Achtung Baby!

After a one night stopover in Paris, we headed for zee land of zee Beer and zee Bratwurst, Deutschland. First stop Munich. Normally when we visit a new city, we hit the streets running and manage to see a good portion of it before leaving. However, despite having almost four days in Munich, we didn't end up seeing that much of it. Something got us a little sidetracked...

The Beer Festival of All Beer Festivals

We made a bit of a late call to come to Oktoberfest and since accommodation starts getting booked out about a year in advance, we struggled to find somewhere to stay. With more than enough "sorry but we've been booked for months" email replies, we decided to just rent a station wagon and sleep in the boot. Worked out pretty cheap and not that uncomfortable so it was a good option really. Plus we had a car to cruise round the autobahns in! Not just any car either. A free upgrade from the rental car company saw us kitted out German-style, in a brand new 5 series BMW with leather, sat-nav and a decent engine to boot.

On the first day of the festival we wanted to make sure we had a seat at a good tent, so we got in there not long after 7am. The doors finally opened at 9:30 and it's a minor miracle that no one had to get carted out on a stretcher after the stampede to get in. About 80% of the seats in the good tents are prebooked so it really is a mad dash to secure a table (and we had a big bunch of Kiwis so we needed two). Then, at noon they finally tap the first keg and the place goes nuts. It took about 45 mins before our beer wench managed to get us our first round of one litre steins. After that the beer arrives a bit more easily and the consumption continues long into the night. Well, long into the night if you can make it. For the festival, each brewery serves up a special batch of beer, which is actually stronger than their usual brew!

We ended up having two massive days at the festival and also a quiet walk around on our day off. The main tents are massive, seating up to 5,000 people. Over six million litres of beer are consumed over the course of the festival! It really is an impressive sight, especially seeing as it's all temporary. The place is huge and there is a never-ending sea of people (lots in lederhosen too!) jumping on the rides or downing pretzels, beer and bratwurst. Good times.

Dachau

For a bit of a break in between two days of madness at Oktoberfest, we decided to do a bit of sightseeing. So the majority of Sunday was spent beneath a cloudless sky, exploring yet another example of the only species on earth that continually aims to destroy its own kind. Situated northwest of Munich and opened in 1933, the concentration camp at Dachau was one of the first to be opened by the Nazis. It was also one of the first to be liberated by the Allied forces but not for another 12 years.

The list of atrocities committed during its existence is appalling. Prisoners of this camp (and the others that Dachau served as a model for) were malnutritioned and over worked, and that's assuming they were deemed fit enough to work. If not, they were either left to starve to death, given a lethal injection, gassed, shot or otherwise killed. As if that's not bad enough, the unluckiest prisoners of all were used for medical research purposes. The research (which often ended in death) included tests to see how the human body was affected by things like g-force, air pressure and various chemicals. Of the 200,000 prisoners that were housed here, about 35,000 didn't survive (although this was also due to disease outbreaks). Despite having four ovens in their on-site crematorium, they often still had piles of bodies just lying around. They really were killing on a grand scale and yet Dachau was small when compared with Auschwitz.

More From Bavaria

After the shenanigans of Oktoberfest we thought it would be a good idea to spend some quality time in the Bavarian Alpine region. Fortunately for us I spent a year here when I was a wee fella so had some old friends to visit. On Tuesday morning, feeling rather less lively than normal we got on the train at Munich and headed in to the hills where we met Frank and Cilly Peterhoff(cheers for everything guys, it was awesome!). When I was four years old my family did an exchange with the Peterhoffs, we lived in their house in Gaißach, Bavaria and they lived in our house in trendy Lower Hutt. I found out from Frank on this trip that the year we were living there was just after the Chernobyl disaster, a mere 2,000kms away, the effects of which were present in Bavaria - this explains a few questions I had about myself... Anyway, that evening we went and saw some more friends, the Lechners, who not only filled us up on tasty Bavarian food and beer, but hooked us up with some tickets to watch Bayern München FC the next night...

