Science Fair / Flossenburg / Reinheim / Regensburg

The week following our Italy/Croatia trip was pretty busy.  The kids went back to school and Monday, Carissa to work and Rick, Sandy and I went to the laundromat.  The kids had a science fair coming up so Monday and Tuesday night were spent getting ready.  Elise's project was trying to determine which juice contained the most vitamin C between lemon, orange, cranberry, apple and Hi-C.  Lydia's was to figure out which M&M color melted the fastest.  They did a great job and both ended up winning first place for their grade.

Conducting Experiments

1st Place!

On Tuesday I took Rick and Sandy to the Flossenburg concentration camp.  It's a "small" camp about 20 minutes from our house with a very nice museum.  You can also walk the grounds.  What struck me about this camp was it was literally surrounded by the town of Flossenburg.  It was primarily a labor camp (as opposed to an extermination camp), and intially the prisoners were used to quarry granite for Hitler's many constuction projects and later in armaments production.  The camp housed mainly political prisoners, itellectuals, criminals and social deviants as well as Jews.  Basically anyone who questioned the Nazi's or weren't in the plans for their master race.  Among the 30,000 that died there - mainly from exhaustion, as the Nazi's literally worked the prisoners to death, the most famous was probably Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  Toward the end of the war, 22,000 Flossenburg prisoners were led on a "death march" in an attempt to move them to Dachau, and 7000 had either been shot for not keeping up or died from exhaustion by the end of the march  When the Allies liberated the camp, 1600 prisoners were found who were left behind because they were too sick to walk.  This was my first trip to a concentration camp and it was very disturbing obviously.  I felt weird about taking pictures, but if you want to see what the camp looked like this link has some good pictures - http://thirdreichruins.com/flossenburg.htm

The following day Rick and Sandy took a day trip to Reinheim, Germany where Sandy's father had served in the Army at the end of the war.  He was a part of a cleanup effort and stayed in the Baron's mansion in the center of town.  Sandy had brought along a postcard of the mansion that her dad had saved from the war and was planning on trying to find it.  When they got to town they were dissapointed to find that the Tourist Information office was closed.  Outside the building Sandy approached a German man and showed him the postcard and asked if the man knew where the building was.  He took a long look at the postcard, thought for a minute and then started walking away.  Rick and Sandy followed him around the corner of the TI building and then he stopped and pointed at what turned out to be the Baron's mansion.  From the looks of it the mansion has been converted into apartments

Baron's Mansion

Thursday I took Rick, Sandy and Haaken down to Regensburg. It was a perfect day and I basically took them to all our favorite spots. Rick really liked the sausages and sauerkraut.

Hungry Men

Happy German

Opatija, Croatia

The trip to Croatia was a long one. It was supposed to take 3 hours, but it ended up taking 5. We hit two traffic jams, where we learned that during traffic jams Italians shut their cars off, get out and smoke or coverse with fellow drivers. We also sat in line for a toll booth and in another line for passports at the border. Once in Opatija, the GPS took us to the wrong address and I ended up driving the van down a narrow dead end street. Once we determined it was the wrong address I couldn't turn around so I had to back out about 200 yards, uphill, around a corner, in the dark, with only my mirrors. It was very difficult to see and based on the horrible smell I put about a years worth of wear and tear on the clutch. We finally got back on track and pulled up to the driveway of the correct address. It was a long and very steep driveway, which appeared to take a sharp 90 degree turn after about 50 yards. Rick got out and climbed up to check it out. He walked around the corner and then reappeared and waved us up. Since the driveway was so steep I really had to gun the van to make it up the hill. About halfway up Rick frantically starts giving me the stop signal so now we're sitting in the middle of a driveway at an angle very similar to the first climb of a big rollercoaster. After a moment Rick waves me forward again but I realize quickly that the van doesn't have enough power to start from this position so I have to back up to the bottom to take another run at it. At the bottom I gun it up the hill and come barrelling around the corner. The headlights swing around on an older couple standing in the middle of the driveway who scatter away wide eyed and I roughly pull into the only available spot. Once we realized we were safe everyone was laughing and the owner who was standing there probably thought we were nuts. The sound of the van coming up the hill was deafening, I nearly killed her other tenants and the smell of the burning clutch was terrible. It was like the arrival of the Griswolds.

