Tomorrow I have a Neuschwanstein tour, but today…another day off to recover from whatever sickness this is. Petra took half a day off yesterday because even she couldn’t work with how sick she felt…and she NEVER takes off sick. (which I don’t understand with an office job…)

Anyways, one of the things I’ve been doing lately is playing a game very similar to RISK, but online. The game’s called Conquerclub, and is better than RISK, as there are all kinds of maps and always people to play against. If anyone wants to play against me, here’s the link.

A lot of people have been adding me to Facebook recently…kinda odd. Especially since myspace has been rather quiet lately.

[Listening to: Louise – NOFX – Pump Up The Valuum (1:49)]

Last week was typical, but today I’m sitting here….two days in a row, sitting here. Very odd. I’m thinking I’m going to have to start up my various other jobs to fill in the cash drop next month as business for me looks like it hit the toilet. Oh well.

In other news, I’ve been reading my cousin David’s blog here.
It’s good to have some sort of “news” from him as he seems to attempt to be as elusive as possible to me. (do I smell?)

German classes are coming along, I spent most of the day going over the articles (die, der, das) of various words I already know…but it’s the little things that can make all the difference.

As some of you may have also noticed, I sometimes have what I was listening to at the time of writing at the end of each post. In this case, it’s Kepi Ghoulie…the song that he played specifically for me when he was here in Munich. You might know him from the Groovie Ghoulies. If you don’t know them at all, it’s fun poppy rock-n-roll with a halloween theme. This is from his solo album though, similar theme.

That’s right, after several years here in Munich, I’ve finally found the time/money to take some German lessons again. Petra found this school that’s extremely reasonably priced compared to other schools we looked into, and class sizes are…well, 3 people in my class!!

So, I’ve had the first class now and the 2nd class will be tonight, and so far it’s looking promising. At the same time, we’ve only covered things I already know, so far…so…well…it’ll get harder quick. However, I’m excited to be taking classes again as everyone around here seems to insist of German, go figure…

Here’s a pic of the school’s sign:

As I mentioned in my last post, Petra and I went to the Oktoberfest (Wies’n) on Sunday and yeah…we had a good time as always, not perfect…but always fun. We went as part of Toytown‘s gathering…so we had reservations and it was MUCH easier than usual.

Anyways, we made it home safely and I recovered within 24 hours, which is nice.

OK, I’m heading over to the Wies’n (commonly known outside of Munich as the Oktoberfest). Because of this, I don’t believe I’ll be functional for the next 48 hours.

Cheers.

Hey everybody. It’s been a while since I typed anything, really. Technically that’s not true, I wrote a review for a CD for a friend’s website that you could read here.

Other than that, on nearly every tour in the last couple weeks I’ve thought “oh, I should mention those two crazy Australian guys that were on my tour today”, or “oh, I should mention how that Stanford University group did with the 7 BMW’s and stopping at Andechs along the way.” …but the fact remains that when I got home, I thought “oh…tomorrow I’ll do that.” Sorry for dropping the ball there.

Yesterday Petra and I spent a day out at our favorite waterpark for adults only/spa type thingy. It was wonderful as usual. The day before we spent the day spending money, or so it seemed. We went to the Wies’n (Oktoberfest) for lunch, bought Petra an mp3 player, bought myself some pants, and went to an art museum which has an exhibit on how Walt Disney relates to European Art.
The exhibit was, like the last exhibit we saw there, quite expensive but very well done. We were happy to see Destino there, which we had never heard of before the exhibit….and overall we happy we saw it. Some of you may recall the last time we visited the hypo-kunsthalle last January.

Anyways, tours for the most part have been going rather normal, meeting nice people and having a few beers along the way.

It’s that time of year again, when tour numbers have hit mid-winter numbers, yet we have pretty darn nice weather. It makes for some great days as a tour guide, but it also means the company is not that happy, as they’re not making hardly anything, if anything.

Then of course there’s the new plague of beggers trying to extend their vacations by becoming “free tour guides”, learning a script and telling all kinds of factually inept tales….but let’s not get into that.

Today was the first day in a long time that I had to cancel a tour, as no one turned up. Oh well, it gives me time to listen to Groovie Ghoulies cd’s, as the singer will be doing a free acoustic set of Groovie Ghoulies stuff and his own solo cds, of which he released two this year. They’ve been a favorite of mine since I was about 16 (seen the ghoulies manyt imes), so it’ll be fun seeing him doing his thing in Munich.

As many of you know, when I first moved to Munich, before I started actually doing tours, I worked for a bike tour company and basically was their PR person to all those coming in at the Hauptbahnhof (main train station) in Munich. *sigh* thankfully, I’ve moved on from those days. The work isn’t bad, it’s just that I don’t function that well at 6am. Anyways, today I had to train in a new girl on how to do that while dealing with the typical cast of characters around the station…I swear we should make a movie about it….I’ve got many fond and not so fond memories.

Other than that, tours have been going well for me, though our tour numbers are drastically down. Personally I think it’s just that we’re at the end of August and there just aren’t many tourists out and about until the Oktoberfest. I like small tours (5-15 people), but at the same time I understand the company needs good numbers (20+) at least ~4 months of the year. If I could have 10 people on every tour, I’d be one happy tour guide.

Here’s a few thoughts on Paris:

 Munich’s subway is better, no question.

The Eiffel tower is standing in line non stop all the way up, all the way down.

I was expecting Paris to be more expensive than Munich, it is not.

10 euro menus are excellent.

It’s my birthday.

