Last year I was introduced to the use of bells to announce time in European cities.  Every quarter hour the bells chime, once for quarter after, twice for half past, and three times for quarter till.  If you have any sense of the time, these quarterly chimes let you know what time it is.  On the hour, of course, the bells ring once for each hour.  (Sibylle adds:  they use two different bells, a smaller one for the quarter hours, and a larger, deeper one, for on the hour.  On the hour, you first hear four quarter bells, then the larger bell once for each hour.)

Here in the States, you only hear church bells occasionally.  In downtown Kansas City, Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral sounds it bells every hour.  Most neighborhood churches, if they have bells, ring them only on Sunday or for special occasions.

View from Stiftskirche, Stuttgart Germany

When we were in Stuttgart the last Sunday of our trip, we realized that it was the annual historic monument day, and that historic sites normally closed to the public, would be open.  Just off the Königstraße in Stuttgart, is the 600 year old Stiftskirche.  We were able to climb the bell tower, all 63 meters of it - 230 steps, going round and round and round. 

Contained in the tower is a 5.2 meter diameter bell, weighing some 6 tons.  How it was ever hauled to the top of the tower is beyond me.  I was able to capture several panoramic views of the city from tower, which you can see on my Flickr site.

(Now that we are back in the States, and have more time, we hope to post some additional entries about our trip to Europe in 2008.)

On the train ride from Zürich to Stuttgart, I managed to capture two or three pictures of a large castle in southern Germany.  When we showed the pictures to Sibylle’s mom, Hannelore, she immediately recognized it and said the name, Hohentwiel.

According to Wikipedia, Hohentwiel is an ancient volcano, and the Burg, or castle, has been there since 914.  The fortress was destroyed in 1800, and is one of the largest castle ruins in Germany.  Had we known, and been prepared, we would have gotten off the train and explored it.

In America, when you make a purchase, the clerk hands you back the receipt and your change (coins and bills) all at once.  It’s an annoyance to one-handedly pick out the receipt to put it away, and then the coins, which go in my pocket, and finally fold the paper money to go in my wallet.  In Europe, all the merchants have a little tray on the counter where they put your change and receipt.  You get to pick things up and put them away yourself.  I like the European way better.

Having more transition time between flights, or trains, is far, far better than “just enough” time.  Our flight connection in Atlanta on our way to Zürich, was “just enough” time.  Which meant that the delay parking at the gate, and the further delay getting off the back of the plane made us nearly miss our connection.  At least one of our train connections was very tight - we had to run around the head of our incoming train to reach the track with our outgoing train.

Merchants in Europe, at least in Germany and Italy, close for midday, usually around 12:30.  They reopen in the afternoon, around 2:30 or 3:00.  Very few places are open past 5:30 or 6:00 in the evening.  In Germany stores are closed on Sunday.  Coming from the US, where everything all the time, it takes some planning to adapt to the different schedule.

The roads, particularly in the older towns, or the older parts of towns, are narrow.  There are very few small SUVs, no large SUVs, and no Pickup trucks.  There are city busses, and micro busses, and construction vehicles, which are larger.  The drivers of these bigger vehicles all manage to navigate incredible tight corners and narrow openings.  Drivers, as a general rule, are more cavalier about lanes and lane usage, but very tolerant of people needing to change lanes or cut across the flow of traffic.  I don’t think I heard a single horn sound the entire time we were gone.  Traffic is very heavy in places, and no one gets upset or aggressive.

In the city of Bressanone, where we spent a week, there is a Millennium Pole, celebrating that cities 1000 year anniversary.  It was erected in 1906, one-hundred-and-two years ago.

Restaurants, particularly the ethnic ones, present you with a small, complimentary, glass of liquor or wine either as you sit down, or after you complete your meal.  The breads served with meals is outstanding, and portions are reasonably sized.  You won’t find any “super sized” meals, nor are you expected to take home leftovers.  In fact, not finishing the portion you are presented usually generates a question about whether or not you liked the food.

Bicycles, walking, and public transportation rule in Europe.  The inner cities, particularly the market areas, are pedestrian only (with exceptions allowed for merchant delivery vehicles and busses), so you see hundreds of bicycles everywhere.  In addition to a huge variety of small cars, you see lots of motorcycles and scooters.  Gas was roughly $8.50 a gallon (1.45 € per liter), so fuel economy is a prime concern.  the United States would have to undergo a significant culture change to make the mass transportation employed in Europe work here.  As Americans, we are too married to our cars to be willing to use trains and busses.  Of course, when our gas prices catch up to theirs, that may change.

