Castles, Churches, Chocolates and Cheese - A trip through Germany, Switzerland & Austria
It was time for our first Euro-trip. We had spent quite a few years thinking about it, but it had never materialized. The NP-hard problem was deciding which part of the continent we should contaminate first. After numerous idle-cycle iterations, it was decided that a combination of Austria, Germany and Switzerland would pacify both halves of the Pandey family. In short, it was the lure of the Swiss and Austrian Alps, the temptation of German and Swiss chocolates, and the sheer domination of German and Austrian composers in our classical library. Of course, there were other minor reasons such as the rugged beauty of the Swiss-Austrian countryside, the dreamy castles of Bavarian Germany and the grandeur of the Austrian Hofburg empire.
The tentative plan was to fly into Frankfurt and rent a car. We would then spend the next few days driving through southern-central Germany and Bavaria, mostly along the Romantic Road, till we hit Fussen on the German-Austrian border. A little western detour would take us around Lake Constance to Zurich and Lucerne and then into the heart of William Tell country. We would cross into Austria near St. Anton and drive our way through Innsbruck, Salzburg and the Lake district, along the Danube Valley, and finally hit Vienna. We would drop the car, explore Vienna for 3 days before flying back to San Jose.
The ordeal started when we had to apply for tourist visas. Since a Schenghen could be obtained either through the German or the Austrian Consulate, we decided to try the Austrian consulate first. Talking to the help desk of the Austrian Consulate in Los Angeles will make you feel that they do not want tourists in their country at all. The employees were rude and un-cooperative, and pretty much gave us the idea that if you need a visa to come to our country, then you are not wanted.
Compare that to the German consulate in San Francisco. They were curteous, inviting and very helpful. Apart from the $35 parking ticket that I received due to a street cleaning parking violation, the visa process went through painlessly. With the Schenghen visa under our belt, the Swiss visa was a breeze. Now all we had to do was grab our cameras, zoom into central Europe and photograph.
Well, not entirely. There was this whole complexity of deciding what to see and when, finding out how much time it would take for us to drive from point A to point B, and finally, booking consecutive hotel rooms. When it comes to the grizzly details, I am a paranoid planner. I cannot travel with uncertainty - and definitely not in a place where I do not know the language nor do I know anyone to help us out. On the other hand, I wanted more freedom than the claustrophobia of a tourism firm's rigid sightseeing plan. I wanted to see the place at my own pace.
And so it came to happen. Every cascading waterfall, every majestic peak, every little U-turn - everything was charted out down to the last drop of gas. That, ladies and gentlemen, is the power of the Internet.
A United Airlines jet lifted us from SFO and in one breath dropped us in the middle of the chaos known as JFK, New York. Here we had the first unplanned activity of our trip - catching a bus from one of the distributed terminals to another. People with no clue as to where they wanted to go were embarking and disembarking constantly in the 10 minute bus journey.
The second leg of our flight was on Lufthansa. Luft - air, hansa - bird. We couldn't help but conjecture on the similarity between the German hansa which means bird, to the Hindi or Sanskrit hansa which stands for a swan, especially given their logo. Somewhere in the midst of all this discussion we dozed off. It was predictably going to be an exciting day tomorrow.
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Germany
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Switzerland
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Austria
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