Our feet REALLY hurt.  The A/C works great at the hotel…so does the internet access.

After 2 1/2 days in Paris, we’ve taken over 500 pictures.

Pictures to follow….going to see Jim today, then St. Denis….then who knows.

Tomorrow Petra and I go off to Paris for a lil over a week and we’re going to attempt to see everything. (of course)

Day trips from Paris include Versailles, Chartres, and Disneyland Paris. Fontainebleu might be able to fit in there too…we’ll have to see.
After talking to many tourists about Paris over the last few months, we decided to book a dinner at the Eiffel tower as well as a boat cruise. As usual at this stage in the game, we’ve really started to worry about running out of time there, but I think we’ll do alright, even if she collapses on me a couple times 🙂

I want to thank everyone who chipped in for our honeymoon, I’m sure it’ll be awesome.

I don’t feel like a real update at the moment since I was up at 4:15am this morning dropping off my mom and brother at the airport…and I’m still quite out of it.

I’ll be doing regular tours pretty constantly again starting tomorrow though. My last tour was on monday, I had 38 people (plus mom and bro, so 41 total), and surprisingly it actually worked out quite well. Tomorrow, back at Neuschwanstein again, and since it’s truely the peak season right now, I expect at least 30 people, probably more like 35.

A bit unrelated to tour guiding, but today my mom and brother arrive from Minnesota, so there will be another break in the tour action. Well, technically tomorrow morning I’ll have a city tour (which they’ll go on as well), but it should be raining, so I don’t expect a lot of people. After that, thursday I have no idea on, but the Friday events are already scheduled…and the same with Saturday of course…so not a whole lot to think about right now, it’s auto-pilot time…which is nice.

Here’s a picture of John the Baptist’s head on a plate, which is in Neuburg:

Continuing in the series of possible things to see as day trips from Munich, let’s look at the beautiful town of Kelheim’s “Hall of Liberation.”

This large monument was built as a memorial commemorating the victories of the Bavarian armies against Napolean in 1813-1815. More information on it here.

Ok, so Kelheim is about an hour 1/2 north of Munich, near Prunn castle and Rosenburg castle, so you could do all three in one day, no problem.

Here’s some pictures of the Hall of Liberation:

[Listening to: We March To the Beat Of Indiff – NOFX – They’ve Actually Gotten Worse (5:40)]

As part of a series of places you could visit as a day trip from Munich, today I’d like to talk about Burghausen for a minute.

Burghausen is a town north of Salzburg, but on the Bavarian (German) side of the river. It has the longest castle in Europe and apparently gets very few tourists. The museum of the castle is owned by the Bavarian government and is included in any annual or 14-day pass for Bavarian palaces and castles.

Also in the castle is a seperate torture museum and city museum. All of the courtyards and walking paths around the castle are completely free and wonderful opportunities to explore an ancient castle.

I usually do Burghausen as part of a full day trip which also includes Fucking Austria (for the sign pictures) and Altötting (to see the Wittelsbach hearts & Tilly’s corpse). However, Burghausen alone is probably enough for most people.

I recently had another trip over there…and I believe it was one of the highlights of my friend’s visit to Bavaria, more so than anything in Munich. Here are some pictures of Burghausen:

For anyone who has visited Munich in the last 4+ years and was hoping to see the BMW museum and only found out while you were here that it was under construction: it’s finally done.

Three days after it’s grand opening, I had a chance to go through it with my friends Flipper, Brooke, and Karen.
Personally, I thought it was better than I expected, though lots of walking up and down and could be just too much for those not used to walking as much as I am. However, I still had a great time at the museum.

It costs a bit more than I had hoped, 12 Euros for an adult. Anyways, it’s finally open, YAY.

Well, as I’m writing this I feel like absolute crap. The last couple weeks I’ve been sneezing more than I have my entire life I think, and then this Monday I started noticing my throat hurting and my lungs burning…followed by a constant headache and running nose. SO, I’m doing well…umm…yeah.

Our house guests left on Wednesday, but I haven’t been back to work yet. Yesterday and today I should have been down at Neuschwanstein, I wish I could. The weather has even been nice….*sigh*.

Good news came last night of course, when Spain made it into the finals of the european soccer championship by beating Russia. Spain vs. germany for a final sounds good.

The last couple of weeks have flown by for me, though my visitors will note that we were doing 7-13 miles a day, every day. I uploaded the pictures to my photobucket account, anyone looking for the older pics from 10kegs.com might find it rather hard as 10kegs was moved to a German server and I have yet to transfer anything over to it.

In other news, my mom and bro will be here in less than two weeks, and then we’ll have the wedding…which should be fun. Yesterday the city we’re getting married in even sent us a free cook book, which I though was pretty cute. *sigh* ….I should try to find if there’s a max amount of dayquil that I can take in a day…

Well, since I’ve had a couple days without tours, it’s kinda relaxing around here…although that stops at 12:40pm tomorrow, when I pick up our three guests at the airport, probably greeting them by immediately grabbing some good ol’ bavarian beers.

I do have a couple of tours this week, however. I have a Neuschwanstein tour on Thursday and a city tour on Friday. I took the weekend off so we could feel the full experience of Munich’s 850th anniversary, which should be fun. The European Cup soccer championships are taking place right now, so far everything is going as expected…nothing exciting. I want Spain to win…I highly doubt that will actually happen, but then again, I have no idea who plays for Spain. All I know is I want Germany to lose but gets reasonably close.

So, have a good one everybody, it’s time for me to eat some watermelon.