Since we went to Germany and France in one trip I'm going to combine them here but I might split up some of the answers if needed.
Where did we go?
We went to Munich and Stuttgart, Germany as well as Mulhouse, France.
How long were we there? We were in Munich for one day, Stuttgart for two days and Mulhouse for two days.
What language do they speak?
They speak German in Germany and French in France :). More people in Germany were able to speak English with us if we had a question about something. Very few people could speak English to us in France. It could have been that we were in a little French town but it definitely was an eye opening experience to be surrounded by people we couldn't communicate with.
What currency do they use?
They both use the Euro which was really nice that we didn't have to change currency halfway through the trip.
Were things expensive?
Overall I thought things were pretty reasonable in both places. Jake bought some clothes in Stuttgart and they were really cheap compared to clothes in Stockholm. We did notice that most places wanted cash which was fine but we typically don't pay for things with cash because it is harder to keep track of where our money is going.
Would we be able to live there for a year?
I think we could live in either Germany or France for a year but I think it would be a harder transition. So many people in Sweden speak English fluently that learning Swedish isn't necessary. That wouldn't be the case in Germany or France. I think had we moved to either of those countries we would know that language much more after living there as long as we have lived Sweden now because it would be necessary. I took French in high school for two years but I don't remember any of it. Maybe if I started studying it then something would come back but I'm not sure much would. I think German would be a really helpful language to know.
What was most memorable thing about the trip?
Germany: The Porsche Museum was the most memorable part of that trip. It was just awesome to see something we've been dreaming about visiting for years. France: The Tour de France! On Monday, July 14th (Bastille Day, French National Day) we started off the morning eating French pastries for breakfast and a French baguette for lunch and then we hiked up a mountains to watch the Tour de France. It seemed like the perfect French experience. We also rode bikes all over a cute, little French city before heading to the Bastille Day fireworks. Jake said several times that was one of the best days of his life. It was pretty awesome!
What was the food like?
Germany: I feel like they had a lot of meat in Germany. Like big hunks of meat for dinner. It could be that is just what we ordered but that's what it seemed. They also had lots of pretzels and beer. France: Pastries of course :). Honestly, I'm not 100% sure what they had since we couldn't really read the menu. We did have tarte flambée one day for lunch which reminded me of a very thin pizza.
Least favorite food? The tarte flambée I ordered our first day in Mulhouse had more onions on it than anything ever should but other than that the rest of the food we had was great.
Favorite food?
The pastries we had for breakfast were amazing. I had one with chocolate and another with shaved almonds and they were both melt in your mouth good!
Would we want to go back? We would both love to go back to Germany or France. I'm not sure I need to go back to these three specific cities, especially in the near future because they were pretty small and I felt like we saw what we needed to see, but there are several other cities in both countries we'd like to visit. What was I most surprised by? I was surprised by how little English people in Mulhouse knew and how isolating that can feel. I was also really surprised we were able to watch the Tour in the mountains. We talked about it and looked into it before we took the trip but it wasn't until the night before at 10:30 pm that we actually found a way to get up the mountain. So that was a very pleasant surprise.
Did we do anything we thought we wouldn't do? The last question answers this one. I didn't think we'd get to see the Tour up in the mountains. What did I learn about myself on this trip? I learned that sometimes the best days are the ones that just fall into place. I am slowly learning to not stress out over the details and that for the most part things will work out and if they don't then you just have to change your expectations and move on. If you want to read about our time in Germany or France click on the links.
We took a train on Sunday, July 13th from Stuttgart, Germany to Mulhouse, France. I was excited about all of the train rides we were taking on this trip. It just seems like if you are traveling around in Europe you should be on a train. It was nice to sit back and read, nap or look out the window on each train ride.
We got to Mulhouse around noon. All of the hotels were book in the city because of the Tour so we stayed at an Airbnb for the first time. An Airbnb is similar to a vrbo (vacation rental by owner) which means you can either rent out a shared room, a private room or the whole apartment/house. After we got to the correct street we both realized we didn't know the exact address and we couldn't match her name from the email with a name on the door. Thankfully Jake has a phone plan that he can use outside of Sweden so he texted her and we were able to connect without waiting for too long.