There are, of course, many differences between the United States and Europe.  Many are not immediately obvious - on the surface, things seem the same, but the moment you scratch a bit, almost nothing is the same anymore.

One difference is money.  I don’t mean the obvious fact that in Europe you pay with Euros (except for Switzerland where you still pay with Swiss Francs) instead of Dollars.  What I mean is that Euros, like German Marks used to, use coins up to 5 Euros:  there are coins for one cent, two cents, five cents (no nicknames either), ten cents, twenty cents, fifty cents, one Euro, two Euros.  Then the paper money starts.  The five coins in your hand may add up to 10 Euros already (at the moment equal to approximately $14.32)

Just like with most everything else, the difference is neither good nor bad, things are just - different.  With so many coins, for instance, wallets naturally have to be of a different design.  Credit cards are only very slowly becoming accepted - mid-size to larger hotels use them, stores hardly ever, restaurants somewhat reluctantly and only for over 10 Euros.

Yesterday, in the transatlantic plane, I realized just how much I had been away - truly away - from the States:  one flight attendant in one aisle asked, over our heads, another in the other aisle whether he had change for a $10 bill, for a passenger who had purchased a beer (costs $7).  They started exchanging dollar bills, she gave him the ten, he handed her back some one-dollar bills - and I thought, “he’s got it all wrong!  He’s handing her bills!  She just needs three dollars!”  It was perhaps only a split second, but it did take a moment to sink in that, no, in American money, three dollars are three one-dollar bills, not coins. 

I remember coming to the States, almost 19 years ago, and being completely thrown for a loop with little details like that.

After today’s flight from Stuttgart (leaving at 11 a.m. German time, that’s 4 a.m. Kansas time)  to Atlanta (arrive 3:20 p.m. - 2:20 p.m. Kansas time) which makes this flight almost 10 and a half hours long, I have revised my high opinion of Delta’s feeding strategies: on our transatlantic flight two weeks ago we were inundated with food practically around the clock. Not so this time. If my math is correct, and it may not be, considering how tired I am, I think they fed us lunch approximately an hour or two into the flight, and then a small pizza snack about an hour before we landed. That’s about eight hours without food, unless you count the small thing of ice cream more than halfway through the flight. There was water but no snack offered in between. Mark and I were starving and actually went up to a flight attendant to ask for at least some peanuts. 

We chuckled once we had the pizza on our trays: in our two weeks in Europe, one week of which we spent in Italy, this was the first time we had pizza. - Of course, contrary to what I said in an earlier posting, Suedtirol, while it is bi-lingual, is not truly bi-cultural; it is much more Austrian than Italian, it is Austrian under the political rule of Italy.

Fortunately for our aching stomachs, food in the Atlanta airport is plentiful and surprisingly good, so we were able to appease our stomachs once we had landed, gone through passport check, baggage claim, customs, baggage re-check, security, and found our gate (which by then had changed twice from the initial one).

Sibylle and I leave on our return flight to America in just a few hours.  I’m suffering from a bout of insomnia, brought on by some poorly timed calls to my cell phone number, so the fact that I’m awake less than 3 hours before starting a marathon day of travel and writing about that day’s impending jet lag, is ironic.

Our flight leaves Germany at 11:00 am local time.  Needing an hour (52 minutes) to travel via S-Bahn from Winnenden to the Stuttgart airport, and another two hours for flight check in and security, plus time for showers, breakfast, travel to the train station, and some cousion time, we are getting up at 5:15 am local time.

The trans-Atlantic flight is just over 10 hours to Atlanta, then we’ve got 3 or so hours on the ground to clear customs, and find our Kansas City departure gate.  The last flight is about 2.5 hours.  Throw in some time for getting our checked bag, and catching a bus to long-term parking, and we’re at our car about hour 22 of travel.  45 minutes to drive home, and we will be at just under 23 total hours duration.

It’ll be 9:00 pm in Kansas City, but 4:00 am for our bodies.  This is better than last year, where our travel duration was closer to 30 hours than to 20.  Still it is going to be a long day.

