For Auld Lang Syne

Sitting around at work sometime in mid-December, we casually inquired what folks did for New Year's Eve on this side of the pond. We were answered with a resounding, "SCOTLAND". To be more specific, we were told, "If you want to see how New Year's is done in Europe, you go to Edinburgh". So we filled up the gas tank and checked our tyre pressure and set off once again, to THE NORTH.

And what else should you expect to see in Scotland?

The capital of Scotland was a beautiful place, complete with one of the most interesting and imposing castles yet:

Unfortunately, we only had about 36 hours in Scotland, and we were really here for one reason:

We can honestly say we didn't know what to expect, but the 10 tonnes of explosives atop Edinburg Castle were hinting at what was to come...So, if you're remotely like us, you're probably thinking, "What's Hogmanay?" An excellent question friends - and although we lived it, the answer is still partially hidden by a thin whiskey haze. Basically Hogmanay is the Scottish New Year, a 4-day event started by a torch light parade (which we sadly missed) and culminating in a marathon (which we missed). Between these events there are lots of people (~200,000), drinking lots of beer, and enjoying lots of street festivities...

The events held on night before New Year's Eve is known locally as "Night Afore Fiesta" and included lots of music, dancing and fantastic street exhibits: Unfortunatly, a light mist continued to fall all night, so most of our pics were fuzzy (that's our story and we're sticking to it!), but we think you get the idea. Given the numbers anticipated on Princes Street for New Year's, combined with the prediced rain, we decided that it probably wasn't prudent to bring the camera, so we don't have pics of the INSANE crowds, the fireworks over Edinburg Castle or the Red Hot Chili Pipers - but rest assured that we did manage to fit right in:

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Deutschland - The Final Chapter (Vol. III)

Feeling fairly melancholy, we left the somberness of Dachau behind as we headed to our next destination...

... Munchen!


















One of those "emotional rollercoaster" - type days, we ended it with a bit of good cheer at Munchen's famous Hofbrauhaus. As you can see, Jesse was in particularly good spirits at the end of the night! (Seriously, you only get beer by the liter here...)














We didn't have much time to explore the old city, but we did pass by the Munchen Rathaus (whilst navigating yet another Christkindersmarkt) and the statue of Bavaria. Leaving the city we journeyed south and eventually stumbled upon some interesting geological structures, locally known as the Alps:














Nestled within the Alps, the castles Hohenschwangau and Neuschwanstein.

Scloss Neuschwanstein at night, as we're trying to figure out the the new tripod...

Departing Munchen, we headed up and over to Augsburg for a 10-year Christmas reunion with Kim's Uncle Erik and Aunt Rose:

Following a lovely Christmas dinner with some of their non-english speaking friends, we generally took things slowly, but did do a bit of sightseeing. Although lots of things were closed on Christmas day, Uncle Eric & Tante Rose did their best to show us the sights around Augsburg, including the Mozarthaus (below) and the Fuggerei (below left). Although it was fantastic to have the "inside scoop" on all things Augsburg, the best part of staying with non-english speakers was having the chance to practice our German. Overall, our german was better when we left, but that's not to say we didn't have plenty of "National Lampoon's European Vacation" moments...

We departed Augsburg for Baden-Baden, with a small diversion to visit the resting place of my Grandmother, Elsa Bauer. Working off our SatNav and a slightly dodgey map drawn by Uncle Erik, we eventually found ourselves in at a graveyard paying our respects to Oma. Even as we photographed the tombstone, Kim noticed something a little squirrely. Oma had passed away in 1995 -- not 2007 as stated on the cross. How on earth could the cemetery have made such an egregious mistake?! Easily - we were in the wrong town. Damn SatNav. A few hours later, with the help of both friendly and hostile locals (somehow unbeknownst to us we fell off the main road and wound up driving down a footpath, pissing off a lot of the dog walkers) we eventually managed to locate the correct cemetery and paid our respects to Kim's REAL grandmother: We ended the day in Baden-Baden ("a town so nice they named it twice!") and ANOTHER Christkindersmarkt (yeah Gluhwein!). Our final leg of the journey started early, so we skipped over the famous thermal springs and headed for a French hypermarket to load the boot with as much Bordeaux as we could manage. 10 hours later we were back in England, settling in and sharing the last days of Christmas with the Fuzzies. Lil'Bit (aka Bizzler) loves her presents! But clearly Christmas wore Qanuk out... We were pretty shot too, and strangely, looking forward to returning to the normalcy of work and life in the Cotswolds (but we suspect that feeling won't last very long!).

A Cold Day in Deutschland (vol. II)

We left Nurnberg and headed south for Munchen. Almost immediatly upon leaving the city we encountered some of the most magnificent landscape we had ever seen. The world looked like it had been painted over with frosted sugar. The trees were glazed in a shimmering white -- everywhere.

Just outside of Munchen lies a small town by the name Dachau. It is sad that this is a town who's name is probably familiar to us all. It had existed for centuries. First, as a home outside of Munich for Bavarian princes. Then as a market town of its own. Yet now we know it only for the concentration camp.


From the car park, there is a long-ish walk to the camp. It was a lonely, cold day. The trees all glazed in the crystal white of the ice. Each step toward the camp increased in use a strange mix of anticipation and dread.

Our first glimpse of the camp, through the trees, set the surreal tone of the entire experience.
Everywhere we looked there was the institutional inhumanity of the camp surrounded by the enameled white and green of the landscape.

We were shortly greeted by the now infamous KZ-Dachau gate and the signature phrase "Work makes you free".

The gate opens upon a large open area where the roll call would have been taken. As Kim and I stood there, attempting to keep warm in the stark cold, we imagined what it would have been like to stand here in the winter, dressed in only rags, and sick or malnourished for an hour or more in the dark, or the snow or the rain.

In the background, you can see what is left of the barracks -- only two are still standing.

Behind this picture there stands the "bunker". This was the area where the important prisoners were kept safely and where other prisoners were brought to be tortured.

The area covered by the camp was vast. But it was important to remember that what remains is only 1/3 of the size of the original camp. As we walked through, we came upon the most sinister of buildings. The one that contained the gas chamber and ovens.
The view from inside the showers.
an oven

and a memorial...