Innsbruck, Austria was a tale of two places for us.
On one hand, we observed some of the most eye-wateringly beautiful mountain scenery we’ve ever seen during the drive in. Carolyn was snapping away from the car as we made our way through the mountains and into Innsbruck. Oohs and aahs could be heard throughout the drive. We never could figure out where the sounds came from, but it added to the experience.
I’ve actually already used a lot of photos from that drive in previous entries because they just ended up being a jumble of scenic photos in folders and I wasn’t always clear where they were taken. Besides, there are lots of photos of natural mountainous beauty on the internet. Of course it’s not nearly as thrilling as seeing them in person. Just like boobs.
Once we entered Innsbruck, we noticed the main part of the city was, frankly, rather boring-looking. It is heavily touristed, but the sightseers generally come there to look at two things: the Alps and old town Innsbruck.
As you can see, the mountains are kinda hard to ignore as they dominate the skyline of the city. In the winter, they magically change to the color of my beard, except the yellow parts on my beard tend to be from leftover spaghetti or lemon popsicle stains and not from whatever causes yellow snow.
Another claim to fame for Innsbruck is that it is one of only three places which have twice hosted the Winter Olympic games, joining St. Moritz, Switzerland and Lake Placid, New York with that distinction.
The old town area was picturesque, but we easily covered it in just part of a day. But I do have a little anecdote as a result of our being there. During all of our travels we never really encountered a horrible disaster, like having a car break down in the middle of nowhere in a foreign country, or getting mugged, or finding someone’s toenail clippings in our shower. But just to show how easy it is to end up in a catastrophe, as I was walking around the town I reached into my pocket for a slightly used mint or something, and I accidentally made my rental car keys tumble onto the pavement. They landed about a hand’s width away from a sewer grate. I stood and stared at the keys for a few moments, marveling at how just a few inches (equal to a few cms, or even more mms, or a whole buttload of μms) can spell the difference between disaster and a minor blog anecdote. Just then a kind young woman –probably thinking I couldn’t bend over that far because I was just standing there gawking at some dropped keys– walked by and picked the keys up and handed them to me. “Danke!” I uttered with genuine gratitude at such a kind gesture. Anyway, disaster averted, and additional humbling instilled to remind me that while we haven’t had any big disasters, that’s not all because we’re so good at traveling. A little luck here and there never hurts.
This is the spaceship that shuttles Austrians back and forth to the moon, but ssshhh, it’s highly classified. They hide it’s true purpose by calling it the “Top of Innsbruck,” pretending to be a cable car that takes you to the top of the mountains. But since we had packed our salt mining gear instead of moonwalk attire, we opted not to take the ride. We figured if they really did go to the top of the mountains, it wouldn’t really be worth it because we just drove through said mountains and there wasn’t enough snow to make it truly glorious. Plus it would’ve cost over $100 for the two of us. We’re not cheap, but we travel frugally, and that really didn’t feel particularly frugal to us. Although I did steal that bike and sold it for a tidy profit. Between the bike and our Top of Innsbruck savings, we pretty much paid for the day, including lunch and one ice cream each.
We did want to partake in some genuine Austrian food, but we had a hard time deciding between eating some glorious uncooked meat or sampling some naked indigo. I was unclear as to whether that meant you had to be naked to eat there, or perhaps just stoned enough where you’d marvel at how their nude shade of violet tastes a bit like the au naturel mauve you consumed the last time you were stoned. Of course, it could be a restaurant that caters exclusively to synesthesia sufferers (those who can taste colors). I am a bit allergic to chartreuse and and red gives me zits, so we stayed away just in case.
We opted for a beer instead. Actually, we had some delicious sausage (you’ve gotta eat some sausage and drink some beer in Austria and Germany or you’re never allowed in again) and thoroughly enjoyed our meal in a nearly abandoned restaurant, because no one there eats lunch at the time we did, apparently. Either that or it was the worst restaurant in Innsbruck and we’re too stupid to tell the difference.
I learn a lot about a place by checking out various travel sites’ “things to see” lists (when a children’s playground is the third most popular, you know you’re in trouble). One must-see destination that kept popping up was this golden balcony roof, made of gold by some Holy Roman Emperor to impress his wife.
Here’s my travelogue summary: It’s gold and it’s a roof.
Here’s the rest of Innsbruck old town. We’re glad we came to see it if for nothing else than the beauty of the Alps, and old town was worth a whirl, but it’s probably best as just a good old-fashioned ski town, albeit one that keeps your keys out of the sewer, so it’ll always have a warm place in my heart just for that. Plus I saw a gold roof.
One of our short detours we made as we drove around the countryside was a visit to Liechtenstein Castle, which sounds a bit cooler than what we found. The castle was closed on the day we visited, so we wandered around and snapped some shots and called it good. It wasn’t on a big hill with a vast vista to view anyway, which is normally one of our favorite things about castles. Hugo of Liechtenstein built the castle between 1130 and 1135 (those are years, not times) right next to some modern neighborhoods. Or at least that’s how it ended up.
For the last leg of this arduous journey, we made our way to Munich (or Munchin’, as the stoners call it), which offers up an amazing old town area as well as serving as a hub for visiting some of the most striking castles and palaces you could ever hope to see, and will in our next entries. Before I go though, I have to share these signs we saw in Austria as a final farewell to that magnificent country:
Sexual mores in Europe are decidedly less conservative than in the US, but I was surprised that even famous prostitutes (hor stars) could advertise on city streets. I’m not completely sure what “damit stemm ich alles” means but my best guess is that it’s a warning to anyone carrying an STD: “Dammit if your (stemmy thing) itches there!”
The advertising campaign continued down the street by reminding people that anyone other than a genuine hor star is most likely going to be a dog dirt bag. Remember, cheaper isn’t always better.
A candlelight dinner in Austria apparently comes with a well-risen (and rad besides) wiener. Not sure if they provide one themselves or just reminding everyone as to what to expect after a romantic meal.
They must have strong truth-in-advertising laws because this sign readily admits that the casino always wins (wiens).
I desperately wanted to see a show with lots of wieners waltzing. I guess it shall have to remain on my bucket list because we took a schlong turn somewhere.
I downed four straight beers to help wash away the mental imagery this conjured up. Why was this restroom sign even needed? You go to a public restroom and blow hot air on what? They even had to handwrite a version in English. I decided to use the outside of my pants to dry my hands instead of inserting them into that mosh pit of potential viruses.
When you put these two photos together, you’re gonna get an explosive result. As most people know, a wolf fart generates amazing power and explosiveness, and becomes a lethal weapon when ignited by a sparked ass. I figured this was probably an old relic from a WWII Wunderwaffe (Super Weapon) program. OK, I know that was more than a stretch, but, y’know, it’s not always easy to come up with yolks; whether good, bad, or scrambled.
Omelet myself out now, so until the next entry, auf wiedersehen!
When we first arrived in Vienna, I wondered what its residents called themselves. Viennese? Viennanamese? Vienna Sausagers? I wracked my brain trying to think of a word I could use to make fun of them in the blog. When I learned that Vienna is known as “Wien” in German, I knew what I’d call them: Wieners! Hilarious right? However, much to my dismay, I discovered that they do in fact call themselves Wieners, which kind of takes the fun out of it all.
That was also when I realized I could walk into the shop pictured here without hiding my face because it is, in fact, not a sex shop. They are bad at English apostrophes though.
At least I can honestly say that we’ve now both seen thousands of wieners. In addition, Vienna is the only city in the world where every dog is a wiener dog.
According to worldsbestcities.com, Vienna ranks 12th best in Europe, with 9 and 11 being Istanbul and Zurich, making those the only two above Vienna that we haven’t been to (the top five are London, Paris, Berlin, Rome and Madrid), so our visit to Vienna made it 10 out of the top 12 we’ve seen so far. It certainly was one of the most beautiful. Depressingly, we’ve only seen 44 out of the top 100 European cities, which puts an exclamation point on the idea that we’re never going to see them all. Accordingly, we’ve just decided to enjoy what we see and accept that in our lifetimes we will never see everything, which helps when we feel like skipping something and taking a nap instead.
We rented a small apartment that was just a short walk away from the Votive Church, which is located in Sigmund Freud Park, which we avoided walking in much because at our age we didn’t want any Freudian slips.
The apartment was also just a short walk away from Vienna’s Ringstraße, which is an area full of grandiose buildings, museums, statues, and strange double s’s.
It seemed that everywhere we turned, there was something magnificent to see, which was slightly amazing in that the Allies bombed the hell out of Vienna during World War II. While some historic buildings survived, many more were reconstructed after the war. We could only see any evidence of this by looking at rows of apartments, where some of them feature relatively new construction next to obviously older ones. Fortunately, they’ve cleared out all the dead bodies by now.
Even outside the Ringstraße, it seemed that everywhere we turned there was something magnificent to look at.
There was so much to see we barely had enough time to shove a sausage down our mouth plus take some Door of the Day pictures. But I think it’s important to partake in local cuisine, so although Vienna sausages are generally those little weiners in a can, we settled for some massive ones between the buns and called it good.
Not every building in Vienna is an old marble masterpiece of architecture. Here is a juxtaposition of new vs. old; one of their very modern buildings as well as a Roman excavation site in the heart of the city.
But boy did those old masterpieces dominate. Everywhere we turned, there were statues, monuments, and Weiners. The last picture on the lower right is of the Vienna State Opera House, which ended up being a little notable for us because it seemed as if wherever we walked, we somehow ended up next to the Opera House. We thought maybe we were in an episode of the Twilight Zone.
We noticed these pipes running through town, I learned that they’re there to pipe water from some subway construction. And here I thought they were probably Strudel Timely Delivery systems, which we avoided because we didn’t want STDs. Also, the picture on the right is only for fans of the Battlestar Galactica reboot. Frack off if you don’t get it, which is exactly what Carolyn is telling me to do in the middle picture. I imagine if one of the Galactica people landed on the planet and saw that sign, they’d be really confused as to what the company was selling. Anyway, that’s all the swearing you’re gonna get in this entry, I’m all swore out from the last one.
So this is Vienna, as beautiful a city as you’re likely ever to see.
And here’s the fracking Opera House… once again following us everywhere.
One of the key sites to see in Vienna is the Schönbrunn Palace. Construction of the palace started in 1696 and was completely redesigned after 1743. It is yet another UNESCO World Heritage site. It’s also a testament to the power and influence of the Habsburgs, and was built on a former hunting lodge site that the Habsburgs had used for centuries. The Habsburg dynasty was one of the most powerful dynasties of Europe, running from the 15th to the 20th century. To keep their power in the family, they engaged in a lot of Inbreeding, which spawned a name for one of their deformities: a jutting jaw, now known as a Habsburg Jaw. I suppose one of the benefits is that they had a place to hold an extra weiner while eating.
I was amazed at the design of this statue, which looked uncannily like Carolyn. It was about then that I snuck another look at her real-life jaw to make sure it wasn’t Habsburgian.
I took a picture of this sign because I found it slightly amusing that the vast majority of tourists walk to the “You are here” location, which is right by the entrance, way across a huge plaza. Once there, they discover that they have to walk right back all the way across the plaza again to go buy the tickets. We were so irritated about it all that we only ventured into the front entrance and snapped a photo so we could honestly say we’ve been inside the Schönbrunn Palace. Plus we didn’t want to end up with a Habsburg Jaw by seeing something jaw-dropping and accidentally replacing ours with one of theirs.
Europeans are apparently so casual about their toilet needs that they had this urinal right out in the open, at least that’s what I thought it was. Unless it was where Habsburg-jawed people are forced to wait. Okay, enough with the Habsburg Jaws already!
