We’re back home and its time to put another 3 guidebooks on our shelf. I like this idea of wrapping an old guidebook in a map as a book cover to keep your collection of trip memories without looking like a Lonely Planet dealer. Our guidebooks are mostly DIY Moleskine guidebooks, but I think they still looked pretty wrapped with maps.
Tonight we’re traveling from Munich to Paris by the City Night Line sleeper train ‘Cassiopeia’, leaving Munich at 22:48 and arriving in Paris Gare de l’Est at 09:23 tomorrow morning. We could take a Ryanair flight for 25E for both of us, but then we would have to pay for another night’s hotel. An overnight train seemed ideal. City to city no hassle.
The Cassiopeia has ordinary seats, couchettes (4-berth & 6-berth) and sleeping-cars (1, 2 & 3-bed deluxe and standard rooms). We’ll be sitting up all night on the plane soon enough so we opted for the 4-berth couchette option instead.
There is a bistro car available in the morning for breakfast, but as we learned before train food is overpriced and usually not very good so we’ll be packing our own dinner and getting breakfast in Paris.
Travel tip: For a cooked breakfast in Munich or evening meal before boarding the Paris-bound sleeper on your return, try the typically Bavarian Mongdratzerl restaurant, located in the hauptbahnhof itself.
You can book online direct with the German train website. (Don’t worry, its way better than Trenitalia.com and takes American credit cards just fine) You can book up to 92 days in advance. We booked exactly when the fare first became available online for 69E each ($175 total at the time). Booking closer to the date of travel would have cost 272Euro “standard fare” each.
Savings fare is awesome, but it has to be booked in advance, has limited availability, no refunds, no changes. If you can’t commit to a particular train then you may look at a rail pass or Ryanair. These overnight trains pay to plan ahead.
Disney hopefully has nothing on the original Neuschwanstein castle. No touristy trip of Germany would be complete without a glance of the hoards of tourists in buses, oh I mean fairy tale castle of Neuschwanstein.
We’re short cutting the masses and avoiding some of the chaos by booking book online in advance for less than 2E more and 2 hrs of waiting in line for tickets saved. Tickets are 17E for both Neuschwanstein and its sister castle Hoehenschwangau. We’ll use the time saved to take a hike up to get a glance at the view in the picture above and if the weather cooperates we’ll eat our lunch there too.
Mad King Ludwig has had tourists visiting since 6 weeks after his death. We’ll be paying our respects at 9am, right when the castles open. I’m a little hesitant to pay 17E for two 30 minute rushed tours, but I’ll kick myself if I don’t go.
Our next stop will be off guidebook and less cliche.
Off to a meeting in Belgium, center for the EU. I hope we get to meet tons of new people from all over. Hubby hopes that Belgium has as good of chocolate and beer as rumored.
Cartoon Via: penelope-jolicoeur
From the moment I set foot inside an airport I feel like I am being worn out and beat down by the process of travel. I mitigate it as much as possible with snacks, naps, noise-canceling headphones, but really who sleeps well sitting up or enjoys being in motion for more than 12 hrs?
I’d love to pick a long-haul international stewardess’ brain on this, but in the meantime, here is what I’ve found that works for me vs. jetlag. I’ll be employing all these techniques just to focus now that I’m on the ground in France.
Any tips appreciated!
Sleep the week before you leave
Stay rested the entire week before you travel. This means don’t stay up until 2am the night before packing or making the house clean so you have a clean house to come home to. I like coming home to a clean home, but I won’t feel like a zombie for three days of my hard earned vacation to accomplish this.
Stress-proof your body
Your body needs sleep, good food and hydration. Figure out how to get them while traveling.
Hydration – The alcohol may be free, but its de-hydrating. And don’t forget to hydrate your skin. The dry plane air is no fun for skin. While technically it won’t help with jet lag, a little moisturizer on your face will make you feel more human guaranteed.
Food – For longer trips pack accordingly, don’t make yourself a victim of the food they serve. (ah, how happy I am we’re not flying on an American airline) And for short trips its far better to have some healthy almonds in flight than those nasty salt packs they hand out.
Sleep – I don’t sleep on planes. 36 hrs to Hong Kong and nope not a wink in the air, but I have been known to set a cell-phone alarm and crash in the airport.