Opatija was intended to be a relaxing last couple days after almost a week of hardcore travel. Everyone we had talked to said it was beautiful and it definitely was, although we were thinking there would be more of a beach scene. Apparently the area was a vacation spot for the Habsburgs (Austrian Imperial family) back in the day and it definitely had a ritzy resort feel to it. The first day we walked down to the beach after a lazy morning and were a bit disappointed. The beach was tiny, had stones instead of sand (sort of like Lake Superior only bigger stones) and wasn't the cleanest. The Adriatic was cold, so the kids didn't spend any time in the water and mostly threw rocks into the sea or played on the jungle gym. After a while we decided to walk the coast and eventually ended up at a restaurant on top of a rocky bluff that had a little man made sandy area with some lounge chairs. We ordered drinks and basked in the sun while the kids climbed the rocks and ran around. That night we ate dinner at a traditional Croatian tavern that our host recommended.

View from our apartment

 Ice cold pool

At the beach

The next morning we got up and decided to walk into the downtown/boardwalk area of Opatija. There was a little bit of shopping and then we started getting harassed by people who were trying to sell boat cruises to tourists. We talked to a couple and haggled a bit and ended up hiring a fishing boat and driver for a 3 hour boat cruise. We had a little bit of time to kill so we picked up some snacks at the grocery store and then walked down to the meeting point for the cruise. The 'captain' of our boat was a 16 year old local kid. He took us to a little town down the coast called Moscenicka Draga where we got out and had a cup of coffee and relaxed by the shore. When we got back in the boat he suggested another little town but we just told him to boat the coast for a couple hours while we snacked and took in the scenery. He was a pretty shy kid but once he realized I wasn't going to stop peppering him with questions he started to open up which made the ride a little more relaxing. That night we ate dinner at a hotel restaurant near down the hill from our apartment.

Opatija from the Adriatic

Moscenicka Draga

The next day it was time to head home. We got up and hit the road and about 9 hours later we were back in Grafenwoehr.

Venice, Italy

Up to this point Booking.com had done a pretty good job providing information about the hotels we've booked.  We'd had a couple surprises - Prague and the mysterious substances splattered on the floor and wall for example - but for the most part our rooms have been basic but clean.  Our hotel in Venice was definitely the nicest room we've stayed in so far.  Apparently it was an old mansion that they converted into a small hotel.  I think there were only six or eight rooms total.  Not sure what the deal was because it was definitely one the low end of available rates - I guess we just lucked out.  Unfortunately we hardly got to enjoy the room since we arrived so late and we're leaving the next day.

At any rate, our morning in Venice started with a fantastic breakfast provided by the hotel.  We were all pretty hungry as we didn't stop for dinner on the way there, just ate snacks from the grocery store.  After breakfast we checked out and arranged for the hotel to hold our bags while we went sightseeing.  Once again we followed Rick Steve's tour which started at the Rialto bridge on the Grand Canal.  It was a bit of a walk and Rick's map didn't have some of the streets labelled correctly but eventually we made it.  On the way we stopped at a big church near our hotel.

The Rialto bridge is the oldest (finished in 1591) and biggest bridge that spans the Grand Canal, the main waterway in Venice.  The bridge is not only a means to cross the canal, it is also a mini shopping mall with two rows of shops on each side of the street.  The bridge was packed with tourists and we basically waited our turn to get a good view of the canal, snapped some pictures and then got off.