One of our other stops was to the Museum of Natural History. While we both feel a little museumed out lately, we thought it worth a visit, and we were right to do so. They had the largest collection of precious minerals, gemstones, and meteorites that we’ve ever seen. Room after room was filled with every imaginable variation of rocks and minerals. I learned that the great variety found on earth is due to all sorts of combinations of factors, including geological activity such as volcanoes, plate tectonics, and water-rock interactions, as well as biological activity, such as chemical reactions with oxygen and organic material. I’m not sure why so many of them end up so beautiful, but thanks Earth!
The museum is also the home of a large dinosaur exhibit, as well as a number of prehistoric displays. No, no, not the wife, she’s not that old yet. But she would barely make a sock for that monster’s leg.
This is a model of a sea scorpion from 320 million years ago. However, since it looks so much like a spider, it’s also Carolyn’s worst nightmare. If she ever really pisses me off, I’ll put a picture of this under her pillow. Actually, I’d never do that because I prefer my face completely un-clawed, my limbs attached, and my jaw decidedly non-Habsburgian. Okay, last one.
The museum did have a few skeletons in its closet, including this display of the first nudists in history.
It is also the home of the very famous Venus Von Willendorf, which is only 11.1 cm. (4.4 in.) tall. It is estimated to have been made about 30,000 years ago, and most archeologists believe it had something to do with fertility or sex. So the next time your wife or girlfriend asks if they’re too fat (right answer: “Of course not honey! I love you just the way you are!”), also point her to a picture of the Venus Von Willendorf and say, “Besides, this is what used to turn men on! See, you’ve still got a long way to go!”
Lastly, I’ll turn to a professional to wrap it up with a few museum-y giggles.
One of the things we like to do in Europe is visit small picturesque towns and esque a bunch of pictures. One of those towns was Mödling, Austria, best known for being the capital of the Austrian district of Mödling as well as being unknown to 98.7% of all Americans.
It’s also famous for the “ö” in its name, which is pronounced by forming an O with your mouth, placing your tongue just behind your last molar, making a gargling sound like you’re swishing around mouthwash, and then fluttering your tongue rapidly while exhaling. We’ll just stick with pronouncing it Modeling.
It also features a statue in the town square entitled, “Homage to the Dairy Queen Ice Cream Cone.”
People have been living in this area since the Neolithic Era, which is the fancy name for “Stone Age.” Despite it’s advanced age, it’s a cute little place and we enjoyed wandering around taking photos and just seeing what popped up.
Well there you go, our first Pop Up. I didn’t actually jump because I didn’t want to break a hip.
In addition to being famous for having two dots above its name, Mödling also offers a tour of the Seven Deadly Sins. Here, we see me enjoying some Lust, and then I experienced Wrath because they make doorways so low you’re guaranteed to get very pissed off after bonking your head. I might as well add Gluttony here because my stomach looks like I ate a whole Happy Meal without taking it out of the box.
We missed out on the other deadly sins, but we’re hoping that by taking pictures of a couple of churches we will be forgiven for the ones we experienced.
One of the advantages of sight-seeing in a small town is that there are a lot fewer pictures to choose from. Despite that, I couldn’t for the life of me remember the stupid joke I had in mind when Carolyn took my picture in front of the Teeladen store. But it was hee-larious, I’m sure.
Before we move on to Hallstatt, here are some photos of the Austrian Alps we encountered while on our drive. Any one of these would make a great background for your computer screen, don’t you think? The beauty of driving in this area is that the drive is just as entertaining as the destination. There’s a lot to be said for driving around in a car instead of bypassing all this natural beauty by flying in.
Of course, there are also some other advantages as well.
Hallstatt is a small town in Austria that is so naturally beautiful it was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1997. Carolyn has long wanted to visit, being drawn by the amazing photography that regularly pops up on the internet. And it didn’t disappoint. The town even greeted us with a rainbow; we felt so special that they went all out just for us. Munich didn’t even give us any free beer.
Halstatt is such a small place that it’s easily viewed in just part of a day. In 2020, the town had a population of 780, but is now a shining example of over-tourism, with estimates ranging from 10,000 to almost 30,000 tourists per day. It was hard to see how they had the infrastructure to handle all that, so we eventually ducked into the salt mines in order to earn our keep and avoid having Austrian dung thrown at our heads. Which isn’t a thing, I just like to say dung.
Hallstatt is surrounded by beautiful Alps and sits on Hallstätter See (aka Lake Hallstatt). It features rainbows for very special tourists, as well as the Hallstatt Ossuary in a chapel called St. Michael’s, where they have more than 1,200 human skulls, 600 of which are artistically painted with symbols, names and dates, while the other 600 remain nude. As far as we know, none of the original owners have come to collect any just because they had their names on them. We didn’t bother with the ossuary because we’ve been to Portugal’s Chapel of Bones in Évora as well as the catacombs in Paris, which has an abundance of formerly used bones. Plus we thought an ossuary was where they practiced Jiu-Jitsu. (OSS is a reverential term used in Jiu-Jitsu. See, that was a preemptive joke-splain right there.) Hallstatt also has the aptly named Hallstatt Museum, which we also didn’t see because we’re a little museumed out. But I’m sure it’s wonderful and probably features many halls and stats.
We’re not as good at photography as many of the folks who have posted pictures in Instagram and who helped make Hallstatt known as “the most Instagrammable town in the world” to the chagrin of all 780 residents. Instead, we give you some unique commentary to make up for our lack of professional photography skills. It may not actually make up for it, but it’s all we’ve got. Oh wait, there’s a slightly used mint in my pocket if you want that.
Additional beautiful views were had by taking the funicular (yet another one!) up to the salt mines, which we’ll get to in a bit. At the top of the funicular is the Hallstatt Skywalk, which offers stunning panoramas and long lines for selfies. Enjoy the scenery!
I have dozens more scenic photos, but I didn’t want to post them all since so many people have approached me saying, “There aren’t enough words in your blogs! The pictures are nice, but I use my toilet time for reading and there just isn’t enough to read per poop!”
Okay, I’m lying. Actually, if I had a euro for every time someone grumbled about BaldSasquatch having “too many words,” I’d have more euros than I do now, so from now on I will demand a euro from anyone who makes that comment. In fact, I just need one more euro to lose one less euro on this project. But enough about the millions I’m not making, onward and upward, it’s almost time to trudge off to the salt mines!
OK, I see you’re slightly constipated, so I had to offer up one more set of Hallstatt pictures first.
Up, up, up we went, over 360 meters (1181 feet) above the town. Given that we were going to an actual working salt mine, I had to wonder if that’s where they came up with the word “funicular,” maybe just so the workers might be convinced that what they were doing was fun. Otherwise, it would be called a “nofunatallbutatleastitisapaycheckicular.” Then fourth graders and many grown American men could giggle because it contains “tit.”
Once we made it to the top, we dressed up in our finest salt mining gear (it pays to pack for every contingency!) and prepared for our trek deep inside the mountain. This was our Salt Trek: To explore strange new condiments. To seek out new spices and new causes of high blood pressure. To boldly sprinkle where no one has seasoned before!
When I saw this sign in the waiting room, I knew exactly what was going to happen. You see, if you’re in a salt mine, you obviously have to use salty language (well, duh!). We knew we were being reminded of that by reading the above sign and realizing what it rhymes with. That said, fair warning, the rest of this entry is going to contain some very salty language. So if you’re offended by words that have been deemed objectionable by the U.S. Department of Words We Think Are Too Salty, then just scroll to the end of this entry or close your laptop with a light but firm slam to express your distaste, because I have to tell you that what follows is gonna contain some very salty language, dadgummit. Okay, I started it with an old swear word, but don’t worry, all the latest and greatest will be represented here.
On our way up to the goddamn mine entrance I took the scenic photo on the left. Carolyn asked if I made sure to crop out the ugly-ass dumpster. I said, “yes, of course dear.” Then I took another close-up shot of the dumpster, just because I’m an ornery son of a bitch.
The dickhead tour guide (he was actually nice, I just had to figure out how to work in a “dickhead,” and we encountered no dickheads throughout this whole trip) marched us like jackasses to the mouth of the tunnel and made us do the wanker walk for what seemed like hours upon fucking hours. I fully expected never to be heard from again, surely much to the delight of those who cringe every time they read another swear word. Although I found it interesting that both Trump and Vance used words like “motherfucker” and “bullshit” during their rally speeches, upending hundreds of years of the tradition of mostly non-vulgar political public speech (often offset by more “fucks” per sentence in recorded history when the tape recorders were running in the oval office; Tricky Dick, I’m pointing at you). So I guess if it’s okay for the President… although I definitely draw the line at even talking about pussy grabbing. Unless it’s my cat. Oh, and no felonies here either, unless escaping from a salt mine counts.
One of the things we learned is that to move between the levels of a salt mine you get to ride a long-assed slide… as long as you want to go down. It was a little goddamn scary at first because, y’know, we haven’t been kids for a couple of millenia now, but we managed to keep the skin on our asses and land on the bottom with only a few salty phrases like, “Whew! That was some salt-assed shit-scary piss-wizardy ride, boy howdy!”
If you ever had the urge to lick something salty besides your partner, then come to the Hallstatt salt mines and lick the damn walls. We didn’t lick a wall ourselves, but we did lick our fingers, and then ever so gently began circling them slowly around and around until -oh wait, wrong lick thingee. Anyway we did in fact taste the wall. Spoiler alert: it was salty. These are the stratusses of salt layers, only interrupted by an occasional black pepper stratus. If you can believe it, even though this mine is the oldest operating salt mine in the world, with excavations dating all the way back to 2,000 years Before Kee-ryst (don’t worry, I never use the lord’s name in vain, although I’m guessing Jesus might’ve uttered a “goddammit” or two when his wine conversion count came up a little short… or would he have said “Daddammit?”), they have only mined about four bloody percent (The Brits- represent!) of all the salt in the mountain. Suffice it to say, humanity will have enough salt to last until we blow the motherfuckin’ planet up.
As we toured the mine, we were shown how salt apparently makes everything look like blue balls (unless this was formerly a stage for Blue Man Group), plus we saw a salty lake. All the tourists hurled obscenities at the salty lake because it needs that to keep it moist.
At the end of the tour, they loaded us on to this “train,” which looks like long-ass wooden benches for a long-butt picnic table. (Seriously, why can we say “long-ass” but not “long-butt?” Oh the vagaries of English are endlessly perplexing! Just like every word that starts with “vag.”) Also, we were slightly pissed off that the assholes didn’t give us a paycheck, talk about a horseshit way to get free labor. I almost burst all my gonads hauling those grains of salt. Fuck ’em all anyway, it’s all fuck news.
OK, here’s some pretty scenery to help everyone relax from all that saltiness. Now I’ve got to go wash my mouth out with soap.
We only spent a few days in Krakow, which is just a four hour drive from Lviv, Ukraine, making it the closest we’ve ever come to a war zone (other than some of our kids’ bedrooms when they were growing up). After quadruple-checking that Google Maps wasn’t accidentally sending us east, especially since I hadn’t downloaded any missile-avoidance software, we drove toward Austria by way of Czechia (formerly the Czech Republic, which is itself formerly Czechoslovakia, which had been formed at the end of World War I following the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire). In 1993, Czechoslovakia separated peacefully into two new countries, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Later, the Czechs decided they preferred to be called Czechia to, and I quote, “…make it easier for companies and sports teams to use it on products and clothing.”