We had a mostly private room :). It was a one bedroom apartment with the main bedroom and bathroom upstairs and we slept on a futon like couch on the floor of the living room. However, the living room was open to the kitchen and it was on the main floor so it wasn't really private in that we couldn't just shut a door and be by ourselves. The person renting the room told Jake that before we booked her apartment but in the future I think we will probably try to find a private room with a door. We dropped off our bags and then headed to the main square for lunch.
We had lunch at the restaurant under the red umbrellas. It was okay but not fantastic. We both had tarte flambée (which were like very thin pizzas) and mine had way too many onions on it but thankfully Jake isn't a picky eater and he split his with me.
In Mulhouse, they have city bikes that you can rent at different stations around the city which is awesome. (You can see the bikes to the right of the church.) We used them the whole weekend instead of using the trams and it was perfect. You can pick them up in one location and bike to another station and drop them off. If you bike for less than 30 minutes it is free and it was one euro for every hour after that. I think all cities should have a city bike exchange with convenient locations :).
After lunch we headed towards the finish line of the Tour de France! Jake's dad enjoys cycling and has been on a couple of cycling trips with a Jake and with other people. He got Jake interested in the Tour and then after Jake and I were married we started watching it together. Jake would always come home for lunch and in the summer we would have lunch together. In July, we would watch the last part of the Tour or highlights from the stage that day. Over the last 6 summers we've enjoyed following the Tour together. We talked about going to France one summer to watch the Tour and then we moved to Sweden and it just seemed silly not to go see it if we were this close. Thankfully it worked out that the Tour finished a stage and started a stage in a city close to other cities we were interested in visiting. Plus since it ended and started in the same city we had two chances to see it.
Stage 9 of the Tour ended in Mulhouse on Sunday, July 13th. We were able to watch from 1.7 km away from the finish line. We found a spot right by a turn so they would have to slow down a little bit and maybe we could catch a longer glimpse of them that way. About two hours before the riders come by a caravan or parade of vehicles comes through throwing out free stuff. The sponsors of the Tour throw out hats, candy, biscuits, water, shirts, bracelets, etc. It was really hectic when we were downtown during the caravan. People were diving to catch things and knocking over kids only to realize what they just dove for wasn't all that exciting and they would just hand it off to someone else. There were a few goodies worth fighting for but really not much. The first day we got a bag of biscuits and a bracelet. Vans also drive by playing loud music and selling Tour de France merchandise like umbrellas, hats and shirts. The caravan lasts for about 45 minutes to an hour and then you have about an hour break before the riders get there. At the end of the stage the riders were flying by us so quickly that we could barely see them but it was still lots of fun.
Tony Martin won the stage that day. He was out in front of the peloton (the big group of riders) and he flew past us to pick up a stage win. Here is a video of him biking by us:
A few minutes later the chase group passed us. This group didn't have the main contenders (who had the best chances of winning the whole Tour) in it they are just a group of guys who were trying to catch Tony Martin so one of them could possibly win the stage but they weren't able to catch him on this day. After the group of riders you will see all the team cars with bikes on top in case a rider has an issue and needs to swap out their bike.
The next group was the peloton, which is the main group of riders, that usually has the main contenders in it. I decided to clap as they passed so I don't have any pictures or videos of that. After the peloton passed us we walked around the corner to see some of the tents they had set up. Jake got a polka dot hat, which is the design they use on the jersey for the rider who is considered the King of the Mountains. We saw a few more groups of riders go by which was fun since they were more spread out than we thought they would be.
After all of the riders finished we walked towards the finish line to see what it looked like.
They were already tearing down the finish line by the time we got there so they could head to the next city to set up again but it was fun to see what was still left. I think it would be so draining to set up and tear down so much stuff each day for the race but I enjoy watching the race so I won't complain.
After the race was over we biked around town for a little while before getting dinner. Several of the storefront windows were decorated for the Tour with drawings of bicycles.
We had dinner at a cute little restaurant and sat next to two guys who always watch the second week of the Tour and they go from town to town for a week following it.
