Travel

In summer this year (Apr-May '08) I went on my first visit to the west -
Germany/Austria, with family.

While it'd have been a good idea to record notes from my travel almost
immediately, I believe retrospecting four months down the line and
recording it is not bad either. Better late than never. So here we go.

The first point of our stay was a non descript hotel in the Seefeld area
in Austria bordering Germany, where we stayed for almost a week. That the
caretaker of the place could talk only Deutsche was only
a small inconvenience. Stunning locale, right in the lap of the alps. How
many times in life will you get to be greeted by a snowclad peak when you
pull open the curtains of your window?

We visited Neuschwanstein- the famed castle that's come to
sysmbolise Disney, Wattens - housing the world-famous crystal museum,
Zugspitze - Germanay's highest mountain, Innsbruck (Euro-2008) all only an
hour's drive (with roads, called Autobahns, as good as the ones in
Germany, you can cover upto 150 kms easily in an hour)

The second week was fun as well. Stayed in a small town called
Mitterfels, an hour's drive away from Munich. Enjoyed lovely drives around
countryside, traveled to Passau (where we went on a nice boat ride on the
Danube/Inn rivers and visited the magnificent St. Stephen's Cathedral) and shopped in the famous Marianne Platz.

Amidst all the fun, I have to admit we had a fair share of "adventures" as
well - we were caught without our passports by a pair of German cops on
one occassion, and in another, were completely lost for two hours circling
all possible wrong routes from Innsbruck, almost losing hope of making it
back, drove to a near empty tank till we managed to find a petrol station
in the nick of time and more.

Unlike what most vegetarian travelers complain of, food was not a particular problem while we traveled, simply because we had our utensils, cooked and carried food everyday before setting off on sightseeing. Renting a car was another wise decision. We covered nearly
3000 kms in ten days without (gasp!) a backache and hassles of finding
transport to move around.

In short, the points I liked best - sheer beauty of the countries,
excellent infrastructure, friendliness of people and what (and not many) I found inconvenient - you are handicapped without a car and not many speak English.