation cathedral

Exterior

All in all, Reims was quite enjoyable, and of course the champagne definitely helped, hehe…

More Museums, Cathedrals, and a River Cruise and Shakespeare!

On our last day in Paris, the weather was just as wonderful as the first day, and of course we had a few more places to conquer.

Musee Lourve - of course we went here, as if I will miss this for the world. CS was more excited about the queue at the Apple store for the iPad 2, lol... The sale of iPad2 only started at 5pm and will only be released then so there were no display sets for him to play with. With our wonderful museum pass, we zoomed past all the queues, woo hoo! The Lourve is seriously big, you can spend a whole day there, heck probably a week and still not see everything. As we were on limited time, we skipped through most of the exhibits and did the major ones, like Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, Coronation of Napoleon etc. We used the audio guide which was quite good, though on hindsight, we should have joined one of the guided tours. I must say that Mona Lisa is NOT that small at the end of the day, though the crowd to see her was obviously quite crazy. Still worth a look no matter what people say.

IM Pei's Glass Pyramid

It's really not as small as it looks!

Amazing! Amazing how many people there are....

Welcoming us to Egypt!

Tourists just snapping away..

Shakespeare and Co - oh how can I come all the way to Paris and not come here! Ever since I watched Before Sunset, I decided I have to go to the bookshop if I ever made my way to Paris and it was every bit as charming as I thought it would be. It's the kind of bookshop I would love to own/ work in if I ever have the chance. The whole place just has books, books and books stacked all over and you can probably spend the whole day on the second floor if you wanted to. People probably come here cos of Ernest Hemmingway, I'm shallower than that, I came here to feel Ethan Hawke/ Julie Delphy, haha.

The famous storefront!

Books galore!

Sainte Chapelle - this was a nightmare to get into, there was a long queue and it seemed like there was no proper queuing system. There were a few people who jumped queue and we waited quite a while to get in, this was actually the first place we had to queue to enter even though we bought the museum pass. The church itself is quite small though the stained glass is really quite spectacular, BUT there was not much sun by the time we got in so they didn't look as amazing as they could have been. In any case I thought it was weird that the Justice Department is just next door as members of the public can just wander so near it. I just thought it wasn't very secure for them even though there were security checks.

The famous stained glass windows

Cathedral Notre Dame de Paris - there was some kind of concert going on just outside the cathedral so there were lots of people around. As we got there too late, we didn't manage to climb up the cathedral to stare at the gargoyles. We just walked around the church and that was it. No sightings of Quasimodo nor of Esmeralda.

No bells ringing but there was lovely blue sky

Cruise by La Seine - we did this in the evening when the museums were closed. We didn't get to see mini Statue of Liberty though I took the one that Y mentioned went there, oh well... It was totally freezing though and we did get very good views of the Eiffel Tower. We were aiming to do a Ethan Hawke/ Julie Delphy and stand at the back and talk about life but it got way too cold. Will be interesting to do this again when we are back in Paris for Roland Garros, J mentioned that the French government brings in sand and put it along the Seine river, wonder if we will manage to see that, lol...

Tour Eiffel as the French says it

The famous Arc de Triomphe

So that was our whirlwind Paris trip. Next tasting the high life in Reims!