So the following night we rocked back to Munich to see our new favourite football team in action. Fortunately Bayern are the top team in the league and were playing FC Energie Cottbus who are the bottom team, no surprises that it was 5-0 in favour of Bayern so we got to see a lot of goals. Half the fun was also sitting in the rowdy fan zone, so we got to learn all the chants and songs, it's pretty amazing to see and hear 70,000 people all getting in to it! Neither of us have ever been huge soccer fans, but it's a whole lot better when you can see it live.

On our last day in Gaißach the Lechners took us up to their mountain hut just over the border in Austria (tick another country off the list!). It's a cool we cottage built into the hill about 1,300m up, where they managed to fill us with even more good food and beer!

Road Trippin' Round Abbaville

Well, a lot of people have been very good to us on this trip, and right up there are Christer and Lilian Fors for lending us a kitted out VW Combi van for a week! (Many many many thanks guys!!!). The day we left Trollhättan in the van it really felt like the quintessential road trip, sun was shining, rock music was pumping on the stereo and the van fridge was soon to be full of beer. It was the first time for both of us driving a manual shift on the right hand side of the road, but you get used to it pretty fast.

Driving hint for Sweden: If you do happen to make a mistake on the roads here we found the best thing to do is to squint cross eyed, look mildly confused and frustrated. Everyone just assumes you're another *&#%+ German tourist, rolls their eyes and lets you away with it...




Our first stop was Gävle, Marcus's birthplace. It was the last night of the city festival and the party was in full swing when we rocked up that evening... [insert a very good night of partying and drinking about here]. The next day the city looked like a bomb had hit it, rubbish was everywhere, I spose that's evidence that we werent the only ones having a good time!

What do you have to do to get arrested around here?!

The following day we tripped out to Sandviken (another town on the Marcus Tillson-childhood-timeline) where the alternator belt in the van decided it was time to snap. Fortunately we managed to get hold of a new one and repair it (OK, so it was mostly Marcus, I tightened one bolt - apparently poorly, was banned from the engine bay so played some encouragement guitar and made lunch instead). We had planned to be in Stockholm that day, yet the mechanical misfortunes meant it was rather late so we went to see our friend Karin in the nearby bustling metropolis of Tierp (population of 32 give or take...) for the night.

Finally we made it to Stockholm, we had heard about some cheap boat rides across the Baltic so went to check them out...



Latvia? Where the hell is that?

So it turned out that for very little money (about $35NZ) you can get a 2 night return cruise from Stockholm to Riga (the capital of Latvia). I cant say Latvia was one of the countries we planned on going to, in fact we new nothing about it and spent half the trip over trying to figure out if Riga was actually in Latvia or Lithuania! The trip across the Baltic leaves Stockholm at 5pm and gets to Riga at 10am the next day. You then spend a few hours in Riga and get back on the boat at 4pm the same day for another over-nighter back to Stockholm. It was a real ''I came, I saw, I brought a T-shirt'' style trip a la Mike Saunders and Graeme Wills.




The trip is so cheap because they expect you to spend a lot of money on the boat, in the bars and in the duty free shop. In fact you could tell when the duty free shop opened, there was a sucking noise as air rushed in to fill the vacuum left by all the people that piled in to buy alcohol at a third of the price that you can get in for in Sweden (oh, but there is a limit of just 10 litres of spirits, 200 litres of wine... ah the EU!).

Riga itself was a very nice place. We sorta expected lots of dark buildings and angry looking communists in trench coats with moustaches. In actual fact the city was full of gorgeous women, luxury cars and some very cool medieval architecture. Latvia is one of those countries that have really got a bad dose of oppression and general nastiness from Russia over the years, not achieving full independence until 1991. The two red stripes on the flag represent the blood spilt over the years, and the willingness to spill some more! O..K... Yet from what we saw it looks like they've got over the hard times and are pretty quickly catching up with the rest of Europe in regards to standard of living and all that. It was a stunning day in Riga so we spent most of our 6 hour excursion just wandering the old city looking at all the buildings and um... other sights, I really wish we could have stayed a few days there, but Stockholm was a calling...