I had cordon blue and Jake had another hunk of meat, similar to what he had in Germany. It is a lot harder to read a menu in France than it was in Germany. German words are similar enough to Swedish that we did pretty well on our own and most Germans could speak enough English if we needed help. That was not the case in France. Most of the people we met in Mulhouse didn't speak English at all and the menu was really hard for us to read. But we survived and it definitely helped us appreciate living in Sweden. Although I think had we moved to Germany or France we would know more of that language than we do Swedish now because it would be a bigger necessity.
The next day the Tour left from Mulhouse but the race usually starts about 30 minutes after the riders start riding to get them warmed up and out of the city. We could have gone to the starting line but we wouldn't have seen much so Jake used his phone the night before to see if he could figure out how to get us up the mountain they were going up on Monday to watch some of the Tour from there. After about an hour he found two different routes we could take to get up into the mountains to watch stage 10.
The next morning we bought 3 pastries and a baguette (which felt very French and brought a smile to my face) and headed to central station to buy tickets only to find out the tram wasn't running because the tram route crossed the Tour route. Thankfully we figured out they had a replacement bus that would take us farther up the route to a different train station where we could continue our journey to the mountains. We took the replacement bus to a tram station and got on a tram that took us to a train-tram.
While we were waiting for the tram we saw another family waiting and we figured out they were also going to watch the Tour. The Grandpa spoke a little bit of English so we decided to stick with them since they might know more of where they were going than we did. Once we switched to the train-tram more of their family members joined them included the Grandpa's son who lived in the US for a couple of years and could speak English really well. We found out they were planning on walking up the same trail on the mountain we were and that he had already been there the week before to scope it out. We asked if it would be okay to just stick with them. After talking with him for a while I asked him what they were planning on doing for lunch. Our plan was to stop in the town where our train stopped and grab some food before climbing up the mountain but he said they already brought food in backpacks. We still had the baguette left from breakfast and a granola bar but that wasn't really enough for lunch. But we decided it might be better to follow them up the mountain and not have much for lunch than try to stop for lunch and lose them. A few minutes later our new friend came back with a baguette, cheese, sausage and tomatoes for us to eat for lunch just in case we got separated. We could not believe it! It was so thoughtful.
We got to our stop and took the trail up the mountain for about 30 minutes before reaching the road that the Tour would go on. We walked up the road a little ways and then stopped to each lunch. After lunch Jake and I walked up a few switchbacks to see if we could find a better spot and we finally settled on one.
We waited for 20 minutes or so before the sponsor caravan started going by us throwing out free stuff again. This time we were much more successful because there were less people around us. We ended up getting lots of great things!
We got another King of the Mountains hat, a yellow LCL hat which I wore, a shirt, three bracelets, glasses cleaning cloth, sun shade, reusable bag and we also go candy and biscuits but we ate those while we were waiting for the cyclists.
Here is a video of the caravan driving by.
The weather was pretty good while we were up in the mountains. It was overcast most of the time which made it nice for our hike. We did have a few rain showers but we found a spot under some trees that helped block most of the rain and then it cleared up again before the riders went by us.
Here are some of the sponsor cars coming around our switchback. We were hoping to be on camera at some point but we weren't. There are cameras on the back of motorcycles and there are also cameras in helicopters. We saw our switchback on the coverage but you couldn't see us because we were standing under some trees. We saw a glimpse of Jake's shirt on stage 9 but they were going by so fast all we could really see was the color.
Here are the riders! We picked this spot so we could see them coming from below before they passed us. And since they had to turn and go uphill they should be going a little slower than they were yesterday which means we should see them for a few seconds longer :). Jake has explained that watching the Tour is like tailgating for 4 hours and then watching a 15 second sporting event. I would say that is pretty accurate. Since this was a mountain stage we had about six or seven 15 second sporting events because the riders were a little more spread apart from going up the mountains. We were bummed because Alberto Contador a popular rider crashed out on this day before he passed us so we didn't get to see him ride but we saw in him in the back of the team car. Mark Cavendish, a well known sprinter, crashed out on the first day of the Tour so we missed seeing him as well.
Sorry the video is a little all over the place but at least you can see how fast they go by.
We walked down a few switchbacks to meet up with our friends again and stopped to cheer on each group of riders that went by us which was fun.