Damn. I knew right then that I’d have to throw out all my Czech Republic logoed underwear, scarves, ear muffs, and nipple rings because my iconic status as a trend-setting fashionista just won’t be taken seriously if I wear obsolete logos. Also, all that makes me wonder if we’re ever gonna see a country named “Nike” or “Walmart.” Heck, Elon’s getting rich enough to buy a whole country, although “Musk” might not be the best name for one. Except the man just made two million bucks and actually sold out his latest perfume, called (and smells like), “Burnt Hair.” I don’t get it, do people think if they buy even the stupidest thing from an insanely rich person that their wealth will somehow rub off in the opposite direction than it actually does? I don’t understand people sometimes.
The scenic pictures like the above are not necessarily presented in chronological order, nor are they necessarily in the exact country we happen to be talking about at the moment. They’re just offered as an example of the Alpish scenery driving through that area of the world provides. It was also a nice antidote for the horrors we had just walked through in Auschwitz, so I’m kinda sprinkling them everywhere like fairy dust, or peanut shells in the restaurants that allow you to throw peanut shells on the floor.
Speaking of Auschwitz, one of our side trips included a stop at one of Hitler’s old digs, the Eagle’s Nest (aka the Kehlsteinhaus), which was built by Martin Bormann as a gift to the Fuhrer for his 50th birthday, and was something of an engineering marvel.
It turns out Hitler visited it less than twenty times, and then mostly just to show off to important guests. The allies tried bombing it but the target was too small for the bombs of the day and they never could take it out.
But oh, those views. As I stood gazing upon some of the most beautiful nature on earth, I couldn’t help but wonder whether a man with such incredible evil, hatred, and anger in his heart could look at these same mountains and appreciate any beauty in them at all. But the truth is, no one is all-evil like they portray in the movies; even genocidal maniacs can enjoy kids or love art or hold doors for women or have a soft spot for animals or cry during Bambi. We tend to view Hitler as a 24/7 vile-spewing hatred machine, but he was just as human as the rest of us. Well, maybe except for those annoying little genocidal tendencies, and that stupid mustache.
This is the entrance to the tunnel that takes you to the elevator that lifts you up to the house that Bormann built. At the top of the cliff above you can see the Eagle’s Nest house, which sits about 6,017 feet above sea level. A mountain road of about four miles long (6.37 km) was blasted into the mountainside, and was completed needing just one hairpin curve and five tunnels. The road and house were built in only 13 months.
To get into the Eagle’s Nest, you have to walk down this 407 foot long tunnel (this is after being ferried by bus to the base of the cliff; otherwise there’s no driving to Eagle’s Nest, you have to take a 30 euro bus ride which more than makes up for the Nest’s “free entrance”).
At the end of the 407 foot tunnel there’s a golden elevator that rises 407 feet to the top. I couldn’t find any relevance for the number 407, and then I remembered that Germany has used the metric system since the 1800s anyway, so it’s simply a matter of the two tunnels being the same length. However, 407 feet does equal exactly 124.054 meters, which didn’t seem very numerological to me until I remembered that both 7 and 18 are considered lucky and important numbers by the Jews, and if you add the first three numbers of 124.054 (124) together you get 7, and if you divide the last three numbers (054) by 3 you get, you guessed it, 18. This is why numerology is so important, it shows how obvious it is that the Jews were taunting Adolf by making him walk right through Jewish lucky numbers to get to his home away from home. In the end, that may be what did him in. Well, that and the cyanide and gunshot to the head.
In any case, part of the reason Hitler didn’t visit that often is because he had a fear of heights and didn’t like the changes in air pressure (maybe he had a hard time popping his ears, which were probably rebelling because of that stupid mustache). He was also worried about the perceived dangers of lightning, and nervous about simply riding in the elevator. In other words, this loud-mouthed, brash, spittle-spewing mass murderer was also a big fraidy cat.
The house itself is now a restaurant. There’s really not much to see inside other than a restaurant, although one of my WWII-knowledgeable sons (they both are actually) asked about the fireplace Mussolini gave Hitler, and was a bit nonplussed to hear that I didn’t really look for it nor take a picture of it.
So here you go, son, we’ll just pretend we never said we didn’t see it. Sometimes I don’t even know why we travel when almost everything we see can be found on the internet. However, at the risk of upsetting the residents of Barcelona and Mallorca and a bunch of other places that are really getting sick and tired of all the tourists… for the most part being there is far superior to the photos you bring home. The photos provide a 2D glimpse as to what you just experienced, but nothing beats actually being there.
Oh yeah, did I forget to mention there were spectacular views up there?
A short but fairly steep hike above the house offered more scenic viewpoints (as if we needed them) as well as this cross, which had a queue in front of it consisting of people waiting to take selfies with it in the background. So naturally I did the same because that’s what you do when you’re traveling: search out the selfie crowds and make sure you don’t miss out on something famous. Of course, some things are famous just because they’re famous. To find out, I searched the web for about ten minutes to see if there was any meaning or particular reason for the cross, and I couldn’t find anything about it. So, I think it’s just the world’s message to Hitler saying, “We’re quite cross about everything you did.” So there.
This is a view of Eagle’s Nest from above and then a view from a little bit below. It’s not hard to understand why the allies had such a hard time bombing it. In those days, bombing accuracy was so poor they had to make up for it by dropping tonnage, which is why you got wipeouts like Dresden and Tokyo. In 1943, only about 20% of the visually dropped bombs hit within 1,000 feet of the aiming point. And this thing is just a lone house. Today, a couple of homemade $100 Ukranian drones could probably take it out.
I’m pretty sure I may have mentioned something about spectacular views already, so the above is just a sampling of the many photos we took while gawking about at the Nest. As I mentioned earlier, photos really can’t do this kind of beauty justice, it is simply incredibly magnificent to see in person.
After visiting Eagle’s Nest, I went into YouTube and watched some of the “home movie” footage they had taken up there with Hitler and Eva Braun, etc. Being there really changed the way I saw those videos; it made it much more real somehow. Anyway, it’s a little, I dunno, haunting to walk in the same footsteps or ride in the same elevator as one of the most infamous mass murderers in history. However, I was thankful that aromas from farts don’t permeate metal, because Adolf was quite the literal gas bag later on in life so if that cable car had been lined with anything that permanently retained fart smells, they’d need to issue gas masks for the duration of the ride.
If I had been a German soldier back then, I sure wouldn’t have wanted to be in the same elevator as the Fuhrer because I’d have to do everything possible to stifle a snicker if he ever let out a long and warbling “Frrrrruuuuumph!”
If I failed, I imagine my headstone would read: “Shot for giggling at the Fuhrer’s farts.”
So now we’re moving on from the Eagle’s Nest and onward to the Hohenwerfen Castle, where they filmed the World War II caper Where Eagles Dare, making this whole blog entry very eagley.
Where Eagles Dare starred luminaries such as Sir Richard Burton, Clint Eastwood, and Terry Yorke. I promise you’ve never heard of Terry Yorke; he was the last uncredited actor in the movie, but now he finally has his name in lights right next to Eastwood and Burton. He’s long dead, but maybe his relatives will send me a thank you note. Possibly with some cash in the envelope? Euros or dollars are fine.
To get into the castle, you have to take a funicular, a mode of transportation that we’re getting pretty used to by now. We bought the whole tour of the castle at the bottom, but were disappointed to discover that the actual tour wouldn’t start for an hour after we landed in the courtyard. Thanks for nothing Ms. Ticket Seller. We wandered around for about half an hour, at which point we looked at each other and both realized that we’d seen enough and that it wasn’t worth spending good time after bad money, so we left before the tour. Which may have been only in German, besides.
Part of the reason we weren’t all that enamored of the castle was because this was one of those castles where they gussied everything up to make it look as if it was new. We really prefer our castles like I prefer my boobs: all natural.
But there’s no way (or reason) to gussy up the views. As usual for a castle, the scenery was breathtaking.
They did have a hangman’s noose to serve as a warning for misbehaving tourists, a short door for misbehaving tall people, and a partially fuzzy picture that served as a sign that the camera in Carolyn’s iPhone was going to be doing its own misbehaving.
So we took some more photos of the scenery and then, after checking to make sure Clint Eastwood wasn’t around anywhere signing autographs, we skedaddled. The other two luminous actors are dead, so he was our only hope. I sent our itinerary to Dirty_Harry@gmail.com but he must not have read it.
So we put Hohenwerfen Castle in our rearview and headed off to work in the salt mines.
Oh, before you go, I have to finish off this eagley entry with an old and very bad eagle joke:
Question: What’s the difference between unlawful and illegal? Answer: Unlawful is when something is contrary to the law of the region, and ill eagle is a sick bird.
My young nephew at the time, many decades ago, tried to repeat this joke by saying, “The difference between them is, that, um, that unlegal is against the law and illawful is a sick bird.” Now that’s how you turn a bad joke into something pretty funny.
The name taken from this small Polish town will be forever etched into history as the centerpiece of the worst genocide in the history of humanity. The town was known as Oświęcim until 1939, when it fell under German rule. At that point the town name was switched to the Germanic version, which is Auschwitz. The nearby camp was given the same name. The Germans cleared the area around the camp to create a large buffer zone, expelling around 17,000 Polish residents, destroying eight villages and leaving Oświęcim with around 7,500 residents as of 1941.
Today, Oświęcim has over 34,000 residents. When we asked our tour guide how it feels to live in a town with such notoriety, he shrugged and said, “We remember the past, but we look to the future.” Additionally, since the Auschwitz name is the German version and is now only used to reference the camp, Oświęcim doesn’t automatically carry the stigma it would if it still held the same name as the death camp. Besides, it was all about the Germans; the Poles were victims too.
It’s a little hard to make out the infamous “Arbeit Macht Frei” (works makes you free) sign here with the tree in the background, but it’s very sobering to walk through that gate. Perhaps the two most iconic images of Auschwitz are this gate and the Auschwitz II-Birkenau gatehouse with its train tracks that led to the gas chambers (first picture). Both were gateways to the unimaginable misery and deaths of more than 1.1 million people, over 90% of which were Jewish. Auschwitz was actually the name of a system of camps, consisting of the main camp, plus Auschwitz II-Birkenau, Auschwitz III-Monowitz, and dozens of subcamps. In the interest of brevity and clarity, we’ll just call everything we see Auschwitz, even though half the tour was outside in the former location of Birkenau.
We had a pleasant and informative guide who took us on a private tour. If you ever get a chance to go to Auschwitz, I recommend booking a private or small group tour. We were allowed into a couple of places other larger groups were not allowed into, and it was nice to be able to ask any questions we liked along the way.
We fully expected to be emotionally overwhelmed by the visit. Strangely enough, neither of us were, although we both choked up when we saw a huge pile of children’s belongings. The Nazis separated anyone who would not be of any use to them in forced labor, meaning the elderly, sick or injured, pregnant women, and children were summarily dispatched to the gas chambers immediately upon arrival. Some infants were killed on the spot by being held by their feet and having their heads bashed in against the sides of railcars. Can you imagine? That should be hard to read. It needs to be hard to forget too, so we always remember what humans are capable of, especially when motivated by hate. As I reflected on our visit, I think we were a little bit emotionally numb, as if looking at the atrocities committed by a race of aliens. It’s hard to feel associated in any way with those monsters, but unlike what they did, I still have to acknowledge they were human. Human, but as far from humane as may be possible.
The brick buildings that were used to house the original inhabitants look surprisingly well built. The infamous structures that held Jewish prisoners destined for slaughter in Birkenau were made of wood and are mostly gone now.
Escape from Auschwitz was extremely risky and difficult, but not impossible. Known figures indicate that 928 prisoners attempted escape from Auschwitz, 50 of whom were women. Almost 200 prisoners actually got away. Most of the rest were captured, sometimes after weeks or months. It’s unknown what happened to some 250 of them. And of course the Germans always performed reprisals by killing a multitude of prisoners in retribution. I’m sure some didn’t think it at the time, but that would have actually been a blessing.
