Remember the days before digital cameras? Taking pictures was a special event, you couldn't check every picture two seconds after it was taken, people didn't put up "photoshoots" of themselves on facebook, and a weekend out didn't necessarily involve a camera. Yeah, I don't remember those days either. In our increasingly digital age, pictures are everywhere (even ones you wish nobody would ever see.) Interestingly enough, the best parts of my week-long vacation with Maggie were not captured on camera. We took as many pictures as Asian tourists, but the best moments still eluded photos. Pardon the pun, but here are a few "snapshots" from our vacation. I'll do my best to paint a picture for you, dear readers, because there is no photographic evidence of these events.
- Ever since I accepted the internship in Munich, my mom has been going on and on about the Sound of Music tour. "Salzburg is only an hour and a half away by train, so you can go on the tour any weekend! You don't even have to book in advance!" When we got to Salzburg, I thought she might kill us if we didn't take the tour. Four hours on a bus singing along to music with a bad tour guide in lederhosen didn't really sound like my cup of tea, but we took one for the team. Despite the cheesy nature of the tour, it ended up being a lot of fun. Rather, Mags and I decided to make it fun. There were two parts in particular that still make me laugh: we yodeled and went ass-backwards up an Alp. Yodeling: you know the song from the movie called "The Lonely Goatherd?" It's a fairly difficult song to sing, but fun to listen to. Everybody on the bus got kind of quiet when it came on, but not me and Maggie. We sang the different parts, knew the harmonies, and pretty much embarrassed the shit out of ourselves. I didn't realize we were the only two singing, but apparently we were (and everyone else was just listening to us. Great.) At the end of our performance, the tour guide thanked us for bringing the "music" back into the tour. Fantastico. Going ass-backwards up a mountain: they had this contraption where you could take a chairlift up the mountain, and roll down on this sled with wheels on the bottom. But instead of a chairlift, they attach a chain to your ass. So we literally went ass-backwards up a mountain and balls first down it (except we don't have balls, but "crotch first" just didn't have the same ring to it.) It was probably the most fun I've had since the first time I went on the autobahn.
- Sloppy Mags made a comeback this weekend. (Note to Jonboy: two mojitos and the girl is d-r-u-n-k.) My favorite part came when she drunkenly tried to carry her huge backpack upstairs. I pushed her sideways and thought she was going to fall over and die. We then proceeded to have one of those drunk talks about our life plans that goes in circles and neither of us remembered in the morning. The best part? I could have taken her to one of the hundreds of bars, clubs, or biergartens in Munich. Instead, we got tipsy on mojitos at the Mexican place less than 50 ft. from my apartment and finished off our drunken night with a bottle of wine at my place. Classy.
- I didn't die on the autobahn. My boss, who was way too nice to us, lent us his BMW Z3 convertible for the weekend. It was one of the first 100 ever made, black with black leather interior, it is in amazing condition, and he figured we could take it for a week or so to go play in the mountains. Did I mention that it was a stick shift? Did I mention that neither of us knew how to drive a stick shift? Thank goodness Mags is a fast learner and that German cars were made to stand some abuse. If either one of those conditions didn't hold, I'm quite sure we would have died. It all turned out well in the end though. I took a picture of Maggie driving on the autobahn (and popping her 100mph cherry without killing us) but it just doesn't quite translate onto film. You had to be there.
- We went to Neuschwanstein with Marcus - it is known as the "Disney Castle." The scenery is truly breathtaking. It is set between two mountains with a beautiful town and lake at the bottom... I have never seen anything like it. However, Mags and I were too busy fighting with our souvenir wooden swords to pay much attention. Every person over the age of fifteen looked at us with contempt, like, "really? REALLY? Wooden swords?" Every kid under the age of ten looked at with jealousy; "I want one!" It was, hands down, the best eight euro I've ever spent. Whenever Maggie pissed me off, I poked her with my wooden sword and everything was better.
- One of the most embarrassing moments of my life happened yesterday; Marcus insisted that we had to try the German white sausages. These sausages are special - you don't eat the casing on them. You just eat the insides. There are a variety of ways to get the casing off of the sausage- you can cut off the top and peel it, you can slice it down the middle and peel it off, or you can eat it the traditional Bavarian way. The traditional way to eat it is this: put the sausage in your mouth, bite down lightly (but don't break the casing) and suck the sausage out. You don't need a picture to imagine what this looks like. Unfortunately, Roland got a picture of it anyway. Wow.
Even though we did take pictures, hopefully the best parts of our trip live on as vivid memories rather than two-dimensional images.
I only have two weeks left here, so I am planning to fill them with adventures. This weekend I'm going to either Hamburg or Paris for Sunday and then going to Frankfurt on Monday. That leaves Friday night and Saturday afternoon to hang out with friends or just play by myself in Munich before taking the night train up north. Next weekend I might go to this beautiful lake in Northern Italy for a couple of days, but it's kind of sad to take a romantic trip by yourself. Oh well.
---
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment