Sorry about not posting for a few days, I’d say I’ve been busy, but well…

Sunday we went to the Hellabrunn Zoo, here in Munich.  This is not necessarily what I’d send tourists to if they only have a few days, even a few weeks, in Munich…but yet it does come up every other month or so.  The zoo isn’t my favorite, but it’s not bad either.  It’s mostly outdoors, the animals have pretty good living conditions (quite a bit of space), and in the summer they look much happier.  This time, well, some are hibernating and others aren’t allowed out because they’d probably freeze to death.  So, they’re probably feeling a bit cooped up at the moment.

Highlights of the Hellabrunn Zoo for me always include the seals, sea lions, polar bears, and penguins. (in that order)

For those living in Munich, you can get a discount card like we have where you start saving € the third visit.  (basically half off)

Anyways, we went to the zoo…umm…today I had a very small tour, but it was nice…a woman from Norway and a woman from Argentina.  Fasching is in full swing.  Good times.

Well, things are going pretty good in my opinion.  Last night I went out for dinner as kind of a fare well dinner for one of the office people, Manu.  Her husband is one of the guides, so I’m sure I’ll still see her around sometimes.  She’ll be having a baby boy quite soon here, so she’ll take maybe a year off, which is quite normal here.  It was nice, but it’s always weird to sorta say good bye to people here as most of the expat community and tour guide community are not that permanent…just semi-permanent (usually at least a few years…but…not forever).

My tours have been very pleasant lately.  I had a castle tour which was mostly backpackers the other day, which is nice…they can be very entertaining, but they don’t tip.  That being said the very obviously well-to-do brits didn’t either.  Goes to show you never really know, which is why I try to go out of my way for everyone.  Good times, none the less.

I had a private tour scheduled Wednesday, but it appears a pipe burst in his kitchen wall.  That’s a sure thing to ruin a vacation 🙁  He won’t be coming over, so I think I’ll be travel writing instead.   It’s too bad as I was looking forward to the private tour.  I normally don’t do much in the way of Third Reich history on my tours, but have been re-reading much of the Third Reich information in preparation and got a new book on the subject as well, which I finished reading just recently.  Nothing really knew, but it’s good for a refresher sometimes.

Maybe he’ll visit next September or November and have better luck.

Also, it would have given me a reason to show someone the church of St. Anna, which I think is really cool as it was bombed…and restored…but they only had pictures in black and white…so when they re-did the church, the ceiling was restored…in black and white.  I think it’s neat. 

I haven’t done what I’ll refer to now as my “super tour” in quite some time, as most people want a quick 2-hour tour.  To really properly see the city, I think you need a good 3 hours, if not more…depending on the group size, etc.  Two hours is never enough.

Today I had a group of 2.  From Milwaukee, even…so I got to rub it in that the packers just lost and yet I still got a good tip, haha.  No, really, they were a great “group”, interested in everything, no walking problems, no language problem (what’s the language difference from Milwaukee to Owatonna, really?), and yeah…it’s a beautiful day, so it was nice.

Well, today I had no tour…mid-winter like this it does happen, especially city tours, the full-day trips usually go, it’s just the two hour ones that for some reaon, people don’t turn up for if it’s cold.  Then again, my last city tour, on saturday, had a good size group…so go figure.

Anyways, yesterday Petra and I decided to go down to a special exhibit showing the royal tombs of the Scythians…whom we had never really heard of, which is interesting in itself.  If you are going to be in Munich in the next week, I HIGHLY recommend going to this exhibit, it was absolutely fascinating and I am very glad I went. Here’s the wiki article on the scythians.  Unfortunately they don’t allow cameras in there, so I don’t have any pictures for you.  I’d also like to point out they have a full mummy where you can even clearly see the tattoos.  Very disturbing and cool at the same time.

It was a weird tour, but at least it actually happened unlike the Salzburg tour the day before.  There is snow down at Neuschwanstein, but very little.  It was pretty warm and an overall pleasant day, it just seems really long when you’re out of practice because of a break like the holidays.

 As many of you know, we have these Mexican amphibians known as axolotls.  They look like this:

They were quite young then, but today they are apparently old enough to have young ones today, as last week we noticed Murphy was laying eggs! (until then, we still weren’t sure if she was a girl)

Here’s a pic of the eggs:

of course if we don’t rescue them, their parents will eat them…apparently similar to polar bears in Nürnberg.

Everyone and their dog seems to be telling me how much snow MN has gotten, but what we’ve got here is what we have normally about this time of year, temps hovering just above freezing and a constant drizzle…making for general misery.

That being said, tomorrow I’m going to Neuschwanstein most likely with 20 very random new friends from 10 different countries…all pretty miserable about the weather, but kind of in awe of the palace none the less.

