Beth and Mark's Gap Year 2014: Skipping winter?

So much has happened since my last post I don't know where to begin.

From Coral Bay we travelled directly to Perth, with stops at Carnarvon and Geraldton along the way, both of which were quite pleasant and gave us a good opportunity for gentle exercise. At Carnarvon we walked from our caravan park into town and out to their town jetty, which is 1 mile long. My understanding is that the jetty has recently been restored, which causes me to worry a little about what it was like beforehand. There are still plenty of rickety boards and wonky handrails to negotiate, but we did this safely and quite enjoyed the experience. In Geraldton our caravan park was on the beach, but about 4 Km from the town centre. Beth of course thought that it would be delightful to take a walk into town along the beach, and indeed it was, apart from a little trailblazing where the beach ran out. When we got into the town centre we found a lovely place looking out over the marina and still serving coffee and cake after 3:00 pm, which seems to be a rarity in these parts. Not only were they serving coffee and cake but it was also excellent, probably the best since the Wild Mango in Kununurra. Needless to say we lingered a little longer than we should and the sun was sinking as we set off for home. This probably conjures up images of a lovely sunset walk along the beach, and although the wind was up and waves were crashing hard into the shore, the first part of the walk did indeed fit that image. It was only when we got to the trailblazing stuff that the splendour was diminished. Beth of course took the lead at this stage and with a little help from an iPhone torch, managed to retrace our steps over dunes, along the beach and through swamps and ditches to bring us safely home. I must confess that I did harbour fears whilst cloaked in darkness, with the wind howling and waves crashing very close and us stumbling over obstacles, that we would be swept out to sea and consigned as shark feed. Beth, I think held no such fears.

Next stop Perth, which marked the end of the first act in our three part Gap Year adventure. In Perth we caught up with Beth's brother and his family and house/dog/fish sat for them for a few days whilst they flew off on a vacation. We also visited my brother and his family who allegedly also live in Perth. When we were last in Perth the suburb in which they live did not exist and the place it now occupies was well beyond the Perth outskirts. It is amazing how this city has grown. Catching up with family was lovely, as was living in a normal house for a few days.

The car and trailer were to be put into mothballs in Perth, and we were then to fly back to Melbourne to help organise catering for Beth's father's 80th birthday party before taking off to Europe for 3 months. But before we could do this we needed to wash the car and have it serviced. Unfortunately both of these seemingly simple exercises ended up being quite painful, and for someone like me who is quite fond of his car, quite distressing. Red dust accumulated over several months was the villain with respect to car washing. Try as you might, this evil stuff seems to just reappear after you remove it. I think that I need to come to terms with the fact that my cars dust infestation is chronic. With respect to the car service, our Darwin dramas continue to haunt us. It seems that we have developed a transmission oil leak which is attributable to the transfer case being overfilled, the villain here clearly being our Darwin service folk (although they believe not). A bun fight is developing between the Darwin dealership, the Perth dealership and Jeep Australia. Quite outrageously, we have left this problem with Beth's brother and sister in law to manage whilst we go as far away from it as we possibly can. We definitely owe them one.

It was great to arrive back in Melbourne and reunite with our son, Kelvin. We have missed him. It was also fantastic to see that our house was not only still standing, but spic and span. The three young men who have been living there have either done a very good job of keeping it tidy, or made a very big effort to clean it up before we got back. Whatever the case, it was very nice to come home to a clean and tidy house. Catching up with family was great, as was helping to cater for Pa from Geelong's 80th Birthday, which was a really nice event.

Beth and I also took the opportunity to catch up with workmates, or at least Beth caught up with workmates. I, due to my sorry employment status caught up with former colleagues. Whilst much of the scuttlebut I gleaned was somewhat depressing (as it involved job losses and delays in strategic projects), it did rekindle some urges to re-enter the public service fray. I must try to remember that I have left all that behind and control those nasty urges. Beth was quite excited to catch up with workmates and to make an assessment of the environment to which she returns in January. She misses the challenges and camaraderie of the workplace, but not so much I think that she would swap the rest of our gap year to return.

After a fantastic week on home soil, it is time to depart again, this time to Europe for 3 months to catch up with our daughter, Candice, who is living in Munich and to do some serious walking in the mountains. Kelvin is travelling with us for 3 weeks, and as this is his first visit to Europe, we will concentrate on the big European tourist destinations of Rome, Barcelona and Paris for that period. Candice will also take some time off and accompaniy us. This will be our first real family holiday for quite some time, and we are all quite excited about it.