Rialto Bridge

Grand Canal from the bridge

From the bridge we followed the walking tour into the middle of the city to a market that was selling all kinds of touristy stuff.  Venice definitely is a very unique city - really crowded and really expensive.  It's built on a swamp and they have a lot of problems with flooding.  I thought it was a lot of fun watching all the boat traffic on the canals - water taxis and buses, delivery boats, personal boats and of course the gondolas with the guys somehow manuvering through all of this just using one long paddle.  The way they are able to control their boats standing on the deck, riding the waves was pretty impressive.

Construction Venice-style

The walking tour ended at Piazza San Marco.  We sat down and did a little people watching while I read from the book about what we were supposed to be looking at.  The square was absolutely packed with people, and there was a huge line waiting to get in to see St. Mark's church.  It looked like it was moving pretty quickly though so everyone got in line while I ran off to find some lunch. 

Piazza San Marco

I got back in time for us to scarf down our food before we got inside the church.  St. Mark's was built around 970.  To think that that long ago they could build a massive building like that on top of a swamp is kind of crazy to me.  The interior is one gigantic mosaic, pretty much floor to ceiling.  Due to the constant crowds, there's a path that is cordoned off that leads you through the church and you can't really linger so the viewing took about 10 minutes.

St. Mark's Cathedral

Afterward we sat outside the church and took a short break and then walked back to the hotel to get our bags.  On the way out of Venice we took a water taxi from one end of the Grand Canal to the other which took about an hour.  Then we piled in the van and began our trek to Croatia.

Water taxi

Heading out of town down the Grand Canal

Florence, Italy

Tuesday morning we got packed up and headed out for Florence.  I was a little nervous about manuvering a 9 passenger van through a major European city, but our hotel turned out to be in a navigable area so it was fine.  We arrived at the hotel well before check in so we parked in the hotel's secure lot, bought bus passes at the front desk and hit the streets of Florence.  The bus ride was about 20 minutes to the heart of the city.

Our first stop was the Duomo, the cathedral church of Florence.  It took over 100 years to build (1296-1436) and once completed had the largest dome in the world.  The square was already pretty busy, but we found a spot along the Baptistery opposite the church and had a quick picnic lunch before going in. 

 Duomo Outside

 Duomo Inside

Duomo from the back

Once inside we wandered and snapped pictures for a little bit.  Although the exterior of the Duomo is quite unique and interesting to look at, the interior seemed pretty sparse compared to a lot of the cathedrals we'd been in.  We exited through a side door and then Grandpa, Lydia, Haaken and I found some gelato and a bench, while Grandma, Carissa and Elise climbed the Duomo's bell tower for a great view of the city.

Bell Tower

 Florence from the Bell Tower

Duomo's Dome

That's us on the bench eating Gelato

Once they conquered the bell tower we walked behind the Cathedral to the Duomo museum, which contains precious art and monuments that once were either a part of the exterior of the Duomo or housed inside.  Numerous works of some of the famous Italian masters are displayed including Michelangelo and Donatello.  It was a great little museum and it felt like we were the only ones it in.

Michelangelo Pieta

Following the museum we wanted to hit an outdoor market we had read about.  The San Lorenzo market is about a 10 minute walk from the Duomo and is filled with vendors selling leather coats, shoes, tshirts, jewelry, etc.  The market was packed and once we got there I think we all realized none of us were really in the mood to shop so we headed back past the Duomo and down Via dei Calzaioli, a famous street that connects the Piazza del Duomo, the religious hub of the old city, and the Piazza della Signoria, the politcial hub.  Lining the Piazza della Signoria are resturants, a few shops, and the massive Pallazzo Vecchio (town hall), and the Loggia dei Lanzi, an open-air sculpture gallery of Renaissance art.  Standing outside the Pallazo Vecchio is a copy of Michaelangelo's David in the spot where the original stood before it was moved inside the Accademia.  We walked around the square a bit but the kids were getting tired and we were quite a ways from the hotel so we jumped on the bus and checked in.  The kids had a quick nap and then we took the bus back into town and had a fabulous meal in the Piazza del Mercato Centrale.