Go Team Garmin!
We were trying to sneak in a picture of our French friends that we met on the train. The one right next to Jake was the Grandpa we met on the first tram and standing next to him is his son who gave us food for lunch.
Standing by the 5 km sign showing you that there were 5 km left to the summit of that mountain. Notice the sign is white with red polka dots, that is the design they use on the jersey for the person who is the King of the Mountains and it is the same design on Jake's hat.
On our way back to the tram.
Here is the train-tram we took and our new French friends.
Once we got back to Mulhouse we had dinner and biked around the town a little bit. Like I said before ordering food was hard. Everything was in French and no one could really translate for us. Jake isn't a picky eater so he usually just asked the waiter to pick something. I don't work that way :) but I ordered some homemade lasagna and it was great!
That night we went to watch the fireworks for Bastille Day, French National Day. We missed the 4th of July back home so watching the fireworks here was really fun. Jake LOVES fireworks and was really sad that we missed shooting them off or seeing any for the 4th but this made up for it at little bit at least.
While we were watching the fireworks we ran into the Rachel, the person who owns the apartment where we were staying in Mulhouse.
We took the Mulhouse bikes to watch the fireworks. They were great because after the fireworks were over we were able to ride back home really quickly and we didn't have to stand around waiting for a spot on the tram.
The next morning we had some more French pastries and then did some shopping before heading to the train station. We took a train from Mulhouse, France to the Frankfurt Airport and then flew back to Stockholm.
We had a great time in France and I am so thankful we were able to watch the Tour. This is definitely a trip we will remember for a long time. If you missed our first three days in Germany you can read about those here and I answered questions about Germany and France here.
We headed to Munich, Germany on Wednesday, July 9th and arrived around 11:00 pm. A childhood friend of mine, Ashley Knoettgen, lives close to Würzburg with her husband Thomas. We had been trying to plan a trip to visit them for a while and it finally worked out. She met us in Munich late at night on Wednesday and took us to her in-laws apartment where we were able to stay for two nights.
On Thursday morning, we woke up and grabbed some fresh bread at a bakery and some fruit at Aldi for breakfast before heading to see the Dachau Concentration Camp. Ashley stayed back in Munich because she had been there before. We joined a guided tour at 10:00. The tour was really interesting and I'm glad we did it but it was also really hard seeing everything and hearing the stories about the prisoners.
The entrance of the camp had a saying "Work makes (one) free." There were different kinds of concentration camps which I didn't realize or remember from studying it in middle school and high school. We were told on the tour that there were work camps and extermination camps. Dachau was a work camp which basically just means the prisoners there were forced to do hard labor for hours and they believed it could make them free but it didn't. There was a ranking that the prisoners were given to put them in to different work groups from easier work (checking in new prisoners) to harder work (moving sand from one pile to another for 12 hours without a break to only repeat it by moving it back the next day).
This is the roll call area. The prisoners had to line up here and stand for 3-4 hours for roll call every morning and every night in rain, sun or freezing temps. Over the 12 years the camp was open there were over 200,000 prisoners recorded to have arrived at Dachau and around 32,000 died.
We toured the prisoner barracks where some of the men had to stay for disciplinary reasons. There were some rooms that were called standing cells where a prisoner might have to stand for days. The size of the cell was about 29.5 inches by 31.5 inches. We heard that one prisoner had to stand for 10 days.
Next on the tour were the barracks. The barracks were actually torn down after the camp closed but they rebuilt one of them to show us what it would look like. There were 34 barracks and each barrack had 6 rooms. Two of the rooms were for sleeping, two for toilets and cold showers and two for lockers to put their clothes. The sleeping chambers changed over the years as the camp grew in numbers. The first picture (on the left) shows beds that were sectioned off so each prisoner had their own space. They also had a straw pillow and blanket. The middle picture shows the beds without a board separating the space in between each prisoner but you can still kind of tell where your space started and stopped. The last picture was just a big open space. It is kind of hard to tell but there is a walkway around the beds and then three large, flat areas where the prisoner slept. I guess 2000 prisoner had to share that space and only about 800 of them could lie down on the beds so the rest had to stand or sit around the floor.
