Category Archives: tours

Things on my various tours over the years

Spring is in the air…

Hi everybody, sorry for the long delay in posting lately.

Believe it or not, I have written quite a few things that should have been here, but eventually made its way to Nileguide.com instead.  This month I’ll be posting a lot of pictures to their site, but soon I’ll be off to different pastures…

It looks like I’ll be contributing to a new and exciting English language newspaper called The Munich Times specifically about the music scene in Munich…reviews, interviews, etc.

Anyways, for now I’m sick as hell…coughing, headache, the works…..spring is here.

Augsburg Tours

Well, the first Augsburg tour went on April 5th.  My first Augsburg customer being from Estonia.  She had a wonderful day (or so she claimed) and it was a beautiful day as well.  Augsburg is refreshing after many years in Munich.  The main thing that I find different is just the general attitude of the people.  Augsburg isn’t so saturated with tour companies even though it has a more substantial history than Munich…but what really sticks in my mind from the Tuesday’s tour is the smell of the city.  Downtown Munich or Berlin or Vienna is mostly shops, churches, palaces, but not food.  Augsburg’s downtown area has food around every corner…and very international options as well…literally everywhere, it’s quite amazing what that does to my stomach after half a tour!  For food alone…this tour is great.

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Book through Radius Tours

The season is almost here and I’m as excited about it as any of you tourists out there.

If you want the no-hassle all-in tour from Munich, please visit Radius Tours and book there.  Once you have booked the tour, please stop by the office at least 5 minutes before the tour to trade the print-out for a real ticket and then you’re all set to go.

The tour costs €35…which includes all transportation to Augsburg and back to Munich.  The meeting time is 9:45am and it returns at 6pm.

For more info on meeting up with the tour in Augsburg: www.augsburgtours.de

 

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Augsburg Tours!

As of April 1st, I’ll be doing Augsburg tours every Tuesday and Friday.

Why Augsburg?  Well, it’s the most historically significant place within a few hours of Munich, in fact it’s well over a thousand years older than Munich with the sights to prove it!

Founded in 15BC by the order of Augustus Caesar, Augsburg really hit its peak during the 1500’s when it was a free imperial city at the center of the largest trading organization on earth.  The Fugger family was, without question, the wealthiest family in the world and they along with their rivals the Welser family, pretty much ran the city of Augsburg.  At that time of course Augsburg was the big city and Munich was the small unimportant town.  Even Vienna’s importance paled in comparison.  The great thing is Augsburg never had a collapse so that even today you can see how amazing Augsburg was because everything is still there and looking great.

More info will be posted soon along with a website dedicated to the tour itself!

 

 

 

 

Winter in Munich

This was the first Christmas spent wi th my parents since 2002, so Christmas was nice…New Year’s Eve we spent at the Fest hall of the Hofbraeu Haus…so…THAT was nice…

Other than that, I’ve been mainly doing Neuschwanstein tours lately.  Looking into other prospects…

I need to completely re-do my private tour page as those msg’ing are asking the impossible.

January is oddly warmer than December.

Petra and I got new phones as well as new Kindles for Christmas, so that’s pretty awesome.

A couple days ago I became the “Mayor” of Neuschwanstein on Foursquare…

Random photos I take with my new phone are uploaded to photobucket automagically (see link on the left)

 

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This is a very random post.  Sorry.  I’ll be less random next time…well, okay, maybe not.

I’ve been busy

Hi everybody.  If you’re wondering what I’m doing lately and there is a gap on here…which I hope isn’t the case as I love my site…but I realize it does happen seasonally…you can check out what I’ve been writing over at Nileguide.  Have a look:  http://www.nileguide.com/destination/blog/munich/

I’ve just started with it…and this is the extreme busy season, so when things start to slow down here, expect me to hit high gear there…and hopefully here as well.  Then again, I don’t get anything from posting here *cough*

I will say the season is pretty much wrapped up…the tourists for the most part are gone until the Oktoberfest…and I’m kinda happy about that actually.  Sometimes you need a break from trying to manage 40+ people all day, every day.

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Back to business, summer tours

Hi everybody, sorry for the long delay (again), this time it was mainly due to our vacation to the states.  It was nearly 4 years since the last time we were there.  We had a great time, I just wish we had more time…several people I meant to get back to at the wedding I never actually did…and that really sucks.  Just not enough time…still, it was a lot of fun and I had my first “real” summer in years…since Germany never actually achieves summer weather.