If there are any random readers out there that have never been to Munich, I also want to mention that I do private tours as well, if you have odd interests for example or just want a more casual or lengthier tour, I’m your man.  Recently I was talking to other guides about top sights of the Munich area that just don’t get tourists, I’d love to take tourists to these places, but the tourists only have 2 days in town total and they’re going to Neuschwanstein with one of them, so what do you do?

For any friends/family, please understand that Petra and I have to figure out our vacations by the end of January, so if you intend to visit us or stay at our place or whatever…unfortunately we’re not that flexible after Feb 1st…before that time, we can take a few days off or whatever for free private tours no problem.

Am I the only one who wishes Led Zepplin would die already?

Hola everybody,

 Let’s see, on Tuesday I had a Salzburg tour, a pretty good size group, but only a so-so tour from my point of view.  I guess partly because of the crap weather.  Wednesday I went postering around Munich, and the same for Thursday.  Today, I decided to try out visiting a German dentist.  Well, sorta.

 Since I don’t have dental insurance, I decided to head over to the Dental college and see what they could do.  Well, it only cost me €25, however, they only put in a “temporary filling”…so I’ll have to go to a normal dentist for that *sigh*.

I went out drinking with Brendan (office manager, dachau tour guide) last night…that was actually weird, not our most fun night out, but always good to get out and have a few with Brendan.  Apparently he wasn’t feeling that great toward the end *cough*

Our tour office has been ripped apart for the last month or more due to a rat…it’s being put together now, but still not close to done from what I’ve seen.  It’s kind of weird because we’re working out of our old office, which is just next door, but it’s no where near as flashy, hidden being our bike rental sorta.  Although this year’s season is long gone, my tours have been pretty sizable lately and I don’t see any real downturn there…which is good.  Lots of planning to do for next year, who knows what we’ll do as we prepare for yet another round with the various evil competitors…but I think the past year was pretty good overall, and certainly I did better than ever…I like doing better each year, it gives me a feeling of accomplishment, even if I didn’t make that much, it’s more than last year.

busy, busy. 

My nose is running like you wouldn’t believe, but only out the one side.

 Anyways, I think I’m sick again, I believe this is already the 2nd time since I started this blog that I’m sick…that’s not good.  Well, it is more or less as far as tours are concerned that the tourist season is over.  I’m on the once or twice a week I have a tour thing at the moment, so I’ve been wandering around Munich with ~150 posters a day instead.  Oh well.

On a positive note, the tours that I have been getting have gone really well.  My last tour, on Saturday, was to Neuschwanstein.  I had people from 9 different countries on the tour…oh, wait, 10 countries.  Two of the guys who claimed to be American turned out to be Mexican…it took several hours to get that out of them.  However, that certainly explained why their English wasn’t perfect.  They were cool, we talked talked politics and agreed on about everything. (one was from Tijuana one L.A.  ….but neither were U.S. citizens, technically) (also I want to note I was asked to not include tour numbers anymore…so now you’re gonna have to guess based on the # of countries represented!)

I believe Petra and I will get our new computers either tomorrow or the next day, so that means a hell of a lot of work needs to be done to transfer data to the new HD, reformat my biggest current drive for Petra…and well…re-install every program.  I made a list of things I need to install immediately, it’s over 30 progs…then there’s gonna be random other ones that I’ll need to install whenever I get around to it of course *cough*.

 Check this out, I had a good laugh.

On Monday I had a Munich Highlights walk.  For those who haven’t taken my tours, what this means is that I take (typically) between 5 and 15 people around Munich for just over 2 hours.  My normal plan of attack is to general make a circle around the old town area of Munich (I won’t get into specifics because, well, that’s insider knowledge).  So I basically try to cover ~850 years of Munich and Bavarian history in that 2 hours.  So really, I do my best and depending on the group, it can be the best 2 hours of my day…as I really do enjoy talking about Munich’s history to anyone even slightly interested.

SO, Monday’s tour…well, only one woman showed up, which is typically a no tour, since our company policy states that we need at least two, because otherwise the company could lose a lot of €.  So she was paying 9 euro for the tour, I won’t say how much a personal tour is, but it’s a long ways off of 9 euro.  My boss happened to be in the office and offered her the personal tour for just 5 euros more, which she of course took because that’s how she had planned to start her day, and, well…who doesn’t like a personal tour?  ….so um, €13 is still a LONG WAYS from a personal tour rate, so she got a great deal, meanwhile I got paid more by having the tour go rather than not, so everyone’s happy.  (did that even make sense?)

 I sent out the “monthly e-mail” to family and friends today, so I’m kinda in rambling mode, sorry.

