after nearly 3 years at BearingPoint, I decided to leave to join another consulting firm called Roundarch. initially a joint venture between Deloitte and WPP, Roundarch focused entirely in the area of interaction design/user experience/usability. the creative space should interest me a bit more than straight bidness consulting. having quit, i suddenly found myself with about 2 weeks of free time before starting Roundarch. so me and yuhka, also free of any distractions like work, hopped on a flight to frankfurt for $400.
a bit of background as to why i chose to do germany and austria for my second trip to europe:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DzsdSWTMuglater in the show, he inhales S-curves and switchbacks on a local mountain road in a resort in the austrian alps called kitzbuhel. he's my hero. so i wanted to do the same in a 3-series. i did it. well almost. instead of a bmw3, I took an Audi A4 2.0TDI up and down some twisty roads in the alps. for about two man/machine hours of white-knuckled, spine tingling, heart pounding excitement at double the speed limit, I lived my dream. but more about that later.
DAY 1immediately upon flying into frankfurt, i spend about an hour and a half trying to get a good rate on a bmw 3series with GPS. in the end, i stuck with hertz and got an A4 without the GPS. there was a huge book convention going on in frankfurt and all the good cars were taken. the Audi '08 TT look pretty damn sexy but i had a hard time handing over 9 hundo for a car rental.
germany is in love with wagons...
from frankfurt, we made our way to heidelberg. having been destroyed by the french in 1693, the castle ruins and medieval town are the main draws. the oldest university in germany is also here. we scoped the Gothic-Renaissance architecture of the half-ruined Schloss before making the drive to munchen. MUNCHEN!
schloss
heidelberg's roofs
arriving in munich for the night, we checked into our hostel and went to a biergarten (beer garden) for our first german dinner of the trip. blech. sausages and potatoes. i mean, those jimmy dean sausages are good, but imagine them plumped up to man weiner size and arriving in pairs or triplets. i could only handle so much sausage despite my enthusiasm towards hanging out with homeboy sausage. anyways, we had our bier, sausages, and potatoes, and stumbled around for aboutlooking for a party. nada. i was jetlagged and ass tired from driving all day so i sleptwalk back to the hostel while yuhka made sure i didn't crash into a pole/car/giant acme anvil on the way back. one day, i'll scope munchen more when i head back to pick up a new BMW through their
European Delivery Program.
DAY 2we were itchin' to escape the overcast dreariness that plagued us since we arrived so we quickly moved onto salzberg, austria, original home of Mozart and filming location for Sound of Music. i must say... wow. salzberg instantly made its way onto my top 5 destinations in europe due to its combination of a relaxed, small town feel and the sheer beauty of the landscape. the quaint houses and buildings look like they grow out of the cliff rock and the calm river that divides the town gives off an air of serenity. apparently, it pretty much looks as much as it did when Mozart lived there 250 years ago. we attempted to hit up the nightlife but everyone goes to bed by 9pm in salzberg. or so it seemed. it's a sleepy community so we didn't mind catching up on sleep here.
what's that growing out of the rock? o, it's an old17th century building
ornate headstones in a very pleasant graveyard
serenity
DAY 3today was the day i intended to find the twisty mountain road in the austrian alps that was the driving force behind this roadtrip. we drove towards kitzbuhel, and looked for the switchbacks and S-curves that tickled my fancy. but alas, no such road was found. we ran out of time and had to race down to berchtesgaden to make a tour of Hitler's Eagle's Nest, his meeting house atop of a mountain with amazing views. so the obvious thing to do was to put the a4 through its paces at double the speed limit. i can't say i've EVAR had a more exhilarating TWO HOUR driving experience. thanks
yuhka for not screaming. but i think you tore some of the fabric out of the roof of the car. also thanks for being in charge of sightseeing while i was focused on not turning our a4 into a mountain fixture.