We chose a 2:40am flight from Melbourne, ostensibly because it was the only reasonably priced flight available with a short stopover in Dubai, but also the idea that it may help us to avoid jet lag. Our theory was that if we got on the plane tired, we were more likely to sleep, then when we arrived tired in Munich at 10:00pm, again we would sleep and hopefully continue a reasonable sleep pattern. Surprisingly, we seemed to get this right because jet lag really has not been a problem for us. The plane trip with Emirates was comfortable and incident free, but tiring nonetheless. Despite the mountains of airline food shovelled into our mouths Kelvin was still hungry at Dubai and found it necessary to swap some of his good Australian money for some UAE Dirhams, and then subsequently swap these for a McDonalds meal (he has kept some spare Dirhams for the return journey). I don't know why I did it, but I have to admit that I also helped myself to a sneaky cheeseburger. Weariness clearly affects people in curious ways.

Two mother and child reunions in the space of one week is an extravaganza for the emotions, and tears flowed aplenty at Munich airport as Kelvin and I looked on blokedly and bemusedly. Candice's apartment is in the Heidhausen district which is very close to the river and the city centre. She had prepared well for our arrival with chocolates for Kelvin, a German mobile phone SIM card for me, and Munich maps for Beth (she clearly knows us all pretty well). She had also borrowed beds and rearranged her apartment (quite roomy, but still only one bedroom) to accommodate the three of us. Our stay at Schloss Candice promised to be very comfortable.

We stayed 5 nights in Munich. Candice was working during this time so it was largely up to the three of us to amuse ourselves. This of course involved understanding the rail network, walking a lot and working out how to carry out a coffee and cake transaction.

Melbourne weather it seems is a little like an infectious disease. You come into contact with it, even for a short time and then you become a carrier and spread it wherever you go. I am assured that Munich weather prior to our arrival was beautiful. For most of the time we were there it was pretty miserable (so much for our thoughts that we were skipping winter this year), but that did not stop us from getting about and making strong inroads into the Lonely Planet top 10 must see things in and around Munich. We even visited some things Candice has not seen yet.

Our first day in Munich largely involved wandering around the city centre and visiting some of their historic buildings, including the Residenz, which was the royal palace for Bavarian rulers in years long past. Much of this amazing building (along with so many others in Munich) was severely damaged during WW2 and has been meticulously restored in the decades since. Surprisingly though (and I am sure that there is a good reason for it), the facades on many of the restored buildings have lost their detailed stonework and decorative mouldings around doors and windows, which have been replaced by painted images of the originals. It looks rather quaint, but given the effort and money expended on other aspects of the buildings, I wonder why some of these were allowed to become quaint rather than magnificent. Cold and rain at lunchtime gave us a really good excuse to try out a sausage and beer feast at one of the German beer halls, where we were served by an Asian lady who's spoke a little English (I suspect she spoke a little German as well). Despite the language difficulties we managed to order our meals and feasted in a gluttonous manner on sausages, potatoes, pretzels (not the crunchy little pipsqueak variety, but monster bread based delights), and beer. Beth of course passed on the beer, but did not hold back on the sausage - all the good work done with Candice's left over vegan fare in the outback was undone in one fell swoop.

As we became more familiar with the landscape, more comfortable with the language, more adept at dodging the raindrops and more attuned to the public transport systems, we dared to venture further afield. Schloss Nymphemburg, another Bavarian Royal Palace outside of the city's centre is an enormous and beautiful set of buildings with gardens to match, somewhat in the ilk of Versailles (although a little more staid I.e. German). Kelvin was a little museumed out from the previous day, so we chose not to walk through the palace (sorry - Schloss), but instead satisfied ourselves with a wander through the gardens, where Kelvin could experiment a little with the camera that he had dusted off for this trip.

A full day was set aside for our visit to Schloss Neuschwanstein, which is a nineteenth-century Romanesque Revival palace on a rugged hill above the village of Hohenschwangau near Füssen in southwest Bavaria, Germany (thank you Wikipedia) and probably the most recognisable castle in Germany, so something that we had to see. Neuschwanstein was built at enormous expense by loopy King Ludwig II, pretty much as a plaything. Ludwig was the German equivalent to Harold Holt, not for his loopiness, but his drowning in mysterious circumstances in the waters of Lake Starnberg. Theories abound regarding the true story of what happened to Ludwig, all of them dreamt up I think by tourist operators to add spice to their stories and sell tickets.