 Piazza della Signoria

 Pallazzo Vecchio

Loggia dei Lanzi

 Dinner

Wednesday we had an ambitious plan to hit 3 museums, a market, grab souvenirs and drive to Venice.  After we packed up the car and checked out we took the bus back to town.  We started with sculptures at the Bargello museum.  Housed in a former palace, it contains hundreds of sculptures from the Italian masters.  We got the audio guide and spent an hour or so checking it all out.

 Borgello Courtyard

From there we walked back to the market we didn't feel like shopping at the day before.  Grandpa bought a leather jacket, Carissa bought some shoes, and Haaken got an Italy sweatsuit that makes him look like an 80s rapper.  We had a bit of time before we were scheduled to see the Accademia, so we made our way to the Farmer's market to pick up some lunch and had a quick bite on the steps outside.

San Loreno Market

The next stop was the Accademia Gallery, which is where Michelangelo's David is now housed.  Prior to going my mom described seeing David and Michelangelo's Prisoners as "thrilling".  I couldn't imagine how that could be possible, but after seeing it, I have to admit she was right.  Although we had seen the replica of David the day before in the Piazza della Signoria, it seemed much more impressive inside the museum.  Equally interesting were the Prisoners, which are partially completed sculptures he never had a chance to finish.  The figures look like they are literally trying to escape from these giant blocks of marble and you can see marks all over the stone where Michelangelo had been chipping away to help them escape.

The kids had been great until this point and we rewarded them with more gelato from a famous shop on the way to our last (and unfortunately biggest) museum, the Uffizi.  Outside the Uffizi the kids got some pictures with some of the street performers before we went in at our scheduled time.  I came prepared for this one and once inside I pulled out the iPods and headphones for Lydia and Haaken.  We got the audioguide and managed to listen to pretty much the entire thing, which took at least 2 hours.

Street shot

 Famous Gelato

Outside the Uffizi

After the Uffizi we took the bus back to the hotel, grabbed some food at the grocery next door, and then hopped in the van.  The 3 hour ride to Venice was uneventful and we parked in the massive parking garage on the shoreline.  We took a water taxi to the stop nearest our hotel and then a 15 minute walk through the streets before we finally were able to check in and collapse in our beds.

Cinque Terre, Italy

Thursday morning I got everyone off to work and school and a couple hours later drove to Nurnberg to pick up Grandpa and Grandma with Haaken.  That night we went out in Eschenbach for a farewell dinner for John and Clarise who had finished their stay in Germany and were moving back home.

The next morning the kids went to school and Carissa to work while Rick, Sandy and I finished packing and picked up the van we were using for the upcoming road trip.  That night we drove to Garmisch and stayed at Edelweiss.  The kids swam and we all ate pizza by the pool and then we all went to bed.  The next morning, we got up, let the kids swim a bit, ate the breakfast buffet and then checked out.  On the way out of town we picked up some food at the Commissary and filled up before our long drive to Italy.

The drive was beautiful - we drove the mountain pass from Garmisch to Austria, where we picked up the autobahn that took us all they way to Cinque Terra.  We drove for hours through the mountainous northern Italian landscape.  It flattened out for a little while and then we hit the mountains again as we approached the coast.

Our hotel was in the little town of Deiva Marina, about a 15 minute train ride from the northern most town of the Cinque Terra (Monterosso).  After we got checked in and all the luggage upstairs we took a walk down to the beach and spent a little while skipping rocks and enjoying the sunset.  That night we ate dinner at a hotel in town that specialized in seafood.

Skipping rocks in Deiva Marina

The Cinque Terra is a string of five villages built into the rocky cliffs along the Mediterranean Sea.  You can hike from one village to the next along the water - I think the entire trail is about 11km.  Unfortunately, the woman at our hotel informed us that due to rain and landslides all of the trails were closed except for the shortest and only paved trail between the two southern-most towns.