Speaking of summer in Germany, the last week of tours have been damn busy, but all good (ok, maybe not so much Saturday as it was pouring rain…and quite awkward with the 2nd guide).  The bus drivers have been extremely nice to us down at Neuschwanstein this year…and well…I’ve been working pretty constant since I got back so I can’t complain too much.

Anyways, I had a real update planned, but thought I’d just post something to fill the gap.

More Notes from Salzburg

These notes were written over a couple recent trips to Salzburg…they are rather random.

The one thing I fear as a tour guide is a group of kids.  I don’t mean, of course, leading a school group or even having a fair number of random kids on my tour, I mean large groups of (usually German, Austrian, or Italian) 12-20 year olds without supervision making life hell for anyone within a 50 meter radius.  Since the trains and buses tourists use are the same as these hellish ghouls they call children here, there is hardly a way to avoid the situation.  I have seen blood shed, beer spilt, and hundreds of items thrown.

Speaking of kids on trains, on my way to Salzburg the other day, if anyone in my 1/4 of the train needed to use the bathroom, they had to go through the carriage before it which:

  1. smelled like a petting zoo
  2. was loud as hell with at least four different cell phones blaring music of different types at full volume
  3. had what appeared to be a full-on dodge ball game going on
  4. was covered in seeds of various sorts which might have been part of the reason for #1

Idiots are telling tourists that the constant rain here is unusual and that it’s the volcano in Iceland’s fault.   Complete bull…should I bring out the statistics?  This is normal weather in Munich…rain, rain, and more rain.

I find myself easily agitated lately and fairly short fused which is worrying and normally indicative of me doing too many tours.  Easily solved, unless it’s late May and everyone is asking you to do their tours as well as your own.  I may flip at any time…wish me luck!

I actually had a tourist complain about the outrageously well behaved dogs being everywhere you go in Germany.  (In Austria it depends where you are, some places they’re not as nice to dogs, for example:  if you’re a dog lover, stay away from Vienna)

I’m possibly the only tour guide that sits here and critiques his own tour…daily.

I’m having lots of luck today…earlier I was walking past McDonald’s and saw this group of teenagers getting thrown out for loitering (there were 6 of them, they bought nothing, and just wanted to sit on the semi-comfy furniture in the cafe area).  Anyways, they were ridiculously obnoxious and only left when the employee finally said he was calling the police.  Now I’m sitting on the opposite end of the mall…and guess who just sat next to me? (and standing in front of me…basically surrounding me…goddamn it)

I may turn into my grandpa any minute now.

The other day I had a tourist turn to me toward the end of a Neuschwanstein tour.  He said “wow, there were so many moments where I would have cracked…how do you manage to stay calm?”  to which I replied “if you got worried over the little things we had today, you’d have a heart attack on the fun days…it always works out, ALWAYS”…”wow, you’re really into the zen”…I guess.

Apparently India produces 13,501,000 tons of mangos a year, I should go there.

My pillow’s made in Poland.  I’m not quit sure how I feel about that.

I just said no to taking someone’s photo on the Makart bridge in Salzburg for two reasons:

  • It’s just rude to block the traffic of an entire bridge (easily 30+ people pass by every 30 seconds)
  • at the angle they wanted their picture all you would have in the background is a muddy river and trees…you wouldn’t even be able to tell that it’s Salzburg…screw that, I have my principles

I finally gave in and tried Ikea’s food.  There’s good and bad.  The price is fairly reasonable (not cheap, though), but it tastes like crap.  It was literally the worst asparagus & potatoes I have ever had…and I’ve had a LOT of asparagus & potatoes in my time.

Our bus got in an accident today (June 4th).  I didn’t have time to take pictures, but we apparently just rammed another bus.  what sucks most is that I had already stamped our tickets.

Would it be rude to line up my tourists every morning and hand out helmets to those I feel may benefit from them?

I actually got the parking lot attendant at Neuschwanstein to not only give the whole bus the finger (repeatedly), but also to threaten it with a shovel.  Let me explain:  we take a PUBLIC BUS…which parks on a public road…and the bus company chooses where to pick us up, not me.  Not one car passed by in the time we took to load the bus.  This idiot thinks I do it to piss him off and drive away business from his parking lot.  Let’s recap:  it’s a public bus parked in front of his parking lot for less than 5 minutes (on a public road, not blocking the parking lot entrance at all) with no possible customers driving by, at all…and the guy threatens physical confrontation with me.  wow.  He needs more beer.

[Listening to The Hold Steady‘s album A Positive Rage]