The cold showers and the toilet room. This camp had only male prisoners.
We walked passed where all of the barracks were and at the end of the camp road there are several memorials set up by different religious groups.
Our last stop on the tour was to see the cremation ovens and the gas chamber. They didn't do mass killings in the gas chamber like they did at Auschwitz but they used it occasionally.
Cremation Ovens
Gas Chamber
We walked back to the train station on the same path that the prisoners would have walked from the train to the camp (but in reverse). We didn't know about the walk on the way to the camp so we walked along the trail in reverse on the way back to the train station.
We met Ashley in Munich after visiting Dachau and hung out with her the rest of the day. We walked up a church tower to look over the city. We had a great view!
Marienplatz
Ashley did a great job telling us all about Munich, the history and what some of the buildings were.
We grabbed lunch at an outside market.
After lunch we walked around the city. We stopped to watch some people surf on a river.
We visited the Hofbräuhaus but we decided not to eat dinner there because it was pretty crowded and hot.
Instead we had a great dinner across the street.
Ashley and I split half of a chicken and Jake had a huge hunk of meat and a potato dumpling (I think that is what it was called).
I had some ice cream after dinner even though it was a little chilly.
If you've been reading the blog for a while now you know I've become quite fond of public transportation. I really like seeing how different cities organize their public transportation so I took a few pictures.
I really liked the sign at the top of this picture showing all the S lines. What I didn't see until after Jake and Ashley pointed it out was the girl standing in the middle giving me a not so pleasant look. Apparently she thought I was taking a picture of her which I guess technically she is in the picture but really I just like public transportation. I'm sure if I told her that she would have understood, right? Public transportation is a normal thing to get excited about :).
We headed back to the apartment after listening to some street musicians and just talked before heading to bed. It was so great catching up with Ashley and spending the day with her. We really appreciated her hospitality and company while we were in Munich! The next morning we were up early to catch a train to Stuttgart, Germany!
Jake and I have wanted to go to Stuttgart, Germany for a while. Anyone know why? The Porsche museum and factory are located there. I have always loved cars and I remember waiting 16 LONG years before I was able to drive. I love driving. It clears my head and brings a smile to my face. After Jake and I started dating of course I started loving Porsches too. We were excited to finally be able to visit a place we've been talking about for so long.
When we planned this trip we knew we could visit the Porsche Museum whenever we wanted but the factory tours were only given during the week. Jake emailed them to ask if we could get a tour and they asked us to email them back a day (even though we had already included that in our first email which, should have given us our first clue that things might not go as planned. We emailed them back on a Friday and finished booking train tickets and hotels over the weekend assuming things would be fine. After booking tickets we got an email back that the tours for all of 2014 were fully booked. We were bummed but they said we could show up at 10 am and see if anyone else didn't show up and then we could join the tour. We also went ahead and booked the Mercedes factory tour for 12:30 pm that day just in case we couldn't get into the Porsche tour we wanted to see at least one factory.
We took a train from Munich to Stuttgart at 6:30 am to get to the Porsche factory tour by 10:00 am. After waiting to see if we could join a tour we were told they were full. We talked to the guides about possibly changing their form email that they use since it implies that getting a tour would be no problem. After talking with them they added us to the 2:00 pm tour, which we didn't even know was an option. So we skipped the Mercedes factory tour and we spent the next 4 hours walking through the Porsche Museum and eating at the restaurant.
VW Bug
This car was my favorite, too bad they only made 200 of them. Jake might have to start looking now since it might be kind of hard to find :).
There were a couple of school groups there on a field trip which just made me smile. They also had a special exhibit called "24 Hours for Eternity" which was a neat exhibit about the 24 hour Le Mans race.
We took these pictures for our nephews. We thought they might like seeing the police car and the tractor.
If I picked a Porsche as my everyday car it would probably be this Porsche Macan which is a smaller SUV.
I think this Carrera GT would be Jake's pick.
We had lunch at the Porsche Museum restaurant before the 2:00 pm factory tour. We both had schnitzel for lunch and it was good. I had a Mezzo Mix for lunch which is basically Coke and Fanta mixed together and it was really good. Jake had a beer.