Auschwitz featured plenty of other ways to kill, including hanging and execution by gunfire. The wall above on the left is the infamous Death Wall (rebuilt after the war), where thousands of prisoners were shot. Auschwitz was a death camp, plain and simple. Thousands upon thousands of mostly Jews tumbled from stinking, jam-packed railcars and were led to the showers, ostensibly to be cleaned and deloused. The men were separated from the women in order to perpetuate this fiction. Those subjected to this extermination were not recorded or tattooed. They were simply vermin to be eradicated. Everyone had to remove their clothes, which were then scooped up and eventually sent back to Germany often for sale through thrift shops for the benefit of the German populace.
Everything was saved and put to use. Hair was shorn and used to make blankets and more. We were told the story of one of the commandants who noticed and admired a beautiful tattoo on the back of a prisoner. A short time later, that tattoo and the skin on which it was inked graced the wall of the commandant’s house as a decoration. They even experimented making soap out of the corpses. We’ve all heard stories of the lampshades made of human skin. All because one narcissistic sociopath with a lust for power decided his race was the master race, and “sub-humans” should be treated worse than animals. And scores of Germans supported him until he started losing the war. Madness.
These freight cars routinely carried 50 prisoners, but were often doubled in capacity to 100 people. It’s hard to imagine what a trip lasting days or even weeks would be like when everyone had to stand pressed together with no food, water, or sanitation. You might spend days standing next to a corpse whose body was simply held up by the people around it. The stench must have been otherworldly.
For those few who still try to either deny the Holocaust or diminish it, there is plenty of captured photographic evidence confirming that everything we know about these concentration camps is true. Still, there are always those who allow their cherished beliefs to twist their brains into undecipherable knots no matter the evidence, so we have to keep the history alive.
This was one of the few places in the facility that showed the actual faces of some of the victims. To that end, Carolyn and I both felt that the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin was more emotion-evoking. There, they tell the stories of various victims and their families, humanizing them and reminding us that they were simply people too, living their lives unaware that the sin of being born Jewish meant that you would be targeted for extermination.
The tour offered some monuments and models, the latter of which demonstrated the efficiency with which people were herded from the trains to the gas chambers. The memorial on the right is the International Monument to the Victims of Fascism. The tour of the camp was not overbearing or dramatic in this regard, but more complementary; they mostly allow the place to speak for itself.
These are empty canisters of Zyklon B, a cyanide-based pesticide that was converted for use to more efficiently exterminate people. One of the comments our tour guide made more than once was that the Germans considered Jews and other undesirables to be nothing but insects. I had often wondered how anyone could treat people worse than they might treat even the lowliest animals, and I suppose thinking of them as insects is about as far down as you need to go to help justify your evil. To demonstrate how powerful yet ridiculous political propaganda can be, Dr. Josef Mengele, the notorious “Angel of Death,” an educated medical doctor, opened up Jewish people (without anesthetic), expecting to find their internal organs either different or in different places. After all, they were “sub-human.” It boggles the mind. Mengele actually escaped after the war and lived until 1979 in South America. I hope he had nightmares every night of his life.
One of the most disconcerting things about being inside one of the barracks, where we could see the racks of bunk beds used by prisoners, was that the place still stank of urine. Nearly 80 years later, the smell has so permeated the wood that it may never go away. That was a little unnerving. The three-tiered bunks often held up to eighteen people, or six to a tier. FIrst thing in the morning, the dead would be carried out, and the remaining prisoners would be given a bowl of a bitter beverage similar to coffee for breakfast. For lunch, they might get a dish of thin soup made from rotten vegetables or meat, and then a crust of moldy bread and a little dab of margarine before going to bed. Make no mistake, you were brought to Auschwitz to die. You were either murdered immediately, or were put to work, where the average lifespan was 4 months.
This is all that remains of the crematoriums in Birkenau. Remarkably, they’ve been able to preserve them just as they were after the Germans blew them up prior to the camp being liberated by the Russians.
The Birkenau section of the camp is quite large. Areas that originally held scores of wooden barracks now only have single chimneys left standing. Essentially, you can peer at a death machine as far as the eye can see, which prompted one of my questions to our guide. I’m not much of a believer in ghosts or spirits, but those who are generally claim that spirits remain because they have unfinished business or experienced unspeakable torment or some such. So if there were ever a place likely to be haunted by tortured souls, you’d think Auschwitz would be filled to capacity with strange goings-on from the afterlife. He indicated he hadn’t heard of any reports like that, although some people can certainly be inclined to feel a little strange being in a place filled with the echoes of so much torment and death.
There is much, much more to Auschwitz and the other German concentration or death camps. My goal here wasn’t to provide a lot of detailed history, but to give you the highlights of a tour we experienced firsthand. I became so immersed in what I was experiencing at times that I didn’t always remember to take a picture, and I didn’t think it overly appropriate to take a selfie or the like. But I think we captured the gist of it.
I will add that on the short bus ride from Auschwitz I to Birkenau, a group of young ladies, roughly high school or college age, decided it would be an appropriate time to laugh and giggle together quite loudly, culminating in their singing some sort of lively, happy song. I so wanted to shout at them, “STOP! Just STOP! This is a place of unimaginable horror and agony! Some people on this bus are grieving! Show some respect!” But I held my tongue, thinking that the world will surely mature them beyond their current youthful ignorance and exuberance soon enough. Still, the incongruity was a bit jarring.
In some ways, I will never understand the human brain and the ease with which so many of them accept hatred as a concept to embrace. While the Nazis brought in plenty of criminals, sadists, and sociopaths to run things inside the barracks (not wanting to go into those disease-ridden cesspools themselves), the rank and file German either turned a blind eye or supported the prejudice against the Jews and others. As long as it wasn’t them. This is the reason we should never forget what fascism, hatred, or often simply the lust for power, can lead to.
The drive back to Krakow was pretty, but we were somber. The tree-lined avenue offered its silent comfort to us, perhaps telling us that despite the horrors we had just seen, there is also a lot of beauty in the world. The only thing is… it absolutely can happen again. We must remember the past. Only with vigilance and a rejection of hateful rhetoric can we even hope that we’ll never see anything like this again. We can hope. But as I write this, Donald Trump has just been elected to a second term. Based on his autocratic tendencies alone, if this were, say, a decade or two after WWII, he wouldn’t have had a snowball’s chance in hell because the memory of what a dictatorial personality is capable of doing would still be fresh on people’s minds. But apparently memories are short. And so ultimately, we can only hope the worst doesn’t happen. Again.
We were very excited to shop for Polish polish, figuring that if nothing else, the repetition of the word would confirm that you are indeed holding polish. Carolyn, being an Interior Designer, talked about Polish polish in almost mystical terms, kind of like Cuban cigars or yogurt-pooping unicorns. We never did find any, probably because “polish” in Polish is “pastować.” I saw a bottle of that and thought it was something you smash spaghetti with.
We made the four hour drive (well, it was supposed to be four hours anyway; bladders and castles wreak havoc on driving times) from Trenčín to Kraków, checking off two countries we had never been to, bringing our total to 21 European countries so far, give or take.
The above was among our first views of Poland’s landscape. We discovered that the countryside was largely the same as Slovakia’s. It’s almost as if nature doesn’t really care about human borders. Psscht. Stupid nature. Doesn’t she know that humans are the only things that matter?
To show nature who’s boss, humans put up a big sign letting us know we were in, um, Ploland? The license plates in Portugal, which is the only other country in the EU that even starts with a “P,” simply have a “P” on them because Portugal joined the EU in 1986, whereas Poland didn’t make it in until 2004, so Portugal got first dibs. But why not use “PO?” Maybe it’s because in Polish, “po” means “after,” while in Portuguese, it means “dust,” while in American English, it means a penniless hooker. Oh wait, that’s actually “po-ho,” so we’ll settle for it being how they say “pour” in the south. Or poor. Or pore. My God I’m glad I’m not still learning English.
Whatever the reason for the “PL,” those in the know and who want to save time just say “Pluh” when referring to Poland. Now you can be an insider too! In fact, you can try it out on the next Polish person you meet. Just say, “I’m thinking of flying to Kraków, Pluh.” Your Polish friend will be so impressed!
When I think of Poland, I think of potatoes, polish vodka, and long skinny sticks. However nowadays, Poland is only the eighth-largest producer of potatoes in the world. While I don’t know the above is a potato field, I’m sticking to my story that it is, especially since I don’t see any long skinny sticks.
As we drove toward Kraków, we noticed a distinct difference in the housing from what we saw in Slovakia. Many, if not most, of the houses we saw were at least two or three stories tall, which each level being nearly identical to the one below. It seemed a little contrary to what we know of Poland, since it suffered through a Communist regime after World War II until 1989, and it usually takes a while for prosperity for the middle classes to catch up after being subjected to what really was just a dictatorship, controlled by Moscow.
So we asked a Polish guide why they had so many multi-story houses and he told us it was because during the Communist regime, people had to save money so those houses were designed to be multigenerational. So you just lived with your parents and maybe grandma and grandpa, like those lazy old people from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory who wouldn’t even get of bed until they learned that Charlie was going to get a tour of Willy Wonka’s factory. Oh then grandpa’s able to jump out of bed and dance a jig. Lazy old bastards; their muscle tone must’ve been just one step away from jellyfish, so I think grandpa might’ve snorted a bit of meth before doing that jig. Do you ingest meth by snorting it? I have no idea and I hope you don’t either.
A couple of the residences we saw were capable of housing families the size of small towns while others offered permanent sleeping arrangements.
The purpose of this boring photo of the road is to remind me to tell the story of what it’s like to drive in Poland. At least on the two-lane roads (we were told there aren’t that many four-lane highways in Poland, although we found at least one), you discover that 70 km/hr is pretty much the standard cruising speed, but you have to lower it to 50 km/hr and sometimes 30 km/hr when entering a town. Often the towns are close enough together that within a minute you go from 70 to 50 to 30, and then just as quickly back to 50 and then 70 because many of the towns are quite small. This happens over and over and over again. It’s like driving in a mini version of Groundhog Day.
I try my best to drive the speed limit in foreign countries; but my best isn’t always good enough because they have radar cameras everywhere so I’ve gotten speeding tickets in about four different countries. The two hardest things about driving within those speed limits is that some cars have a little chime they spew –trust me, it’s spew– when you go even ONE kilometer over the speed limit. I’m trying to keep it at 70, but of course sometimes it slips up to 71, BING! Dammit. I go back down to 68, look at some sight and apparently press ever so slightly on the gas, BING! Our drives consisted of a lot of bings. And you can’t really use cruise control because you’re speeding up and slowing down so often.
On top of all that, if you do adhere to the posted speed limit you end up with a long line of impatient drivers behind you who apparently don’t mind that there are cameras and who passed us whenever they got the chance.
We took a picture of this bus passing us because… a bus passed us. We were doing the speed limit. There was one time I was probably doing something like 10km or so over the speed limit for about ten seconds, we got a nice big flash in our face telling me that we’re gonna have yet another country’s ticket coming. You know, in Iceland we never saw one speeder. If the sign said 100, then by golly that’s what everyone did. Not so in Poland, despite the fact that they have plentiful cameras and they’re not afraid to flash drivers. Out of curiosity I looked up speeding ticket averages in Iceland and Poland. Perhaps predictably, Iceland’s ranges from USD $195- $460 or more, while Poland’s ranges from $25 to $100. I think I’ll be finding out how true that is soon enough.