Since Carissa and I had pretty much planned our whole stay around hiking between the towns we were pretty bummed.  We took the train Sunday morning to Monterosso in hopes to getting a different answer from the people selling the tickets to hike the trail, but got the same news.  As a result, we hopped back on the train to the last town, Riomaggiore, to hike the easy trail.

The train dropped us off at the base of Riomaggiore.  We walked through a long tunnel and then began climbing the steep streets to explore the town.  The weather was perfect - high 60s, low 70s, no wind, and completely clear.  It was pretty amazing to see how the city was carved into the cliffs.  At the top was a tiny fortress and an incredible view of the sea and coastline.  While we were snapping pictures we started talking to another American family who'd been there a couple days.  They informed us that they had hiked a different section of the trail that was supposed to be closed which was good news.

We walked back down to the base of the cliffs and the start of the trail.  The first section of the trail is called the Via Dell'Amore (Love Walk).  Apparently until the last century there was almost no communication between the villages.  Villagers rarely married anyone from outside their village.  In the 1920s a trail was made between the two towns, but because of landslides it was closed more often than it was open.  After WWII the trail was improved and became established as a meeting point for boys and girls from the two towns.  The couples often decorated the trail with amorous graffitti and after seeing it a journalist coined the now-established name.  In addition to the graffitti are hundreds of padlocks along the railings of the trail.  Closing a padlock with your significant other is the current craze in Italy.  We also saw this at a park in Budapest.

Via Dell'Amore

Approaching Manarola

The hike took about a half hour.  We detoured off the trail for a bit to climb on some rocks right on the water.  Once in Manarola we stopped at a little shop for some fresh olive focaccia and gelato for lunch.  Afterwards we walked a bit along the shore and then climbed a staircase that led to a playground overlooking the town.  The kids played for a bit while the grownups took a rest in the sun.

Manarola

Above the playground was a cemetery.  In the 1800s cemeteries were considered health risks and as a result were located out of town.  The only way out of town is up, so the cemeteries are all on top of the bluffs.  After the cemetery we followed a footpath that took us through the terraced vineyards that surround the town.     From the top of the town we then descended back to the train station.

We hopped on the train and took it to the next town, Corniglia  Tiny Corniglia is perched high above the sea and is the only town in the Cinque Terre with no beach access.  We took a shuttle driven by a very irritable man into town, and then explored for about 30 minutes, which is about all that is required to see the whole thing.  The shuttle dropped us back at the train station and we took it to Vernazza.

Corniglia

In Vernazza we walked straight to the waterfront and chose a place for dinner right on the water.  Although the food wasn't very good, it was a beautiful night and the location was perfect.  After dinner we took the train back to our hotel and crashed.

Vernazza

Great location / Bad food

Monday morning we got up and took the train back to Vernazza.  We began the day with hike between Vernazza and Corniglia.  It was a fantastic hike, much better than the Via Dell'Amore.  The rugged trail wound up and down the steep shore offering beautfiul views at every turn.  With a couple stops for snacks and pictures we arrived in Corniglia after about 2 hours and were rewarded with another stop at a gelato shop.

View from the trail-head in Manarola

Looking down on Corniglia

Corniglia with Manarola in background

We hopped back on the train to Vernazza.  Just up the hill from the train station was a playground that the kids played at for a bit before we climbed a long staircase to the top of the town.  Rick and I enjoyed the view while everyone else climbed a bit higher to explore another cemetery.  We wound back down through the town back to the waterfront and then bought ferry tickets to the last town, Monterosso.

Vernazza from above

The ferry ride was about 15 minutes and dropped us off near the best beach in the Cinque Terre.  The kids played while Sandy and Carissa lounged in the sun.  Rick and I walked to a beachfront bar for a couple beverages.  After a couple hours we walked into town and wandered the streets of the old town.  Afterwards we walked along the waterfront and through tunnel to the new town and selected a spot for dinner.  We sat outside and enjoyed a fantastic meal to close out our stay in Cinque Terre.

Approaching Monterosso

Anchovy Dinner