Drink tea
Chamomile tea keeps me calm, but it also works for nausea and as an anti-inflammatory. Ginger calms tummies too and maybe its all in my head, but a good ginger scone makes me feel less claustophobic too. Sitting there eating a homemade ginger scone with some chamomile tea from Starbucks is a travel ritual that doesn’t get old.
Things to try, that don’t work for me
Acupressure wristbands
No jet lag herbal suppliment
The 6 item challenge is all about living in only 6 items of clothing for a month to get a better feel for what you really need and detach from your clothing possessions. I think its a cool project, but I don’t know if I could travel on only 6 items like this lady: My month of madness, or how I traveled in 6 items
BTW, the challenge doesn’t include accessories or underthings. Still, I wonder what the guys on the OBOW would think of this as a packing technique! Although, they’ve been hung up on men’s trench coats as a packing technique lately, I think they would still be impressed.
Update: As a personal test I tried to do a 6 day challenge for my 3 week trip. I’ll be leaving tonight with 10 items instead. Personal best, but still far from minimalist.
The car is rented. One more thing off of the checklist before we leave on Friday night. I hate to rent when I could take trains, but this trip it just makes sense. Tonight is my last manual driving lesson and I’ll also be buying a Europe iPad GPS app. to join our Michelin Germany map for navigation.
Lessons learned for trying to rent a car in France & Germany:
Wish me luck, and German/French drivers I apologize in advance for my manual skills.
Vagabonding had a recent post on travel journal peeping which pointed me to this link to moleskinerie. It is a pretty cool blog where people open up their own Moleskines and show whats inside, how they use them. I’ll never be a sktechbook artist doing amazing watercolors in mine, but its inspirational none the less.
Word must have got out that we have a house with water rather than a dry cabin, a separate bathroom for guests and aren’t weird stalkers, because we’ve seen a flurry of requests to surf our couch this month. The most important lesson learned is that CouchSurfing experiences vary in what you get out of them. Its really about community and culture sharing rather than free lodging.
Our first guests were quiet and neat and we cooked dinner together, but I couldn’t tell you much about them, their trip or even remember their names in a week. Our second guest didn’t arrive with a guidebook itinerary in hand and actually wanted our input on our hometown. Even if I hadn’t had time to show her around myself she would have had a different experience, because she actually asked us rather than having preconceptions and a checklist from a guidebook.
She also had genuine interest in meeting us as people and getting to know us which resulted in a few late nights talking about travels, life and enjoying the red wine. It also meant that instead of getting just a few blankets and pillows from me, she got two days of my time, a guided bike tour of our town, shopped together at the farmer’s market for a fresh salad to go with a very Alaskan halibut dinner and an 8.5 mile hike guided by us over mountains to a hot springs. In other words she saw things that weren’t in the must-dos of a guidebook and had a far different experience.
Nothing was wrong with the first guests and I left them a positive reference, but I want to be that second guest and go beyond the guidebook.
My Tips for a Positive Hosting Experience
I’ll do another post with Tips for Surfers after our first surfing experience this fall.
We have one week of our Europe trip from August 11-18 where we have no plans yet. (Probably will have a car rented, oh God those poor Germans.)
We know we’ll be in Munich for most of that time, with possible side trips to visit some friends in Passau and Nurnberg in there somewhere, but for now we’re keeping things unplanned so we feel less like we’re on a strict tour of Europe and more spontaneous. This has me freaked to have no hotel plans, just a list of back-up hostels and an iPad with Wifi. Where will I sleep? A bench?! Sigh.
So I am trying to up my Couchsurfing.com cred by being a host before trying to be hosted. I have a feeling that if I was requesting someone in Munich for their couch, they’d be happier seeing I’m not some crazy person. So tomorrow I am having 3 young Chinese ladies over for two nights.
This has brought out my “I’m hosting Thanksgiving and the house must be perfect and everyone must be fed and entertained constantly or I’m a horrible person side.” I really have no idea what they expect beyond what was in my profile: a couch, pillows and their own shower.
I really don’t want to freak them out, so I have limited myself to e-mailing them a list of local events going on this weekend (Solstice baby, oh wait, that’s depressing because then we start losing light.) and cleaning the house to within an inch of its life. (What happened to Spring Cleaning?)
- Clean house
- Folder of local brochures and a list of events during their stay
- Plenty of pillows and blankets and towels
- Bus maps
Previous hosts, chime in, what else am I missing?