So it’s either piss off the locals, or risk getting a speeding ticket. BING!
After all that stressful driving we needed to find someplace where we could get drinks to pour into our alkoholes.
One of the ideas I’ve embraced after traveling all around Europe is that if we’re going to use a hotel, which is almost always a good idea if you’re going to stay right in the middle of downtown, is that I favor American-branded hotels over any other. It’s not that European hotels are bad, it’s just that Americans, well, they’re pretty damn good at providing comfort, and their usual cheery helpfulness can be very appreciated when you’re needing help, and most American-branded services in Europe have at least a little touch of American customer service in them. That said, throughout my entire life I have avoided Holiday Inn. In my mind, they’re just a small step from Motel 6, and are often shabby or rundown. So look at the above picture and gaze in wonder on what is easily the most beautiful and amazing Holiday Inn I’ve ever seen. On top of that, it was right on the border of old town Kraków, which is exactly where we wanted to be. We had a lovely stay and I’d highly recommend it if you’re staying in Kraków. It’s affordable too, just over 100 euros per night for a standard room.
Without a lot of time to spare, we felt fortunate that the best sights of Kraków are experienced in old town, called “Stare Miasto” in Polish. Most city guides you see about Kraków pretty much focus on this area of the city, and our favorite Holiday Inn ever was only a short walk away.
The area didn’t disappoint. It was alive with tourists and beautiful old buildings, and even though it was well-touristed, the area felt safe and we weren’t bothered by any blatant touristy hassles.
I could go do some research and detail the names and purpose of each building (actually, many of them were churches and castles so we hardly needed much help there), but the truth is we didn’t much care about the details while we were seeing them, so I’m imagining most readers wouldn’t either. We just enjoyed their grandeur and beauty. I did find it interesting that the largest and most imposing building is the Cloth Hall (Sukiennice), rebuilt in 1555, in the photo below. Basically it’s the world’s oldest shopping mall. We figured it had to be some sort of palace or government building, but no, it was, and is still, a shopping mall.
Kraków wasn’t bombed during WWII, which is part of the reason these buildings are still standing. They had the Kraków Ghetto, established to exploit, persecute, and terrorize local Polish Jews, because of course it was so obvious that the Polish Jews are the reason Germany lost WWI. Kraków has some WWII memorials and museums, such as the Jewish Ghetto, the Schindler’s Factory Museum, the former Plaszow Labour and Concentration Camp, and the original Gestapo Prison, but we were only going to have time to visit the biggest monstrosity of them all: Auschwitz.
If you were to tell anyone who asks how to find the most frequented tourist spots in a European city, just tell them to look for the horse-drawn carriages. Many if not most large European cities seem to have them out there in tourist areas. It looks romantic, I suppose, but after riding in one or two over the years we’re happy to settle for photos and fewer horse farts.
As we wandered around the area we spotted this amusement park across the water. That’s not the moon to its left, it’s a hot air balloon. We took a closer look at one of the lamps and saw that it was a feeding ground for what had to be some very fat and happy spiders. Letting them stay that way seems like a very eco-friendly way to keep the bug population down. It must work, we weren’t bugged by anything.
Somewhere along the way we spotted the American Consulate. I tucked its location away in my brain in case I succumbed to a desire to shoplift or beat up a local again. Of course, seeing as how my brain can only retain about the last ten minutes of information, I promptly forgot where it was and so decided I had better behave.
We found a nearby restaurant that featured good old fashioned Polish food (we’re not foodies, but I always try and seek out the local dishes just to slightly immerse into that country’s culture). I promised our friends who couldn’t make the trip with us that I’d try and report on pierogi: Polish dumplings, a common food in Poland. It’s a dish invented almost 800 years ago that stuck around because potatoes are a cheap staple. The dumplings themselves don’t have much flavor, so it’s all about what’s inside. They didn’t have any with hot fudge sundaes in them, so I had to settle for whatever this was, I don’t remember. But it was tasty.
The next day we drove past this ominous sign. That’ll be the next blog entry.
As our bodies slowly but surely ooze their way into old age, the idea of a long, arduous travel itinerary with lots of stops just doesn’t feel like something we want to do anymore. So what did we do? We booked a long, arduous travel itinerary with lots of stops. That’s the problem with getting older, you forget what you vowed never to do again until you’re in the middle of it wondering who else you can blame.
If a sightseeing vacation is like a buffet, then many Americans who travel to Europe often plan to stuff as much into their sightseeing gullet as possible, sometimes resulting in what I call “mental vomiting” (and by “what I call,” I mean I made it up just now), whereby all the sights and experiences just regurgitate into a big, smelly, often hard-to-remember mess. (Way to ensnare your audience so artfully by talking about vomit in the second paragraph, Anderson! Woohoo! Anyway, I’ve already given up my dreams of a Pulitzer for the Best Travel Blog Featuring a Hairy, Fictitious Animal, so yeah, vomit ho!)
But since we live in Europe, we are able to be a little less stressed out by the Buffet d’Travel, because we know two things: 1) Coming back to a place is almost always an option because we don’t have to do that grueling 20 hour expedition from the states, and 2) We will never ever see everything there is to see even if we were on the road 363 days a year (we’d take Christmas and New Year’s off), and so we don’t sweat it if we don’t see everything.
However, the cornerstone we built this whole trip around was Auschwitz. We felt as if it was our duty to see it. Humanity has done some awful things to each other throughout our existence, and I think it’s important that we don’t sugarcoat histories or forget them. There are holocaust deniers out there as well as some extremists who proclaim that the camps were “humane.” I would beg to differ (actually I wouldn’t beg, they just need to be slapped upside the head), I think Auschwitz provides the very definition of “inhumane.” So the more of us that see the place of atrocities firsthand, the less traction these dipshits might get with their hateful revisionist histories.
Once we decided on Auschwitz, we realized Krakow is very near there, so hey, let’s spend a few days in Krakow (which was not on our bucket list but should have been), and as long as we have a car let’s drive through Slovakia and Czechia and y’know what? Carolyn always wanted to see Hallstatt and that’s on the way to Munich during October, so free beer for us, yay! Oh wait, there’s Innsbruck too, where they held the winter Olympics twice, so let’s take a daytrip down there and maybe we’ll see a famous skier. And then we saw a road sign to Budapest, so I’m like, “Honey! You wanna drive to Budapest too?” We seriously considered it because even though it wasn’t on our bucket list, how often are you close enough to drive to a place like Budapest? Ultimately we decided that a city named after big flying bugs that look like fat bald men was probably not worth it, because of course Buddha Pest was the original name of the city. And Buddha Pest insecticide is almost impossible to find nowadays, so yeah, naw.
We flew into Vienna because we had original plans with some good friends, but sadly they had to back out at the last minute due to family issues, so our itinerary became a little fluid. While flying into Krakow would have saved some driving time, we likely wouldn’t have added Slovakia to our countries-visited list, nor would we have discovered the charming little town of Trenčín. So fly into Vienna we did, where we promptly hopped into our rental car and left the city in our rearview mirror. “We shall return!” we cried. No one in Vienna cared.
Anyway, this sign for the Vienna State Opera greeted us and I couldn’t help wondering whether the woman in the photo was looking shocked because the man was singing an opera at full volume right into her ear, or whether he’s whispering, “Opera is stupid” even though he’s an opera singer, or whether he is admitting that he just peed his pants.
We decided to put a couple of hours in on the road because Vienna to Krakow is a five hour drive, so I had selected Trenčín because it was the desired distance away and it is in Slovakia, plus I liked the little bowl on top of the “c.” I was going to make a joke about that, but then I looked up how to pronounce “č” and I thought the instructions were funnier than anything I could come up with: Your tongue is positioned at the front end of the hard palate (i.e. the roof of the mouth), close to the front teeth. č – (“tvrdo” č – the “hard” č) = tš. Try to blend the sounds t and š into one “hard” sound and there you go! The tongue is positioned more backward against the hard palate.
Yeah, well, I like my “c’s” to take as little work as possible, thank you very much, so I’ll stick to my English and bad Portuguese, the latter of which has already damaged my nasal cavities. However, you have to admit the USA’s full name would look much more exotic if it were spelled: The United States of Američa. Naw, now that I see it, that’d be Socialist-y fer sure. Plus I still don’t know how to pronounce “č.”
So let’s move to our Trenčín experience. Raise your hand if you’ve ever been to, or even heard of, Trenčín. Yeah I thought not, but if you have, why are you raising your hand when you’re alone reading?
We’ll begin with the Hotel Elizabeth, because that’s where we stayed. The hotel started operations in 1902, I think making it one of the newest buildings in all of our photos from the trip. He he. Anyway, it’s a charming hotel, and sits just beneath the medieval Castle of Trenčín, and was otherwise the perfect destination for our one night stay.
As you can see, it was a bit of a dreary morning and we still had to drive off to Krakow, but there was a cute little town square and so we wandered around just enjoying the ambiance of this little Slovakian town. It made me wonder about the hundreds and hundreds of small charming towns all around Europe we’ll never see or hear of. Like I said earlier, we can’t see ’em all, but the ones we do we sure enjoy!
The town’s skyline is dominated by the Castle of Trenčín, whose history dates back all the way to Roman times. A cliff with a large inscription abuts the hotel, and tells of a victory by the Romans in 179 AD. Of course, I’m taking their word for it, it may be an ancient No Parking sign for all I know.
Carolyn scored two Doors of the Day in Trenčín, so she left happy.
We’ll move on from Trenčín just as soon as we grab a snack from the local 7-11. To be honest, I have no idea if most Slovakian convenience stores leave this much floor space open or if the owner of this shop is some sort of neat freak, but I was kind of bemused at the sight. In the USA, you’d have to walk past huge stacks of six packs with big cardboard cutouts of your favorite racer showing how awesome beer and car racing go together, along with racks of candy, and then more racks of candy, plus 38 varieties of chips just to reach the cashier sitting behind a counter that looks like it was merchandised by a hoarder. In comparison, this store just puts one 20-pack of soda on the floor and decides that’s about all the floor space they can sacrifice.
While in Slovakia, we learned that it’s quite renown for all of its castles, somewhat to our chagrin because we were just passing through. But we did stop at one that was along the way to Krakow, and that’s the Orava Castle, named after Orava, a famous sword-wielding flying squirrel with a cape. Orava actually does mean squirrel, so boy howdy that little rodent must’ve been quite the specimen! Of course, nothing instills fear into an enemy like facing an angry squirrel. “The squirrels are attacking! The squirrels are attacking! Aaaaaah! Run for the hills!”
The castle was built when the area was part of Hungary, with the oldest parts being built in the thirteenth century and the most recent parts in the early seventeenth century. Of course one of the main things we like about castles are the views, and the Squirrel Castle didn’t disappoint in that regard. We didn’t go nuts for it, but it was nice.
In addition to the views, Carolyn scored another Door of the Day, while I scored a Dress of the Day, a Window of the day, and a Carriage of the day. Our trip was already so Of the Day fulfilling!
I was thinking this cannon probably wasn’t all that efficient given that if the aim is just a little bit off, like it is in the photo, after all the smoke and dust clears you’re going to see that you inadvertently expanded your window size quite a bit. They eventually moved the three barrel design over to big battleships, which was great in WWII, but have now been rendered obsolete by $100 drones.
But you know, they always had comfortable sleeping arrangements available for those who screwed up. While it’s obvious you’d have to be a real dummy to end up being tortured like that, I still feel for them because their clothes are pretty bland plus everyone knows you don’t wear white pants after Labor Day. It’s just all so sad.