Answering the Call of Stockholm

What is it about these Scandinavian capitals that keeps calling our names? It could be the beautiful old towns with their cobbled streets and interesting architecture. Perhaps it's the friendliness of the locals or the cool, relaxed atmosphere. It might be the warm, sunny weather we've had and the nice parks to relax in. Or maybe it's just... oops, sorry, lost track there for a second... another one just walked by...




Yes, Stockholm is yet another Scandinavian capital that has it all. Just like Oslo and, even more so, Copenhagen, we found we could walk round for hours on end without getting bored. Gamla Stan is the Old Town and is an especially nice part to wander round in. It's home to the Royal Palace (which also happens to be the largest palace in the world with 608 rooms), masses of amazing buildings and winding, cobbled streets to explore it all by.




There are plenty of other sights to see varying from the old and majestic, to the funky and new. Stockholm also has an amazing array of toys around the place! Huge luxury yachts loaded up with jet skis, boats and widescreen tvs surround the harbour. There are even more nice cars here than in London; Lambos, Ferraris, Astons, Bentleys... are everywhere. Other things to keep the tourist busy include a multitude of museums, boat trips through the archipelago and several markets. One of the markets, Östermalms Saluhall, was awesome. It was crammed full of local and imported meats, cheeses, seafood and more. I couldn't resist a few local treats, including a few different types of salmon (smoked, marinated and in a roll with caviar, dill and cream cheese) and some smoked eel. A few fantastic morsels in yet another fantastic city...




Got the Van Back... and in One Piece

After the excitement of the road trip, it was time to return the VW back to it's home in Trollhättan. To Christer's delight, we even managed to return it all in one piece. However, the excitement was not yet over, as there was a booze up organised for that night! Not ones to turn a big night down, we headed out for a great one in Trollhättan.

The Fors' have made sure we've had plenty of other trips to keep us entertained as well. One night we went to a weekly car show down at the locks near where they live. We were there at the right time too, as we got to see a boat, that only just managed to squeeze into the lock, get lowered down to the water level of the river below. And we also saw plenty of cool, old cars and bikes.

On another day we drove out to a coastal town called Smögen. It's renowned for it's interesting, rocky coastline and fishing heritage. The thing to do there is grab some fresh shrimps, a crunchy baguette and some wine and then head down to the rocks for a pleasant afternoon in the sunshine. Afterwards we enjoyed an ice cream while walking around the picturesque (and stereotypically Swedish) fishing village. It's a tough life.

While on the topic of food and all things Swedish, I will endeavour to describe a local delicacy, Surströmming, to you. I'm not sure if it was the cold, a diet of magic mushrooms or perhaps the lack of sunshine hours in the winter, but for some reason, some crazy Swede came up with the idea of putting herring in a can with some other ingredients in order to get it to ferment. And then eating it. You can tell it's fermented for several different reasons. The first being that when you have it, those who have had it before will give you the "honour" of opening it. Secondly, you have to open the can slowly and carefully, to allow the putrid gases to escape without causing a small geyser. And thirdly, as soon as you allow the first molecule of gas to escape from the near-exploding can you can smell nothing but the overwhelming stench of the rotting fish inside. Mmmmmmmm, no wonder they only ever eat it outside. However, after the smell subsides and you prepare it properly (take out the fillets, put it on a special bread, with potato, red onion, tomato and sour cream), it actually tastes pretty good (to some people anyway). You'd never want to eat it on it's own but once it's mixed with everything it's a different story, a bit like anchovies but with a tad more flavour.

Well, that about sums up the Scandinavian leg of our journey. Something tells me it certainly won't be the last time we visit this part of the world though....