We met the tour guide at 2:00 pm for the factory tour and found out that because of construction that started at the plant during 2nd shift we would only be able to tour the factory where they assemble the engines and not the factory where they assemble the cars. What? We were bummed. We were thankful to be on the tour but still bummed that we had been looking forward to it all morning only to find out it wouldn't be a complete tour. To make up for it they were offering a free guided tour through the museum, the one we just spent three and a half hours walking through. We passed on the guided tour of the museum but we did enjoy the small part of the factory tour we were able to see.
Unfortunately, we weren't able to take any pictures of the factory. Some things that I thought were interesting was their goal of keeping their workers relaxed. Each station has three minutes to complete their task. They know that it would only take maybe half that amount of time but they don't want to put so much pressure on the workers that they get stressed and then become unhappy because that could potentially make them cause mistakes. I thought that was an interesting perspective. They care more about careful work than pumping out as many cars as possible in a day. We did get to ask lots of questions about the number of stations with people versus machines. They told us how they cold test the engines in the middle of the line and then again at the end and if there is an issue they can pull them off the line and run a few tests to figure out the problem. They also have floaters whose job is just to go around and assist other people who may be having an issue with something so they don't have to stop the whole line to fix a problem. One other really neat thing was they had these robotic carts that delivered the parts to the station right as the parts were needed. That was really cool.
Before leaving the Porsche museum we walked back through the museum to take one more peek at our favorite cars.
Checking out my favorite car again :).
These pictures aren't great because they were taken through a window at the Porsche service center but this is the new 918 Spyder hybrid that is capable of going 0 to 60 in 2.8 seconds and it gets 80 miles per gallon (but not at the same time).
We headed back to the hotel for a little bit of downtime that night before heading out for dinner. We tried going to an Italian restaurant but it had a really long wait so we made reservations for that place for the next night and walked a couple of blocks to a different restaurant and it was SO GOOD. Jake ordered beef tips with buttered noodles and I ordered a traditional food from, it was similar to ravioli with spinach and cheese inside. It was such a great meal in a fun little bar (yes I put fun and bar in the same sentence).
After dinner we walked around Stuttgart. It was a really nice evening. We got some gelato and listened to a few street musicians before heading back to the hotel. We stayed a little outside of the city center at Hotel One. It was right on a U-bahn line which was really convenient to hop on to get to the city.
The next morning, Saturday, July 12th, we headed to the Mercedes Museum. The Mercedes Museum was a lot different than the Porsche Museum. It was a bigger museum and it told a lot more about the history of how Mercedes started as well as world history at the time Mercedes was making cars.
The museum was 7 floors and you started at the top and walked down in a spiral around the building. There were 6 main floors and 5 extra exhibitions. On the ramp going down to each next level they had news from that time period along the wall letting you know what happened in the world at the time. I thought that was a really neat added bonus to the museum.
A few pictures for our nephews Andrew and Nathan.
They wanted to do some testing on the cars but if they put all of the equipment in the car it was too heavy so they rigged this up. They had a cable running to a car that drove behind the car they were testing and the car in the back had all the heavy equipment.
Not a great picture but the back of car with the test equipment. This reminded Jake of my dad because he does testing on planes and so these pictures are for you Dad!
The car used in the Lost World Jurassic Park movie.
I had schnitzel again for lunch just like I had the day before at the Porsche restaurant (and the Porsche one was better).
We stopped by the dealership on the way out and looked at a few cars.
Overall the Mercedes Museum gave a lot more information about cars and engines and gave us a history of the world since the invention of cars which was nice but had I been a huge Mercedes fan I think I would have been a little disappointed. They didn't have a lineup of the current 2014 models like they did at the Porsche Museum (and that could be because they have so many more models) but there just weren't that many original cars, they were replicas, or even really that many cars that most people would recognize as a Mercedes, in my opinion. I'm glad we went but it was definitely a different experience than the Porsche museum.
We walked around the city after visiting the museum and had dinner at Il Pomodoro. It was pretty good and we sat outside in beautiful weather which was a nice touch to the evening. We listened to some more street musicians that were really good before finding a big outdoor tv screen showing the 3rd place World Cup game. We watched the game for 30 minutes or so before heading back to the hotel.