Speaking of sad, you see, these are the challenges we face with different languages. I hope that’s not a Roasted Grandma in there, you never know what weird customs all these foreigners get themselves all up into. Plus everyone knows you don’t eat Roasted Grandma until Easter. Still, that is a pretty good price.
What, first it was hobbits, and now it’s Yoda? Okay, I’m gonna offer up a sneak preview just to show why that headline makes sense. This photo is taken from the inside of a cave, known as –and I know you’ll never guess this– the Yoda Cave. I don’t know how they came up with that. Actually, rumor has it that George Lucas spent a fortnight in the cave doing psychedelics sometime in the early ’70s.
In fact, if you look carefully, to the left you can see the outline of Princess Leia’s chin, lips, and nose. Additionally, the outline of Luke Skywalker’s buttocks is easily seen on the right, and Hans Solo’s cleft chin is obviously part of the rock formations on the far left. So I guess we can thank Icelandic caves and LSD for Star Wars!
Kirkjubæjarklaustur
Maybe I should’ve used a Star Trek metaphor, given that Captain James T. Kirk’s actual name was James T. Kirkjubæjarklaustur, only shortened because so many aliens couldn’t pronounce it. A lot of people have no idea that Captain Kirk was Icelandic.
Anyway, Kirkjubæjarklaustur was a verdant source of all sorts of things to see and do, including talking with Yoda and playing with actual lava. Off we go to where no man has gone before!
First we had to get our motor runnin’, then head on down the highway, lookin’ for adventure, and whatever comes our way… Born to be Wild, Born to be Wi-i-i-i-ild!
I might add the following verse just for us:
Driving a dumb Ford Puma
Swerving to our doom-ah!
With the conTrolls fighting us at every turn
The Ford engineers must burn!
Born to hate the stupid Ford Puma, born to hate the stupid Ford Puma!
Okay, I’m sticking to my day job, don’t worry. Oh wait, I don’t have a job.
And yes they do take their troll-lore seriously here. And no, these aren’t trolleys. And yes, I often answer unasked questions out loud. It’s called “quirky,” not “mentally challenged” like they said at the ward.
Kirkjubæjarklaustur also hosts the charming little town of Vik with its 300 or so inhabitants, which itself hosts the lava show, which you’ll see in just a bit (or sooner if you cheat and scroll down). While the two of us are pretty tired of looking at grandiose cathedrals, in Iceland there were quite a few of these quaint little churches in most towns, generally with the same charming design. As an American who is currently observing religious thought steadily insinuating itself into American politics, seeing these little churches makes me wax philosophical about the good ol’ days, when churches were mostly just a social gathering place as well as a place of acceptance, caring, generosity, and the occasional apple pie. It’d be a lot better to have a bunch of apolitical small churches like that than a politically involved national mega-religion trying to tell everyone how to behave through the government. And if you only disagree with that because your religion is the one behind all of it, then you just proved my point.
With today’s highly charged political climate in the US, a house like this might be lookin’ mighty appealing to a lot of Americans right about now.
So here’s the outside of the Yoda Cave. The cave is part of a promontory called Hjörleifshöfði, which literally means the residence of Hjörleifur, plus a lot of dots. Poor Hjörleifur was the 8th dwarf in Snow White, so he didn’t make the cut, and then he tried out for The Hobbit, and made it all the way to the 14th dwarf, but they only needed 13, so he made a costume that looked like his door entrance and tried out for Star Wars and landed the part. The rest is history, at least BaldSasquatch history, especially if you don’t worry about the impossibility of the timeline I just laid out, unless you believe, as I do, that Hjörleifur was a time traveler.
The area is a very short drive from the highway over a dirt road, and surprisingly it’s apparently privately owned as the request for parking fees (done online all over Iceland) were for a private individual, not the government. Pretty low overhead income stream I’d say.
Now I’d like to introduce you to Moss Heath, who will be our tour guide through all things moss in Iceland. Moss Heath is probably a lumbersexual. Did you know there was such a thing? A lumbersexual is a burly breed of man that looks more like a rugged outdoorsman than a model. I stumbled across that while looking up different ways to say rugged beauty of Iceland. I was relieved that it had nothing to do with being kinky with planks of wood.
Moss, moss, moss everywhere. In your soup, and in your hair. You can’t stop moss, you can’t use floss, and you can’t toss moss sauce for a loss. Cuz moss is da boss, even if you cry, “No mas! No mas!”
Compare these two pictures above to the two pictures above them. Notice the difference in color? We visited in May, which is apparently right about the time the moss starts changing color to green. We would’ve loved to have seen the fields in their full verdant splendor, but it was also fascinating to nearly be able to see the color change right before our very eyes.
They have so much moss they store it on top of their houses for later use in making moss soup, a common staple of Iceland, at least until Bosch came in and took over Iceland’s staple industry.
Our hotel (Hotel Laki) was in the Kirkjubæjarklaustur district as well. The location was a great jumping-off point for exploring further away from Reykjavík than I think many tourists go, unless they’re driving the entire Ring Road around the island. The two pictures on the right were taken from our room; you can rent a regular hotel room or little separated cottages at Hotel Laki. I guess those would be good housing for a honeymoon, depending on the decibel level of your moaning and screaming.
We also got to see the results of a nuclear test. Just kiddin’. As good as humans are at destroying things, they got nothing on Mother Nature, who can simply belch and lay thousands of acres to waste.
Not far from the hotel are the majestic views of Fjadrargljufur Canyon. Getting to that view entails an uphill hike, but we managed it just fine and it was worth every step. It was also fun chatting with a German couple we met up there who kindly took our picture (duh- that’s obviously a German-taken photo). We’ve had some nice conversations with fellow travelers over the years; a lot of them Germans. They either like traveling more than most or are more prone to chatting with Americans.
Vik is the home of a clever little business called The Lava Show. It’s held in a relatively small, nondescript room, but who cares, the star of the show is a very hot Miss Lava. After a film and a talk by an engaging host, the lava began rippling its way into our laps.
As it oozed on down the channel, the presenter picked up a metal stick and began playing with the lava, telling us all about the many properties of the material. As soon as the lava entered the room, the temperature began to climb steadily upward, until it became like a sauna, resulting in a flurry of coats being removed. Since we were in a Scandinavian-esque country, I halfway expected everyone to keep going and sit naked as if in a sauna, but I think most of the guests were tourists from outside the country, so I only saw a glimpse of a bra strap. Miss Lava remained completely unclothed, however.
We learned that when volcanoes erupt, particularly the one near Vik, the lava isn’t their biggest worry. It’s the tons of water that gets released from the glaciers above the eruption, resulting in a flow of water greater than the four largest rivers in the world, combined. You get trivia points if you can name the four largest rivers in the world. Answer at the end of this post.*
We also learned that Iceland protects its citizens in case of destruction by eruptions, floods, or troll attacks. They are automatically covered and will have their domiciles and belongings replaced in case of such a disaster. It’s nice to have a government that actually looks out for its people, especially the ones who suffer from some bad luck. Although I don’t know if you can call it bad luck when you pretty much live right on top of a volcano.
Afterwards the lava cools down fairly quickly. It’s eventually recycled for future shows and is heated up inside a specially made oven they got from Lava Ovens R Us, just outside Reykjavik. To set this business up, they also had to deal with municipal officials who initially responded to their request of bringing flowing hot lava and tourists together indoors with, “You want to do what?“
Here are some of the scenes showing lava flows; the one on the right was from a news report on a volcano that erupted just a couple of days after we left. “The Andersons? Yeah, they just left.” “Okay, we can erupt now.” Swine lava.
Rangárþing
This is the only photo we took in Rangárþing, so apparently there’s nothing else interesting in that district. Just for kicks, I looked it up in Wikipedia: Rangárþing eystra (Icelandic pronunciation: [ˈrauŋkˌaurˌθiŋk ˌeistra]) is a municipality located in southern Iceland in the Southern Region, between Eystri Rangá in the west and Jökulsá á Sólheimasandi in the east. The largest settlements are Skógar and Hvolsvöllur.
That’s it. That’s all there is to read. So now you’re an expert on Rangárþing.
Also note that Skógar has about 20 residents and was still worthy of making the list. So, yeah.
Reykjavik
Before visiting Iceland I was a bit curious about Reykjavik, because there really didn’t seem to be a lot of landmarks or interesting things to see published about the city. In fact, on most top ten things to-do lists the only activities or sights within Reykjavik are food tours and the Lava Show (they opened one up in Reykjavik too), the rest are tours outside the city. Reykjavik is the capital and Iceland’s largest city, but it also only has about 140,000 residents. By comparison, if you’re an Oregonian you’ll probably know of Gresham, Oregon, which has about 110,000 residents, so just a bit smaller, and not exactly a place that screams tourist sites. Salem and Eugene in Oregon are both larger than Reykjavik and really not exciting in the least. Kent, Washington is about the same size as Reykjavik, and is just as boring (just like Boring, Oregon). And in Portugal, Reykjavik would be its 6th largest city, right after Braga. Having been to Gresham, Salem, Eugene, Kent, and Braga (which most Americans probably never heard of, but is in fact a lovely little city), I guess it makes sense that there’s not a whole lot of reason to expect anything glamorous out of Reykjavik.
Our first stop was to catch a ride over Iceland in a simulated flyover adventure that makes you feel as if you’re actually flying over the landscape. I rode something very similar called Soarin’ Around the World at Disney’s Epcot Center years ago. Perhaps one of the best testimonials as to the beauty of Iceland was Carolyn being brought to tears simply due to the beauty of what she was seeing. Since I’m a man and am under strict parental orders to never cry, I of course didn’t, but I could tell that I would’ve had I been more of a girly man. I did make sure to grab my crotch, spit on the sidewalk, and loudly proclaim my desire for a beer when we left the place just to make sure everyone understood all my manliness.
(Okay, I actually choked up a little too, but don’t tell anyone. It really was that breathtaking.)
One of the iconic structures in Reykjavik is Hallgrímskirkja, which is a Lutheran church and the second tallest building in Iceland, after Smáratorg Tower, which is an office and retail building that also served as Smaug’s lair for a time. Also, Hallgrímskirkja looks like something Saruman might’ve lived in.
The architecture in Reykjavik is classified as “normal,” by the Architectural Rating System Syndicate and Enterprise Strategies (ARSSES), based in Helsinki, Finland.
One of the top tourist sites of Reykjavik is Rainbow Road. I couldn’t read the Icelandic signs, but best I could decipher was that you have to be gay to walk on it. We snuck Carolyn on for a quick shot and got her off there before any hoards of lesbians could descend upon her. I wanted to walk on the colors too, so I approached a group of men who were obviously there as gay stand-ins, and grabbed one of their hands and sashayed over to the rainbow, dragging him behind me. Unfortunately I must not be a very attractive gay man because the guy yanked his hand away and slapped me in the face. Or maybe he was just a damn homophobe.
Just another couple of random photos trying to salvage some sort of picturesque beauty out of a utilitarian town.
One of the interesting landmarks in Reykjavik is the Perlan museum. And by “interesting landmark” we mean “the best of what little there is to actually see.” I mean, it’s a fine little city, don’t get me wrong. It’s just not touristy-picturesque. Besides, the wonder and beauty of Iceland is in nature, so I think Iceland is smart not to try and gussy up Reykjavik just for tourists. On top of all that, Iceland is currently ranked as the third happiest country in the world, right after Finland and Denmark, so whatever they’re doing is working.
We did learn about what troll women looked like, plus they had this statue of an even bigger one. Doh! You know I kid, Wifey. To me you’re absolutely the most beautiful trolless in the world. The pointy-eared TILF there doesn’t even come close, although you have to admit, she’s pretty hot for a troll.