Schloss Neuschwanstein is a remarkable place, as indeed is the village of Hohenschwangau below, and is definitely something not to miss if you are visiting Munich. Although relatively unremarkable in terms of size or grandeur, it's setting atop a craggy tor and it's fairy tale appearance make it a truly magical place to visit. Clearly we were not the only ones to think so, because there was a massive swarm of tourists wherever we went. Welcome to Europe Kelvin. If Schloss Neuschwanstein was relocated to Australia I think we could clear the national debt in a week. I think it is fair to say that despite, rather than because of the tourists, we had a delightful time here.

For our last day in Munich, we were somewhat undecided what to do, so allowed Kelvin to choose an activity. Surprisingly, a visit to the former Nazi concentration camp at Dachau was chosen in preference to the BMW museum. In some ways you wish that places like this would have been torn down to remove a horrible dark part of history from memory, but it was the wishes of survivors of this place that Dachau remain largely intact as a memorial to those who suffered and died here and as a reminder or us all that this sort of thing must never happen again. Although I am sure that many of the visitors here come out of morbid fascination rather than to understand and learn from the horrors perpetrated here, I would suggest that very few people would go away from a visit without feeling a sense of revulsion at the crimes committed here and elsewhere. I guess if that sense is new, or heightened, then that is learning, and a good thing.

It is estimated that about 150,000 people perished at Dachau, largely from mistreatment, and whilst this number pales in comparison with the likes of the Treblinka and Auschwitz death camps, which had a specific role in exterminating "undesirables" and where millions perished, Dachau was the first concentration camp (established in 1933 soon after the rise of Hitler as the German leader) and set a model for cruelty and genocide which was followed by these other camps. It is interesting the emotions that places like this stir up. A few years ago we visited the Anne Franke house in Amsterdam which made me feel incredibly sad. I did not feel sadness here so much as anger, but perhaps I should have, because here 150,000 stories ended prematurely for no good reason.

The Germans are born to be engineers. Everything here is perfectly planned, precise and runs like clock work. Beth of course loves this and is in her element here. I also like order, but I don't mind a bit of chaos thrown in as well, it helps to keep us on our toes. I was amused to find that the Germans are so ordered, that on the very rare occasion that something untoward happens they are totally lost. To fully appreciate the Dachau experience we felt that a guided tour in English would be best, so we arrived at the counter at just after 11:00am to find that we had just missed the 11:00 tour. Not to worry, we booked for the next tour at 2:00 and decided to go off have lunch and a wander until then. The thought did occur to us that maybe we could catch up to and tag onto the tour which had just left, but decided against. We arrived back at the designated meeting spot well before 2:00 and waited for our guide, then we waited some more, and still some more again. By this time it was 2:15 and we sensed that perhaps something had gone awry. Beth inquired at the counter to be told that they had lost their guide and to be patient, they were trying to contact her. So we waited some more. This is the sort of thing which clearly does not happen in Germany because what followed was quite comical. Although the desk was staffed with people speaking perfect English, a red faced young man who had obviously skipped a few English classes and was clearly not well equipped for the task was sent out to advise those in the tour group that the tour would not proceed and to explain that a choice of either a full refund, or a full refund plus an audio guide was possible. This message was horribly lost in translation and the process for executing these choices was not explained, so of course nobody quite knew what they were getting or how to get it and pandemonium ensued. Eventually we navigated our way through the improvised and horribly inefficient process and secured an audio guide, and 4 hours later than we had hoped, embarked on the tour.

A highlight of our stay in Munich was watching the amazing World Cup semi final (where Germany prevailed 7-1 against a hapless Brazil side) in a beer hall with about 200 Germans. The atmosphere was quite amazing. Candice had originally intended taking us to an open air beer garden where the game was to be displayed on a giant screen, but the weather was quite foul so we we found a beer hall, but not surprisingly there was not a seat to be had, so we found quite a good spot to stand and watch. I have never quite experienced the ear splitting din I heard eight times that night. One for each German goal, and the loudest reserved for when the final whistle blew. Even though we were nearly asleep on our feet (this was only our second night in the country), the regularity of goals and boisterous celebration of the natives kept us from embarrassing ourselves by falling to the ground in slumber.

Although I am writing this having returned to Munich from our 2 weeks in Rome, Barcelona and Paris, I am aware that I have written quite a lot and that I have shamefully reneged on my promise of an early update upon reaching Europe. For that reason I will finish up here and post another update soon regarding these adventures. It has been a very busy time and finding gaps in the day to write a blog has proven quite difficult. Now that we are about to fall back into some sort of regimented existence (sans children) I am hoping that I can make updates more frequently.