Last week I went to Salzburg twice, both times I spent the 3 hours in the middle of the day in a large shopping mall at the edge of town.  For those who haven’t been on the Salzburg tour, I take a group to Salzburg, we walk around for 1.5 hours, then they have 3 hours to go into all the places I talked about…meanwhile I usually read a book or whatever.  Then we meet back up and head for Munich.

SO, just to do something a bit different, the last two trips I hopped back on a bus and went to Europark, which is quite nice.  It has lots of restaurants, a couple bookstores, a large supermarket, a large electronics store, and free bathrooms *cough*.  Now, on to pictures…first off, here’s one of a 80,000 EURO TV. 

Here’s a pic of Untersberg from the mall entrance, on a crappy day:

…and here’s a recent pic from Neuschwanstein looking down at Hohenschwangau, this was last week, Nov. 5th 2007.

Well, last night we got a new TV.  I know, wtf?  Were we looking for a new TV?  not really…but I’m always on the lookout for things involving the word FREE.  In this case, we upgraded our livingroom TV from 19″ to 27″.  Also, now we can use that 19″ as our bedroom TV.  YAY.  Did I mention the word free?  Basically, I was doing my usual thing, checking the toytownmunich.com forum and I noticed someone posted that they were giving a 27″ Philips TV in good condition away for free…well, it turns out it’s a damn nice TV, and umm…yeah, we’re thrilled.  Here’s some pics of old and new:

That reminds me of just last month when we picked up my new monitor, which you can also see in the picture.  That was a free upgrade from a 17″ to a 19″…and it is damn nice.  Did I mention the word free? 

SO, tours have been all over the place lately, as far as how I feel at the end of them anyways.  Yesterday was a good day, except for it being cold of course…but not too bad.  Neuschwanstein has snow on it at the moment, which only happened a total of 3 days last year, so it’s quite impressive this early.  We don’t have any snow here in Munich, the other day it snowed, but it melted on impact.  Tomorrow I’m heading back to Neuschwanstein so I’ll see if it has snow again.  For some reason I didn’t feel like taking any pics of NSS in the snow yesterday. (I only had my phone camera anyways)

As far as tour numbers are concerned lately it’s been pretty consistent for me, around 9-15 people every tour…which is pretty nice.  DB, the german train company, is planning strikes again…this time thursday and friday.  Well, I have a Salzburg tour on Thursday and it always makes me uneasy when my boss wants me to go ahead with the tour during the strikes…I just don’t like starting a tour when I don’t know for certain we can get there and back.  With Salzburg, if the tour is thrown off an hour, it really hurts the tour as they don’t have time to go into the museums or up to the castle…and well, I just want to make sure everyone’s happy.  …so we’ll see how it goes for Thursday.

I’ve also had a couple very odd tours to Salzburg…both going well…but…well…odd.  The last one had 2 from spain (nearly no english but for some ungodly reason their spanish was EXACTLY what I learned in school so that I could actually understand them…this nearly never happens with spanish-speaking people.  They were from Madrid, for the record), then a couple guys from Chile (here on business), then a couple americans (cali), and then three chinese guys who understood about 3 words that day (friendly, though).  So in total, I had 2 who could actually understand everything I said, 3 that understood NOT A GODDAMN WORD, and then of course the 4 that understood only every 5th word.  That makes things interesting, especially since they’re still working on the tracks, so with the multiple train switches….I’m happy to report that everyone made it there and back and were happy at the end.

The Salzburg tour before that was DURING the DB strike last Thursday.  Now, I really didn’t want to do it since DB wasn’t promising anything…but surprisingly, it went well.  Our train left on the other side of Munich, so we took the scenic route across town on the subway, then a train to the border, then switched trains….then our normal train right on time got us back…well, to the Ostbahnhof again, then an U-bahn ride over to the Hauptbahnhof which is where we started.   Anyways…I hung out with a really nice old man from Malta whom I hope to someday visit.  Also, an American guy who was from Seattle…and reminded me of my favorite professor from college….Dr. Fred Lee.  We had a good time, despite the DB strike looming…and crappy weather.