One of the featured exhibits was an ice cave, made entirely out of –you’ll never guess– frozen water. That’s right. They even carved out an ice throne designed to give those with hemorrhoids some relief. To thank them when I left the cave I gave them a typical Icelandic icy stare, which is always appreciated.
By the way, it was really cold in there, so Carolyn ran pell mell to the exit as soon as she could. I stayed so I could experience what it felt like to be a freshly caught trout thrown into the freezer. I only left after I’d had it up to my gills.
One of the features of Perlan is a slowly rotating top featuring a very nice restaurant. When we travel, we eat a lot via grocery store, but we wanted to experience at least one good Icelandic restaurant dish. It turns out that restaurant is actually quite a nice one, with a focus on Icelandic culinary traditions. The sheep eyes were a little gooey, but everything else was great! After lunch, I walked around the outside snapping a bunch of shots in order to make what amounted to a 360 degree view of Reykjavik. Instead, I selected these four shots because there’s just not enough to see to make all that work worthwhile.
Thingvellir National Park
Believe it or not, we’ve come to the last leg of our Icelandic experience, albeit with a stop where we all get to see the edge of the world, more or less literally. Iceland sits right on top of where the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates sit across from each other in a rift valley, usually exchange pleasantries. Sometimes, however, they get into shouting matches, which is why there are about 130 volcanoes in Iceland, 32 of which are active.
Near the rift valley is the Oxararfoss waterfall, best known for its water cascading over rock.
Walking away from the waterfall and toward the rift offers up this view. That’s North America on the left and Europe on the right. You can tell because the cliff on the right is much more liberal.
We didn’t see much snow other than the glaciers while in Iceland, so this little spot of white hunkiness got us all twitterpated and we took 14 photos of it. But I’m only showing you the best one.
I’m gonna have to trot out some more Lord of the Rings references because this looks exactly like the trail Sam, Frodo, and Gollum took as they entered Mordor. Except I think that one rock on the right used to be on the other side. Pphht. Movies are so fake.
Actually, that photo would make for a pretty interesting and challenging jigsaw puzzle, wouldn’t it?
Standing in the middle of that means you could get squished like a bug if the continental plates decided to quit shovin’ and began reaching out to each other for a hug.
This is what babies see when they look out of their baby carriage.
And this is what Sam and Frodo saw after they crossed the border into Mordor.
Mount Doom.
Whenever we’re traveling I like to snap photos of signs that are made funny because of language differences, or just because I figured out some way to make fun of them. Here is my collection from Iceland, starting with an inn that thinks it’s a bank… or the other way around. I had absolutely no idea which one it was, so I looked it up. It is a hotel. But apparently with ATM themes throughout.
When your bratty kid snores too loud, he’s called a snorrabraut.
I made sure I didn’t bring any broken flowers on any of our hikes, because apparently they’re not allowed. I also wore sneakers since boots obviously aren’t allowed either. It was sure fun walking on that grass once I had the right equipment!
I tried saying a bunch of complimentary things to the cliff edge, but it remained steadfast in its insecurity. Or unsecurity, which is how Icelandianisticish people say it.
Apparently Kaffi’s vagina was impressive enough to get a whole building named after it.
I guess you say, “I have to go snyrting” when you have to use the loo. They are pretty polite in Iceland, always minding their snyrts and q’s.
Based on the color alone, I think we all know what this is. I’ll only add that there’s a limit to the kinds of exotic foods I’ll try, and I do draw the line at frozen poop.
This isn’t a sign, unless it’s a sign of impending electrocution. It’s actually a picture from our hotel room that conveys a couple of points. First is I think it’s a great idea to hardwire a hair dryer into the wall; that’s a pretty effective theft deterrent. But it’s also a little unsettling to have an electrical cord dangling into the sink. Of course, most of us almost always use a hair dryer over a sink (although my hair drying days were long gone a couple of decades ago), but still, this doesn’t feel very safe. We somehow survived, however.
I’m gonna close this Icelandic Trilogy with a bunch of pictures of Northern Lights, taken from inside the Perlan museum. Unfortunately, we weren’t there at a good time for actual Northern Lights, although we were treated to same during our cruise in Norway. However, those were a little bit blah, especially with the naked eye. I don’t know if we’ll ever get a chance to see the real spectacular versions, but hey, that’s why photography was invented! I was gonna pretend that we saw these ourselves, but then I realized it would violate the BaldSasquatch code of only printing the 100% truth. About everything. All the time.
Um, what’s wrong with my nose?
Fare thee well Iceland, we’re glad to have known ye!
* The largest rivers of the world, in order: Nile, Amazon, Yangtze, Mississippi.
We spent about a week in Iceland, which felt like just the proper amount of time. We saw all the major attractions we wanted to see without it feeling like a trek to Mount Doom, and were otherwise enveloped by nature’s beauty everywhere we went. As I mentioned in my last entry, I’m posting the photos in alphabetical order by location partly to highlight the interesting place names. So now we’re to the “f’s,” with Flúðir leading the way.
Flúðir
If Flúðir doesn’t sound like a place from the Lord of the Rings, I don’t know what does. Tolkien certainly could have used it, because this is the only photo we took in Flúðir, so I think only a couple of arctic foxes would’ve noticed. In any case, the photo is a good representation of our drive: long straightaways with vast plains and rarely a mountain or four not in sight. Except we never found Mount Doom. But some of those lava fields sure look similar to what Frodo and Sam had to navigate as they approached Mordor’s volcano.
On the last day we also honored Gandalf’s admonition to “fly you fools!”
Grímsnes-og Grafningshreppur
Grímsnes-og Grafningshreppur sure sounds like a place the orcs must’ve lived, eh? The main settlement in the area is Sólheimar, which has a whopping 80 human inhabitants and I don’t think there are any orcs or goblins left. The main attraction of this region is the Kerið Volcanic Crater. I looked up how to pronounce the “ð” in Icelandic, and got this: Place the tip of your tongue between your upper and lower teeth. Push air out of your mouth between your tongue and your teeth. You should feel some friction.
Screw that, that’s way too much work. I’m just gonna call it Cheerio.
Kerið (aka Cheerio) is thought to be a cone volcano which erupted, emptying its magma reserve. Once the magma was depleted, the weight of the cone collapsed into the empty magma chamber. The current pool of water at the bottom of the crater is at the same level as the water table and is not caused by rainfall. However, it does look like a cereal bowl for a giant capable of holding an enormous helping of Cheerios.
Kerið’s caldera is estimated to have formed approximately 6,500 years ago. Just to give you an idea as to how long ago that was, the world’s first cities appeared in southern Mesopotamia around that time (or if you’re a Bible literalist, about the time Eve was showing off her pet snake to Adam). I think it’s safe to say there was no photography of the explosion, especially since the Mesopotamians hadn’t invented camera film yet.
You may be asking yourself, what in Sam Hill is Carolyn really doing? She was actually fighting the wind (nature’s kind, not the, uh, other one) because it was windy as hell up there. With her arms extended, she looks like she was about ready to take off like the Flying Nun. Although if she’d have been blown off the cliff she would’ve been the Falling None.
Haukadalur Geothermal Field
One item on our bucket list was to see a geyser. We didn’t know it was on our bucket list until we were looking at sights to see in Iceland and found them there. Our bucket list tends to grow when we’re traveling, but it mostly ends up filled with things crossed off. We’re gonna need a bigger bucket.
They have a nice operation nearby with an upscale restaurant and a large gift shop/cafe within a few hundred meters of the field of rising steam and boiling water. At first we thought we had it made by finding a place with guaranteed restrooms because the entire building looked like it was for old geezers. We just thought “Geysir” was how they spelled geezer. But, despite the hordes of people younger than us there, there were plenty of restrooms available, and they honored the geezer name by featuring a robust selection of Preparation H and black socks.
By the way, here is a little trivia to lend credence to our geezer confusion. In British English, geyser has two meanings: a “geyser” can be either a hot spring or a water heater. And for both meanings of the word, most British speakers rhyme it with “geezer.” So there. Tally ho!
The area looked like the fallout from a nuclear bomb, except without all the dead people and stuff.
Just in case you’re not familiar with celsius, 100 degrees is when water starts to boil. I decided not to challenge any signs and test any temperatures, because I like my fingers rare.
They have a cute “litli geysir” before you get to the main event, presumably for the kids to play in.
The word “geyser” actually came from the Icelandic geyser known as Geysir, but ol’ Geysir stopped spouting, so another one called Strokkur has become the main event. Strokkur” translates to “churn;” so get your mind out of the gutter. With all that said, here below was what you’ve all been waiting for all along! (No, not the end of the blog, the geyser eruption!)
We actually captured the whole eruption on video, but the budget for BaldSasquatch –despite the non-existent advertising bucks the site will never generate– doesn’t allow for videos. So go see your own damn geyser if we’re not enough for you, ha ha! Anyway, the geyser erupts every 4-10 minutes (it ain’t Old Faithful), so we watched a couple of eruptions. Our video had one that went a bit higher, so apparently they can vary in intensity.
Of course we always have to root through the souvenirs and chachkies but we rarely buy anything except funny hats. And by “buy” we mean try them on to try to catch some local fleas and then put them back on the rack to share some of our own Portuguese fleas.
Hvolsvöllura
Hvolsvöllura features waterfalls, incredible vistas, glaciers, strange rock formations, a Piggly Wiggly, and a restaurant with a choir. There’s lots to see here, so strap in!
First we have to show our favorite grocery store in Iceland, which I nicknamed Piggly Wiggly. You might think the name of the place is 10-20, but those are in fact its operating hours (20 is 10:00 PM for you American luddites). The name of the store is actually “Bónus,” and they have 31 stores in the country. I gotta say it’s nice not to have to jump out of the car and search for a little sticker on the door with the operating hours on it during, let’s say, a thunderstorm while surrounded by muggers, a rabid poodle and a very angry duck. Accordingly I think every business should display their hours like Bónus. If Carolyn and I ever set up a store in our retirement, we’d probably paint a big 16-16:20 on it.
After stocking up on junk food (we couldn’t find any appropriate foods earmarked for cooking in a geyser, surprisingly), we set out on the road, snapping photos of the sweeping vistas from our stupid Ford Puma. Seriously, that car almost killed us. As just one example, the cruise control was so poorly designed that if you wanted to slow down a bit by pressing the button, and held it down for longer than maybe half a second, the requested speed would suddenly drop in 10 km increments, meaning that within seconds you could go from 70 to 30 (and I guess zero, but I never tested that), but at a reduction in speed so abrupt that it felt like the brakes were being stomped on. Since they weren’t, meaning the brake lights didn’t signal anything, if anyone would’ve been behind us during any of the first thirty times I wrestled with that shitshow, they surely would’ve plowed right through the Puma’s butt cheeks and wrecked ‘um.
Skógafoss is one of the biggest waterfalls in Iceland, with a drop of about 60 meters (131.234 cubits) and a width of 25 meters (54.6807 cubits). With the right conditions, you can see a rainbow. That’s just a word of warning for any American conservatives who think the falls might support gay rights and so would prefer to avoid them.
When I first looked at this photo, I thought Carolyn might secretly be a leprechaun, what with a rainbow shooting out of her ear and all. But in actuality, she’s the pot ‘o gold at the end of my rainbow!
You can walk up 527 steps in order to see the top of the waterfall. But it seemed to me that the bottom is where all the action is, and I’m pretty sure our knees only had about 100 stairs in them. Besides, while I’ve seen the top of plenty of water, I was more anxious to see the backside of water simply because of the marketing campaign offered up by the following waterfall:
Seljalandsfoss is one of Iceland’s most famous waterfalls, best known for the ability to walk behind it (and get soaked in the process). For the life of me, I can’t understand why that’s such a big deal. Just to make sure, before we went there I craned my neck into a sink while running water from the faucet, but the water looked exactly the same as the front.