snow covered alps
nice lawns
we made it to the tour with 5 minutes left. the 4 hour tour of hitler's home base, bunkers, and eagle's nest was quite interesting. some neat facts are that 22km of bunkers were dug out in 18 months, the bunkers were only used once despite their elaborate build quality, and building the eagle's nest was one of the most expensive affairs the nazi party undertook. the tour guide was a bit odd as she seemed to revel in hitler's and the nazi party's accomplishments. she repeated everything a minimum of 3 times and glorified hitler's feats. i felt like i was on a "i love hitler" tour. i didn't have any good photos of the view from the eagle's nest because it was too foggy but the bunker pic exemplifies the surprising quality of the tunnels.
am i dead?
with the tour done, we drove 4 hours to vienna, austria. we checked into a marriott reservation i made with my points and met up with my friend and vienna local, jada. she took us to dinner at a biergarten and we spent the night wondering around town. after seeing all the sites when they were closed, we called it a night.
DAY 4 and 5we spent the next couple of days and nights seeing the beautiful city and touring museums and palaces. people here are so nice and lovely. thanks to jada for taking us to some night spots and the cool sights. thanks to her sister for letting us crash at her new pad. it was nice not to think for a couple of days. not that i did any of that during our vacation.
like a mini-Versailles, some king's pad
some sort of government building thingiee
yuhka and jada in some fancy noodle bar
we wanted to get a head start to berlin so we drove about 4 hours to regensberg in germany. we found a biergarten that had hotel rooms and checked in. we had to walk through restaurant and kitchen area to get to the room. lots of drunk germans belting off what sounded old, folk songs greeted our entrance. nice. we looked for food and ended up eating at mcdonald's. a very fancy mcdonald's.
DAY 6
after walking around regensberg, another quaint german town on a river, we headed to nuremburg. the stark contrast in architecture between a city that wasn't touched by a single bomb and one that was completely flattened by them was fascinating. nuremburg was chosen by the nazis as their propaganda center and for mass rallies. it was also deliberately chosen as the site for the trials of war criminals after the war. we drove the rest of the way to berlin after seeing regensberg and nuremburg during the day.
regensberg: hotel/biergarten/drunk germanenclave
nuremburg is sexy
lovin' the weiners and pretzels
ooo, dramatic
DAY 7 and 8
we decided to hang up the keys to the A4 1355 miles and $276 in diesel gas later. i still miss it. berlin is definitely a city i'd revisit in the future. yuhka mentioned it has a very similar NY east village feel before it became gentrified minus the crowds and grime. the everything goes, vibrant, free spirited nature of the city can be felt in each neighborhood we toured. while we saw most of the touristy sites such as the Government District and the Holocaust Monuments the first day, we saw the rest of berlin the next. berlin was meant to be seen by bike so we decided to as the locals do and ride around our last day there. i think the city will become one of the biggest and brightest cities in the world very, very soon.
we met up with yuhka's friend who used to live there for nearly a year. her friend in turn knew a couple of very interesting people. one in particular chose to head out to the deserts of namibia for 3 months to work under a goldsmith in order to learn the finer craft of jewelry making. another fell in love with a mannequin and wanted to have him in her apt. she also got our waiter to give her his number, apparently a very rare german move.
art academy. i wonder if all the stairs actually lead somewhere.
cruising the berlin wall
these stairs exemplify berlin's graffiti culture
brandenburg gate, the former east-west divide
cute mural for the kids
f u mickey d's
with 1001bhp, this $1.5 million car is the fastest, most powerful, most expensive, street-legal full production car ever made. drool. gasp. splooge.
who is that driving that hot wagon in front of the circus hostel?
DAY 9
we tried scopin the scene the night before we left berlin for frankfurt, but apparently 12:30 is too early to hit the bars up. the next morning, we flew to frankfurt and did a lil walking around. not much to see there but it is a pretty big financial center.
dr. jekyll and mr. hyde
with my final sausage eaten, a polish dog, we head underground to catch the subway back to the airport. until round 3, goodbye europe!