I think I’m gonna put a beer in the fridge.  My friend Andi, he owns the small restaurant (imbiss) that I stop at on my Neuschwanstein tours, gave me a beer the other day that I didn’t drink…so I hauled it all the way back here…so I’ll report back on how it tastes…as I’ve never had that brand of beer.  I really do try to taste EVERY beer I come across…I’m slowly making my way.  I should make a list.  Anyways, this one is called:  Schussenrieder Schwarzbier

So, Saturday I had a tour to Salzburg, as has become the usual lately.  Radius Tours started the winter schedule a little earlier than previous years, on Oct. 1st…so that means from now til April, our Salzburg tours are only on Tues, Thurs, and Saturday.  Personally I’m not a big fan of being in Salzburg on Saturdays, it’s just so horribly crowded…yes, even on cold rainy days.  In fact, it seems that’s about all I’m getting lately on my Salzburg tours…fairly cold rainy days.  I shouldn’t complain too much though, it hasn’t really affected the tours much as it’s just been a lil rain here and there.  Also, Neuschwanstein during the off-season is only on Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays…so obviously I’ll have less tours, which is always expected.  And City tours of Munich are Monday, Thursday, and Saturday.

 The good part is, I’ll always have Fridays and Sundays off, since none of the tours I do can be on those days.  Well, I’ll still probably do posters on a lot of those Fridays.

My last Salzburg tour was quite interesting.  Personally, I think it was a fairly bad tour…I had 23 people which is a pretty large group for Salzburg (it’s ususally around 8-15), and they weren’t the fastest…AND since it was a Saturday, it was horribly crowded in Salzburg as well.  However, the thing that really affects the tour is the fact that they’re working on the tracks between Munich and Salzburg…so it involves switching trains and even taking two completely different routes getting there and back.  That eats up about 15min on the way there, and 30min on the way back…so that kinda blows.  The interesting thing about Saturday’s tour was where the tourists were from.  I’d say I get an average of about 5 countries represented on any given tour….Saturday’s was 10.  Here’s how it went:

2 canada, 4 USA, 2 Denmark, 2 South Africa, 1 Jordan, 2 Australia, 4 Puerto Rico, 2 Korea, 2 Ireland, 2 Zambia.

I dunno, I got 30 euros in tips, so I think it went alright.  By the way the tips came from the americans, south africans, and the canadians.  Here’s a pic from Saturday:

As far as the hangover on Monday, that’d be referring to my current condition.  We had a guide’s meeting last night, which of course involves all kinds of random conversation and immense amounts of beer.   I apparently even watched a South Africa vs. Argentina rugby match for some reason. South Africa won, I think it was an ass-whooping, but I’m not sure as I was more concerned with trying to keep up with the other guides extremely fast beer drinking abilities, I swear they were pouring it on the floor when I wasn’t looking.

The few days have been quite regular tours.  Today’s city tour was canceled, not surprisingly really, since it was the last day of Oktoberfest today.  Technically I had two people, but they have a voucher so they can go any day the next week.  The two guys were on my tour yesterday…and so it was kinda a shame, I offered to still do the tour, but they figured, naw…so well…maybe I’ll see them on my Tuesday Munich Highlights tour.  One of the two of them is a fellow “Toytowner”…for those who don’t know, “Toytown” is referring to http://www.toytownmunich.com/ which is an awesome website if you ever want to move to Germany.  It started as a website for expats here in Munich and has expanded to all of Germany.  Anyways, it’s where we help each other out and hang out online.  My nickname on there is NOFXmike, which is pretty obvious I suppose.  Anyways, “3 lions” from Toytown was on my Salzburg tour yesterday…which was interesting…I rarely recognize someone when I come out to greet the tourists.

 Other than that, today Petra and I went over to the O’fest…had our oxen sandwich and garlic shrimp…and came back home,  we love the food there.

With the Oktoberfest in the title, you’d hope I’d have something funny to say about a weird incident involving a tourist, alcohol, and some nasty smell…but no, not this time.

The last couple of days I’ve had city tours, Sunday I had 17 americans and today I had 3 americans and 2 kiwis (that’s a total of 5 for those of you who haven’t gotten to 2nd grade yet).  ….anyways, that’s a completely different tour, yet…well…it went about the same.  We also had about the same weather…which was damn nice.  Tips are up, YAY.  I like tips…even the kiwis tipped today.

Tomorrow we’re going to a sushi place for lunch…to see if it’s anywhere near as good as dinner there…it’s half the price…soo….hmm…I’ll report back.

Also tomorrow I’m meeting up with my friend and fellow tour guide Brendan to head over to the Wies’n and have some alcoholic beverages.  He claims he hasn’t actually gone to the fest for like 3 years…that’s kinda sad….but it IS a hell of a hassle compared to other (very similar) fests in the area…so I can understand.

Speaking of Brendan, I just realized I don’t have a damn picture of him.  I know people are camera shy (nearly everyone I know…which is just sad….come on…), but I should get one tomorrow.  In fact, I should make a point of it to take pics of all the guides the next few times I see them, just in case black mail is in order.

I’ll be drinking tomorrow, so umm, wish me luck on the tour wednesday morning 🙂

Here’s a couple pics of the fest: