The Oswalt Life: February 2010

This post is a "retro" post. I was never able to get it to post correctly after our trip, and found it in my archive under "draft".... better late than never!

We decided to take a day trip from Munich to Salzburg Austria which was only about an hour train ride. I first discovered Salzburg by watching a travel show about it, and was excited to learn it was so close to Munich. Salzburg is known for being the home of Mozart (they are very proud of him!), and my personal favorite... the filming location for "The Sound of Music"

We took a tour of their local beer brewery Stiegl. Kirk thought it would be hilarious to mimic this photo..... he laugh every time he see's it!

Where the magic happens

Did you know you could open a beer with eyelash curlers? Yes you can!

Mmmmm......beeer! ( in our best Homer Simpson voice)

Who knew a beer tasting was included in our tour!?!

There she is in all of her glory. The house where the Sound of Music was filmed.

A castle on top of a mountain... very hard to photograph.

Kirk had been dying to stand in a statue niche. His obsession started in London with a failed attempt. He was so excited that it was finally achievable. Look.... that statue looks like KIRK!!!

We took a tour of this beautiful estate, villa, and garden (forgot the name, too lazy to look it up). The prince who lived here, thought it would be funny to make a water garden with "hidden" sprinklers. I bet he lost a few friends over his humor.

Kirk asked me if I wanted to join the "statue" club? Why not! At first people looked at us like we were crazy.... but while we were leaving, they couldn't resist. We started a trend!

This was the only way to exit this building. Our guide would lower the pressure, causing some of the guests to get soaked! A few of them were not too happy.

My life is now complete. This is the gazebo from the Sound of Music where Liesl sang "I am 16 going on 17". Can you believe Kirk has never seen the movie? Blasphemy!

I wanted one by myself!

Taking a break from our tour to enjoy the local brew. It's delicious!

This is the house where Mozart was born.

This was the "old town" where every store front has to have a hanging old-fashioned sign. Even H&M and Fossil!

The "Man"!

We were so tired of asking people to take pictures for us. We've officially mastered the "one handed" self photo. It took a while to realize Kirk's arm is longer than mine!

The hills are alive, and the gelato is delicious in Salzburg Austria!

We were pretty excited about going to Munich during the "real" Oktoberfest! We arrived at the train station, found the best route to our hotel (on the metro), and an early dinner, and turned in early! We got up early to be at Oktoberfest and in a tent by 9am, to hopefully get a seat at a table. Boy, were we wrong! We got to the Hofbrau tent at 9 to find it completely full. They don't start serving beer until 12:00, so we stood around and waited to see if we wanted to hang out, or walk around. We decided to walk around and came up on the parade, now that's more my style! I love parades, and can't help really excited about them! After the parade, the mayor taps the keg, everyone cheers and the drinking begins. We were unaware of the fact that you can't get a beer unless you are sitting at a table, you can't walk up to a bar to order one.... huh what a bummer. Well, we tried to visit a few different tents to see if we could get lucky and find someone at a table that would order a beer for us, but we had no luck! At this point Kirk started to panic, he couldn't believe he was at Oktoberfest and COULDN'T GET A BEER!!! I felt so bad for him, he was so excited at first and now is so disappointed. He turned to total "pout" mode, and was in the worst mood. I couldn't snap him out of it! I hadn't researched anything about Munich or Oktoberfest, because Kirk was in charge of this one and I did the other 6 cities! I decided to make a suggestion that our hotel had given us in case we got tired of Oktoberfest, and we headed to downtown Munich. I remembered the hotel telling us to go to Hofbrauhaus's Bier Garten. Once we found it, we decided to eat across the street first at the Hard Rock Cafe..... I know, I know; but I really wanted a salad, and Kirk wanted a burger! Once we got inside of the Bier Garten and heard the music and saw the beer, Kirk's mood instantly improved! Now, he was a happy boy! This is what he thought Oktoberfest was all about, not the state fair(ish) festival we had just left. We stayed there for awhile, and then decided to do our own tour of all the local breweries! We continued our tour the next day, and also fit in a little more sightseeing and shopping. We decided to make a day trip the next day into Salzburg, Austria (the home of "The Sound of Music") seeing that it was only an hour away, and ended our stay in Munich on a much happier note than what it started!