We were excited to get up close and personal with a glacier, but apparently a glacier’s icy stare is enough to melt the adventure right out of aging tourists, as well as screw with the spelling of “recommend.”
So we stayed a respectful distance away despite how appealing that glacier water must have tasted, especially with all the chocolate bits.
As you can see by the picture on the left, a huge walrus had camped out in the lake in front of the glacier. No, no, the picture on the left, not me on the right!
Next up is Reynisfjara Beach, made famous for its black sand as well as basalt columns. The columns were formed after lava erupted from a volcano and then flowed onto the beach during high tide, and the sea rapidly cooled them. Some say the formations look like a pipe organ.
Although it looks like a giant pipe organ, as hard as I might I couldn’t create any sound by blowing on the rocks. Even worse, I couldn’t find the keyboard, so we had to make due with overhearing about six different languages speculating as to why some nut was kissing the rocks while I wiped the sand off my lips.
“Black sand beach” sounds rather exotic until you look at it and realize it’s just sand that’s a little darker than most. Although the naturally occuring footprint-looking indentations are a sight to behold.
Those rocks formed the basis of a legend concerning two trolls who attempted to drag a ship to shore. Unfortunately for the trolls, even though they were disguised as humans, they were caught by the sun’s rays and turned to stone, becoming the sea stacks known as the Reynisdrangar. Personally, I would’ve named them Laurel and Hardy.
Or maybe it should be the Three Stooges.
I’m sure the rock formations in the background are called something but I couldn’t read the sign from that distance. I’d also bet there’s some trollish legend attached to them, but pretty much all I can see here is my beautiful wife, who is clearly no troll. I’m a lucky man!
Otherwise, here are a series of pictures of the surrounding area. Again, photos don’t do it justice, but suffice to say if you look under “rugged beauty” in the dictionary, there is just one word: Iceland.
And then if you look up “Iceland,” this is all they show.
We had lunch in the quaint little town of Vik (pronounced “Veek;” also, “Vik” means bay, and “Reykur” means smoky, so Reykjavík –pronounced “Raykaveek”– means smokey bay, probably on account of all the indigenous hippies smoking lava bongs) and found ourselves surrounded by this church choir belting out their version of Hells Bells by AC/DC. Do you see that table just in front of the woman in yellow? Yeah, that’s where we were sitting when they started assembling. After one of them balanced their music sheet on my head, we realized we might be in the way and so wolfed down the rest of our lunch and stepped away to avoid eardrum damage. It was actually kind of sweet, unless you wanted to eat lunch without a choir three inches from your ear. But hey, Vik only has a little over 300 residents, so I’m sure they take whatever entertainment they can get, other than when they’re not dodging lava flows and the huge floods the eruptions often cause.
One thing I noticed about the Icelandic language is that apparently they need three words to spell “stop.” It’s no wonder they have tight speed limits, by the time you’re done reading the sign you’ve run into whatever you were supposed to stop for.
And so, once the road repair people let us through, we headed on down the highway to our next Icelandic adventure, which we hoped would result in our finding a pot o’ gold.
Due to surviving into our mid-60’s and being retired, confusion has become our constant companion. For example, when Carolyn told me to put “ice” on my grocery shopping list, by the time the faint echoes of the request bubbled up again inside my brain, I had lost track of exactly what I was supposed to do, although I did remember it might’ve had something to do with ice. At that moment, a Facebook post popped up involving Iceland, so naturally I found myself looking into flights to Iceland. Carolyn was a bit confused when I triumphantly told her I had booked two tickets to Iceland, thinking I had fulfilled her wishes just as ordered. Oh, well, gotta love Europe!
Eventually we learned that she had actually asked me to put “rice” on the shopping list.
Good thing there isn’t a Riceland in the world… unless it’s as gorgeous as Iceland. But that’s not likely, because if they had a “Miss Country” beauty pageant, the other countries would all storm out during the swimsuit competition after Iceland saunters out and promptly blows its top off, which would of course send all the male voters into a frenzy and guarantee Iceland the top prize.
As it turns out, Iceland did exactly that about two days after we left, so we missed a good eruption, sadly. Plus we came back without any ice.
I’m both happy and sorry to say that despite our years of travel photography experience, there is nothing I can show you in this post that will truly capture the majesty and beauty that we saw. But, I know you’ve paid good money to read this so I will try my best. I’ll start out with this scene at the airport, which was taken not long before boarding, and made me worry that this low-cost airline we were using might have so many problems that we might be the only ones on the flight. Turns out we were seated at the wrong gate. It’s a wonder we get anywhere successfully nowadays.
Once we landed and settled in, it took us a while to get our bearings and figure out our exact exploration plan. First of all, the place names in Iceland are pretty much impossible for a non-Icelander to pronounce and/or remember. So if you look at a map with all these place names, you not only have no idea what they are, but you have little ability to memorize them in any way. I mean, look at this map, which was more or less a billboard at a roadside stop. I stared at it a while and realized it was going to be about as much help as my growing a third nipple.
Eventually we figured out that it we just drive on the “Ring Road,” which is the one good road that encircles all of Iceland, and watched for picnic table signs, we’d eventually see everything there was to see. Because in Iceland, if it’s very far off the Ring Road, you’d better be driving a 4×4 plus be authorized to do so by the car rental company. Which is fine because there are plenty of interesting things to see without going 4×4, and they kindly put picnic tables in small spots by the side of the road where you can gaze upon waterfalls or glaciers or mountains or vast lava fields or your navel. Accordingly, a very fine sightseeing plan is just to hop in your car and start along the Ring Road and keep your eyes peeled. Easy peasy, once we figured that out.
So because it doesn’t matter what the actual process is, I’m going to display the photos in alphabetical order according to the geotags on each photo. The location names are kind of a hoot, so that’s partly why I decided on this system.
Bláskógabyggð
Bláskógabyggð’s photos consist of one big waterfall: Gullfoss. By the way, “foss” means “waterfall” in Icelandic. They have a saying there: “No foss, no moss.” Or they should, anyway.
Gullfoss translates to “Golden Falls,” and is part of Iceland’s famous Golden Circle, but was never featured in the Golden Girls TV show for some reason. The origin of the name is shrouded in mystery: some say it was named for the golden light that reflects in its waters at sunset, while others believe it was inspired by the rainbow created by the sun hitting the water spray, which makes me wonder if those particular people were colorblind because I’ve never seen gold in a rainbow. At the end, maybe, but never in it.
You can walk to an area that will get you all wet, but we weren’t interested in a Golden Falls shower. There are actually two parking lots, one that gets you close to the falls and the other above some stairs, where there is a nice gift shop and restaurant.
So, see? That’s pretty much how our trip went. Hop in the car for the day, stop at various sites, snapping pictures and gazing in wonder at the rugged beauty, and then on to the next one.
Fagurhólsmýri
Yeah, say Fagurhólsmýri five times real fast.
This region has some of the most interesting and exciting things to see in all of Iceland.
All we had to do was outrun this rainstorm that kept looming behind us.
There are a lot of waterfalls in Iceland, mostly on account of the water. And gravity. As you’re driving along the Ring Road you just spot them (or the picnic table sign), and then pull over, marvel at the beauty, snap a few photos, and then get in the car and immediately ask where the next restroom is. Old peoples needs their toilets, y’know, especially after being next to that much rushing water.
I don’t know about you, but I think these scenes are real perty-like. There’s definitely something about standing out in the world looking at some of its most beautiful scenery that makes you feel glad to be alive, as well as happy there are still places where you can look out over a great and beautiful expanse and see no one except your honey bunny.
These interesting rock formations are called Basalt Columns, and are basically nature’s attempt at architecture. Basalt makes up about 90% of all the lava rock on earth, and when it cools, due to scientific reasons too complicated to explain here, it sometimes forms these straight columns. (Actually it’s probably not that complicated but when I looked it up there were a lot of words.) Anyway, I think they were really made by the same aliens who made the great pyramids. I mean, if you have the technology to travel hundreds of light years across a universe, the first thing you’re going to want to do when you land is play with rocks, right?
I took this picture for my permanent collection just in case I need blackmail material on Carolyn. Here my favorite scofflaw is traipsing across the grass despite the red line through the human on the sign. She claims she thought it only pertained to men because they used the same male image on bathroom signs. Tell it to the judge.
We took a buttload of photos from the car (a buttload is roughly equivalent to 534), because we were surrounded constantly by such gorgeous scenery. Again, the photos don’t do it justice, you really have to see it in person. For now, I guess you have to settle for BaldSasquatch. But think about adding Iceland to your travel bucket list, it’s hard to imagine anyone walking away from Iceland disappointed in the visit.
That isn’t a volcano blowing in the background, but that field of black rock is as a result of a major lava flow. There were places that looked absolutely otherworldly.
We did frequently marvel at the individual homes or tiny settlements consisting of a handful of houses in the middle of nowhere. I mean, I was certain I saw a sign that said “Nowhere,” with a smaller sign underneath that said, “And you’re in the middle of it.” Anyway, living that remote takes special kind of introvert. If any of those people are extroverts they probably turn into serial killers, or politicians.
We saw lots of horses along the way. The Icelandic horse is a special breed, smaller than most (but they’re not ponies), and direct descendents of the horses originally brought there by the Vikings. The Icelandic horse is known for its outstanding ability to cross rough terrain and are excellent swimmers. The law in Iceland is that you can’t import a horse, and if any horse leaves the country, it can never return, because it might have some big horse cooties on it. Or in it, actually.
The Jökulsárlón Glacier Lagoon is a lagoon formed by the runoff from Breiðamerkurjökull Glacier (which is often pronounced, “Breiðamerkurjökull”), and is yet another spectacular site where photos cannot do it justice. It’s a bay filled with chunks and pieces of ice, looking much like something you’d find in Antarctica. The water flows into the ocean and feeds Breiðamerkursandur beach. While “Breiðamerkursandur” is obviously one of the easiest Icelandic place names to pronounce, for some reason “Diamond Beach” became a more popular nickname for the beach.
The whole place is also a location lots of photographers use for an exotic backdrop. While we were there there was a photo shoot being done with a model who looked absolutely delighted to be standing in freezing cold weather wearing nothing but a flowy skirt and some aluminum foil boots.
We looked and looked for diamonds, hoping to pay for the trip with what we found, but all we saw were these bits and pieces of a glacier (often called “ice”), so we never could figure out why they call it Diamond Beach. The word “Breiðamerkursandur” means “sandy beach” in Icelandic, so I’m guessing that the Diamond Beach nickname came as a result of it taking just as long to pronounce “Breiðamerkursandur” as it takes the earth to forge a diamond.
And so we hit the road again and on to the next beautiful site, which will be presented in the next edition of Bald Sasquatch because we can already see you’ve finished your business on the toilet and are ready to attack life slightly lighter than when you started reading this entry.
So we’ll leave you with this photo of what our stupid rental car (more on the pitiful Ford Puma later… what a hunk ‘o poorly designed junk!), which felt like it needed to remind us every time we stopped the car to look for occupants in the rear seat. I’m not sure who forgot who in the past, but some Ford engineer must’ve thought it was a big problem. Now, if it came up as soon as I got in the car because there was a murderer hiding back there, then they’d be on to something. But if you’re gonna forget your kid or someone back there and only be reminded by this message as you get out of the car, well, all I can say is the Ford Puma is the car for you! And I’m sorry for that!
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