Europe 2008

A lot of our friends are going to Europe this year: Melissa and Robert are heading to England and France, and then Melissa and Spencer (different Melissa) are going to Italy, Germany, and France.

I spent some time to help the latter Melissa plan their German portion and boy did it get the travel juices flowing. A couple things to note for our 2008 foray (hopefully!):

Linderhof Castle: This is one of the more beautiful castles and it is mentioned often in my King Ludwig II history book that I'm reading. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linderhof.

Starnbergersee (and castle): This is nearby München and the site where it is said Ludwig was drowned.

Andechs Brewery (http://www.andechs.de/index.asp?lng=en: Was on the original list, but we didn't end up going that way when we left München. Instead, we went up to Freising and negotiated our first hotel room auf Deutsch.

Notes on Regensburg:

It's old city is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, so it's got some cred.

There is a huge BMW plant just outside of town that you can tour. But, I think it's only in German...which would be kind of hilarious. The BMW plant tour in Munich that we took was in English.

Notes on Switzerland:

We've talked about hitting somewhere in Switzerland. I've heard beautiful things about Luzerne, but my co-worker Peggy said to instead focus on the town of Interlaken, which is situated between two lakes. Get it? Interlaken? Traveling there can be done via train...about 4 hours from Lindau (where I've been positioning us as a gateway city). The train route does go through Zürich though...

Notes on Austria:

Last night over our third Monopolowa and Tonic, we joked how neither of us know Monopolowa Vodka was an Austrian potato vodka. We always thought it was Polish or Russian. That led into a talk about Salzburg (and it's relative close proximity to Bayern. (1 1/2 hour train ride!)

OK, enough dreaming for now.

Tschüß!!!