Annette, Will, and I took a daytrip to Innsbruck yesterday. That’s the kind of thing you can do when you are in Europe: take a day-trip via train to another country entirely. Well, I guess you can take a day-trip to Canada too, but try that with a train and see how it goes. Anyway, Innsbruck was nice and surprisingly (to me, at least) touristy. We went to a very neat folk art museum, which is a nice relief from all of the Virgin Mary w/baby art we had been looking at in various churches and museums lately. Speaking of chruches: we went into this one in Innsbruck (I can’t remember the name now) that had about 15 or 20 of these giant bronze statues of kings in armor and queens and such all around a tomb. Very freaky. The waitress we had in the cafe we ate at spoke English with a New Zealand accent, and when we asked about that, she told us she had lived down there for 8 months working on a horse farm. And learning English, I guess.
And today is our last day in Mittenwald. Annette and I did a little more shopping while Will and his grandparents are out hiking. Mittenwald has been a lovely place to visit and stay, but I think when we come back (and I am sure we will as long as Annette’s parents keep coming here), we will probably make it for 3 or so days instead of a week. Tomorrow we leave for Munich to get to a sort of “staging area” for our flight, which leaves Monday morning.
Jeez, our timing on flying to Europe seems grand, doesn’t it? Actually, we have been able to keep up on the news here, and I don’t think it will be too big of a deal. As I discuss in the “miscellaneous” part of this message, the TV access we have had has been both good and bad. In any event, the big problem appears to be in the UK. According to this site for Delta (which is the airline we are taking back), the only concern is no liquids on-board. That’s fine; just as long as they let us pack our schnapps.
And now, to the miscellaneous part of things: I have about 14 minutes of Internet time left, so I thought I would post a few last thoughts about our trip in no particular order:
- TV in Europe is strangely similar and strangely different from that in the U.S. For example, you know that guy who has these infomercials with this weird running machine? They were on like six different channels at the same time one day in Italy. There is some kind of puzzle game show on constantly here in Germany where I am pretty sure the host is just kind of yelling at the viewing audience. Speaking of TV….
- We have watched a great deal of MTV in the room because it is pretty much the only thing in English. What is weird about MTV here is you have American bands in rotation, but you also have these European knock-offs of American acts, and I can tell you there are few things more strange than German or Italian rap acts.
- One of the most memorable things for me on this trip was seeing the David. It was very surreal seeing this most famous sculpture in the world, something I have of course seen in images and copies a zillion times, up close and personal for real. It was too real, if that makes sense. Two other observations about that: right next to the David, just to add to the surrealness, is a computer simulation of the statue. You can use it to rotate it and see it with different light and shadows and such. Second, and this is really for my father, David does not appear to me to be circumcised.
- The food in Italy was better than it is in Germany, but I have to say that a) it wasn’t as good there as I thought it would be, b) we live in an age where you can pretty much buy the same things in the US, and c), between these two countries, I do not need to eat any pork products for a while.
- Italy is super-duper expensive, while Germany is bizarrely cheap. So if you are on a budget, you gotta go German.
I’m about out of time, so that will be it for now. More photos and more info after I get back to the US…..