After a week in Südtirol, we again took the train to return to Germany.  Our trip was uneventful, if a bit wearying.  The train was again full, and we were very grateful to have reserved seats the whole way.  Unlike plane travel where you are assigned a seat, trains in Europe allow you (in some cases) to buy a ticket but not reserve a seat.  If you find an unreserved seat, you can take that one.  If there are no unreserved seats, you either stand, or use one of the jump seats in the corridor.  Some of the trains had tiny  digital displays at each seating cluster to show which were reserved and which weren’t.  One used paper cards with the end-points of the reservation noted.  Riders without reservations routinely ignore these reservation indicators, so you have to show them your reservation and ask them to leave the seat.

As we discovered on our way to Italy, some Europeans are fairly nasty about the whole “you’re in my seat” exchange.  We got to evict one woman from our compartment when we got on the train in Bressanone Saturday afternoon.  As it turns out, she had a seat reserved in our compartment, but with a full compliment of six people, she claimed it was “too @$%#&! crowded” (in German, of course), and opted to sit on one of the jump seats in the corridor.

Given the crowding on the train, and the expensive snacks or food, which may or may not be available (nearly everyone brings their own food and drink on board), the whole “Europe by train” experience was less than romantic.  It is still an efficient, relatively inexpensive way to travel, it just isn’t the Orient Express.  We didn’t upgrade to first class on any of our trains, so I don’t know if the experience there is any better or not.

Our trip north on Saturday took about 6 hours, with a brief (less than 10 minute) train switch in München. The first train, from Bressanone to München, was older and a bit noisy, the train from München to Stuttgart, was much newer, and whisper quiet.  It is hard to gauge how fast you are traveling at any given time, but by looking out the window and guessing, “are the trees and houses going by as fast as when I drive on the highway?” I think I can safely say we, at times, were going much faster than 70 or 80 miles an hour.  We both agreed that driving the same distance in a car would not only take longer, but that at least one of us, the driver, wouldn’t get to sightsee along the way.

Train travel in Europe may not be a romantic as we envisioned months ago when planning this trip, and neither of us can imagine the exhaustion that would have set in had we planned a trip around a Eurail Pass and visits to multiple places or countries, but it is quick, efficient, and fun in a “gee, I’m glad I’m not driving” sort of way.

When I was about 15 years old I was introduced to fantasy literature. A common thread in many of the books were jagged, saw-tooth mountains that had to be traversed in order for the hero to defeat the evil doer. Many of the authors were quite descriptive about these mountains, but until yesterday, I had never seen anything in real life that matched my imagination about jagged, saw-toothed mountains.

Our week-long bus pass includes three routes that extend out of Bressanone and into some neighboring towns. Earlier this week we visited Luson on one such bus trip, and saw some of the higher peaks to the north of us. They were appropriately mountainous, with bare, rocky tops, and forested slopes. Sibylle had read about a 45-minute hike available from the end of another bus route, to “Schatzerhuette“, a remote refuge or hut, with a few rooms for rent and a restaurant to the south and east of Bressanone. Yesterday we took that bus, and made that hike.

The ride up to Schihütte started on the narrow, but still two lanes wide road.

Well, a lane and a half, with an occasional wide spot approaching two full lanes of width. There was heavy pine forest on both sides of the road, and incredible vistas at every turn. The second to last stop, Palmschoss, was the end of the “wide” road, and the start of a much narrower mountain road. The bus, a full length city sized model, now needed the entire width of the road to make it around the corners. This is not a road for the squeamish, or those afraid of heights. Both Sibylle and I agreed that driving these roads ourselves wouldn’t be enjoyable. Neither of us would want to be a passenger, and neither of us would feel entirely safe as the driver either. We placed our trust in the repeated laps the driver had made prior to our trip.

Midway up the narrow road we rounded a corner and saw the Dolomites for the first time. These are young mountains, unworn by time and weather, yet. Jagged, abrupt, imposing, and beautiful. The rest of the ride provided tantalizing glimpses of these saw-tooth peaks. And the end of the road, at Skihütte, gave a tremendous view of three ridges of these stunning peaks, fading off in to the haze to our south.

The trail up and around the mountain was actually a fire road, so it was wide and comfortable for walking. After going east for a bit, and then south, we rounded the mountain and turned east again, and we could see the length of the valley, perhaps 10 miles, all of it boarded to the south by the Dolomite peaks. We were perhaps 6000 feet in elevation, which put us just below the tree line. The peaks opposite us were nearly vertical from the valley floor, which was a good 2000 feet below us. The lower Dolomite slopes were covered in some trees, which then gave way to what I thought was snow or glacier, but later decided was loose scree and rubble from the mountain. The vertical sides were full of fissures and cracks, and the numerous peaks were sharp and jagged. Even the relatively young Rockies aren’t as utterly daunting in appearance as these peaks. Imagine a giant hand made of rock and stone, thrusting upwards with each finger a different peak.

The refuge was a beautiful place, surrounded by an Alpine meadow, overlooking the deep valley to the south, and the stunning Dolomite peaks beyond.

We enjoyed surprisingly good food for lunch, and took our time resting there, enjoying the peaceful quiet. Venturing further along the path, which eventually leads to the next village down the valley, we came across a beautiful cottage, built over a small stable, and a meadow with half a dozen cows grazing. All the cows wear bells, and there is a constant background music as the cows move about.

We returned to the refuge for more food, and a little nap for me and some post card writing for Sibylle, before making our way back down the mountain to the bus home.

Südtirol is bilingual and bicultural - both German (Austrian) and Italian. It is amazing how effortlessly most people here go back and forth between the two languages. Occasionally, there may be a faint Italian lilt in someone’s otherwise perfect and absolutely flawless German, making me think that perhaps Italian is his native language, but the ease with which most people here speak both languages is stunning. 

Everything, all signs, street names, signs on doors, announcements, etc. are in both German and Italian, usually German first. Mark and I have been wondering how people here feel about this biculturality. Do they - inside, where the tourists don’t see - fiercely belong to one culture, patriotically defending their heritage? Do they frown upon the other? Do they flock together with only people from their own heritage? Also: how do they do subtitles in movies??

One thing that’s both Austrian and Italian is the abundance of signs that people here are predominantly Catholic - there are churches, of course, but also all sorts of shrines and crosses, both inside houses and on the outside, and out in nature, along walking trails. 

Mark asked, the first night we were here in Bressanone - as evening church bells and a thunderstorm coincided - whether bells here were used to warn people of severe weather. The question, surprisingly, surprised me: the only “severe” weather here would be a thunderstorm or a snowstorm, and those you can usually see approach, so there’s not much need to warn people.

Last year we made heavy use of an Internet Cafe in Winnenden, to check email, and post to our web sites. We also use the computers there to copy pictures from our camera memory cards to a portable hard drive I had brought with me. When we returned home and went to copy pictures from our memory cards to our computers the anti-virus software immediately objected to the cards, saying there were viruses there.

I was able to clean my memory cards and have them return to normal function without any difficulties. Sibylle’s memory card however, refused to be read via her USB cable and reader. It worked fine in the camera, but not independently. When we arrived in Germany, we discovered that one of the things we forgot to pack was the camera to USB cable for her camera. She had the memory card reader and its cable, but plugging the card in only gave us a “memory card empty” message.

We went to a camera store on Marktplatz in Winnenden to see if we could buy a new camera to computer cable for her camera. The man there said he didn’t have a cable, but he did have some software that would let him recover all the pictures on the memory card, and reformat it so that it would work again. All for just 10 Euros. We said yes.

An hour later, when we returned to the store, he handed us a CD with some 280 pictures on it, and a newly formated memory card. I am happy to say that her card reader once again works the way it should. The last vestiges of the virus from last year were gone.

That is until I filled up my first 256 MB memory card and switched to the second. As it happened, I took just two pictures before trying to upload through my card reader, whereupon I got the same “memory card empty” message. With only two pictures on the card I didn’t hesitate to reformat it. The first reformat I used the suggested 16 kilobyte file allocation unit size, which I later determined was a mistake. After taking a picture, it took the camera a very long time to save the image to the card. This morning I reformated the card a second time, using a 1024 byte (i.e., 1 MB) allocation unit size. And FAT32 instead of the suggested FAT format. When I put the card in the camera, it objected to the card, but offered to format it for me. Once the camera was done with the format (a surprisingly quick 5 seconds) the card worked like it was brand new.

Finally, after a year, the viruses we got last year in the Internet Cafe, were gone.